90: Chapter 90 Cleaning up the battlefield, hurry up and grab the essence!

The battle was over.

The Zerg Swarm had withdrawn.

"Cancel the pursuit order. All ships, rest and reorganize on the spot. Clean up the battlefield!"

Major General Zhao Yu stood in the center of the bridge, his voice spreading through the entire fleet via the command network. He stared at the red light dots rapidly moving away on the hologram, his fingers lightly tapping the edge of the tactical console.

"The Zerg retreat formation is intact, not a rout. Pursuit may lead to a counter-attack."

"The core mission of this fleet is to escort the diplomatic mission, not an annihilation operation."

"Therefore," Zhao Yu raised his volume, "all units, deactivate Level 1 combat readiness and switch to Level 3 alert."

"Current primary task: Clean up the battlefield and tally battle damage."

He looked around, his tone returning to the cold, hard texture belonging to a legion commander:

"Recover all recoverable resources. Especially the Zerg corpses; the Research Institute buys those at high prices. They are raw materials for biological agents, and pharmaceutical life extension depends on them. Move fast, don't wait for the Zerg to react and pull a feint."

The orders were passed down through the ranks.

Over fifty thousand warships simultaneously "breathed a sigh of relief"—the brightness of the energy patterns flowing on the hulls decreased, gun ports slowly retracted into the armor layers, and engines switched from combat power to cruise mode.

The ports originally used for launching missiles and deploying fighter jets now began to spit out something else.

Recovery robots.

Numbering in the hundreds of millions, intelligent recovery units of various forms surged from the bellies of each ship like metallic locusts, pouncing on the battlefield where they had just been fighting to the death.

...

The Zerg clearly didn't intend to leave any parting gifts for the humans when they retreated. Any biomass they could carry away was basically dragged off.

However, near the Watcher Legion's side, where the warships' fire was more concentrated, some corpses remained around them that they couldn't enter to recover.

Floating on the battlefield were many more drone and star mine remains emitting electrical sparks. There were only a small amount of Zerg limbs.

"Report." The voice of the recovery department head sounded over the command network, dripping with deep disappointment. "The Zerg took away the vast majority of the corpses."

Zhao Yu raised an eyebrow. "Expected. Scrape up as much as you can."

"Yes, sir!"

The engineering teams began their work.

But someone was moving faster than them.

---

"Quick, quick, quick! Hurry and grab the essence!!"

Li Yuan was practically pressed against the observation window, gesticulating wildly, his nose almost flattened.

Ten Lin Xiao Fighter Jets, piloted by Light Guardians, were frantically weaving through the edge of the battlefield.

That could no longer be called "weaving."

That was called "glitching."

Every time a Light Guardian discovered a Zerg corpse, the fighter jet would dive toward it.

Then, it would lightly "brush" the corpse with its wing.

Giving just a tiny bit of initial momentum, it sent the corpse drifting slowly toward the nearest human warship.

Simultaneously, the life essence within the corpse would be stored by the Light Guardian's energy pathways.

The drifting corpses would then be taken over by the warship's own gravitational field, which, like a magnet attracting iron filings, slowly "tugged" the remains over until they finally adhered to the surface of the warship's outer armor.

At first, it was just a small pile.

Soon, the small pile became a large pile.

Then, the large pile became a small mountain.

Finally...

"Holy crap."

Chu Xinghe was piloting his fighter jet back to base. As he approached the "purple subtlety," he saw that on the armor plating that was originally smooth as a mirror, a mountain range of Zerg corpses stretching for over a dozen kilometers had grown.

And this mountain range was still "growing" at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Are they... running over to the neighboring xihe-class ships again?" Luo Lan's voice came through the channel, laced with deep helplessness.

Chu Xinghe pulled up the radar screen.

Sure enough.

The ten green dots representing the Light Guardian fighter jets were currently split into three groups: one group continued scavenging around the purple subtlety, while the other two groups—one pounced on a nearby xihe-class battlecruiser, and the other simply ran off to a cruiser further away.

Then they began repeating the same process:

Find corpse → brush it → deliver it to the warship as "add-on armor."

"Damn." Luo Lan's eyes twitched. "Is anyone going to manage them?"

No response.

The Light Guardians continued burying their heads in their work, their movements as nimble as if they were rushing the last wave of deliveries on Double Eleven.

Chu Xinghe was silent for two seconds before switching to a private chat with Luo Lan: "Do you think Li Yuan's babies... have some kind of special fetish? Like necrophilia? Forget it, this makes it easier for the people behind to collect later; their efficiency is actually quite high."

Luo Lan rolled her eyes on the other end—Chu Xinghe could imagine the scene.

"How can it not be high!" Luo Lan's voice was very helpless. "Look at their maneuvers. That sudden stop and turn just now, the displayed G-force was at least two thousand Gs. I certainly couldn't pull that off. Senior Brother Chu, could you?"

Chu Xinghe thought about it and honestly shook his head. "I can't. If I did, I'd turn into meat paste."

---

The efficiency of the hundreds of millions of recovery robots was quite high. Soon the battlefield was swept clean. Although Li Yuan's Light Guardians were also efficient, there were only 10 of them after all; compared to the entire battlefield, they were just a drop in the bucket.

When the fighter jets returned to the hangar and the ten Light Guardians disembarked, their appearances had undergone a significant change.

First were the weapons and shields.

The light-forged longswords, shields, armor, and quivers were originally pure milky-white light structures. Now, they were completely as if forged from rubies.

Overall, they looked like...

"Did this Light Set swap for a Fire Dragon Set?" Chu Xinghe was also a veteran gamer. When the fighter jets landed and he saw the ten Light Guardians walking down in formation, he blurted out, "This skin... is pretty flashy!"

Luo Lan facepalmed beside him. "Senior Brother, this is reality, not a game."

"I know." Chu Xinghe stroked his chin, his eyes shining. "But don't you think this look is cool? Red and white color scheme, a classic that never goes out of style. And look at the patterns on that armor, tsk tsk, the details are maxed out."

He suddenly thought of something and abruptly turned to look at Li Yuan, who had just run down from the observation deck:

"Junior Brother! Let's discuss something!"

Li Yuan: "...Huh?"

"These Light Guardians of yours," Chu Xinghe rubbed his hands, his expression eager, "are they for sale? I want to buy a female version! Price is negotiable!"

Li Yuan: "???"

Luo Lan: "...Senior Brother, can you stay serious for more than two days?"

"No," Chu Xinghe said righteously. "Being serious is bad for the health."

---

Farce aside, business had to be done. Next was the tactical review, and the students had to attend as observers.

However, Li Yuan let Laya take leave and go back to handle the matter of essence transfer and summarization; after all, it was easy for girls to get leave.

The battlefield cleanup lasted for about six hours. The final statistics were quickly released.

"Battle damage report."

On the bridge, Major General Zhao Yu looked at the data scrolling on the holographic screen, his expression calm.

"Unmanned equipment losses: star mine array loss rate 5%, turret array loss rate 0.2%, drone loss rate... 3%. Totaling 7,164,000,000 units."

He paused. "All are rapidly replenishable consumables, not a big problem."

"Personnel losses: 127 lightly injured, 43 seriously injured. Eleven frigates lost."

The atmosphere on the bridge grew heavy for a moment.

These were all frigate crew members who had advanced too aggressively in the early stages and failed to withdraw in time after being surrounded by the Zerg.

Zhao Yu was silent for a few seconds, then continued:

"In terms of results: Confirmed destruction of one leviathan mothership—designated No. 7. Destroyed various types of Zerg combat units, totaling approximately... eighty-four billion."

The number was huge.

But it was useless. Everyone knew that for the Zerg, this number didn't even count as a loss, and the biomass was basically all recovered.

"Overall assessment," Zhao Yu turned off the holographic screen and looked at the surrounding officers and observing students, "in this encounter, our army achieved its strategic goal—repelling the swarm and ensuring the safety of the diplomatic mission. But at the tactical level..."

He shook his head. "It's a bit of a loss."

"The Return to Void system was a 'first-encounter kill' for the Leviathan. The Zerg hadn't recorded actual combat data for this weapon before, which is why No. 7 dared to charge so far forward, and its shield configuration was a conventional scheme. Next time they'll know—either keep their distance, adjust shield frequencies, or directly focus fire on our Sovereign-class ships."

"In hundreds of years of the confrontation era, there has been too little experience with fleet battles of this scale." Zhao Yu sighed. "Today's battle exposed many problems. Each post, go back and write a review report, to be submitted tomorrow."

He waved his hand. "Meeting adjourned. Send the wounded to medical pods. Repair what needs repairing, replenish what needs replenishing. Mission students... go back and rest, the itinerary continues as normal tomorrow."

...

When Li Yuan walked out of the bridge, it was already dark—of course, there was no day or night in space, but the fleet simulated a standard routine, dimming the lights as "nightfall."

His mind was still spinning with the content of the review meeting just now.

A loss?

It certainly was a loss.

The human side lost real warships, lives, and resources. The Zerg that died... to put it bluntly, were just a batch of assembly-line products. They could just have the broodmother hatch another batch when they got back.

Unless they could directly annihilate motherships like the Leviathan as the Return to Void did, killing any number of fodder was meaningless.

"But the essence is truly fragrant..." Li Yuan got a bit excited thinking about how the essence snatched in this battle had dyed the Light Guardians red.

He didn't know the exact amount yet—he had Laya go back first to summarize.

Thinking of Laya and that ambiguous essence transfer method, Li Yuan's pace quickened slightly.

In the dormitory now, there should only be a warm Laya, hehe.

Li Yuan swallowed hard.

It was out of excitement.

He walked to the dormitory door and took a deep breath, steadying his expression—he couldn't look too excited.

Then, he swiped his card and pushed the door open.

---

The door opened.

Laya, in a fiery red gown, sat on the bed, the hem of the gown covering the entire room.