Volume 13 Ancient Bronze City Ruins Chapter 611: The Eve of the War
With a loud "swish", a large crack was suddenly torn in the bottom of the carriage, and the steel plate at the torn part folded to both sides. A skinny, charred arm stretched out from the outside and grabbed the edge of the steel plate.
This is a human hand...but it doesn't look like a living person's limb, but rather like it comes from a dried mummy.
At the end of the fingers were long, sharp and broken nails like claws. These nails scraped against the steel plates, making a continuous, teeth-grinding sound. The engineer almost immediately thought of the sound coming from above his head not long ago. He originally thought it was some kind of multi-legged arthropod creature similar to a centipede, but now it seems that it was probably the harsh noise made by these nails scratching against the vehicle armor.
The gap in the steel plate grew larger, and a second black arm, like a mummy, stretched into the carriage... followed by the third and fourth...
Could it be that there was more than one monster under the car... No, that's not right! These arms came from the same body! The engineer felt as if he had lost control of his body, and an indescribable sense of fear gripped his heart... He wanted to pull the trigger, but found that the trigger seemed to be welded shut and he couldn't pull it.
On the contrary, Lao Le yelled, picked up his two guns and started shooting at those arms!
But as soon as the bullets touched these arms, they immediately shattered - to be precise, they did not shatter, but "scattered"!
These arms turned into countless tiny black beetles in an instant!
These little beetles moved extremely fast, and in a blink of an eye they had crawled all over the machine gunner's body - the latter didn't even have time to make any sound before he turned into a white skeleton and fell inside the carriage.
This speed is countless times more exaggerated than the terrifying army ants on Earth!
"Bugs, bugs?!" Lao Le was also dumbfounded at this time. The muzzle of his gun subconsciously followed the movement of the insect swarm, but after these beetles had eaten up the flesh and blood of the machine gunner, they suddenly pounced on the soldier who had just looked at the photos of his wife and children. Lao Le couldn't help but hesitate briefly - if he fired now, he was not sure how many bugs he could kill, but the teammate who was targeted by the bugs would definitely die.
A 10mm caliber full-power bullet would tear the human body apart cleanly and crush the internal organs... If you are shot at this distance, there will not even be a chance for rescue.
Or to put it another way, not even a complete corpse will be left behind.
But in the less than half a second that Lao Le hesitated, the soldier followed the machine gunner's fate and was eaten to pieces by these black beetles.
Two white skeletons scattered and slid along the inclined floor to one end of the carriage - these black beetles not only ate all the flesh and blood of the two people, but also left no cartilage and tendons between the bones.
But...these bugs...
They didn't seem to be full.
…
…
On the other side, the First Cruise Fleet finally arrived at the parking airspace of Yagunakotor and completed the handover with Fleet Zero.
Those researchers who were not seriously injured were also sent to the front-line supply base to engage in research on wolf-like creatures. Although most of the research instruments and equipment were damaged during Ke Lan's "violent unloading", while Ke Lan was dealing with the hijacking incident, the Ye Group spent a large amount of money to urgently purchase a batch from the Ark and sent them over... In Ye Yan's words, it could be considered "making up for one's mistakes."
Although this amount of compensation can only be said to be negligible compared to the mistakes made by the Ye Group due to negligence, neither Ke Lan nor the Undead Crew seem to want to hold the Ye family accountable, which makes the fat man Ye Yan secretly relieved.
However, before Ke Lan could even sit down, she immediately received an encrypted call from the field corps.
The content of the call was roughly that the Field Corps had originally planned to send a special team to dig a tunnel to send Ke Lan and others into the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City. However, just a few minutes ago, this special team suddenly lost contact underground, and the communication between them and the headquarters was completely cut off.
The Field Corps immediately dispatched a reinforcement force consisting of about one hundred elite soldiers, equipped with a large amount of active ammunition and various advanced weapons, into the tunnel... But even when they were about to arrive at the place where the special forces team lost contact, this one hundred-man force suddenly disappeared without a trace.
With the firepower of this team, even if they encounter a powerful SP-type mutant, they can "poison" the enemy to death by pouring massive amounts of active ammunition... Even if they encounter the "giant centipede" that attacked the Mukah base, they can at least send some message back before they are completely destroyed.
However, even the scream before death was not heard by the command center in the rear.
In the previous second, the signalman of this unit was still conducting routine reporting as usual, and in the next second, the entire communication channel fell into silence - as if this unit had evaporated from the world at that moment.
To achieve this effect, after much thought, only the power of the Cardinal in Black can do it.
The commander of the field corps immediately decided to report to the Undead Crew Council... Apart from the Prophet, the Black Cardinals heretic sect is the most feared existence. Their danger does not lie in their terrifying destructive power - in terms of destructive power alone, more than 90% of the Black Cardinals cannot catch up with the giant centipede that appeared at the Mukach base. If they simply turned into black skeletons, their threat would not even be as great as that of an SP-type mutant.
The reason why people are afraid of them is entirely because of the randomness, instability and uncontrollability of the sacrificial rituals.
Just as Ke Lan had imagined before, he sent a dozen cardinals in black to sneak into the Ark, and directly went to important facilities such as reactors, research institutes, and ammunition depots wearing bomb vests to perform sacrifices, and then detonated bombs halfway through the ceremony to interrupt the sacrifice by suicide. As long as one of them drew the "first prize" and triggered a space storm, or an effect similar to a hydrogen bomb explosion, the damage caused would be absolutely incalculable, and it was even possible that the entire Ark would be sunk.
Although Ke Lan didn't know why the Prophet didn't adopt such a simple and crude tactic, it didn't mean that the Ark military would underestimate the danger of the Black Cardinal - no matter where, in the wilderness or inside the Ark , as long as they found the suspected presence of the Black Cardinal, they would list the elimination of the Black Cardinal as the highest priority mission goal.
But this time, after the command submitted the combat report to the Undead Crew, the crew only replied with a very brief sentence: "The original combat plan will be started ahead of schedule."
The so-called "original battle plan" refers to the combat operation that the "Mole Squad" would send Ke Lan and others into the ancient bronze city ruins and seize control of the ruins after digging the tunnel... But now not only is the tunnel still eleven kilometers away from being opened, even the Mole Squad responsible for digging the tunnel and the subsequent reinforcements are also missing . In this case, the Undead Crew will activate the battle plan in advance, and the meaning is obvious.
They wanted Ke Lan to clean up this mess.
Ke Lan listened to the officer who called finish his story. A swear word brewed in his throat for a long time, but in the end he didn't say it out loud.
He also knew that this officer... or rather, the entire field corps command including this officer, was just a messenger, and it was meaningless to scold them.
If you want to curse, you might as well curse the people in the crew club directly.
But when Ke Lan tried to dial the number Pan left for him, a mechanized female voice came from the other end of the phone, saying "The user you are calling is out of service area."
"Fuck... Isn't this a landline number? How could it be out of service?" Ke Lan hung up the phone in dissatisfaction, but the Hound beside him patted him on the shoulder and comforted him: "I've seen this kind of thing a lot in the army before... Many orders are made up by the people above them on a whim - oh, or maybe not on a whim, but on a whim. They never consider the specific circumstances of the people below them. Anyway, if plan A doesn't work, there's plan B, and if plan B fails, there's plan C... As for the life and death of the people who implement these plans, who cares?"
Hound poured a glass of soda and handed it to Ke Lan, then continued, "Just think of it as the waiter resigning, and the food that was originally served to you on the table has become a buffet... Anyway, this is a plate of rotten food, and it doesn't matter whether it is presented well or not. In my opinion, instead of opposing this surprise attack, it is better to let the people above cancel the entire operation plan... Attacking the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City is like pushing people into a meat grinder."
"I also think what Old Dog said is right." Layton nodded. "This battle plan was formulated too hastily. From the discovery of the traces of the heretic sect to the approval of the entire operation, there was less than an hour... Even if those extremist organizations in the old era wanted to launch a terrorist attack, they would have to start planning at least several days in advance."
"But we have no way to refuse." Ke Lan sighed, "It's like your unit received a mission that is obviously a suicide mission. You can only obey orders or defect. The third option does not exist from the beginning... Of course, you can also ignore orders, but disobeying orders on the spot is no different from defecting."
The hound was suddenly speechless. He stared at Ke Lan viciously, breathing heavily, unable to utter a word.
Ke Lan's words just hit upon the past that he was most reluctant to mention.
Indeed, he knew clearly at that time that his troops were used as bait, but he had no choice but to obey and sent his subordinates to hell with his own hands... Even if there was trouble later, it was only because the soldiers who died did not receive the proper pensions and compensation - if he had disobeyed orders from the beginning, he would probably have been shot long ago.
"It's meaningless to bring this up now." Thirty-three looked at the hound with complicated eyes, and then focused his gaze on Ke Lan, "Why don't you discuss how to start the battle plan in advance?"
"The situation is not optimistic... or to put it bluntly, the situation is as bad as it can be." Ke Lan said, "The Gopher Squad and the subsequent reinforcements should have been wiped out. Obviously, this battle plan of digging a tunnel into the ruins has been discovered by the heretics. Even if we eliminate the enemies in the tunnel and open up the last eleven kilometers, the entire action plan cannot be considered a surprise attack at all. The heretics in the ruins can completely wait for us at the exit of the tunnel-"
"This is not called infiltration warfare at all." The hound said unhappily after his breathing became a little calmer. "This is called walking into a trap."
"That's not necessarily true. As long as the force is strong enough, a surprise attack can be turned into a strong attack." Thirty-three shook his head. "With the two of you, I think the heretic sect will most likely underestimate the strength of the infiltration team. This is an opportunity."
Sanshisan's gaze moved from Ke Lan to Ze Luo - he had never seen Ze Luo before, and unlike Cao Ge, he did not have a general idea of Ze Luo's abilities. He did not even know whether Ze Luo was a member of the God Hunting Group or a family member of a member... However, his fighting instinct kept reminding him that this girl with a seemingly perfect appearance was definitely more terrifying than any monster he had ever seen on the battlefield or in the ruins.
If Sanshisan had encountered Ze Luo alone in the wilderness, he would not even have the thought of fighting him - turning around and running away might have given him a chance of survival.
It's just a glimmer of hope.
He didn't know how to describe this feeling. It was the unique sense of danger that a seasoned warrior had... But he was also glad that at least this girl was on their side now.
"You mean, we should let Ze Luo participate in the operation?" Ke Lan turned her head to look at Ze Luo who was playing the video game, and couldn't help but fall into hesitation.
In fact, he was very reluctant to let Ze Luo fight against the heretics, but with his own strength, if the enemy was a black cardinal, he might not be sure of winning.
Like the black mummy on the Hercules transport plane before, he had no way to deal with it, and could only rely on Ze Luo to get rid of that guy.
What's more, the black cardinal in the tunnel is just the "first level", and there are more enemies and traps waiting for them.
Before Ke Lan made a decision, Ze Luo took the initiative to put down the game console in his hand and said to Ke Lan: "I want to go."
"...This operation is very dangerous, and the chance of getting out of it safely is very low." Ke Lan said to her.
"Without me, your chances of getting out of this unscathed would be even lower." Ze Luo said, "In fact, you know very well that my own safety is the last thing you need to worry about... You are worried that I will lose control, so you don't want me to participate in this combat operation, right?"
