139: Chapter 141: Tear Down the Foundation to Build the Ceiling

The light inside the Holographic Operations Cabin was stained blood-red by rows of glaring red data frames.

The construction list titled [Imperial Frigate - Standard Cruiser Type] floated in mid-air.

Constructing a void warship capable of navigating within a star system and entering the Gods' Ranking Tournament requires a massive material foundation.

The first item on the list is 26,000 tons of high-purity Refined Steel.

The second item is 3,000 tons of abyss alloy used to line the heat-insulating inner layer of the main engine.

The third item is 500 tons of Adamantium to forge the prow ram and the core fire control array area.

Li Cang's fingers slid across the console, switching to the current base's resource library panel.

Several extremely clean zeros popped up on the display.

Zero Adamantium.

Zero Refined Steel.

The inventory of abyss alloy was stuck at the pathetic number of 323.

That low-ranking Priest supervisor, forcibly bound to the shipyard control room by a cyber virus, was watching this bill through the communication channel.

The Priest's massive mechanical optical sensor contracted rapidly, and the sound of crackling current overload emitted from his vocalizer.

Without materials, the assembly protocol cannot be initiated; no amount of mechanical prayers can conjure up a single basic armor plate.

The Priest judged this to be a guaranteed losing situation. He submitted a notification on the communication channel, stating that the 72-hour timeframe, combined with the existing scrap, was only enough to weld a barely airtight tin toilet around that dark-gold grade gravity engine.

Li Cang directly cut off the Priest's audio input signal.

He did not intend to send troops out to scavenge.

The mutant beasts or Xenos tribes within a radius of thousands of kilometers had long been cleared out; even if there were any, the biomass from such low-level creatures could not be refined into a starship keel capable of passing the tournament's inspection.

He tapped open the holographic perspective view of the base's underground structure on the console.

His index finger swiped across the screen, directly selecting all load-bearing areas from the third to the fifth underground levels.

This was the physical cornerstone of the entire outpost base, a core support network formed by cross-welding tens of thousands of high-strength alloy pillars.

The red cursor tapped heavily on these alloy pillars, marking them for demolition.

The command bypassed all safety warning procedures and was sent directly to the underlying receivers of the internal engineering Servitors.

A piercing air-defense zone alarm sounded on the surface; this was usually the physical evacuation signal issued only when encountering a devastating strike.

There was no enemy attack; the command originated from the Commander.

Hundreds of tracked engineering Servitors slid into the third underground level without obstruction, following the elevator.

They were equipped with high-frequency plasma cutting saws capable of slicing directly through tank armor.

The first alloy load-bearing pillar, with a diameter exceeding two meters, was bitten by the cutting saw.

Eerie blue plasma sparks splattered everywhere in the dim underground space, and the sound of metal melting under high heat drowned out the humming of the ventilation ducts.

The moment the load-bearing pillar was cut, the ceiling of the third underground level emitted a terrifyingly dull thud.

Tons of concrete rubble, mixed with bent steel bars, crashed down from above, smashing several Servitors that couldn't dodge in time into twisted scrap metal.

Once a load-bearing wall of this magnitude was lost, the surface structures above would suffer irreversible subsidence under the force of gravity.

Li Cang didn't give it a chance to subside.

The main pipeline of the underground cooling system was forcibly blown open.

The massive amount of liquid nitrogen stored in the lower levels gushed out frantically through the ruptured gap.

The ultra-low temperature gas, nearly minus 200 degrees, turned into thick white freezing fog the moment it touched the air, forcibly filling the cracks in the rock layers that were about to collapse due to the loss of load support.

Moisture rapidly froze under the extreme cold, growing wildly along the remaining steel bar veins, forming huge, solid ice pillars radiating bone-chilling cold within minutes.

The ice pillars replaced the removed alloy pillars, firmly propping up the precarious base surface in an extremely primitive and unstable physical manner.

The tracked Servitors dragged tens of thousands of tons of core alloy building materials out to the surface and dumped them directly into the large smelting blast furnace, which was already operating at its limit.

Li Cang's gaze shifted to the surface.

He selected the air-defense array area.

Those four close-in defense towers, which had suffered barrel deformation and jamming while resisting the meteor engine, originally required a month for major repairs.

Li Cang did not select the repair option.

Heavy engineering cranes drove into the air-defense array.

Thick alloy chains tightly bound the base of the ten-meter-high close-in defense towers.

The hydraulic motors emitted a roar as if they were about to explode, and the tracks frictioned charred marks onto the permafrost.

The four expensive close-in defense towers were uprooted; the power cables and data fiber optics connected to their bases were violently ripped apart, bursting into clusters of blue electric arcs in mid-air.

The steps of dismantling and sorting were even skipped; they were thrown directly into the No. 2 blast furnace, melting into rolling molten iron under thousands of degrees of heat.

The Priest supervisor on the other side of the holographic screen watched the monitoring values of the data pipelines, fully loaded with materials, jumping wildly.

Mechanical logic could not comprehend this self-destructive act of destroying the foundation of one's own civilization's defense.

Without the underground support network and the air-defense towers, this outpost base was nothing more than a paper shell that would shatter at a touch.

Li Cang's calculations were clear: after entering the Star Sea Battle Royale, the surface base would lose its significance for the competition. As long as the engine could take flight, the bricks beneath his feet were all redundant dead weight.

The numbers on the material panel were skyrocketing.

But the shortfall in steel and armor plates was still 30%.

Li Cang switched the internal communication frequency to the barracks of the ordinary Thunder Warriors stationed on the ground.

One hundred and fourteen veteran Thunder Warriors, who had not participated in the ice sheet nuclear explosion and had remained inside the base for defense, received the order for mandatory assembly.

They lined up neatly in the square where the wind and snow were raging.

Their power armor models were old, and the surfaces were covered with repaired welding scars and indelible Xenos bloodstains.

Li Cang's holographic projection flickered in the wind and snow.

"Remove armor."

Two extremely brief words.

There was no pre-battle mobilization, nor any comforting nonsense.

Only the whistling wind remained in the square.

The 114 genetically modified warriors, two meters tall, did not hesitate at all.

The heavy metal latches were violently popped open.

The chest plates were removed and slammed into the snow.

The interfaces connecting to their spines and ganglia were pulled out by their bare hands.

Blood seeped out along the metal slots on their backs, instantly congealing into dark red ice beads in the extreme cold of minus sixty degrees.

They removed the hydraulic bearings from their legs, and the heavy arm armor was stripped away.

114 topless giants stood in the wind and snow.

The broken power armor, having lost the support of its master's body heat, emitted a faint white steam in the snow.

The pale skin of the Thunder Warriors was covered in black patches caused by genetic collapse, and their thick muscle fibers were twitching violently due to the extreme cold and the aftereffects of the neural disconnection.

Engineering Servitors drove into the square, using their cold mechanical arms to shovel up all these antique power armor pieces, still stained with their masters' body heat and blood.

These suits of armor, which had once protected the initial blood and bone of the Empire, were sent into the third blast furnace, becoming the raw material for the starship's surface armor.

The Thunder Warriors did not collect cold-resistant clothing; they walked bare-chested toward the unloading port of the smelting area.

The ultimate physical fitness bestowed upon them by genetic modification made them the best porters.

Alloy steel beams, each weighing several tons, burning red and freshly poured from the molds, were carried directly on their shoulders.

The high heat instantly cooked the skin on their shoulders, emitting a pungent smell of roasted meat.

Pain nerves were forcibly suppressed under the suppression of the genetic frenzy trait.

They lined up into a silent conveyor belt of flesh and blood, carrying these scorching building materials step by step toward the assembly area of the Orbital Shipyard.

Forty-eight hours of the 72-hour countdown had already passed.

All the scrap metal, load-bearing pillars, air-defense towers, and old power armor had been transformed into standard-specification starship building materials.

The shipyard's keel was piled high with these metal modules of unknown origin.

Conventional civilization shipbuilding requires dust-free workshops, precision welding, and months of underlying logic matching.

Li Cang bypassed these processes directly.

He activated the core mechanism of the "Epoch" system—[civilization forge].

The holographic interface inside the operations cabin was filled with golden flames.

Li Cang selected all the massive scrap data piled up on the shipyard.

Then he pulled out the physical card emitting a dark golden glow—the [Warp Gravity Jump Engine]—from the card slot.

He threw both the card and the scrap data into the crucible.

This violated conventional shipbuilding common sense; it was a forced fusion completely exploiting the system's card-making loophole.

The crucible's judgment values were jumping wildly on the screen.

The logic rejection rate exceeded 90%.

The metal fatigue of the scrap was extremely high; the overclocked pull of the dark-gold grade gravity engine would be extremely unstable.

The system popped up a dozen red warning windows in succession, indicating that the probability of this patchwork object disintegrating in space was as high as 85%.

Li Cang did not perform any withdrawal operations; he directly clicked the execution confirmation key for forced materialization.

A massive torrent of data that distorted the surrounding air rushed straight into the sky from the operations cabin.

A blinding black radiance that devoured all light erupted above the Orbital Shipyard.

Within the black radiance, the sounds of metal being forcibly twisted, reorganized, and forged shattered all the glass inside the base.

The system countdown jumped to the 71st hour and 59th minute.

The aurora re-covered the sky, and the black radiance faded.

An extremely massive, ugly, black warship exuding an aura of extreme brutality sat heavily on the shipyard's fixing frame.

It had no aerodynamic design whatsoever.

The prow was a huge solid ram forged from the main bodies of the four air-defense towers, with dark red heat that hadn't completely cooled down still remaining on the surface.

The armor plates on both sides of the hull were outrageously thick, all made of heavy steel plates forcibly pressed from the Thunder Warriors' old armor and the underground load-bearing pillars, with rough rivets the size of a human head punched at the seams of every steel plate.

There were no unnecessary observation windows; the entire bridge was buried beneath the thickest armor layer.

This was not a spaceship at all; it was a blood-stained battle-axe used to crush the skulls of enemies in space.

The pungent smell of machine oil and high-temperature metal permeated the entire tundra.

At the stern of the battle-axe-shaped frigate, the connection point of that dark-gold grade engine was spitting out eerie blue plasma exhaust flames.

A glaring golden banner popped up on the main screen of the operations cabin.

[Entity ship meeting interstellar navigation standards detected and generated.]

[Civilization level locked.]

[Second round of mandatory PVP ranking stage: Public Star Region - Shattered Star Battle Royale entry inspection passed.]

[Space jump traction program has been initiated.]

[Countdown: 60 seconds.]

Li Cang watched the jumping countdown without the slightest relaxation.

He glanced at the indelible dark golden entry on the warship's main control panel: [Warp Blind Jump].

This meant that this patchwork piece of junk, which didn't even have a Geller Field installed, would be directly exposed to the deepest, most chaotic shadows of the universe during the upcoming long-distance jump.

He connected to the Astartes' internal channel.

The fourteen recruits who had experienced the gravitational tearing had just stepped onto the cold metal deck of the frigate.

Li Cang did not let them go to the cryo-pods or turret battle stations.

The teleportation protocol command of the operations cabin was activated.

Twenty metal weapon crates, each weighing half a ton, were teleported directly into the wide metal corridor outside the bridge.

The weapon crates popped open automatically the moment they touched the deck.

They were filled with high-frequency Chainswords fresh off the production line, with the lubricating oil not even wiped off yet, as well as rows of large-caliber Electromagnetic Bolters.

"Everyone draw your weapons, power on the Chainswords."

Li Cang's voice came out from the ship's internal loudspeakers.

The fourteen black armored giants moved at the sound, stepping over the ice shards on the floor and grabbing their weapons.

The crisp sound of the Electromagnetic Bolters being loaded and the roar of the Chainswords' motors at full power formed a deafening echo in the enclosed corridor.

The roar of the engine reached its peak.

The external aurora was dragged into ribbons of light by the gravitational field torn by the frigate.

Li Cang stared fixedly at that dark golden trait description.

"Lock the bridge doors before the jump countdown ends."

"After entering the tunnel, regardless of what intangible shadows appear beside you, regardless of what viscera with eyes appear on the walls."

"Just chop them up for me."

The countdown hit zero.

This black battle-axe, cobbled together with everything the base had, smashed through the physical dimensions of reality and plunged headlong into that scarlet abyss which no ordinary person could look upon.