11: Kill them all at the oil refinery? This heresy is more efficient than the devil!

In the shadows of a base corner, Zhang Yuan stood alone.

The cold metal walls drew away his body heat, but he didn't notice.

[Post-battle summary complete.]

The adjutant's cold electronic voice echoed in his mind.

[Recovered enemy 'Tarantula' Sentry Turret, 72% damage.]

[Structure severely damaged, unable to reverse-engineer.]

[Deemed scrap, melted down.]

[Metal materials +850.]

[bio-fuel +350.]

"bio-fuel."

Zhang Yuan murmured the words.

His stomach churned.

His gaze passed through several compartments, landing on a corner of the holographic screen, where external operations were being broadcast in real-time.

Two massive SCV engineering robots were using their heavy mechanical arms to pick up the remnants of bodies in Hive City Enforcer uniforms and deposit them into the roaring smelting unit behind them.

No mourning, no ceremony.

Not even the slightest pause.

The body that once belonged to a living person was precisely fed into the input port by the mechanical arm.

Then, the [bio-fuel] reading on the screen flickered.

Zhang Yuan stared intently at the number until his eyes felt dry and stinging, then abruptly tore his gaze away.

He raised his hand, his fingertips tracing the cold control panel, leaving a faint damp mark.

"Execute recycling."

His command echoed in his mind, his voice calm in a way that was unfamiliar even to himself.

He had to do this.

Especially in front of Ilaria, he had to be a ruthless, rational, unshakeable leader.

Any weakness in this abyss was a death warrant.

A sour taste rose in his throat.

He spun around, rushed to the metal scrap recycling port in the corner, bent over, and retched violently.

Nothing came out.

Only the sharp pain of stomach cramps and a silent curse against this world, surging from deep within his chest.

Why?

Why did he have to come here?

Not far away in the medical bay, behind a gap in a metal partition, Ilaria witnessed it all.

She watched that tall but solitary back.

Watched the tense line of his shoulders.

Watched his hand unconsciously clench and unclench on the control panel.

This man, issuing the most blasphemous commands, yet surrounded by a palpable aura of pain.

Was this man a cold-blooded demon who enjoyed blasphemy, or a... mortal forced to wear a demon's mask, with a bleeding heart?

Confusion and shock intertwined in Ilaria's azure eyes, deepening them.

She took a deep breath, stepped out of the shadows, her footsteps unusually clear in the quiet base.

"I need to tell you something."

Zhang Yuan straightened up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and by the time he turned, his face had regained its calm.

"My mentor, Inquisitor Augustus, we did not come to this Hive City without reason."

Ilaria's voice was calm, as if her recent observation had led her to a decision.

"We tracked traces of Chaos corruption here, suspecting the Valerius Family is involved with some forbidden worship."

She paused, seemingly organizing her thoughts.

"This is Valarak Hive, located on the fringes of the Ultima Segmentum. The current time is 985.M41, according to official Imperial records."

The calm on Zhang Yuan's face vanished instantly.

His pupils contracted, and his breathing hitched for a moment.

Valarak.

Fringes of the Ultima Segmentum.

985.M41.

These words struck his nerves like heavy hammers.

The Great Rift.

The Plague Wars.

The Tyranids' Leviathan fleet.

Those world-destroying catastrophes from his "Cloud Hammer" knowledge were no longer distant background stories, but an imminent future, roaring close!

He had no time.

He had to develop as quickly as possible, at all costs.

Under Ilaria's "guidance," Zhang Yuan's resource collection efficiency greatly improved.

But soon, new problems arose.

Easily accessible scrap and isolated mutated creatures around the base had been cleared out.

To continue rapid development and unlock Bolter technology, he had to enter the deeper abandoned industrial zones.

And that was the traditional hunting ground of the "Goliath Gang," one of the Hive City's three major gangs.

"Passive defense can never lead to development."

Zhang Yuan rejected Ilaria's suggestion to "temporarily avoid the conflict."

He used the resources accumulated during this time to train four more Space Marines, forming a full squad of eight.

Ilaria watched the new recruits emerge from the barracks, her heart once again shaken.

This speed of creation out of nothing completely overturned her understanding of productivity.

At the same time, a brand new upgrade option had been unlocked in the armory's tech tree.

[Upgrade Project: Combat Shield.]

[Cost: Metal 150, bio-fuel 150.]

[Description: Equips Space Space Marines with rapidly deployable heavy riot shields, made of tungsten carbide and high-density ceramic composite materials, effective against projectile weapons and low-intensity explosive impacts.]

"Ha!"

Zhang Yuan let out a short laugh, looking at the new option.

"It's time to teach those muscle-brained barbarians a lesson in technology!"

He tapped the virtual screen lightly with his finger.

"Sorry, fellas," he muttered softly, "to unlock Bolter technology, I'll have to ask you to make a small contribution to humanity's great revival."

"We're going to collect some 'tolls'!"

Inside the abandoned foundry passage, eight Space Space Marines, like steel behemoths merged with shadows, lay silently in ambush behind huge pipes and rusted mechanical wreckage.

Five extremely tall and burly figures appeared at the end of the passage.

Their muscles were bulging, their skin covered with hideous scars and rough metal implants, and they carried huge chain axes and crude gunpowder flamers.

The leader noticed a subtle scratch on the ground, immediately stopped, and let out a bestial growl.

The crude blunderbuss in his hand suddenly lifted, and without any warning, directly sprayed a barrage of scorching iron shot!

"Front rank, shields up!"

Zhang Yuan's command was instantly transmitted through the encrypted channel.

Clang!

Two heavy and swift mechanical interlocking sounds rang out.

The two Space Marines at the very front suddenly stepped forward, their arm-mounted devices instantly activating, as several thick alloy plates layered out, expanded, and interlocked tightly, instantly forming a wall shimmering with cold metallic light directly in front of the squad.

Dense iron shot and the heavy throwing axes that whistled after them slammed hard against the shield surfaces.

A series of ear-splitting metallic impacts merged into a single noise, and powerless sparks erupted in clusters on the shield's surface, yet failed to leave even a single effective dent.

The Space Marines behind the shields stood firm as mountains.

"Is that all?"

A cold electronic synthetic voice came from behind the shields, carrying a processed, emotionless taunt.

The next second, the two shield-wielding Space Marines tacitly stepped half a pace aside, opening two narrow but deadly firing lanes.

Six C-14 'Stinger' gauss rifles, already prepared, instantly erupted with air-tearing roars.

A metal storm of high-velocity armor-piercing rounds swept forth with unmatched kinetic energy.

The Goliath strongman charging at the front bore the brunt.

His proud, reinforced muscles, comparable to low-grade alloy, failed to offer the slightest resistance against the gauss rifle. The 8mm metal spike passed through at three times the speed of sound, its kinetic energy instantly exploding within his chest cavity, churning his heart and lungs into a bloody pulp and blasting a basin-sized hole from his back. The sneer on his face had not even faded before the light of life completely vanished from his eyes.

His entire body was flung backward as if struck head-on by an invisible battering ram, slamming heavily into the wall behind him and sliding down, leaving a shocking splash of bloodstains.

The battle began in mere seconds and ended in mere seconds.

Only the smell of gunpowder and a nauseatingly thick stench of blood remained in the passage.

After the battle, Ilaria stepped forward to examine the bodies, her face suddenly becoming incredibly grim.

"This is bad."

She whispered, pointing to the neck of one of the most burly corpses.

There hung a hideous necklace made of coarse bone fragments and metal pieces, with a roughly polished, still sharp metal jawbone as its pendant.

"This is the 'Bonebreaker's' mark; he's 'Ironjaw's' younger brother, a minor leader of the Goliath Gang in the Red Sands District!"

"This is the 'Bonebreaker's' mark, only trusted confidants of the gang leader wear it. And look at the injection scars on his arm, they're residuals of 'Rage Type IV' combat stims, which only 'Ironjaw's' direct forces get... This person is his younger brother! Such a person appearing in a squad means we might have wiped out an elite squad on an important mission, not just robbed a few stragglers. Ironjaw won't let this go."

Half a day later, the news reached the Goliath Gang's lair in the depths of the Red Sands District, an abandoned smelting workshop converted into their base.

"What did you say?!"

A roar loud enough to tear off the roof exploded in the space filled with the smell of sweat, machine oil, and cheap stimulants.

"Ironjaw," a giant nearly two and a half meters tall, with muscles like stacked granite and half his face replaced by a grotesque metal jawbone, suddenly stood up.

He grabbed a heavy iron table nearby and, like throwing a small stone, slammed it violently against the opposite wall.

Boom—!

The iron table shattered into pieces, sending fragments flying, startling several gang members nearby.

"Ironjaw's" massive body almost burst out of the room, his muscles, packed with various combat stims and metal implants, swelled wildly in anger.

He issued a rallying call to all Goliath members in the Red Sands District.

Nearly a hundred muscle-bound strongmen, injected with combat hormones and wielding chain axes, led by a champion warrior known as "The Butcher," charged menacingly towards Zhang Yuan's base.

"The Butcher" also dragged a creaking, makeshift battering ram welded from countless scraps and bones. They intended to crush this new force that dared to provoke them, using the most primitive and bloody methods.

Piercing alarms blared throughout the base.

The lights on the walls instantly changed from soft white to rapidly flashing blood-red!

Looking at the dense, rapidly approaching red dots on the tactical map, Ilaria's breathing quickened.

This was the biggest crisis Zhang Yuan had faced since establishing his base.

She looked at Zhang Yuan.

The man was staring at his resource panel, where numbers flickered due to the newly acquired minerals.

On his face, however, was a nearly insane smile.

Zhang Yuan slammed the control console.

"All SCVs, immediately build Bunkers at the main entrance! Hurry!"

He turned around, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Let them come! Today, I'll show them what 'Space Marines in Bunkers, even gods can't stop them' means!"