18: Chapter 18 Return to the Wasteland: Practical Testing of New Weapons

The Polaris's tracks transformed into two rows of thick, jagged teeth, arrogantly crushing the newly formed ice sheet.

The crunching sound was deafening.

After the Extreme Cold Ice Storm, the Pale Shoals revealed a heart-stopping, cruel beauty.

The once undulating ice hills had been completely leveled by the gale.

The ground was covered in a layer of pale white snow, several meters thick and as smooth as a mirror.

There was still no sun in the sky, only grayish radioactive clouds casting a depressing glimmer.

The entire world was terrifyingly silent.

Apart from the roar of the Polaris's engine, not a single sound could be heard.

No birds chirping, no sound of wind.

This was a dead zone that had just been combed through by the Grim Reaper.

Lu Chen sat in the driver's cab, his gaze sweeping across the desolation through the bulletproof glass with an expressionless face.

He saw it clearly.

On this pristine white snowfield, odd-shaped ice sculptures occasionally protruded abruptly.

Some were the remains of Mutant Beasts stuck in a running posture.

Others were several mini snowmobiles huddled tightly together, attempting to keep warm with their faint residual heat.

The people inside had long since frozen into brittle ice shards.

The ice storm was nature's most ruthless scavenger.

It wiped out all the weak, leaving behind only the strongest predators and the most durable armor.

Clatter...

With the support of the Track Anti-Cold Lubrication System, the Polaris easily drove over a thirty-degree steep slope, no different from driving on flat ground.

Even with the extra several tons of riveted scrap steel armor added to the chassis, its speed remained stable at thirty kilometers per hour.

The solid, heavy feedback from the chassis made every nerve in Lu Chen's body feel incredibly comfortable.

Just then, his gaze paused.

About five hundred meters ahead to the right, at the edge of a glacial rift, something was moving slowly on the snow surface.

Its massive silhouette flickered in and out of view against the grayish-white background.

"Just stepped out and already ran into a delivery."

Lu Chen scoffed, curling his lip.

He turned the steering wheel sharply to the right without hesitation.

The massive body of the Polaris carved a perfect arc across the ice, and accompanied by a violent roar, it charged straight toward that direction!

As the distance closed, the true appearance of the thing was finally revealed to Lu Chen.

It was a monster comparable in size to a rhinoceros from the Old Era.

Its entire body was covered in a thick, grayish-brown, rock-like keratin layer, and it had two thick, ice-blue bone spurs that curved upward like tusks.

A Mutated Ice-Rock Pig!

[Status: Extremely hungry, irritable.]

[Threat Level: Medium (against light armor). Characteristics: Thick-skinned and fleshy, extremely high destructive power in straight-line charges.]

This monster, which had just survived the ice storm in an underground cave, was frantically digging through the snow with its thick front hooves, trying to find frozen corpses to feed on.

When it heard the unbridled roar of the Polaris's engine, it suddenly raised its ugly head.

Two small, scarlet eyes locked firmly onto this speeding black hunk of iron.

If it were the old Polaris with only thin sheet metal, Lu Chen would definitely have chosen to snipe it with a repeating crossbow from a hundred meters away, never letting this brute get even half a step closer.

But now?

"Come on, beast. Let me see if my ten-centimeter scrap steel armor is hard enough."

A wild fighting spirit burned in Lu Chen's eyes.

Not only did he not slow down, but he also floored the accelerator!

The boiler let out a deafening roar.

The Polaris was like a moving hill, crashing head-on into the Mutated Ice-Rock Pig!

"Roar!!!"

The Mutated Ice-Rock Pig was thoroughly enraged.

On this wasteland, it had never seen a tin can that dared to challenge its charging power head-on.

It let out a roar like thunder, kicked its four hooves against the ground, and kicked up a sky full of snow dust.

With its two deadly bone spurs, it turned into a cannonball fired from a chamber, charging forward to meet the impact!

Three hundred meters! Two hundred meters! One hundred meters!

Man and beast were staging the most primitive kinetic collision on the pale snowfield!

Inside the cabin, Lin Wan screamed in terror at this crazy move.

She grabbed the handrail on the wall tightly.

Bang!!!

An extremely terrifying loud noise resonated across the snowfield!

It was the most violent symphony of steel and flesh!

The sharp, inverted V-shaped scrap steel ram on the front of the Polaris collided fiercely with the Mutated Ice-Rock Pig's indestructible ice-blue bone spurs!

A visible shockwave erupted at the point of impact, instantly clearing the snow for over a dozen meters around!

Creak!

The Mutated Ice-Rock Pig's proud charging power vanished instantly after encountering the multi-ton tracked vehicle and the ricochet effect of the sloped armor.

Its massive body crashed directly into an immovable wall of sighs!

Accompanied by the sound of cracking bone, its two thick bone spurs were actually snapped off!

Following that, the powerful kinetic energy of the Polaris flipped its multi-ton body directly onto the ground.

It slid backward for over a dozen meters on the smooth ice, plowing out a deep, bloody groove.

As for the Polaris, apart from the body shaking violently, only two shallow white scratches were left on the ten-centimeter-thick scrap steel armor!

Not even a single rivet had loosened!

"This armor is powerful!"

Lu Chen couldn't help but pat the steering wheel.

As a patient with severe 'insufficient firepower' phobia, he finally experienced the perverted pleasure of armored crushing.

But the battle was not over yet.

Although the Mutated Ice-Rock Pig's bone spurs were broken and its head was bleeding, it managed to struggle back to its feet, relying on its extremely tenacious vitality.

Its eyes had turned completely blood-red from pain and rage.

Shaking its dizzy head, it recklessly charged at the Polaris's side tracks again, attempting to destroy them with its rock-like keratin layer!

"Stupid."

Lu Chen composed his expression; this pig had already lost its value as armor testing material.

Now, it only had one last use: a weapon test target.

He reached out toward the right side of the dashboard, to the brass toggle switch with a red safety cover.

"I'll use you to officially break in my Steam Sprayer."

Click!

The red cover flipped open.

Lu Chen's finger mercilessly pushed the switch to the top!