Chapter 178 Mechanical Plague: Rust

"Bzzt... bzzzt..."

That distress signal, crackling with static, was still playing on a loop, but in the deathly silent command hall of the dragon sparrow, it sounded even more chilling than a funeral dirge.

"Old Chen, drag out those 'old antiques' gathering dust in the warehouse." Lin Yuan ripped off the connecting cables still smoking on his body; although his face was as pale as a sheet, the gleam of mischief in his eyes had not faded one bit.

Chen Weiguo was stunned for a moment, then immediately realized: "You mean... the first-generation hydraulic power armor?"

"Right, that batch of junk that is useless except for being bulky and durable." Lin Yuan flexed his stiff neck, his joints popping, "That stuff has no chips, it's all mechanical transmissions and hydraulic rods. Even if the virus in this hellhole wants to gnaw on it, it has to see if its teeth can bite through solid steel plates."

The current dragon sparrow was like a paralyzed giant; all its high-tech equipment had become mere decorations, and instead, this kind of clunky, primitive machinery had become a lifeline.

Ten minutes later, at the launch deck.

Six bulky mechs with mottled paint, still smelling of factory grease, stood in a row. These things looked like sentient boilers, covered in violent rivets and exposed hydraulic pipes, puffing out steam with every movement.

"I'm going too." Academician Wang squeezed over, clutching an old-fashioned Geiger counter; the old man was wearing a gas mask, looking quite comical.

"You should just rest here, old man. The air in that place is full of the smell of rust; don't clog up your lungs." Lin Yuan stepped into the open cockpit of the mech, and with a teeth-gritting sound of gears meshing, the heavy chest armor slammed shut.

"I am going to collect samples! Samples! That is science!" Academician Wang yelled, hopping up and down.

"I'll bring you a bucket when I get back." Lin Yuan's voice came through the external speakers with a muffled echo.

Because the ejection system was paralyzed, these six mechs were hoisted out of the cabin by winches.

There was no roar of thrusters, no attitude adjustment. Lin Yuan, leading five elite death squads also wearing hydraulic armor, pulled on an alloy cable as thick as a wrist, drifting toward the signal source like a string of cured meat hanging on a drying rack.

This primitive method of boarding made Lin Yuan, who was accustomed to space folding, feel like he had returned to the Stone Age.

As the distance closed, the tragic state of the severed frigate became clearer.

It did not look like a ship, but more like a rotting corpse. The armor plates on the hull were curled up, and red rust spots were slowly squirming on the metal surface like living moss. Through the damaged portholes, one could see eerie red lights flickering in the corridors inside.

"This is what it looks like to be 'eaten'..." In the communication channel, a soldier's voice sounded tense.

"Don't stare at it; you'll get styes." Lin Yuan manipulated the heavy mechanical arm and grabbed firmly onto the exposed keel structure of the frigate.

Clang! With a loud bang, the six mechs landed one after another.

The gravity system here seemed not to have completely failed, but it was very chaotic. As soon as Lin Yuan landed, he felt the deck under his feet was soft and mushy, lacking any metallic texture.

"Captain, the air pressure reading is normal, but the composition is wrong."

"This smell..." Lin Yuan turned on the external sniffer, and a strong, bloody, rusty smell instantly drilled into his nostrils, "It's about the same as what we used to smell at the slaughterhouse."

"Let's go, find that living person." Lin Yuan drew the chainsword from his back. In this kind of hellhole, this simple and brutal kinetic weapon was more useful than a lightsaber.

The group advanced deep along the twisted corridor.

The pipelines on both sides of the corridor were like bulging blood vessels, pulsing as they transported some kind of dark red liquid. The originally smooth metal panels on the walls were now covered with layers of rust scabs that looked like scales.

Suddenly, a heavy, dragging sound came from ahead. "Click... crack..."

It sounded like rusted gears being forced to turn, or like bones being snapped.

"Stop." Lin Yuan raised his mechanical arm. The beam of the searchlight shone over.

At the end of the corridor, a figure in a tattered spacesuit was facing away from them. It was hunched over, holding a wrench, and was frantically hammering at a pipe on the wall.

"Hey, buddy, was that you calling for help earlier?" Lin Yuan shouted.

The figure paused. It slowly turned around.

Everyone gasped.

That could not be called a human at all. Its visor was shattered, and the exposed facial skin had a dead-grey metallic texture. Half of its face was completely rusted, and there were even red fungal threads crawling in and out of its eye sockets.

The most terrifying part was its chest, which had been torn open by some force. There were no organs inside, only tangled, pulsing, rusted gears and pipelines.

"Intruder..." The monster let out an indistinct roar, the sound like two pieces of sheet metal rubbing against each other.

"Cleanse... all iron... must be returned..."

Before the words faded, the monster suddenly erupted!

Despite its stiff movements, its explosive power was ridiculously strong. It kicked off the wall, causing the alloy surface to instantly cave in, and launched itself like a cannonball straight at Lin Yuan in the front.

"Damn, this one is an agility type!" Lin Yuan cursed, maneuvering his hydraulic armor to dodge to the side.

The monster flew past his armor, and the wrench in its hand smashed heavily into the floor behind him, punching right through that area.

"Fire!" Da-da-da-da—!

Five mechs simultaneously raised their large-caliber kinetic rifles, and the dense armor-piercing rounds instantly engulfed the monster.

However, a hair-raising scene occurred. The warheads, which were sufficient to penetrate light armor, only kicked up puffs of red dust when hitting the monster.

Its body's hardness far exceeded ordinary alloys, and in the bullet holes, what flowed out was not blood or machine oil, but a viscous, pus-like rust water.

These rust fluids fell onto the floor, immediately making a "hissing" corrosive sound.

"Roar!" The monster, bearing the hail of bullets, grabbed the leg of a nearby soldier's mech. Creak—!

The heavy leg armor of that hydraulic mech was actually deformed by its bare hand!

"Captain! This thing's strength is ridiculously high! The hydraulic rods can't hold it!" The soldier screamed.

"Don't wrestle with it! This thing has no pain sensation!" Lin Yuan stepped out, his chainsword roaring.

"Let go, damn it!" Vroom—!

The high-speed rotating saw teeth cut into the monster's arm, sending sparks flying everywhere. It was like sawing through a solid high-carbon steel pillar, shaking Lin Yuan's hand until it went numb.

But this was, after all, a weapon imbued with Void Energy. Pfft!

The monster's arm snapped off, and a foul-smelling red mist sprayed from the stump.

Before the monster could scream, Lin Yuan backhanded his sword, directly slicing off half of its head.

The monster twitched twice, the red light in its eye sockets finally extinguishing, and it collapsed like a pile of scrap metal.

"Is that it?" A soldier looked at the corpse with lingering fear, "What the hell is this thing? It's part zombie, part robot."

"This is called a Necromorph, or... a Mechanical Undead." Lin Yuan kicked the head on the ground, his expression gloomy, "That virus treated the crew of this ship as parts and transformed their corpses into killing machines."

"There is more than one here." Lin Yuan looked toward the deep, dark corridor, "The gunfire just now probably woke up the whole nest."

As if to confirm his words, from the ventilation ducts, under the floor, and on the ceiling in all directions, dense scratching sounds began to emerge.

It was as if countless giant iron rats were crawling in the pipes.

"If you don't want to become a scrap metal statue standing on the side of the road, move fast!" Lin Yuan roared, "Target the core cabin; that distress signal is right there!"

Everyone did not dare to delay; the hydraulic engines output at full power, rumbling as they dashed into the depths.

The journey was simply a gauntlet.

Those "mechanical zombies" that darted out from the shadows—some had four arms, while others had simply welded themselves onto mobile carts. They had no reason, only a craving for fresh metal and flesh.

Fortunately, although these hydraulic mechs were bulky, they were thick-skinned and durable. Lin Yuan was going full-on "musou" mode; when his chainsword blade dulled, he would just smash with his mechanical arm, hacking out a bloody path.

"We're here! That's the door ahead!"

A heavy blast door appeared at the end of the corridor. Several reinforced steel bars were welded onto it; clearly, the person inside did not want anything to get in.

"Bzzt... hurry... I can't hold on..." The voice in the communicator became increasingly weak.

"Move aside!" Lin Yuan signaled everyone to retreat, then controlled his mech to step back two paces and launched a fierce charge.

Boom! The blast door let out an unbearable groan, and the door frame deformed. Boom! The second impact. The steel bars snapped, and the door collapsed with a crash.

Lin Yuan rushed in with his chainsword: "Raise your hands if you don't want to die!"

However, the scene inside left him stunned.

This was a small maintenance room, with scattered parts and empty medicine vials all over the floor.

In the center of the room, on a workbench, sat a young girl who looked less than twenty years old.

She was wearing a greasy technician's uniform, and her left sleeve had been torn off. That originally fair arm, from the elbow down, had completely turned into that terrifying black-red rusted iron, and the corrosion was visibly spreading toward her shoulder.

The girl had a belt in her mouth and was holding a buzzing small plasma cutter in her right hand.

She was covered in sweat, her face as pale as paper, but her eyes were as fierce as a wolf.

Seeing the mechs rush in, she only lifted her eyelids, and then, without hesitation, pressed the cutter against her own arm.

Hiss—! The smell of charred flesh and the sound of metal cutting mixed together.

"Nggh—!!!" The girl let out a muffled groan suppressed to the extreme from her throat, her body trembling violently, but the knife in her hand was terrifyingly steady.

Plop. The forearm, which had rusted to death, fell to the ground and instantly turned into a pile of red powder.

Lin Yuan's eyelids twitched as he watched. This was a ruthless person.

The girl threw away the cutter, trembling as she grabbed a syringe with half a tube of blue liquid from the side, and jabbed it into the stump of her severed arm, which was still sizzling and bleeding.

A miraculous scene occurred. As the deep blue liquid was injected, the red rust spots that were trying to burrow into the wound rapidly receded as if they had encountered a natural enemy. The metal cells at the wound began to proliferate wildly, and in the blink of an eye, they sealed the wound, forming a silver-white metal interface.

"Hoo... hoo..." The girl spat out the belt, panting heavily, and only then did she look up at Lin Yuan and the others.

Her right eye was a normal brown, but her left eye was a precise electronic prosthetic eye, which was flashing with a wary red light.

"You're late." The girl's voice was hoarse, "If you had been a minute later, I would have turned into one of those things outside."

"Are you the one who sent the signal?" Lin Yuan opened his visor, staring at her severed arm that had just stopped bleeding, but his gaze fell on the empty syringe, "What was that? Nano-repair fluid?"

"That is a 'Purifier'." The girl lit a cheap cigarette with her remaining right hand and took a deep drag, "In this Land Abandoned by Gods, this is the only medicine that can keep you from turning into scrap metal."

"What is this place called?" Lin Yuan asked.

"Land Abandoned by Gods is what you outsiders call it. We call it the 'Pasture of the Rust Lord'." The girl blew a smoke ring, her eyes mocking, "And that big sphere of yours is just a newly arrived fat sheep."

"Pasture?" Lin Yuan frowned.

"Yes, a pasture." The girl pointed to the floating wreckage outside the window, "These ships were all idiots who wanted to take a shortcut. They were caught by the 'Corrosion' and turned into nutrients. And the dead crew members became the hounds that herd for the Lord."

"'Corrosion'... what exactly is it? Don't tell me it's some computer virus."

"It is certainly not a virus." The girl sneered, "It is resentment. It is the resentment of the billions of the Titan Race and the Mechanical Intelligence Race who died here ten thousand years ago. They hate all carbon-based life forms, and they also hate all precise logic. They just want to drag everything back to the most primitive state of chaos."

"Alright, story time is over." Lin Yuan interrupted her, pointing to the empty syringe on the floor, "That thing, do you have any more?"

The girl shrank back warily: "Why?"

"I have billions of people waiting to be saved, and I need to fix my spaceship." Lin Yuan said righteously, "Name your price, sister. Do you want gold, or energy blocks? Or I can take you out of this hellhole."

Hearing the word "leave", the girl's prosthetic eye contracted sharply.

"You have a ship? And it hasn't been eaten yet?"

"Not yet. But I have a way to deal with this thing; I just need some of this blue potion as an auxiliary." Lin Yuan patted his chest armor, "How about it? Do we have a deal?"

The girl stared at Lin Yuan for a while, seemingly evaluating the credibility of this man wearing primitive mechs.

Suddenly, from deep in the corridor outside the room, a shrill, long howl was heard.

That sound was not as dull as the previous mechanical zombies; instead, it carried a hair-raising intelligence.

The girl's expression changed abruptly.

"Damn it! It's the 'Hound Leader'! It smelled the scent of living people!"

She grabbed the toolkit on the table and stumbled down.

"No time to haggle! Take me with you! I know where there is a warehouse for this purifier; it was a war reserve depot of the Titan Race!"

"Warehouse?" Lin Yuan's eyes lit up instantly like searchlights.

He had no other merits, except that he could not resist the word "warehouse".

"Deal!" Lin Yuan picked up the girl and stuffed her into the passenger seat of the cockpit like a little chick, "Sit tight, we're going 'shopping'!"

"Wait! How did you get here?" The girl asked in horror.

"We came by winch."

"What?!"

Before the girl could react, Lin Yuan had already controlled the mech to smash through the adjacent porthole.

"Old Chen! Pull the rope! It's getting hot, let's bail!"

Outside the window, deep in the originally pitch-black fog, thousands of ghostly blue will-o'-the-wisps were lighting up.

Those were not fireflies. Those were countless electronic eyes waking up.

This entire frigate was actually a giant anthill. And now, this kick had completely blown it open.

"Roar—!!!"

Countless black shadows lunged out from every corner of the wreckage, swarming toward the six mechs hanging in mid-air.

"Hold on tight! This rollercoaster is a bit exciting!" Lin Yuan laughed loudly, and the chainsword in his hand drew a trail of fire in the void.

"It's been a long time since I've been this wild, come on! Let's hurt each other! Let's see if your teeth are harder, or if my sword is faster!"