30: Chapter 30: Undercurrents Are Surge!

In the surveillance room, Shen Hongyuan picked up the phone.

The voice on the other end was deep; it was an old acquaintance from the Southern Military Region frontline headquarters, codenamed "Iron Wall."

"Old Shen, the warning level has been raised."

"What do you mean?"

"On the third outer defensive line, we've detected seven cross-boundary fluctuations from last night to this morning. There are at least four Tier 2 Source Beasts, and the energy signature of one of them... is suspected to be Tier 3."

"What! Tier 3?!"

His voice suddenly shot up, making the glass in the surveillance room hum.

"What are you guys at the frontline reconnaissance department doing? A Tier 3 Source Beast pushed from the Source Abyss core to the outer perimeter, a distance of several hundred kilometers, and your early warning network is just for show?! What about the defensive deployment? The patrols? Are those staff officers asleep or blind?"

The other end of the line was silent for two seconds; there was no rebuttal.

Because there really was no way to refute it.

Iron Wall's tone held a hint of bitterness: "Old Shen, this is indeed our dereliction of duty; I won't make excuses. That Tier 3 Source Beast... is a 'Mountain-Splitting Iron-Spine Rhinoceros'."

Shen Hongyuan's pupils constricted sharply.

Iron Wall continued: "At 2:17 AM last night, that Iron-Spine Rhinoceros suddenly broke through the third defensive line's outer blockade, charging wildly along the way, and directly overturned two of our reconnaissance teams. Five out of seven armored reconnaissance vehicles were totaled, and fourteen awakened ones were sent to the rear with light or serious injuries. By the time reinforcements arrived, that beast had already turned back into the Source Abyss."

"Coming and going as it pleases?" Shen Hongyuan gritted his teeth.

"Yes," Iron Wall repeated, his voice deep, "The entire process took less than twelve minutes. It didn't seem like it was foraging; it was more like... testing."

A chill ran down Shen Hongyuan's back.

The power conversion between Source Beasts and humans was never equal.

Source Beasts were born with formidable physical bodies, and their energy circulation efficiency far exceeded that of human awakened ones; crushing opponents of the same tier was almost the norm.

The True Mass of a Tier 3 Source Beast was comparable to a Tier 4 human expert.

And the Mountain-Splitting Iron-Spine Rhinoceros was a top-tier predator among Tier 3s.

Its entire body was covered in metal-like bone armor, and the single horn on its head could pierce through any known alloy armor.

This thing had a violent temper and could collapse mountains when it charged.

In the past, these things stayed honestly in the Source Abyss and never crossed the border.

Now, they were frequently paying visits!

Iron Wall sighed: "Old Shen, you know as well, Source Abyss rifts are spread across the entire Southern Military Region.

With over a hundred entrances, large and small, no one can predict which point the Source Beasts will emerge from.

Our forces are limited, and we can't cover everything when allocating combat power.

We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for more than a day or two."

Shen Hongyuan didn't speak; he understood.

The entire Southern Military Region had 13 Source Abyss entrances that needed to be guarded.

The defensive lines were stretched too thin, and there were never enough awakened ones.

Everywhere was crying out for manpower, and everywhere needed reinforcements.

This wasn't a problem for any one person; it was the predicament of all humanity in the face of the Source Abyss.

"The central government has urgently deployed two mecha companies to reinforce the defensive line here in Jiangcheng.

The war situation in the East and West also shows signs of escalation, and the expansion rate of all Source Abyss rifts is still rising.

It has already increased by 5.2% compared to last month."

Shen Hongyuan's pupils constricted slightly.

It wasn't 3.7 anymore.

It had risen again.

As the rifts expanded, Source Energy leaked out.

The activity range of high-tier Source Beasts was shifting outward.

Looking at these pieces of bad news together, they were the precursors of disaster.

"That training mission for your daughter..." the other end of the line paused, "Leaving tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Brother, let me speak from the heart, Old Shen: let her hold off for a bit. It's not about being afraid of trouble; it's that this wave is abnormal.

Those things look like they've been driven out by something, not like normal territory expansion."

Shen Hongyuan was silent for a few seconds.

He could certainly let his daughter hold off.

A phone call to her mentor with any excuse would delay it.

But he knew Shen Qingci's temper better than anyone.

If she knew that the more dangerous the front line was, the more she was being protected, she would likely skip the training application entirely and go to the front line as a volunteer.

That girl had inherited the stubbornness from her mother; ten cows couldn't pull her back.

"Understood. I'll consider it."

He hung up the phone.

Shen Hongyuan put down the phone and turned to look at the surveillance screen.

On the screen, the tea stains had not yet dried.

The thin, lanky youth in the footage was crouching behind a pile of scrapped mecha parts, sneaking around, touching and flipping things over.

This kid's body density could no longer be described as "comparable to superalloys."

It was something beyond his cognitive range.

Having lived for half a life, he had seen countless monsters with spatial-type talents, but he had never seen an F-tier talent that could be this hard.

A secondary petrification mutation?

His confidence in this conclusion had dropped from ninety percent to sixty percent.

But regardless of what that kid actually was, one thing was certain... Shen Hongyuan stared at the screen with heavy eyes.

He had bet correctly.

This freak, whose flesh was harder than steel and who didn't fear death, was the best shield he could currently find for his daughter.

Even if it only extended her reaction time by a few seconds.

It should be enough.

Shen Hongyuan set down his cup, his thumb rubbing the edge of his phone case.

"Three days." He stared at the sneaky back on the screen, his voice very soft.

"It must go smoothly."

...

Scrap Yard, heavy object area.

Su Ming was feeling a bit bloated now.

Ever since he had accidentally touched that inferior beast crystal just now.

After swallowing it in one gulp and exchanging it for one hundred mass points, his standards for food had completely changed.

That ordinary scrap metal?

Sorry, he couldn't look at it anymore.

Half an hour ago, he was still honestly gnawing on high-manganese steel armor plates and titanium-tungsten alloy drive shafts.

One piece was thirty or forty points, one rod was forty or fifty points, and he had been gnawing with relish.

Now?

It was like being used to eating A5 Wagyu beef and suddenly being asked to go back to eating steamed buns.

It wasn't that he couldn't eat it, it was just that his palate had become picky.

Those scrapped mecha wrecks with claw marks and energy burn marks were his real targets.

Because things like beast crystals were often hidden in the crevices of equipment wrecks that had fought against beasts or Source Beasts.

Shattered crystals that couldn't be recovered in time on the battlefield, residual crystal fragments embedded in armor, or even dried high-tier Source Beast blood stains on the surface of the mecha bodies.

For the military, these were insignificant impurities in scrap that weren't worth extracting, but for him, they were all-natural organic nutritious meals.

Su Ming crouched behind a pile of scrapped infantry armored vehicles.

After searching for a long time, his gaze locked onto something.

A main tank armor plate weighing seven or eight hundred catties.

In the center of the plate was a huge penetrating dent.

The high-strength alloy at the edge had been forcibly torn open by something.

The torn surface was jagged, with charred burn marks remaining on the surface.

The burns were unevenly distributed, not like the regular cuts of energy weapons.

It looked more like something left behind by some high-temperature organism grabbing onto it directly.

Beast claw marks.

Su Ming's eyes lit up.

He went around to the side of the armor plate, crouched down, and scraped away the surface rust.

Through the gaps between the gears and rivets, he vaguely saw the deepest part... something was shining, the luster was very faint, but it was definitely shining.

The problem was, this armor plate was too thick.

The entire plate was at least six or seven centimeters of military-grade special steel, and the gap was so narrow that even a finger couldn't fit in.

A normal person's approach would be to find cutting equipment or call a tower crane to flip the plate over.

Su Ming looked around.

The nearest worker was fifty meters away.

That was enough.

He gripped the edge of the torn surface of the armor plate with both hands, his ten fingers embedding into the steel plate.

"Up..."

His muscles suddenly tightened, one ton of True Mass sank into his feet, and he exerted force from his waist and back.

"Creak...!"

The seven or eight hundred catty tank main armor plate was lifted from the ground by him.

It wasn't enough.

The thing he wanted to see was in the deepest crevice, just lifting it up was useless.

Su Ming gritted his molars, his arms tore... to the sides.

"Creak... creak, creak, creak, creak!!"

The sound of metal tearing was sharp and ear-piercing, like a giant snapping a steel bar.

The six or seven-centimeter-thick military-grade special steel plate was like a corrugated cardboard box being violently torn apart in Su Ming's hands.

The tear extended from the center to both sides, and the rusted cross-section revealed the silvery-bright metal cross-section inside.

Fifty meters away, Scarface Li, who was moving scrap, turned his head sharply.

The half-smoked cigarette in his mouth dropped directly to the ground.

"What the... hell..."

The few burly men behind him were also stunned.

A young man in his twenties, a porter by trade.

The iron pliers in his hand clattered onto his foot, making him wince in pain.

But his eyes didn't move from Su Ming for even a second.

"Is that... a tank main armor plate?"

"Damn, that thing takes four of us plus hydraulic pliers to cut, he... he used his hands?"

"F-tier talent? Are you sure that's F-tier?"

Scarface Li picked up the cigarette butt that had fallen on the ground, found it was out, took out his lighter and lit it again, his hand shaking.

"A flash in the pan," he took a deep drag, his voice hoarse, "The military inspector said it: secondary petrification mutation, the closer to the end of life, the more explosive the power."

He paused.

"This kid probably doesn't have many days left."

The surroundings were quiet for a few seconds.

The young porter muttered in a low voice: "Damn... if a person about to die has such strength, how fierce must he be when he's alive..."

No one answered.

Su Ming turned a deaf ear to the discussion behind him.

After the armor plate was torn open, the things in the crevice were exposed to the sunlight.

Four.

Four gray crystal fragments the size of a thumb.

The surface was stained with dried dark brown blood, emitting a weak but definitely existing energy fluctuation.

And next to the crystal fragments, there was also a black, hard, shell-like substance the size of a fingernail.

It wasn't metal, it wasn't ore.

Su Ming leaned in and sniffed.

Fishy.

Very fishy, carrying a wild aura that made one's scalp tingle.

Source Beast blood scab.

Su Ming's pupils constricted slightly.

Whatever it was, eat it first.

He closed the torn armor plate to block the view and placed his left hand on it.

"Devour."

[Ding! Devoured Tier 1 inferior beast crystal fragments ×4, mass points +75, +82, +91, +68]

[Ding! Devoured Tier 2 Source Beast dried blood scab (residual), purification and refining complete, mass points +340]

Three hundred and forty?

A dried blood scab the size of a fingernail, three hundred and forty points?

What if it were a fresh, complete Tier 2 Source Beast carcass?

He didn't dare to think.

If he kept thinking, he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.

He casually devoured the torn armor plate as well.

[Ding! Devoured B-tier military special steel plate, purification and refining complete, mass points +87]

The system notification sound kept ringing in his mind.

Su Ming felt like a gambler feeding coins into a slot machine, every pull was a jackpot.

Current mass point balance... 1480.8.

Su Ming rubbed his fingers.

Plus the remaining time today to continue devouring, and adding the daily one percent compound interest growth, by the time they set off the day after tomorrow... he might be able to exchange for another talent sequence!

As for the 10,000 kilograms of True Mass required for Tier 3 Silver.

It was still far off.

But the direction was right.

And he was now very, very certain of one thing.

The Source Abyss training the day after tomorrow was not just a mission to act as a meat shield for Shen Hongyuan.

It was his buffet restaurant.

Beast carcasses, Source Beast wrecks, scattered crystal fragments... that meat grinder that even the military found a headache, in his eyes, was an unmined gold mine.

Su Ming licked his lips and continued to search for the next wreck with claw marks.

The humanoid excavator, back to work.

...