24: Chapter 24: Harpoon Reforged and Fully Loaded! Venturing Deep into the Ice Valley to Hunt Top-Tier Beasts!

The temperature inside the carriage remained firmly pinned at twenty degrees Celsius, showing not the slightest fluctuation even though the boiler had just undergone a violent physical modification.

The existence of the thermal break system meant Lu Chen didn't need to worry at all about heat loss within the vehicle.

He sat in the driver's seat, his gaze shifting from the newly generated supercharger pushrod to the scrap metal box in the corner used for storing miscellaneous items.

Inside the box, a pile of cracked and deformed scrap metal was emitting the lingering scent of gunpowder smoke.

That was the wreckage of the solid steel harpoon that had just pierced through an enemy vehicle's boiler in actual combat.

Due to the terrifying physical collision and internal sympathetic detonation it had experienced, the once gleaming harpoon had shattered into pieces of scrap metal, with only the special alloy chain barely remaining intact.

"Mobility is secured, but the ultimate deterrent of the firepower network cannot be broken."

Lu Chen narrowed his eyes slightly.

He had witnessed the power of the Armor-Piercing Explosive Harpoon Gun firsthand; it was a strategic-grade weapon capable of instantly turning the tide of battle.

But the most fatal drawback of this weapon was that the fifty-jin solid steel harpoon was a single-use consumable.

Currently, his ammunition count was zero.

Once he encountered large, thick-skinned mutated creatures, relying solely on the high-pressure spray gun and the rapid-fire crossbow would be insufficient for a one-hit kill.

For someone suffering from severe firepower deficiency phobia, having an empty cannon hanging in the turret was worse than being killed.

"System, bring up the harpoon recasting plan."

[Ding! Harpoon wreckage and sufficient scrap steel detected.]

[Recasting plan generated: Consume all scrap steel materials currently in the scrap box and deduct 10 Truth Points as high-dimensional smelting energy to recast a brand-new Armor-Piercing Explosive Harpoon and automatically load it into the turret's ready position.]

[Execute?]

"Ten Truth Points."

Lu Chen glanced at the remaining balance of 50 points in the upper right corner.

It hurt to spend them, but these ten points were worth more than their cost.

A single harpoon often yielded top-tier prey worth hundreds or thousands of Truth Points.

"Execute recasting."

A ghostly blue light bloomed once more inside the carriage, aimed directly at that inconspicuous scrap metal box.

Lin Wan was using tweezers to water the second crop roots of the cabbage drop by drop, and her eyes were dazzled by the sudden light.

She turned her head and saw a scene that would subvert the common sense of physics.

The deformed harpoon wreckage in the scrap box, along with various scraps of steel plates collected earlier, rapidly melted under the shroud of the system's blue light!

With no signs of high-temperature scorching, the metal was directly decomposed into a semi-fluid state, and then, guided by an invisible force, it flowed upstream along the metal ammunition feed tube connecting to the turret on the roof!

Creak! Clatter!

From within the heavy, semi-enclosed turret on the roof, came the sound of metal forging and quenching.

The sound was forceful and rhythmic, striking the internal parts again and again.

Just five seconds later.

Click!

A crisp, unmistakably mechanical sound of loading came from the roof.

Through the semi-circular observation dome on the roof of the driver's cab, Lu Chen could clearly see that a brand-new solid steel harpoon, gleaming with a cold, frigid light and featuring menacing barbs, had been firmly locked into the slide of the black iron cannon barrel!

It lay dormant in the steel jungle, coiled and ready, prepared to pierce through its prey.

[Recasting complete. Armor-Piercing Explosive Harpoon Gun is ready. Current ammunition: 1/1.]

[Current Truth Points balance: 40 points.]

"That feels better."

Lu Chen exhaled.

Ammunition fully loaded, engine roaring, armor thick.

This sense of ultimate control, armed to the teeth, filled him with the excitement of an impending hunt.

He turned his head to look at Lin Wan, who was obediently huddled next to the cultivation box, her eyes filled with awe.

"Keep an eye on that pot of cabbage," Lu Chen said coldly. "We're going out to sweep."

Having said that, he pushed open the safety catch on the heavy push-pull lever to the left of the driver's seat and placed his hand lightly on the black and yellow handle.

The massive body of Polaris suddenly roared to life.

The thick tracks frantically churned up the snow on the ground, and this multi-ton steel fortress crushed the scattered scrap metal, plunging headlong into the wind and snow in the deepest part of the Pale Shoals.

The air in the Pale Shoals after the Extreme Cold Ice Storm was exceptionally frigid.

Visibility had recovered somewhat, but the sky was still shrouded in a layer of persistent, lead-grey radiation clouds.

Polaris advanced steadily across the ice at a cruising speed of thirty kilometers per hour.

Under the cover of the dim sky, Lu Chen used the periscope to carefully scan every inch of the snowy ground along the way.

Time passed slowly amidst the low hum of the engine.

Two hours after venturing deep into the hinterland.

Lu Chen's gaze tightened, and he pulled hard on the steering wheel with his right hand.

The massive body of Polaris came to an emergency stop with extreme smoothness behind an ice hill, its tracks carving two deep white marks into the ice.

"There's a big one."

He pressed his eyes firmly against the periscope.

At the entrance to a leeward Ice Valley five hundred meters ahead, a series of exaggerated footprints had suddenly appeared on the once-flat snow!

Each footprint was the size of a washbasin, deeply embedded in the hard ice layer, with the surrounding ice shards ground into powder by immense gravity.

Beside the footprints, several bloodied, mangled remains that had been violently torn apart were scattered about.

Lu Chen zoomed in to identify them carefully; it was actually half the carcass of a low-tier Icefield Wolf!

The spine of this Icefield Wolf had been snapped by some kind of force, and its hard skull had been chewed to pieces, leaving only the lower half of its body discarded carelessly in the snow.

The cross-section of the corpse was covered with jagged bite marks, with bone fragments and flesh mixed together.

"Snapping the spine of a low-tier Mutant Beast in one bite, and chewing the bones like a snack."

Lu Chen slowed his breathing, quickly accessing the wasteland creature database in his brain.

No matter how fierce the previous Mutated Snow Bear was, it couldn't achieve this level of physical destruction.

Low-tier and ordinary mid-tier creatures couldn't leave marks like this; only a top-tier predator standing at the apex of the Pale Shoals food chain could do this!

Lu Chen's fingers brushed the base of the two brass cranks above his head; the cold, hard touch of the metal came through, and his heartbeat strangely steadied.

"The fiercer, the better. The fiercer the monster, the purer the beast core condensed within its body, and the more explosive the Truth Points it can be exchanged for."

He straightened his back, his eyes revealing undisguised fanaticism.

The tracking marker of the Snow Shard Gang was urging a countdown; he had to skip those low-value prey.

Only by hunting such top-tier prey could he rapidly increase his Truth Points in the shortest possible time and complete the cross-tier evolution of Polaris.

Lu Chen slowly pushed down the accelerator pedal.

Polaris followed the row of exaggerated footprints and silently drove into the deep Ice Valley.