89: Chapter 89: Forty vehicles reduced to eight! An alarm blared from the communicator.

The final eight vehicles of the pincer flank split into two groups of four.

Lu Chen dealt with the nearest group of four first.

Fragmentation grenades saturated the ground, Heavy Machine Guns shredded the tracks, the manganese steel ram sliced in diagonally, and the Steam Spray Gun poured heat inside.

Four vehicles, four minutes and thirty seconds.

A minute slower than when he fought the Icebreaker Swarm this morning.

The reason was that the Bone's men fought with more ferocity.

After the tracks of one vehicle were severed, the driver kicked open the door, brandished a modified rifle, and rushed out, firing five consecutive shots at the Polaris's armor plating.

The bullets struck the angled sloped armor without leaving so much as a dent.

Lu Chen didn't bother with him and simply crushed him under the treads.

The other group of four in the distance saw the carnage but did not scatter to flee.

They accelerated and charged toward him.

A full-speed charge.

Face to face.

Lu Chen adjusted his steering and met them head-on.

The two sides charged at each other from two hundred meters away.

The four opposing vehicles fired their 75mm cannons in a volley.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Four shells came flying.

Two hit the front ram and bounced off.

One struck the left-side angled sloped armor, ricocheted with a whistle, and flew off into the distance.

The fourth hit the shield of the roof-mounted Heavy Machine Gun turret, leaving a white scratch on the sloped armor surface before bouncing away.

All four shots deflected.

Lu Chen's counterattack was a Harpoon Cannon.

The twenty-five-kilogram solid steel barb hit the front armor weld of the lead vehicle from a distance of one hundred and fifty meters.

Delayed fuse.

Three seconds.

Boom!

The internal explosion tore a meter-wide gap in the entire front of the lead vehicle, and boiler steam surged out from the rupture.

The remaining three vehicles did not slow down just because their comrade had been disabled.

They swerved around the sides of the lead vehicle and continued their charge.

Lu Chen used the Heavy Machine Gun to take out the drive wheel of the vehicle on the left.

He used the mechanical arm to rip off the gun barrel of the vehicle on the right.

The vehicle in the middle collided straight into him.

The manganese steel ram was aimed directly at its front.

Impact.

The Polaris's new tread suction array proved its worth.

The twenty-plus-ton chassis was firmly pinned to the ice at the moment of impact, not yielding even an inch.

The opponent's front armor was pried open, and the entire vehicle was pushed six meters back, flipping completely upside down.

"City Lord, that last hit was really loud."

"A normal collision."

"Two of my Cabbage roots fell over."

"Set them back up."

"Okay."

The pincer flank was cleared.

All fifteen vehicles were dealt with.

Time elapsed: just over twenty minutes.

Lu Chen began decomposing the wreckage.

The mechanical arm shuttled back and forth across the battlefield.

Pale blue light flared up in clusters amidst the twilight; with every flash, a combat vehicle vanished from the material plane.

System statistics popped up one after another.

As he decomposed the remains, he turned the vehicle around and pushed toward the frontal battlefield.

Zhao Tiezhu's latest report came in.

"Frontal situation: the iron wall has disabled sixteen vehicles. Patrol vehicles destroyed five and lost three. There are eight left charging the front."

Eight vehicles.

Out of forty vehicles, only eight remained.

"Battalion Commander Zhao, thank you for your hard work."

"Huh?" Zhao Tiezhu wasn't used to hearing that and paused for a beat. "Just standard operations."

"Position of those eight?"

"They've broken into within one kilometer of the iron wall. My patrol vehicles are intercepting."

"What about the vehicle with the golden skull pattern belonging to White Bone?"

"Still there, in the second row of the eight."

"Good."

Lu Chen increased his speed to seventy kilometers per hour and rushed toward the iron wall's frontal battlefield.

He didn't have time to decompose all the wreckage on the flank, so he started with twelve of the fifteen vehicles he could reach.

Decomposition income plus previous income from the transport trucks and the eight rear vehicles:

3 Transport Trucks: 987 points.

8 Rear Vehicles: 1,623 points.

12 Flank Vehicles (decomposed portion): 2,441 points.

Current Balance: 7,793 points.

There were still three flank wrecks he hadn't had time to decompose, plus the wreckage on the frontal battlefield waiting to be collected.

He switched the comm-link to Lin Xiao's frequency.

"City Lord Lin Xiao."

"Here!" Lin Xiao's voice was half a pitch more urgent than usual.

"Report: All three transport trucks of the Ice-Rift Swarm are destroyed. None of the six 105mm cannons managed a single effective hit. The fifteen vehicles on the pincer flank have been wiped out. Currently, eight remain on the front, including White Bone himself. I am heading to the front."

"From forty vehicles down to eight?"

"Correct."

"How much time did it take?"

Lu Chen glanced at the wall clock.

"Just over thirty-five minutes since the first shot from the Ray Cannon."

The sound of Lin Xiao slamming the desk hard came through the comm-link.

"Thirty-five minutes! Brother Lu Chen, you are the bane of the Snow Shard Gang's existence! White Bone's Ice-Rift Swarm—over thirty vehicles plus six cannons—just gone like that!"

"There are still eight left."

"What's eight vehicles? Zhao Tiezhu's ten cannons and twenty patrol vehicles are more than enough to handle them. You don't even need to go yourself."

"I need the wreckage."

"You," Lin Xiao laughed, "never forget to scavenge for scrap, no matter the time."

"The scrap is worth eight thousand points."

"Fine, fine, go pick your scrap. When the fight is over, come back and I'll give you the blueprints."

"Good."

Lu Chen tapped his finger on the steering wheel.

The background noise in the comm-link changed.

Originally, Lin Xiao's side had been the typical sound of personnel moving and low-voiced reports in the command room.

A piercing alarm sounded from the background of the comm-link.

Woooooo! Woooooo!

That alarm wasn't the sound of an electronic buzzer; it was the highest-level combat alarm of Black Rock City-State.

Lu Chen had only heard that sound once before on the broadcast.

It was only sounded during a state of total combat readiness.

But total combat readiness was already in effect.

This alarm was a level even higher than total combat readiness.

"City Lord Lin Xiao?"

On the other end of the comm-link, Lin Xiao's voice was halfway drowned out by the alarm.

His voice was still there, but his tone had changed.

The laughter was gone; the booming voice was gone.

What remained was a voice pressed very low and tight.

"Brother Lu Chen, something's happened."

"What is it?"

"To our rear."

Lin Xiao's breathing quickened for two beats over the comm-link.

"To the southwest, forty kilometers from Black Rock City-State."

"What is it?"

"One Ice Thorn Lv.4 Main City. Two lv.3 fortresses."

Lu Chen's fingers froze on the steering wheel.

His brain completed the calculations within two seconds.

Southwest.

The Ice-Rift Swarm was attacking from the northeast; the southwest was the direct rear of Black Rock City-State.

A Lv.4 plus two Lv.3s.

That was the configuration of the North Ice Group.

Iron Spine's main force.

"Why didn't previous reconnaissance detect them?"

"I don't know!" Lin Xiao's voice was filled with anxiety. "Our radar and outposts didn't detect any signals! They appeared out of thin air forty kilometers away!"

"Stealth."

A single word.

Lu Chen's mind flipped through the files of the four major leaders of the Snow Shard Gang.

North Ice Group: Stationed at the Roaring Ice Abyss main base, guarding the Ice Thorn Lv.4 Main City and two Lv.3 satellite cities.

The files mentioned nothing about stealth capabilities.

Three years of intelligence gathering.

Not a single word.

"Ice Thorn," Lu Chen uttered the name.

Another voice came through the comm-link.

It wasn't Lin Xiao.

That voice was transmitted across all public frequencies simultaneously, the power so high that even the Polaris's old military radio received it automatically.

A man's voice.

Young, sharp, and filled with a morbid cheerfulness.

"Bugs of Black Rock City-State!"

"Can you hear me? If you can, give me a little hop!"

"I am Ice Thorn!"