170: Chapter 174 This is not a grave, this is your new post

The battle axe heavy cruiser looked like a scrap of iron that had been bitten in half and rolled through lava several times.

Accompanied by the harsh, unpleasant hiss of airflow, it wobbled and crashed onto the originally smooth special metal platform of the Equatorial Main Dock on Mining Planet No. 3.

The Mars-grade 'Great Production Logistics Coordination Array' was no joke.

Even before the ship had stabilized its exhaust, thousands of low-level Servitors were already pushing High-Frequency Welding Carts tens of meters long and carrying massive alloy repair plates, swarming over it like black ants smelling blood.

There was no sense of panic. Throughout the Equatorial Base, there was only the extremely mechanical and rhythmic roar of high-load emergency repairs.

Li Cang stood up from the main control chair in the operations room, looking at the screen filled with hull damage reports that were almost breaking through the red background.

This was a solid, lethal blow from the unreasonable computing power of a higher civilization. However, the result was beautiful.

He didn't go to inspect the repairs; instead, with a wave of his hand, he shifted all the focus of the main camera to the low-level Medical Decompression Chamber, filled with the smell of engine oil and decaying blood, where the Astartes veteran was located.

Inside the airlock, there were no clean medical instruments.

Veteran Number Fourteen—whose left arm had once been a mere stump and who had just suffered massive pulmonary hemorrhaging and carbonization due to a hard-core overload during the breach of the Computing Wall—was now lying on an extremely cold, tilted Surgical Maintenance Table.

His heartbeat on the monitoring panel had already stretched into a weak, dying dotted line.

In the face of such triple-crushing injuries that exceeded the physical limits of the flesh, even the heaven-defying hidden self-healing trait of the Star Beast genes could only barely sustain this pile of bone and blood still called a 'soldier'.

Li Cang watched him coldly.

“System prompt: Due to excessive higher dimensional interference damage, this infantry unit is in a state of physical scrap. Even if astronomical points are consumed for reconstruction, it will permanently lose its mobility.”

This was the reward for following him through the entire Battle Royale and just performing great service in the deep space ruins and the higher-dimensional cage. More than half of his body was ruined.

According to the logic of the interstellar empires on the great map—those with noble faiths or even those who calculated purely by reason—the most decent thing would be to grant him euthanasia and a posthumous sacred military rank.

But Li Cang was an extremely radical, pure materialist player; the word 'decency' did not exist in his dictionary.

He firmly held the remaining half-broken blade, along with the extremely foul and disgusting 'Higher-Dimensional Dark Green First-Clear Crystalline Powder Poison' that he had scraped from the combat knife in the computing cage, amounting to less than a small pinch.

With extreme force and without hesitation, his finger pressed the dark button next to the console, which had only been unlocked in a small portion of its branch area:

【Mars Atlas Special Hidden Branch: Medium-sized Sacred Living Colossus Frame (Damaged Package Edition)】.

“Mobility is gone?”

Li Cang's voice, devoid of any emotion, cut through the medical bay via the broadcast. Recruit Number One did not stop him.

“Then forget about mobility. This place just happens to need someone to man a cannon.”

What descended from the fully automated heavy industry pipeline was not a mechanical pacemaker or a breathing tube.

Instead, it was several brutal automatic surgical saws with frenzied plasma rotation speeds and mechanical claws!

Under the extremely disgusting and uncomfortable forced mechanical modification laws characteristic of Warhammer, Number Fourteen's remaining limbs—both intact and ruined—were directly and neatly dismembered from his torso!

Nothing was preserved. There was no so-called anesthesia period.

The massive body, now just a half-shell containing the core brain cavity and internal organs while constantly spewing blood, was grabbed by a thick mechanical hook like a piece of rotten meat and slammed directly into a wide, giant steel coffin slot painted in solid black, heavy Adamantium!

This was the most notorious battlefield heavy equipment in the 40,000 Universe. It didn't need a computer motherboard.

You put a person inside and forcibly establish a neural connection between that blood-soaked mangled body and those large-caliber twin-linked cannons!

Li Cang did not watch the physical stitching, which possessed a certain aesthetic of flying flesh; instead, he acted extremely boldly while the slot was being filled with antiseptic engine oil and life-sustaining amniotic fluid.

He wastefully poured that pile of powder—a mixture of lethal poison and extremely abnormal, twisted cells—entirely into the core aortic life-support tube connecting Veteran Number Fourteen's brain to the mecha's central spine.

【High-intensity high-order neural mutation Primarch detected merging!】

【Forcibly suppressing the shell and merging the metal chassis logic!】

In this dark red underground furnace, under Li Cang's heartless gaze, that giant, square steel monster—originally as silent as a deep-pit iron grave—let out a terrifying, high-pitched roar that made one's skin crawl, indistinguishable from a human throat or the screeching of metal.

The composite heavy armor plate on its chest, over a meter thick, closed completely!

Two mechanical legs, so irregular they were almost crude, nailed themselves firmly onto the vibrating rock plates of this dead star system.

On its left side was welded an eleven-barrel, ultra-large-caliber smoothbore assault rotary cannon, powerful enough to level a small hilltop; on its right side was not a defensive shield.

Instead, it was a pair of heavy armor-piercing alloy fist-claws, flowing with a sickening green light that was extremely unnatural due to the integration of higher-dimensional toxins.

【Starfall Mutant Edition · Toxic Sacred Dreadnought (Ground Combat Extreme Rank) born.】

【Hidden Traits Added: Venom Sac Spreading / Undying Will / Guardian Soul.】

【System Combat Assessment: It does not need an anti-aircraft battery; it is a mobile graveyard of cannons capable of spreading higher-dimensional decay.】

If the previous soldiers were merely for hacking people down...

Then this beast, now wrapped in layers of black oil and heavy iron armor, emitting an extremely brutal, blood-red gaze from the single-slit observation port in front, truly gave Li Cang the violent confidence to go head-to-head even with advanced mechs!

Number Fourteen wasn't dead; he had just moved to a new post for a malevolent spirit—one where he couldn't even dream of a vacation and would never need to sleep.

Li Cang was examining this new toy. At this moment, when the absolute center of gravity for surface combat had been elevated...

The beast's heavily armored mechanical legs suddenly lurched upward.

Before its heavy iron feet, trailing green flames, could stomp firmly onto the ground and leave high-temperature scorched marks...

On the 'Whisperer Radar Induction Matrix,' which had been rearranged and underwent a system-level expansion upgrade...

An extremely mood-shattering, anti-aircraft-level yellow wide-area alarm—harsher than when the coalition forces had arrived before—instantly shattered the brief sense of jubilation in the entire Mars Fortress Zone caused by the deployment of the new unit.

In a blind spot at the extreme outer edge of the 300-light-year great map fog...

An 'Unknown Stray Mercenary-Class Deep Space Scavenger Group,' completely devoid of any conspicuous warlord paint and with its entire radar signature in a highly advanced hidden state, acted as if it had caught the scent of fat meat and rotten blood from afar.

Without submitting any system clearance applications...

Like a pack of starving wolves, they extremely arrogantly and silently deployed a strike line with an intense sense of solid kinetic pressure, thrusting straight toward Mining Planet No. 3!