236: Chapter 236 The Koi Fish Pulls Out the Ultimate Counter Card with One Finger

The crystal walls of the entire mining warehouse began to tremble simultaneously.

It was the kind of tremor that came from deep underground, the kind you could feel in your bones as you stood on the ground.

The dim blue veins of the ore began to flow in reverse.

The crystal walls, which had originally exuded a halo of light, were now pulling all their light inward, as if something had opened a breach deep inside. Just as water flows to the lowest point, the ore's energy was surging backward into deeper depths.

Copper Hammer stood in the center of the main mining tunnel, his welding gun still in hand. He watched as the few high-grade crystal veins he had just chiseled open shuddered twice, then began to suck energy into the depths.

He remained silent for about two seconds.

Then, he let out a roar that could have cracked the ceiling of the mining tunnel.

"My ore!"

Mio's projection popped out from the corner of the tunnel. Her translucent body flickered twice from the force of Copper Hammer's shout before she could even steady herself.

Copper Hammer had already swung his welding gun. The grime on his face had been shaken off, his beard was bristling, and his eyes were as red as Tier 2 magic crystals as he prepared to charge deep into the mining warehouse.

"I'm going to fight it!"

"Fight what?!"

Mio's high-voltage current net shot out from the side, forcibly snagging the tool belt at Copper Hammer's waist and pinning the stocky man in place.

"If you go up there, you're just delivering materials! Its scraps are enough to swallow you a hundred times over!"

Copper Hammer was still kicking his feet.

"That won't do. If I watch the ore get stolen with my own eyes, I won't be able to sleep for the rest of my life."

"You won't have a rest of your life!"

Mio was about to disconnect. "It's absorbing Source Crystals, but you're consuming my electronic lifespan!"

Over in the control room, Shen Wanbing's voice dropped by half a degree, carrying an intensely suppressed urgency.

"Mother entity indexed; estimated mass is over eighty meters."

"Is it a true peak Tier 6, or a hybrid mutant?" Jiang Jiuyou asked directly.

"Hybrid. It's a mass-produced model using the cloning technology of the Gray-White Mechanical Holy Court. Its core is a mental link, and it contains numerous cloning nodes, each with an independent consciousness."

Su Xiaoqi, holding her half-empty bone soup pot, tilted her head and peered into the depths from the entrance of the mining tunnel.

"Are there many brains in there?"

Mio: "Yes."

Su Xiaoqi: "Will something with multiple brains taste very fragrant when stewed?"

Mio's projection went silent for a moment.

Chen Chen turned off that channel.

The vibrations deep in the mining tunnel became more frequent, and the dim blue light patterns on the crystal walls began to dim at a visible rate, as if they were being drained empty.

He turned his head to look at Shen Wanxing, who was still wrapped in a blanket in the corner, sneaking toward the tunnel exit.

Shen Wanxing stopped in her tracks, clutching the blanket with both hands. She turned her head slowly, her face plastered with an expression that said, "I'm just passing by."

"My wrists are still sore..."

"Three days of leave, forfeited."

Shen Wanxing stiffened, her feet as if nailed to the ground. Her voice carried grievances and indignation.

"Chen Chen, how can you be so—"

"Keep stalling, and I'll deduct a week."

Shen Wanxing shut her mouth.

Barefoot, she pulled the blanket tight over her shoulders and walked over to the remains of the Half-Step Tier 6 giant beast. She lowered her head to stare at the pile of broken armor and core fragments that were still radiating residual heat, then took a breath.

"Just one time, right?"

"Hurry."

She bit her lip, extended an index finger, closed her eyes, and poked the core fragment at the center of the remains.

The golden light didn't appear first.

What appeared first was nearly two seconds of silence from Mio.

Then, a purple-gold pillar of light exploded from Shen Wanxing's fingertip, piercing through the tunnel ceiling and forcibly blasting a beam of light in the mining warehouse two hundred meters underground, illuminating half of the crystal walls in purple-gold.

[Lucky Critical triggered!]

[Extremely low probability 100x multiplier activated! Trigger rate 0.7%!]

[Half-Step Tier 6 battlefield bionic mecha remains quality limit jump!]

A string of material lists flashed by rapidly. Chen Chen scanned them, his eyes stopping on the last line.

[SS-Rank Special Item: Clone Neural Control Hub (One-time use)!]

[Effect: Can forcibly take over all control nodes within the target that rely on cloning mental links. Duration: 5 seconds. During this time, the target cannot act autonomously, and signals between control nodes will conduct in reverse, causing systemic collapse.]

In the communication sent from the control room, Shen Wanbing only said one word.

"Use it."

Chen Chen gripped the black-silver hub in his palm; even through his glove, he could feel the fine vibrations.

Deep in the mining warehouse, the roaring grew more intense.

The first mining wall exploded less than three hundred meters away from everyone.

The thing that surged out of the breach was not a single entity.

It was a massive swarm.

Standing just over eighty meters tall, grey-white mechanical skeletons were deeply embedded into massive chunks of cloned flesh. The entire mother entity looked like dozens of various mechs and hundreds of humanoid creatures forced together, stitched into a mass with rotting flesh and weld seams.

At the very top was a master control head. Arranged according to cloning mental weight, the face was that of a currently trending top male celebrity.

The clones constantly being spat out from the mother entity's body each had a different face from the entertainment industry.

Su Xiaoqi tilted her head while holding the bone soup pot.

"The faces are too fake; they don't taste good."

Blood Rose had already taken her position on the flank of the mining tunnel. She sliced her fingertip, and pink poisonous threads seeped out from between her fingers, automatically searching for the organic nerve bundles of the clones in the air.

"I'll block the perimeter."

Jiang Yanxue didn't waste words. Her blade was already unsheathed. She leaped down from the high vantage point of the mining tunnel, her killing intent spreading with her movements. The clones that had just crawled out of the tunnel paused simultaneously, and those below Half-Step Tier 6 collapsed directly.

She wove through the pile of clones, her blade light trailing an afterimage. It was almost impossible to see where the edge was, only the number of those falling.

Su Xiaoqi set her bone soup pot on the side of the mining tunnel, walked around picking for a long time, and finally squatted down to dismantle the thigh joint of a mining mech that had been frozen into an ice sculpture.

She weighed it in her hand, nodded, and stepped into the swarm of clones in two strides.

The first smash landed with a bang, shaking the ground.

The speed at which the clones were smashed away was faster than the speed at which they were spat out from the mother entity.

Su Xiaoqi smashed them while expressing her disdain.

"The eyes are wrong, and the nose is wrong too. This cloning quality is no good."

Mio covered her projection's forehead.

"What are you picking?!"

"Picking which one tastes better."

"None of them taste good!"

In the control room, Jiang Jiuyou pulled up all the Lower Deck defensive lines, and mobile artillery formed a circular formation on the outer layer of the mining warehouse.

"The main cannon is not yet usable. The secondary cannons have a three-shot limit, and the Star-Splitting side cannons can fire one round."

Chen Chen had already run to the area closest to the mother entity. The sea-stabilizing needle popped out from his space ring, and he gripped it in his palm, the blue-gold patterns traveling up the staff.

He didn't rush to attack directly.

The mother entity was too large; in the confined underground space, once the Gravity Domain was fully opened, the pressure on the ceiling would exceed the critical value, and the hard-won ore veins and the entire storage warehouse would be finished.

He glanced at the black-silver hub.

It was one-time use; he had to be precise.

The mother entity turned half a circle in the mining warehouse. The mechanical eye on the master control head locked onto Chen Chen, and its chest cavity began to accumulate energy.

Global Zero-Degree Ray.

Last time, that forty-meter giant beast used this move to freeze the entire level of the mining tunnel. The energy accumulation scale of the eighty-meter mother entity was several times greater.

Shen Wanbing's warning exploded in the communication.

"Ray charging is seventy percent complete—"

Chen Chen moved forward, not backward.

He stepped onto the nearest clone remains on the mother entity's left side, used it to leap upward, and plunged the sea-stabilizing needle into the mechanical skeleton on the mother entity's right side. The blue-gold patterns exploded, sealing off the four crystal marrow ducts on the right, cutting its recovery speed in half.

The mother entity tilted to the right, and the master control head shifted accordingly. The Zero-Degree Ray deviated in angle, and the blue-white ray grazed past Chen Chen's side, carving a whole section of the mining wall into an ice mirror.

The distance was sufficient.

Chen Chen crushed the clone neural control hub.

Black-silver light exploded from his palm, and the fine control frequency waves expanded like a spider web, penetrating the mother entity's outer mechanical shell and drilling into every clone node inside its body.

The mother entity froze for a full two seconds.

Then, all the clone nodes simultaneously emitted a piercing short-circuit buzz.

The mental link conducted in reverse. Dozens of independent consciousnesses inside the body stacked onto the same channel simultaneously, overlapping and interfering with each other.

The eighty-meter behemoth began to tremble.

Within the five-second window, Chen Chen flipped over the side of the mother entity, gripping the Void-Splitting Gravity Ship-Slashing Blade with both hands. He pressed all his Mental Power into the blade, and Gravity Collapse condensed a black dot at the tip, which he aimed and drove into the neck structure of the master control head.

One strike.

The head exploded, and the control signal was cut off.

The mother entity completely short-circuited and crashed toward the right side of the mining tunnel.

Copper Hammer roared from outside the mining tunnel.

"The mining wall! Don't smash my mining wall!"

The mother entity's remains shifted at the last half-meter, crashing into the abandoned area of the mining warehouse.

Copper Hammer watched with trembling whiskers for three seconds, then turned back to look at Mio.

"See, I warned it."

Mio's projection almost shut down on the spot.

...

Less than five minutes after the mother entity's remains fell, Copper Hammer led thousands of mining slaves rushing in from the outer mining tunnel. Like a pack of wolves starved for three days pouncing into a sheepfold, drills, chisels, and ore carts refilled the mining warehouse with devastating speed.

Iron Wall stood on a high platform maintaining order, his voice almost completely hoarse.

"By zone! Follow the zones! Anyone pushing will have points deducted!"

Luo Yunwei did not go to the mining tunnel.

She had Xu Qingzhi take a three-person film crew and edit the footage of Chen Chen leaping down from fifty meters high and severing the master control head with a single blade into a forty-second projection from five angles.

All public screens in the Lower Deck played it simultaneously.

After the first loop of the footage finished, the Lower Deck was silent for three seconds. When the second loop ended, cheers rolled out from every tunnel, drowning out the roar of the mining machines.

The faith value slot in the upper right corner of Chen Chen's retina jumped by a number.

[Faith Value: 234000 → 311450.]

Luo Yunwei said in the communication channel: "Yi Chang, the second phase of the publicity plan can be submitted for approval tonight."

Yi Chang remained silent for two seconds.

"Send it."

...

At ten o'clock at night, the garrison lights on the outer layer of the mining warehouse turned on, and the city entered a silent maintenance state.

Chen Chen returned to his suite, washed the ore crystal fragments and blood scabs from his hands, changed into a clean tactical jacket, and sat on the sofa.

Three minutes later, there were two knocks on the door.

"Come in."

Qin Hongye pushed the door open and entered.

She had changed into a very short black tactical vest, with a sniper auxiliary device hanging around her neck, and a circle of bloodstains seeping through the bandage on her right shoulder.

She had changed her pants, but they were still the same tight leather pants; when she kicked the door, the seam of the pants strained into an arc.

The Meteor sniper cannon she carried was leaned against the side of the door; she hadn't brought it in.

Chen Chen didn't move; he scanned her.

"Shoulder."

Qin Hongye walked in, kicked the cabin door shut, leaned her back against the cabin wall, and tilted her chin.

"I fired two extra shots today, and it widened again. You said you'd be responsible."

"Sit."

She glanced at the sofa, walked over, and sat on the other end. Her back was straight, looking no different from when she was on the sniper platform.

Chen Chen moved over to her side, tore off the old bandage on her right shoulder, and pulled it away, exposing her entire right shoulder and upper arm.

There was already a bruise under the skin, with signs of slight tearing in the muscle fibers. It felt a bit hot when pressed.

Qin Hongye didn't move, but her breathing hitched for a moment.

"It's not torn," she wanted to add.

"It's twice as bad as this morning."

"It can still be used."

Chen Chen pressed his hand onto the injury without a word, his Mental Power seeping in through his palm, pressing and filling along the tear in the muscle fibers.

Midnight sharp.

The system prompt fell on time.

[Unique SS-Rank growth affix "Physical Overlimit" triggered.]

[constitution + 10, agility + 5.]

Qi and blood exploded from within Chen Chen, pouring in through the contact point of his palm. The tearing sensation in Qin Hongye's shoulder began to recede within five seconds.

Her eyelashes trembled. She turned her head, her dark brown pupils facing Chen Chen's profile.

"Forbidden Domain Dual Cultivation?"

"Why are you asking about this?"

"Just asking." She leaned back on her knees; she couldn't keep her back straight anymore.

The concentration of the Qi and blood nourishment was too high—not lower than usual, but because the contact area was concentrated on the torn shoulder area, the delivery density was even more intense.

Healing the injury and strengthening her constitution occurred simultaneously. Qin Hongye's right shoulder grew hot, extending to the side of her neck, and her entire arm went numb.

"...Your grip is too solid."

"Endure it."

"I didn't say it was uncomfortable."

She rested her head against the back of the sofa, placed her right hand on Chen Chen's arm, tightened her fingers, and dug her nails in, effectively fixing an angle.

[Forbidden Domain Blood triggered.]

[Qin Hongye's constitution is being strengthened.]

The bruise on her right shoulder began to fade. The repair speed of the muscle fibers was far faster than self-healing. The tear closed, and the heat flow traveled down along the blood vessels to her wrist and fingertips.

Qin Hongye clenched and unclenched her hand, testing it twice; the grip strength of her right hand had fully returned.

She didn't speak immediately.

After a moment of silence, she turned her face, her voice dropping a few decibels.

"That shot today, did you record it in the credit book?"

"Recorded."

"Then the extra training I wanted."

"It's right here."

Qin Hongye was stunned for half a beat.

Then, the roots of her ears slowly grew hot. She turned her head away, tilted to the other side of the sofa, her voice without much fluctuation, but her articulation was lighter than usual.

"Then... add it."

...

At 2:20 AM, the lights in the City Lord's suite were still on.

In the control room, Shen Wanbing had been staring at the passive scanning data of the top layer of the mining warehouse for nearly an hour.

The double shielding layer made all external detection ineffective, but occasionally, some extremely subtle energy fluctuations leaked out from the gaps inside.

She magnified that data three times and adjusted the filtering parameters twice.

When comparing it with the template library for the third time, she sat up straight.

This signal used a human Tier 3 civilization encryption frequency band.

An ancient version from decades ago.

In the current underground mining warehouse, theoretically, nothing would be using this frequency band to send signals.

But it repeated every seventeen minutes, with extremely low intensity and a duration of no more than three seconds, as if it were afraid of being heard, yet also afraid of not being heard.

Shen Wanbing activated a private communication, cutting into Chen Chen's communication channel.

On the other side of the screen, Chen Chen's channel connected, and the background sound was very quiet.

"Speak."

"The top shielding layer of the mining warehouse; I intercepted a signal."

Shen Wanbing projected the spectrum onto the secondary screen. "Human encryption frequency band; it's not something from the Gray-White Mechanical Holy Court."

"How often?"

"Seventeen minutes. I've already received it three times. The next one is in four minutes."

Silence for two seconds.

"Is it a distress signal?"

"It seems like it."

Shen Wanbing pressed her finger against the edge of the spectrum. "But I'm not sure who it is. The signal is too weak, decoding requires..."

"Wait for the next one, intercept it completely."

"Okay."

She put down the data pad and looked back at the thin waveform on the secondary screen.

Four minutes.