Phone novel Chapter 887 - 115: Hunting Parties of the Three Major Families (2)
Chapter 887 - 115: Hunting Parties of the Three Major Families (2)
"Heh." Nagano Souta let out a cold laugh. "With the relationship between your Chen Family and the City Defense Army, are you truly unaware of the final fate of the Four Divine Beasts’ pilots? Tell your father Chen Dazhuang that the box of good wine I owed him back then will be compensated with my ’Spring Breeze’.
"I will definitely convey your message!" Chen Jing bowed deeply towards the White Tiger.
"You still have connections with the Chen Family?" Sun Hang asked softly.
"Not much of a connection. Back then the Chen Family tried to win us over by sending many gifts, I returned all but kept one box of good wine," Nagano Souta said. "Chen Dazhuang is a decent person, and he raised his two sons well. Handing Spring Breeze over to him puts my mind at ease."
"I see..." Sun Hang turned his head to Chen Jing and asked, "I have a question, when do you plan to start the operation?"
"Half an hour after setting up camp." Chen Jing replied immediately.
"So soon?" Candle Dragon asked doubtfully. "Don’t you need time to rest? The journey from Dragon City to here is far from smooth."
"No need," Chen Jing said. "As far as I know, hunters and mercenaries from all over the Federation are rushing here. The more we delay, the more people will join the mission, and the less contribution we will earn. I prefer to resolve this quickly, using only the power of Dragon City to eliminate this anomaly."
"This guy is indeed quite articulate," Sun Hang evaluated inwardly. "At a lower emotional intelligence, this statement translates to ’I want to claim all the credit,’ while at a higher one, it becomes ’solving the anomaly with Dragon City’s own power’... I wouldn’t be able to say something like that myself."
...
Under the leadership of Chen Jing, the hunting group finished setting up camp in just twenty minutes, and after half an hour of preparation, they launched the first exploratory attack on the collapsed area.
The initial hunters and mercenaries gathered around too, but from their appearance, they seemed to be there only to watch rather than participate.
A few mercenaries together lifted a dozen coffin-sized boxes from the truck. When these boxes were opened, inside lay mechanical soldiers with human-like body structures—as military robots, dog-type and spider-type are the most common, while humanoid ones are quite rare.
This is because humanoid robots are harder to balance compared to four-legged mechanical dogs and eight-legged or more mechanical spiders, and they also have clear disadvantages in terms of exposed area and running speed.
The most common field for humanoid robots is testing—to replace humans in extremely hazardous battlefield tests.
The mechanical soldiers brought by Chen Jing were precisely for this purpose.
The mercenaries skillfully dressed these mechanical soldiers in protective suits and inserted many button-sized monitoring devices into the suit’s lining.
After accomplishing all these, the dozens of mechanical soldiers took up arms and walked with slightly stiff steps towards the spore-laden collapsed area.
"Test 01 and Test 02 have entered the spore-laden area, the spore concentration in the air is rapidly increasing," a young woman holding a laptop standing next to Chen Jing said. "Corrosion signs detected on the protective suit’s surface, but corrosion level is still within a controllable range. According to current spore concentration and corrosion efficiency formula calculations, the outermost coating of the protective suit can last more than twenty minutes at the center of the collapsed area."
"What’s the vertical depth of the center position you’ve calculated?" Chen Jing glanced at the young woman and asked.
"Zero."
"Then this data is meaningless." Chen Jing shook his head. "We can’t possibly hover over the pit to fight, as the depth increases, so would the spore concentration."
"But we lack data on spore concentration deep inside the pit," the young woman said. "Drones can only detect the surface area spore concentration, deeper probes suffer from interference."
"That’s why we brought robots," Chen Jing said. "Send the robots into the pit."
"Yes!"
The two mechanical soldiers at the front had reached the edge of the cliff. They turned and shot a steel pin into the rock. Then they extracted a steel cable from their bodies, clipped the end of the cable onto the steel pin.
These two robot soldiers slightly bent their knees, bracing against the edge of the rock. As the cable extended, they began to descend into the pit, quickly disappearing from everyone’s view.
Charles and his group craned their necks, staring intently at the cliff’s edge. As the initial two mechanical soldiers entered the pit, four more descended in the same manner from different locations.
The remaining mechanical soldiers stood with weapons, guarding the edge of the cliff.
"Tsk, having money is indeed great. Each unit of these mechanical soldiers costs several hundred thousand, right?" a mercenary next to Charles sighed. "Without risking lives, they can thoroughly investigate the pit’s conditions. If I had money, I’d definitely send robots first."
"I’m afraid you couldn’t buy this model of robot even if you had the money," Charles murmured. "These aren’t civilian robots; they’re mechanical soldiers sold to the military. If an ordinary person were caught buying these, they’d probably end up in custody."
"Damn, how did they get them?"
"Idiot, don’t you know what kind of business the Bai Family of the three great families runs? These robots are produced by them. They just wipe the production serial numbers and claim they’re modified civilian versions. Who would dare mess with them?"
"Damn, I almost forgot about that," the mercenary said awkwardly, scratching his head. "So it’s just self-production and self-distribution..."
Meanwhile, next to Chen Jing.
"Depth ten meters... fifteen meters... the rate of concentration increase has risen by 0.9%," the young woman said, her eyes fixed on the data on the screen. "Aside from that, no anomalies detected for now."
"Can you see the target?" Chen Jing asked.
"Visibility is too poor, can’t capture the target with optical cameras," the young woman replied. "However, according to the reaction of the meme monitoring equipment, the target is confirmed to be at the bottom of the pit, approximately eleven hundred meters deep."
"Increase the descent speed," Chen Jing commanded. "At this pace, it’s too slow."
"Okay... wait!" the young woman suddenly froze. "Test 01’s signal is lost... Test 02’s signal is also lost! All six robots that entered the pit have lost signal!"
"What happened?" Chen Jing immediately asked. "Did the last images before signal loss show anything?"
The young woman shook her head. "The final second of footage before signal loss was normal, all monitoring data showed no anomalies, the protective suits’ corrosion level was entirely within the controllable range... they seemed to be subjected to an unobservable remote attack..."
"Have the robots on the cliff pull up the cables, see what’s left of the signal-lost robots," Chen Jing said.
"I’m on it... wait! The equipment is detecting a large number of meme reactions! Many independent entities, numbering about five hundred... no, over eight hundred! They’re climbing up along the pit walls!"
"Subordinate anomalies?!" Chen Jing didn’t hesitate and directly called out to the vigilant crowd, "Something is climbing out of the pit! Everyone, prepare for combat!!"