131: Chapter 132 The Correct Way to Disassemble Genuine Parts

The collapsing metal door kicked up a hurricane mixed with the smell of rust.

C-19 stepped onto the wreckage of the scorching door panel; the glare filtration system of his eyepiece instantly reached full capacity, emitting a piercing beep.

Ahead was a bottomless, shaft-like space.

An acceleration track over thirty meters in diameter, nested with countless superconducting coils, stabbed straight toward the skylight above the ice.

In the center of the track, the plasma had been compressed into a blinding blue-white star, with terrifying electromagnetic containment fields pulling visible static filaments through the air.

C-19 did not fire.

The ballistic analysis module in his helmet had already redlined.

With a containment field of that level, a bolt shell would be reduced to elementary particles the moment it touched the magnetic field, unable to even produce a spark.

Thirty seconds.

If they didn't dismantle this several-hundred-meter-long metal pillar, the five of them would turn into steam in the stratosphere along with the Antarctic Ice Sheet above their heads.

Inside the Holographic Operations Cabin, Li Cang's fingers hammered out a blur of afterimages on the keyboard.

He pulled up the fragmented blueprint that the Adeptus Mechanicus had reverse-engineered from that Underground Workshop a hundred days ago, at the very start of the Civilization Deduction.

The blueprint was synchronized directly to C-19's tactical eyepiece.

A flashing red circle was marked in the center of the blueprint, accompanied by a very short description: High-temperature pressure-resistant sealing ring, the core hub of the nuclear reactor cooling system.

"At the bottom of the track, twenty meters down on the left, that's its cooling pump," Li Cang's voice hammered directly into C-19's mind via bone-conduction earphones. "Go pull out that sealing ring."

No explanation of the principles was needed.

Pull the plug on the cooling system, and the miniature nuclear reactor would burn through its own isolation chamber within seconds; the Macro-cannon's containment magnetic field would instantly collapse due to the loss of power at the base level.

Blowing the barrel—this was the demolition logic of Warhammer.

C-19 led four recruits as they leaped down onto the maintenance catwalk at the edge of the track.

Below the catwalk was a circular metal buffer platform; it was too close to the plasma core.

The surrounding temperature was nearing a thousand degrees; the thermal insulation coating on the surface of the power armor began to blacken and peel, and the servo motors let out painful groans.

A heavy, two-meter-high isolation gate appeared ahead.

This was the final lock leading to the cooling pump.

But this door couldn't be smashed open directly with Engineering Demolition.

The door was covered with a visible dark red radiation field, a barrier formed by the high-energy neutron stream leaking from the bottom reactor, constrained by magnetic fields.

If any living thing touched this field, the water in their cells would instantly boil, and proteins would carbonize within tenths of a second.

The four recruits stopped before the gate.

The armor on their bodies had already been scorched into tatters by Melta Guns during the previous charge; their exposed muscle tissue was oozing yellowish fluid under the surrounding high temperatures.

Countdown: Twenty seconds.

The four did not wait for C-19's order.

Almost simultaneously, they pushed the Gene-seed at the back of their necks to an overclocked physical limit of two hundred percent.

Bones made muffled cracking sounds under flesh, and muscle fibers were forced into catalysis by overclocking hormones, bursting through the remaining armor.

Four massive bodies slammed directly into that dark red radiation field.

They weren't repelled, nor were they shredded.

Using pure kinetic energy, they forcibly squeezed and deformed the field, then hooked their hands into the gaps of the isolation gate.

The high temperature instantly ignited the fat and muscle within their bodies.

Dark red flames flickered up their arms; flesh turned charred and peeled away at a visible speed, revealing the ceramic-matrix reinforced skeletons beneath.

Secondary Hearts performed a final, frantic pumping of blood within scorched chest cavities.

Creeeeeak.

With their combined strength, the four pulled the gate open to a half-meter-wide gap.

They did not retreat.

They couldn't retreat anymore.

Under the extreme heat, their skeletons and remaining armor had already fuse-welded with the metal edges of the gate.

They became four physical flesh-wedges, using spines melted into the steel to stubbornly prop open the door.

Black carbonized powder puffed out from their open mouths without a sound.

C-19 did not pause.

Tucking in his shoulders and turning sideways, he squeezed through the gap propped open by his comrades' ashes.

His only remaining hand gripped the Chainsword.

The shoulder blade protruding from his left shoulder was scraped off as he passed through the gate, but he felt no pain.

Behind the gate was a massive spherical cavity.

A cooling pipe as thick as a large tree lay across the center; at the pipe connection, a titanium alloy sealing ring over two meters in diameter was emitting a low hum under high pressure.

Countdown: Eight seconds.

C-19 strode over.

He didn't pull it with his hands.

He slammed the tip of the Chainsword into the gap at the edge of the sealing ring.

His fingers twisted the throttle on the hilt to the max; the serrated teeth frantically bit into the titanium alloy, erupting in a series of blinding sparks.

The Engineering Demolition trait locked onto the target.

C-19 braced one foot against the main body of the cooling pipe, his right arm muscles bulging, and he yanked back violently with his waist.

A crisp crack sounded.

That core part of the Macro-cannon's main artery was forcibly torn from the pipe, along with half of the fixing flange.

Extremely cold liquid helium mixed with high-pressure steam erupted from the break like an infuriated dragon.

C-19 was sent flying by the impact, equivalent to several hundred tons of force, slamming heavily into the rear bulkhead; his breastplate caved in on the spot.

Countdown: Three seconds.

The miniature nuclear reactor at the base lost its cooling suppression, and the core temperature breached the critical value within a tenth of a second.

The reactor's isolation chamber was burned through.

In the energy conduits connecting to the plasma acceleration track, the previously steady current turned into an uncontrollable, violent power surge.

The magnetohydrodynamic containment field instantly collapsed.

That ball of blue-white plasma, which had been compressed to its limit, lost all restraint.

Inside the Holographic Operations Cabin.

The main monitor in front of Li Cang exploded into absolute static at that moment.

Then, a low, muffled boom—as if space itself were being torn apart—came through all the audio output devices.

Above the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The remnants of the Golden Legion, who had been scattered by the Battery Bombs, had just crawled out of the ice abyss.

They watched in horror as the ice beneath their feet, which hadn't melted for millions of years, suddenly glowed with a desperate blue-white light from within.

Then, the ice sheet collapsed.

The ice field for over a dozen kilometers around sank downward; a plasma fire pillar several hundred meters thick shattered the ice, like a blue spear piercing the heavens, stabbing straight into the atmosphere.

The vaporized ice water turned into a massive mushroom cloud connecting heaven and earth.

Facility Three, along with that yet-to-be-fired strategic-grade Macro-cannon, completely evaporated in the backlash of its own energy.

The alarm in the Holographic Operations Cabin stopped.

The static on the system interface gradually faded, refreshing with a line of cold green characters.

[Emergency Correction Report: Determined that the strategic-grade threat source has been destroyed.]

[Area Status: Physical Annihilation.]

Li Cang leaned back in his chair.

He looked at the countdown hitting zero on the screen, then glanced at the fourteen avatars on the troop panel that had already turned gray.

He had just spent all his savings to forge the sharpest blade.

Then he had personally snapped that blade beneath the ice sheet.

The operations cabin was so quiet that only the ticking of the life-support system pumping medication could be heard.

Li Cang extended a pale finger and swiped away the battle damage report on the holographic screen.

It wasn't a loss.