146: Chapter 146 Black Armor Donned, Bunker Alien Slaughter Begins

Solomon withdrew his gaze from the constantly shifting black mist above the pedestal and glanced at the row of screen terminals on the desk.

They were synchronously playing external surveillance footage transmitted from the remaining blind-spot cameras.

On one of the screens, several armed personnel from The Five Great Families were already escorting his traitorous deputy security commander, searching section by section along the basement corridor into the outer sector.

【Nano-Carapace】: The core technology that the Crane Family had spent over a hundred years reverse-engineering from those two cockroach-shaped Aliens corpses from 1947.

The tissue structure of the donor corpses itself contained a type of long-inactive, micro-biomimetic swarm component. Each individual unit had once provided protection and adaptive camouflage for the original compound-eyed, winged Alien master during its lifetime.

The Crane Family spent three generations rebuilding these micro-components, gradually awakening, dismantling, replicating, and modifying them from the nearly fossilized remains, yet they could never break through the constraint of the final process node: the neural synchronization stability chain after form fixation.

Without achieving this step, the Nano-Carapace would remain a semi-finished product that could never be separated from the body.

But now, The Five Great Families had fought their way to the concrete interlayer just a few inches above his head, so even a semi-finished product had to be used.

Solomon reached his hand into the constantly shifting black mist suspended above the pedestal. As soon as his fingertips touched it, the mist acted like a living creature, instantly climbing onto his fingers and spreading upward along his knuckles, the back of his hand, and his forearm at an astonishing speed.

It was not smoke, not gas, and not any room-temperature plasma substance known to humans.

They were a swarm composed of trillions of nano-scale biomimetic cockroach-shaped units, each so small that they could not be distinguished by the naked eye. The individuals built a temporary neural network using weak bio-electrical signals.

They crawled along Solomon's arm. Wherever they passed, the fibers of his suit and his skin were simultaneously covered by layer after layer of extremely thin black carapace. Within a few seconds, his shoulder blades, spine, collarbone, and ribcage were all wrapped and covered by these self-organizing micro-units.

Then, those nano-cockroaches began to gather and form on both sides of his shoulder blades on his back. Stretching outward to the left and right, they formed a pair of deep black wing membranes, thin enough to be nearly transparent. Each wing membrane was densely covered with extremely fine cross-ribbing, with the edges emitting a faint, cold, dark green light.

His face was covered last, and the position of his eyes was replaced by two rows of dense compound-eye crystals, each crystal emitting a dark red, bloody glow in the extremely low light.

Solomon felt the weight of this carapace covering his entire body as it clung to him… It was almost zero; on the surface of his skin, only a faint sensation of electrical stimulation remained.

When he spoke, his voice had changed; it was no longer the raspy bass of that eighty-five-year-old financier, but possessed a cold, piercing power mixed with some kind of low-frequency resonance.

"This is technology from an Alien planet; it is indeed powerful!"

As his voice fell, Solomon's entire body suddenly transformed into a black smoke-like mist. He was so fast that even the afterimages left in the air dissipated on their own within half a second, and he rushed like lightning along the basement corridor toward the exit leading to the ground level.

…

Finn had scouted the path clear.

This former sergeant, who had worked for the Crane Family for nearly twenty years, had his hands tied behind his back. With an entire assault team pressing their gun barrels against the back of his head, he was pushed forward section by section along the labyrinthine corridors of the manor's basement.

He truly did not play any tricks. The price of playing tricks in front of The Five Great Families was instant death, and Finn did not want to die.

The assault team circled the underground tunnel network twice, confirming the location of every fork in the road, the thickness of every blast door, and the exact coordinates of the main research lab at the deepest point.

When the communicator transmitted the real-time electronic map back to the surface, Rockefeller III was in the manor's courtyard, slowly sipping whiskey next to that old-fashioned stone table, which had been scarred by shrapnel.

He set his glass on the stone table, picked up the tablet, and carefully examined the map. Then he looked up and asked the assault team leader several key questions: whether the corridor width was sufficient for a tactical double-column advance, whether there was any residual smell of explosive tar behind the blast doors, and whether Solomon had deployed any automated defense systems in the depths of the basement.

After receiving clear answers to everything, he set down the tablet, stood up, straightened his suit buttons, and ordered The Five Great Families to assemble all their elite armed forces to attack the depths of the basement.

By the time the joint assault group of over four hundred people had finished lining up between the courtyard and the corridor, Rockefeller III walked up to the high stone platform in the courtyard, where the railings had been blown away, and looked down at the dense mass of armed personnel.

He reached out, pulled Samuel Astor, who was standing beside him, to his side, and asked a question to those below the platform.

"Do you all know who this person is?"

In the front row below the platform, several assault team leaders answered almost in unison: "We know! Mr. Samuel Astor, the current head of the Astor Family!"

Rockefeller III nodded and asked again: "Then do you know what the Astor Family is?"

"One of the top Five Great Families in the Lighthouse Country!"

The response was louder, and many of the armed personnel in the rows instinctively straightened their backs.

Rockefeller III took half a step forward, his leather shoes stepping on the edge of the stone steps, and he swept his gaze down over every face in the crowd.

"Then do you know why the Astor Family was able to become a top family in the Lighthouse Country?"

The crowd below fell silent instantly.

The young people in the front row, whose gazes were firm and who had been gripping their firearms, all fell into silence. Some looked blankly at their companions, while others lowered their heads, pondering the answer, yet they could not think of any explanation other than "their family is very rich."

In the back row, a sniper even muttered silently in his heart: "If I knew how to become a top family, would I still be standing here risking my life for others?"

Samuel Astor stood beside Rockefeller III, and the composure of an old-school aristocrat on his face was betrayed for the most part by his index finger, which kept rubbing gently against the inside of his cuff.

He did not understand what Rockefeller III was trying to do.

If it was just mobilization, why keep mentioning his family?

He was not the target of tonight's attack, nor was he part of the Jewish Financial Groups being boycotted by The Five Great Families, yet he was being repeatedly singled out at the mobilization meeting by Rockefeller, who had just finished defining everything for everyone at Spring Mountain Manor with the phrase, "The entire America is the territory of The Five Great Families."

Any old-school aristocrat would find this suspicious.

Rockefeller III ignored Samuel's confusion and cast his gaze back to the crowd below.

His voice was not loud, but it had great penetrating power; every word seemed to be carefully weighed before being thrown out.

"Do you want to become a top family in the Lighthouse Country?"