277: Chapter 277 Extreme Cold Ice Pressure, Abyss Meat Grinder

The spatial ring erupted in a blinding blue light, instantly swallowing the five hundred Cangqiong Mecha. After half a minute, the light collapsed inward, causing the twisted spatial vortex to close completely.

The noise in their ears vanished, and endless darkness instantly surged in along with the freezing seawater.

A piercing alarm sounded inside Da Biao's helmet. The values on his holographic projection panel plummeted, displaying an external ambient temperature of minus sixty degrees and a depth of eight hundred meters.

The bitter cold and water pressure tightly encased the mecha, and deep blue ice condensed on the outer metal armor. Da Biao panted heavily, attempting to move his shoulders.

The sharp sound of metal grinding—creak, crack, crack—echoed through the communication channel.

"What the hell kind of place is this?!"

His deputy, Zhang Qiang, standing a few meters away, was completely covered in a layer of ice. He gripped the hilt of the ultra-high-frequency oscillation blade on his back, preparing to draw it, but the blade remained jammed in the scabbard. He exerted force again, causing sparks to burst from his mechanical arm's hydraulic lines; the entire movement was delayed by a full three seconds.

"The hydraulic valves are frozen solid!"

Da Biao stomped his foot hard, causing the mud to stir up murky seawater, and quickly pressed the internal comms button.

"This piece of junk Old Wei built can't even withstand eight hundred meters of water pressure! Every squad, report your damage status immediately!"

A cacophony of voices erupted in the communication channel.

"Group One's hydraulic pump pressure is overloaded!"

"Group Three's life support heating system has failed, and battery power is draining too fast!"

"Captain, I can't draw my blade, joint movement is restricted—everything is jammed to hell!"

Da Biao gritted his teeth and punched the armor on his left thigh hard, shaking off a layer of ice shards.

"Save your energy!"

"Maintain formation, close ranks immediately!"

Zhang Qiang turned his stiff neck to look up at the murky seawater above.

"The Boss sent us here to force open this vault door, but now we can barely move. This place is truly hellish!"

Just as Da Biao was about to speak, several blinding red lights suddenly ignited deep in the darkness ahead, and six wide-beam, deep-red laser scanning grids shot out from the top of a massive black metal structure hundreds of meters away.

The crisscrossing red beams swept over the position of Da Biao and his team, and their helmet radars were instantly flooded with dense red dots.

"The fully automated anti-missile matrix has been activated!"

"All six rapid-fire systems have locked onto us!"

The vibration sensors on the mecha's shell allowed the Death Squad Soldier to clearly feel the violent churning of the seawater. Tens of thousands of special deep-water armor-piercing shells and high-explosive torpedoes, trailing long wakes, cut through the dark water and plummeted straight toward the five hundred Cangqiong Mecha.

"Everyone, activate the Magnetofluid Shield!"

Da Biao roared and signaled with a tactical gesture.

The micro-anti-gravity modules inside the five hundred mecha outputted at full power, and the deep blue energy shields expanded around the mecha, connecting into a massive blue curtain of light.

The first high-explosive torpedo slammed into the shield in front, causing a massive tremor. The violent shockwave overturned dozens of tons of seabed silt, and the powerful underwater turbulence sent the dozen Death Squad Soldier units on the perimeter reeling.

"Stabilize your chassis!"

Dense armor-piercing shells struck the shield, sparking blue energy ripples, and the Magnetofluid Shield's energy bar dropped visibly. Zhang Qiang braced his legs hard, yet he was still pushed back three meters through the sand and mud.

"Captain, this won't last much longer!"

"Shield power consumption has tripled. In ten minutes at most, we'll all be ice sculptures!"

Da Biao stared intently at the deep-sea vault, which continued to spew fire, and did not reply.

Inside the Abyss Consortium's nuclear-proof bunker command center, located six hundred meters beneath the Alps in Europe, three blonde, blue-eyed Consortium executives sat on leather sofas in the hall. Each held a glass of premium red wine, watching the real-time surveillance footage of the Arctic Ocean floor on a giant LCD screen.

Under the impact of the explosions, the blue shield's light continued to wane, and the five hundred black mecha struggled to move through the muddy seabed.

"Lu Chen and his group of brainless barbarians—they're certainly eager to throw their lives away."

Regional President Hans, sitting in the center, swirled his red wine glass and spoke calmly.

"They probably think the deep sea is their own swimming pool."

"Eight hundred meters of water pressure combined with minus sixty degrees is an absolute dead zone. Even the most advanced deep-sea submersibles wouldn't dare perform any violent military maneuvers at such depths."

The deputy on the left sneered.

A military industry expert on the right picked up a data report to review.

"According to the radar feedback, the opponent's power armor is already experiencing severe hydraulic lock-ups and heating failures."

"Their battery consumables have suffered irreversible degradation in the extreme cold. We don't need to deploy our main forces; those six automated anti-missile matrices alone are enough to wear them all to death."

Regional President Hans took a sip of red wine and leaned back in his chair, satisfied.

"Lu Chen just won a boring farce by scaring world leaders with a piece of scrap metal ship."

"He simply doesn't understand the true face of this world. Things like heritage require time to accumulate."

The deputy laughed out loud while watching the mecha retreating on the screen.

"Once these tin cans are blown into scrap metal, we'll ship the salvaged wreckage to Jiangcheng and attach a repair bill for him."

Regional President Hans set down his wine glass and walked to the screen, adjusting his tie.

"Lu Chen's reach has grown far too long."

"Notify the AI immediately to lift the safety protocol restrictions. Serve them the main course; it's time to end this farce once and for all."

In the chaotic ocean current, Da Biao withstood a round of torpedo shockwaves. The ice on his armor's surface shattered, only to rapidly refreeze.

"Power level has dropped below forty percent! Captain, come up with a plan—do we retreat or charge?!"

"Retreat where?!"

"We haven't finished the mission the Boss gave us—how could we show our faces if we went back?!"

Da Biao roared and forcibly connected to the cross-regional secure line directly linking to the Jiangcheng control room. A massive surge of static noise filled the channel.

"Old Wei, speak the hell up!"

Wei Jianguo, with a double happiness cigarette in his mouth, immediately lunged to the console upon hearing the voice. Lu Chen sat in the boss's chair behind him, watching the seabed surveillance data.

"Da Biao, your situation isn't right! Vital signs are all dropping—what the hell is going on?!"

"Cut the crap! This piece of junk shell you built has gone on strike!"

"Not only is the battery dying, but the joint hydraulic valves are jammed to hell! It takes me three seconds just to draw my blade!"

Da Biao wiped the ice water from his visor with force.

Wei Jianguo's hands moved in a blur as he typed furiously on the keyboard, pulling up the Cangqiong Mecha's underlying logs. He stared at the data in shock.

"Eight hundred meters deep, and in the Arctic Ocean no less!"

"The water pressure is too high, and the extreme cold caused the temperature control system to crash. The power core has entered overload self-protection mode—you've all been frozen solid!"

"Stop giving me your damn theories! We're being used as live targets right now!"

Da Biao's voice was completely drowned out by the violent explosions.

"The enemy's armor-piercing shells haven't stopped! The shield won't last ten minutes—give me a straight answer: can you fix it or not?!"

Wei Jianguo took a drag of his cigarette, spat out the butt, and typed furiously on the keyboard.

"Tighten the defensive line immediately, do not scatter! Shut down all non-essential auxiliary audiovisual systems to save power for the shield. Your mecha has a high-dimensional temperature control port reserved in the underlying system—give me three minutes!"

Lu Chen stepped forward and pressed his hand on the edge of the console.

"Can you solve it completely in three minutes?"

"Yes!"

"I'll perform a live hot-patch update for the temperature control and hydraulic drive code, bypassing all physical restrictions to force the power core output. We'll just have to treat the mecha like a pressure cooker!"

Wei Jianguo replied without lifting his head, eyes fixed on the screen.

"Da Biao."

Lu Chen spoke calmly into the microphone.

"Boss, I'm listening!"

"Hold on for three minutes."

"Once it's fixed, strip the shell off that vault. Don't leave a single living soul inside."

"Understood!"

After the communication was cut, the explosions on the seabed intensified. The five hundred mecha were forced into a tight circular formation, and the blue shield on the periphery grew increasingly dim.

Zhang Qiang stared intently at the direction of the vault, his eyelids twitching wildly.

"Captain."

"There's new activity on the radar!"

A row of scarlet countdown indicator lights suddenly illuminated on the massive composite armor outer wall of the Abyss Consortium's vault. The seawater churned violently once more, and ten giant torpedo launch tubes, each ten meters in diameter, slowly opened from beneath the armor.

The pitch-black muzzles were all locked onto the clustered mecha formation.