120: Chapter 120: Using Sleep to Counter the Main Characters' Thunder Beasts

The battle fortress left two shallow tracks on the creep-covered ground, finally stopping at the edge of a relatively open basin.

Inside the vehicle, the three looked through the panoramic porthole of the observation deck toward the 'mountain' in the center of the basin.

Finally, they had reached the Ultralisk.

Unlike all the Zerg encountered before, there was no roaring, no hostility, and not even the vigilance of sensing an approaching enemy.

This thousand-meter-tall behemoth lay quietly in the center of the basin, the bone spurs on its back resembling the silhouette of continuous mountain ranges, rising and falling slightly with its long, slow breaths.

It was asleep.

It was truly asleep.

Li Yuan looked at the huge red dot on the Zerg detection map, which was as dazzling as a small sun, and then looked at the 'mountain range' outside the window that seemed to have existed there since ancient times, feeling momentarily dazed.

"Is this... the Ultralisk?" Laya leaned against the porthole, her ice-blue eyes widened, her voice filled with disbelief, "It... didn't notice us?"

Elia stood beside her, her silver hair shimmering under the pale sunlight filtering through the thin atmosphere. The young girl frowned slightly, her ice-blue pupils reflecting the silhouette of the behemoth in the distance, and said softly:

"According to the data, the Ultralisk's sensory system mainly targets large energy reactions and physical vibrations. The movement of our battle fortress... for it, might be like an ant crawling past its feet."

Li Yuan was silent.

Indeed, looking at the proportions, the battle fortress, which was over a hundred meters long, probably couldn't even count as a slightly larger toy in front of this behemoth that was over two thousand meters long.

He adjusted the high-magnification telescope on the observation deck, zooming in the lens, and the details of the Ultralisk were clearly presented.

First was the height—visually estimated at over 1,200 meters, equivalent to a 300-story skyscraper from the old human era. Its body was overall dark brown, covered with biological armor that was thick and plate-like. The armor was covered with crisscrossing gullies and protruding bone spurs, each of which was tens of meters long, with tips gleaming with a metallic, cold, and hard luster under the light.

The most striking part was the head. Two giant serrated mandibles over four hundred meters long extended from both sides of the mouthparts, their edges in a ferocious barbed shape, with surfaces covered in traces of wear—

That was proof of having once torn through city walls and pierced through the armor of command centers. The mandibles were slightly open in its sleep, revealing the pitch-black oral cavity behind, where layers of grinding gear-like teeth could be vaguely seen.

Above the head were six pairs of compound eyes, each with a diameter of over twenty meters, currently tightly shut, with chitinous eyelids on the surface like heavy sluice gates. Dense, short tentacles grew around the compound eyes, swaying gently with its breathing.

Following the head backward was a neck as thick as the base of a mountain range, followed by a massive torso almost equal in length to the body. On each side of the torso were three pairs of articulated limbs—

Like giant bridge piers, the supporting legs each had a diameter of over three hundred meters, with heavy footpads divided into three lobes at the ends, deeply embedded in the creep-covered ground.

On its back, extending from the end of the neck to the tip of the tail, grew two rows of uneven bone spurs. These bone spurs were at least a hundred meters long, with the longest ones located in the center of the back, reaching a height of over three hundred meters, casting ferocious shadows under the pale daylight.

The tail was relatively short but still nearly three hundred meters long, ending in a cluster of bone hammers resembling a meteor hammer, with surfaces covered in sharp protrusions.

Overall, it didn't look like a creature, but more like a living, breathing mountain range.

The battle fortress stopped about 500 meters in front of the Ultralisk. Looking up from this angle, the behemoth's form almost filled most of the field of view. Beneath its feet, the fortress was as tiny as a toy car discarded by a child on a beach.

"This thing..." Laya swallowed, her voice a bit dry, "It looks really tanky."

She recalled the Brood Hosts they had dealt with before. Although those meat mountains that were hundreds of meters tall were massive, their surfaces were covered in semi-transparent incubation membranes, with Larva wriggling inside and breaking out of the sacs.

The entire host gave a feeling of being soft, wriggling, full of life activities, but weak in defense. In fact, that was true—after breaking the energy shield, the phase-conjugate ion beam could easily penetrate their bodies.

But the Ultralisk was completely different.

The first impression it gave was "heaviness." Every inch of its carapace seemed to have gone through billions of years of sedimentation and compression, and every bone spur exuded a sense of power capable of destroying cities and breaking through fortresses. That oppressive force, naturally radiating even in its sleep, as if it could crush everything, made any creature standing before it instinctively feel their own insignificance.

What was even more unsettling was its "composure."

The enemy was already close by, yet it remained asleep. It was pure disregard—just as humans wouldn't care about an ant crawling past their feet, this behemoth seemed to not consider the battle fortress right in front of it a threat that needed vigilance.

"How about..." Elia spoke softly, breaking the silence, "we fire a shot and see?"

Her ice-blue eyes held uncertainty: "Although, I always feel... that taking advantage of the Ultralisk dreaming to launch a sneak attack is a bit... presumptuous?"

This was a bit weird, but Li Yuan understood what she meant.

Facing such a massive, power-filled creature, even knowing it was an enemy, the act of "stabbing it while it sleeps" would indeed make one feel a kind of near-instinctive hesitation—this was a natural awe of "colossal objects."

Laya tilted her head: "But there's no other way, right? Didn't Sister Ling Xi say that the Ultralisk is mainly a city-breaking weapon against large-scale human fortifications and armaments? Humans don't have a precedent for single-unit combat against an Ultralisk, and we don't know how to fight it either."

"She's right." Li Yuan called up the data from the database, "According to war history records, the Ultralisk mainly undertakes assault tasks on the battlefield—breaking through defensive lines, tearing apart positions, and destroying fixed defensive fortifications. They basically don't launch attacks on individual units..."

Elia was thoughtful: "So they actually... don't really listen to commands?"

"Probably. There are records showing that, except for executing specific destruction tasks, most of the time, the Ultralisk wanders on the battlefield." Li Yuan flipped through the data,

"They have no territorial awareness, and their aggressiveness is relatively 'passive'—unless they receive sufficient stimulation or direct orders from a Cerebrate, otherwise, they are more inclined to... uh, eat trees."

"Eat trees?" Laya blinked.

"Yes." Li Yuan pointed to a record, "Observation reports show that, in addition to the energy provided by the creep for survival, the Ultralisk's own feeding preference is omnivorous with a tendency toward herbivory. They can grind almost all organic matter with their mouthparts, but their favorite food is large plants rich in fiber. Some frontline outposts even use this point to plant specific tree species as 'decoy forests' outside the defensive lines to attract the Ultralisk to deviate from their attack routes."

Laya had a strange expression: "So such a big guy... is actually a vegetarian enthusiast?"

"You can understand it that way." Li Yuan closed the data, "So, since it's sleeping so soundly now, maybe it's... digesting?"

The three looked at each other.

The atmosphere was somewhat subtle for a moment.

They had prepared for a bitter battle, a fierce battle, or even a bloody battle, but it turned out the opponent was sleeping, and might even be having a sweet dream about eating leaves.

"Since we're already here," Li Yuan rubbed his temples, a bit depressed, "if we go back without firing a shot, that would be even more awkward."

His original assumption was that after approaching a certain distance, the Ultralisk would wake up, followed by a grand battle—just like in the war history footage, the behemoth charging, the earth shaking, while they would use mobility and tactics to maneuver, finally winning with difficulty.

Who knew reality would be so... plain.

"Hey hey! Laya, what are you doing!" Elia suddenly exclaimed.

Li Yuan turned his head and saw that Laya had opened the side door of the observation deck at some point, her two pairs of light wings unfolded behind her, and she was flying gently toward the Ultralisk.

"I'll just... touch it to see." Laya looked back, revealing a playful smile, "It's sleeping so deeply, it should be fine, right?"

"Come back!" Li Yuan shouted in a low voice.

But Laya had already flown to the side of one of the Ultralisk's forelimbs. That articulated limb, with a diameter of over fifty meters, lay on the ground like a collapsed giant pillar, and the carapace on its surface was even more shocking up close—

Each carapace plate was several meters thick, with coarse, stiff bristles growing at the seams. The surface of the carapace was not smooth but covered with fine, uneven textures and traces of mineral deposits.

Laya carefully reached out, her fingertips gently touching the surface of the carapace.

Cold, hard, with a texture somewhat like rock. She pressed down with some force, but the carapace didn't move at all, not even leaving a single scratch.

"It's really hard..." Laya muttered softly, and then curiously flew to one of the Ultralisk's compound eyes. That eye, with a diameter of over twenty meters, was tightly shut, the chitinous surface of the eyelid displaying a dark red iridescence under the light.

She could even hear the slow and powerful sound of blood flowing from behind the eye—that was proof of the behemoth's life activities.

Laya turned in the air and finally landed back on the observation deck, looking surprised: "Master, it's really sleeping so soundly! It didn't react when I touched it!"

Li Yuan rubbed his forehead: "Alright, alright, stop playing. Since it won't wake up, then we'll... fire a few shots to try?"

We can't really make a trip for nothing.

The three returned to the vehicle, and Li Yuan drove the battle fortress back about two kilometers—at this distance, even if the Ultralisk suddenly woke up, they would have enough reaction time to adjust their tactics.

"Target locked, at the seam of the Ultralisk's chest carapace." The Light Guardian's report came from the communication channel, "Phase-conjugate cation siege cannon charging started."