158: Chapter 162 I'll Bit Your Neck Along the Internet Cable

The air at the bottom of the trench was as murky as a jar of stagnant, foul-smelling water.

Fourteenth Recruit didn't turn on any tactical lighting; he had even physically smashed the few low-light indicators on his masterwork armor.

The Infiltrator opposite him, wearing 'Shadow Weaver' optical camouflage, had fully revealed himself. This advanced coating, claimed to absorb all light spectra, had irreversibly peeled off after taking a shrapnel storm from two improvised landmine explosions at close range.

It was a High Elf.

He was beautiful, with a slender build and muscle lines that appeared extremely well-proportioned under his damaged, skin-tight combat suit.

But this meant nothing in Number Fourteen's eyes.

The motor of the high-frequency Chainsword roared to life.

The Elf Special Ops member reacted extremely quickly. Even with his vision obscured and his hearing deafened by the explosion, he still drew the high-frequency ion blade at his waist, relying on muscle memory and high-level neural reflexes.

The blue ion blade traced an incredibly precise arc in the darkness, aiming straight for the gap in Number Fourteen's faceplate.

Number Fourteen did not dodge.

He had lost his left hand in the Battle Royale, and the servo-arm on his right had been kept in an overloaded state. He raised his Chainsword and, without any parrying technique, chopped directly down at the light blade.

Clang!

The high-frequency vibrating adamantium teeth and the scorching ion blade collided.

The cutting power of the ion blade was indeed strong, slicing through the alloy guide plate on the outside of the Chainsword. However, the unreasonable mass and massive kinetic inertia of the Chainsword directly dislocated the Elf's right hand holding the blade.

Number Fourteen took a step forward.

The heavy magnetic boot on his right leg suddenly lifted, kicking the Elf in the chest.

With half a ton of power armor plus momentum, this kick directly snapped three ribs in the opponent's chest, pinning the Elf against the rock wall of the trench.

"Zzzzt—"

The Chainsword pressed down with the momentum.

There was no elegant swordsmanship; the teeth bit into the Elf's shoulder without resistance. Flesh, bone, and even the high-tech fibers of the combat suit instantly turned into splashing gore before this weapon born purely for destruction.

The Elf didn't even let out a scream before his entire body was sliced in half diagonally from shoulder to waist.

A few screams and the sound of heavy objects hitting the ground in the distance also quickly subsided.

This ambush in the hundred-meter-deep trench was less of a battle and more of a slaughter.

Fifty Astartes against twelve special ops soldiers who had fallen into the pit; the process was so short that Li Cang didn't even have time to take a sip of his coffee.

The severed limbs and broken torso at the end of the trench belonged to the Special Ops Captain.

His legs had already been blown off by Recruit Number One using a Bolter, and his optical camouflage was completely ruined.

But he wasn't dead.

There was no fear of pain in the captain's eyes, only an extremely cold resolve.

He knew he couldn't escape. But as one of the most elite Infiltrators of the Eternal Star Crown Federation, his neural link still stored the bone density of these giants, armor thickness, and structural data of this crude defensive position he had just scanned.

As long as this data was transmitted, the Federation's main star battleship fleet could use high-frequency sonic weapons to shatter these giants' brains in the next second.

He used his only remaining right hand to claw into his damaged helmet and, without hesitation, crushed a miniature bio-chip embedded in the back of his head.

"Final Protocol, initiated."

The captain's body began to show abnormalities.

Under the catalysis of the chip, that advanced Elven flesh rapidly dissolved, transforming into a burst of extremely high-frequency quantum energy. A visible pillar of light, carrying a ghostly blue data stream, shot up from the crown of his head.

Ignoring the magnetic field interference of the mining planet, it shot straight into outer space.

Recruit Number One raised his Bolter and fired two more rounds into that head.

The captain's head shattered like a watermelon.

But that blue pillar of light remained.

It was a quantum channel on the rules level, detached from the constraints of the physical body, performing a pre-death information dump.

The operations cabin.

Li Cang put down his coffee cup.

As soon as that data channel flashing with piercing blue light appeared on the holographic screen, he knew what the opponent was doing.

This was a top-seven big shot after all.

Losing a few soldiers didn't hurt, but if they managed to figure out his bottom line, that would be truly fatal.

The battle axe frigate's cyber ai virus gave a frantic alarm, indicating that high-dimensional data was penetrating their electronic shielding network.

"Want to suck some information back?"

Li Cang's fingers slowly tapped on the console.

He didn't smash the keyboard, nor was he exasperated.

He pulled up the pile of waste materials in the ship's bottom layer that still emitted a pungent smell.

"Sure, I'll let you have your fill."

Li Cang didn't try to cut off that quantum channel.

With the technology he currently had, he couldn't cut it off even if he wanted to.

He intercepted the core code of the poison crystals he had created earlier to sell fake goods—that data stream full of the 'Machine Spirit Fanaticism' virus and 'Cyber Illogical Algorithm'.

This data was so dirty that even the furnace could barely suppress it.

"Number Fourteen." Li Cang's voice connected to the trench via a private line.

"Next to that glowing corpse on your left, there's a Servitor wreck blown apart by a mine."

Number Fourteen turned his head and saw that mixture of metal and flesh still emitting black smoke.

"Pull out the data cable from the back of that Servitor and plug it into the interface behind that corpse's neck! Now!"

Number Fourteen didn't ask why.

He walked over and, with one hand, ripped out the thick black bone cable from the back of the Servitor, which was still covered in an unknown liquid.

Then he walked to the headless Elven corpse that was still erupting with a blue digital light pillar.

He aimed at the data slot still flickering at the corpse's cervical spine.

He shoved it in with great force.

The moment the physical connection was completed.

Li Cang slammed down the release lever in the operations cabin.

That 'toxic machine spirit' data stream he had forcibly bundled flowed through the ship's relay, through the Servitor's bone cable, and directly into the body of the Elf Special Ops Captain.

The body was dead; it was merely an upload channel.

This thick, black-red data stream full of virus code was like a lethal toxin injection. It flowed upstream along that originally pure blue quantum light pillar, surging frantically toward space.

One hundred kilometers above the surface of the mining planet.

The 'Void Ripper' class phased stealth ship.

This ship was in an absolutely silent state of ambush.

On the bridge, the operator responsible for data recovery was staring intently at the progress bar on the interface.

"Ground team confirmed wiped out. But the captain successfully initiated the Final Protocol."

"quantum channel stable. Data recovery progress: eighty percent... ninety percent..."

The operator let out a long breath. As long as they got the data, they could safely jump away.

"Recovery complete."

The very second the progress bar hit one hundred percent.

The pristine holographic screen in front of him, representing the pinnacle of the Federation's technology, suddenly flickered without warning.

And then.

In the corner of the screen, a virtual dark-red flesh sprout grew.

It was a materialized mutation caused by the extreme distortion of the code.

The flesh sprout expanded rapidly, accompanied by a piercing alarm. It was a coarse noise like metal scraping against glass, something none of the operators had ever heard before.

"Warning! Lethal logic erosion detected!"

"Firewall collapsed! Life support system logic being overwritten!"

The operator's fingers pressed frantically on the console, but he found his commands were not only ineffective.

Actual brown rust began to grow on the console's casing.

The phase stealth generator, the pride of this priceless stealth ship, crashed directly under the impact of the virus.

Its slender hull, which had perfectly blended into the cosmic background, flickered a few times on the mining planet's orbit and completely revealed its original form.

It was no longer as clean as new.

The lights inside the hull flickered for two rounds and then all went out.

The propulsion and life support systems were both locked down within three seconds by the dirty data carrying the 'Machine Spirit Fanaticism' virus.

This was a murder that transcended physical dimensions.

In the operations cabin, Li Cang watched the huge cursor on the radar that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, flashing a conspicuous red.

The cursor's current state was stationary.

Like a dead fish with its belly turned up.

Li Cang did not show a triumphant expression.

He still maintained that posture, leaning back in his chair with his fingers on the armrest.

"Recruit Number One, take your men and go up to the sky in a shuttle."

He looked at the trophy slowly drifting in space, his tone as flat as if he were talking about a trivial matter.

"Since they don't want to leave their bodies whole, then bring the ship back for me too."