Steel torrents pioneering a different world

Chapter 236 Twisted Sea Monster! A Forbidden Land for Noise and Sailboats? (Please Subscribe)

"Report! A huge shadow has been detected directly beneath the hull of the Type 022 missile boat!"

The communications soldier's roar was like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the wisp of heat that had just risen in the command room.

All eyes instantly shifted from the green cursor representing "Tadpole-07" to the symbol representing the Type 022 missile boat. Below it, a disproportionately large shadowy outline was slowly emerging with an ominous air.

"Target confirmed!" Brigade Commander Fu slammed his hand on the control panel, making a dull thud.

"No! Our decoy sonar is exhausted, and passive detectors are blind in this environment!" A technical officer's face turned pale as his hands flew across the keyboard, but the data displayed on the screen remained a chaotic jumble of noise.

Unlike other sea monsters that swam wildly, the shadow rose steadily in an almost straight line, clearly having locked onto the Type 022 missile boat on the surface.

That was the confidence and composure of a higher-level predator.

Commander Fu's pupils contracted sharply. He stopped asking questions and directly issued the order: "Have the depth charges on the 022 submarine been dropped yet?"

His words were not a question, but a statement.

"Commander!" The white-haired professor turned around abruptly, his voice trembling. "No! The Tadpole's propellers have suffered unknown damage, and directional control is extremely difficult! Any violent explosion could cause it to completely lose control, and we'll have no last chance!"

"Then let it get out of control."

Commander Fu's voice was completely calm, as if he were ordering a routine exercise.

"Save the boat first, then figure out how to salvage it. If the boat is gone, we'll have nothing left."

He paused, then added, "We're out of time, let's submit."

The command room was deathly silent.

Everyone understood what this order meant.

The Roadblock Smart Depth Charge is the Type 022 missile boat's last line of defense beneath the sea surface, originally designed to deal with enemy schools of fish that dare to pursue it.

It is extremely powerful and has a certain degree of autonomous target acquisition capability.

But now, they're going to use it to blow up what's under their feet.

The shockwave from the explosion was tantamount to annihilation for the nearby "Tadpole-07".

The overwhelming stench of blood would absolutely turn this already turbulent sea into a complete battlefield.

"If we don't attack soon, we're going to lose a small target." Brigade Commander Fu looked at the screen, his tone cold, with a hint of self-deprecating dark humor. "Boat 022, prepare to maneuver."

"Yes!"

Meanwhile, the captain of the 022 unmanned boat, who was in control, gasped as he watched the sea monster getting closer and closer.

"Hiss... Is this some kind of genetically hybridized creature?"

The captain stared intently at the enormous shadow on the sonar screen that almost filled the entire bottom of the screen, a fine layer of cold sweat beading on his forehead.

It was octopus-like in shape, but covered in pustules and had long, powerful tentacles; the one that humans have detected so far is nearly a hundred meters long.

This thing's head is completely different from the octopus found from Changhu Lake. It is full of distortion and twisting, with many compound eyes and covered with fine, fragmented scales similar to a tortoise shell.

It looks like a pitiful creature forcibly mixed from a broken conch shell and a giant octopus, resulting in an unknown mutation.

As the other party approached, its pus-like appearance and its blend of green, black, pale white, and blood red became clearer.

The captain of the unmanned boat felt his heart skip a beat.

It's worth noting that the entire steel-cast missile boat is only 46 meters long, while the enormous, bizarre octopus that slowly rises from the sea is twice that length.

Humans are like peanuts in a human's hand, easily swallowed one by one with a drink!
"Disarm the depth charges and prepare to deploy! Engines, warm up quickly, and be ready to evade at maximum power!"

The weapon operator quickly slapped down the red protective cover in front of him, his fingers as steady as if welded to the control panel, precisely inputting the unlock command.

Given the size of that sea monster, the captain's order was to use these water-permeable bombs to explode directly in front of his feet.

If things go wrong, the ships could be destroyed.

"300 meters away!"

"Cheer up!" the captain roared, rubbing his icy hands. "Get the recovery team's robotic arms ready too. Once 022 is at full throttle, don't worry about what happens underwater, just grab the tadpoles!"

"understand!"

"Chief Engineer! Make this ship fly!"

"Don't worry, I'm the Akina Mountain Speed ​​King!"

The tense atmosphere was filled with the sound of everyone's breathing. The captain turned his gaze to the churning, dark sea outside the bridge, as seen through the camera.

Three hundred meters away, Tadpole-07 was slowly rising to the surface. Such a small creature could be destroyed at any moment in the raging waves.

And in the abyss beneath the ship they were remotely controlling, there was a massive sea monster large enough to pull the warship into the ocean.

"The sea monster's speed has increased!"

The captain grabbed the communicator, his voice resolute.

"Weapon system, deployment countdown!"

"Third, throw it directly!"

With a roar from the captain, the weapons operator slammed the launch button!
On both sides of the hull, several smart depth charges slid into the water like droppings from the ship.

They charged straight toward that enormous shadow, carrying the mission of their own demise!

Time is infinitely stretched at this moment.

one second.

two seconds.

In the remote control hall, everyone in the command center was on tenterhooks, staring intently at the screen.

Those tiny dots representing depth charges were plummeting vertically at an alarming speed.

At their end, the enormous, suffocating shadow finally realized something was wrong.

It no longer disguises itself, no longer lurks, and no longer worries about its enormous size disturbing the monster!

It sensed that the prey on the water's surface seemed about to escape.

The deformed and ugly outline suddenly rose to the surface, its huge tentacles stirring up terrifying undercurrents in the deep sea. It moved so fast that it left a blur on the screen as it rushed straight toward the 022 missile boat it had chosen!
"Now! Chief Engineer!"

The remotely controlled chief engineer pushed the thruster power lever all the way down!

boom--!
Dozens of kilometers away, from the stern of the Type 022 missile boat, as seen in the drone's lens, two white jets of water suddenly gushed out like a torrent, as if the entire nearly 200-ton vessel was being violently pushed forward by an invisible giant hand!

The ship suddenly veered to one side, drawing a near-acute turn on the sea surface!

At the very same instant the ship was drifting and tail-spinning!

That mutated giant octopus crashed headlong into the oncoming gift of death!
There was no earth-shattering roar, only a muffled thunderclap that seemed to shatter one's heart, coming from the deepest part of the ocean!
Boom-! ! !
The surveillance cameras on the bridge started shaking violently, and the video became blurry.

From the perspective of a drone, the Type 022 missile boat looks like a soda can that has been kicked by a giant's foot. Half of the hull was lifted off the water by the violent shock wave and then slammed back into the surging waves!
Outside the boat, a column of murky water, several meters in diameter, shot into the sky, then transformed into a torrential downpour of blood and flesh, pounding against the deck and portholes.

Green pus, blackish-red bits of flesh, bone fragments, and scales resembling broken turtle shells, mixed with a large amount of seawater, landed on this advanced missile boat...

"Steady! Steady!"

The captain of the remotely controlled Type 022 unmanned vessel spoke quickly to the driver.

While the warship drifted with the current following the explosion.

The area below the screen, which was originally filled with a huge shadow, has now become a chaotic mess, with countless tiny dots slowly sinking and spreading, like a blizzard erupting in the deep sea.

"Has the target been killed?"

Looking at the spectacular sight, the weapons operator asked with some uncertainty.

Before he finished speaking, a thick, almost tangible pool of blood and smoke billowed up from underwater.

"With so much blood, it must have been blown up!"

"Why is there so much smoke? Is that guy's blood hot?"

In the command center, Brigade Commander Fu stared expressionlessly at the bloody images being transmitted back to the main screen.

"How is 022 doing?"

"Report to the brigade commander! The hull structure has been impacted, but no fatal damage has been found! Some power has been lost, the waterjet propulsion system is malfunctioning, but the hull has not completely lost power!"

"Where is the tadpole detector? Where is it?" Commander Fu asked immediately.

This question instantly froze the atmosphere that had just been relieved.

The professor stared intently at the data terminal in front of him, his face even more grim than before.

"The signal is still there! But... but the secondary shockwave from the explosion seems to have completely destroyed its thrusters! It's sinking now!"

On the screen, the faint dot representing "Tadpole-07" flashed a pale yellow warning signal.

The tadpole detector has an internal inflation device for buoyancy, a fault-tolerant engineering design that allows it to automatically rise to the surface in case of danger.

However, judging from the surrounding environment and the steaming seawater, the water will likely seep in soon.

If the detector gets water inside and short-circuits, everything that has been painstakingly collected inside will be rendered useless.

"Ships, move over there quickly! Where's the recovery team?" Commander Fu didn't waste another word. "Prepare to retrieve the tadpole detector!"

The pilot began maneuvering the warship to turn, while the deployed cameras scanned the surrounding waters to observe the situation.

The exploding flesh and blood of the behemoth have become the deadliest bait in this deep sea.

The shockwaves and waves from the explosion had not yet completely dissipated, but the thick, fishy smell had already attracted the first group of gourmets.

On the screen, countless points of light representing deep-sea predators converged from all directions, like sharks smelling blood, rushing madly toward the center of the explosion.

Human-made probes discovered this scene.

They are mainly creatures similar to the giant octopus from before. Their bodies seem to be resistant to the corrosive blood of that monster, and they are being torn apart by it.

Some of these incidents even escalated into fights on the spot.

Meanwhile, schools of predatory fish like swordfish lingered nearby, taking the opportunity to tear off some specimens, but dared not fully join the ocean's feast.

"It seems that not all marine creatures possess strange and unusual abilities!"

"Can we catch a specimen of that sea monster? That thing is over a hundred meters long, and its genome probably contains a lot of interesting information," a scientist inquired.

"Unless what's docked inside right now is a Type 055 destroyer with thickened armor steel, you can forget about it!"

While everyone was talking, the restarted 022 unmanned surface vessel began to change direction.

After the ship restarted, its noise and detection systems became targets for sea monsters and schools of fish in the chaotic ocean.

"Recovery arm deployed, move closer to the tadpole detector..."

The recycling team operator spoke calmly, but the fine sweat on his forehead betrayed his tension.

The warship slowly approached, and the nets on its extended robotic arms began to catch the tadpoles bobbing up and down in the seawater.

However, the strange winds and large waves in the Devil's Sea made the recovery of the robotic arm difficult.

"Next time, we need to make the net bigger!" the technician in charge of this project thought to himself.

As the robotic arm probed into the ocean in an attempt to retrieve the tadpole-shaped probe, a malicious attack from beneath the sea also began!

jump! jump! jump!
Several enormous swordfish, like arrows released from a bow, slammed their sharp snouts into the armor of the 022 warship, producing a series of ear-piercing metallic scraping sounds.

"Damn it, how come these bastards are so aggressive?"

The ship's navigator cursed and attempted to make slight adjustments to shake off the nuisance. While they had caused damage, they hadn't yet destroyed the ship's propeller.

But even more trouble was yet to come.

On the sonar system, several huge shadows were rapidly approaching from below.

"Warning! Large life form detected! Damn, it's a Giant Horn Stone!"

The clearly defined monsters on the screen gradually appeared. These creatures, which were extinct on Earth but were still active in this other world, charged at the warship with sharp, cone-shaped shells on their heads.

"Boom!"

With a muffled thud, the entire remote control hall screen jolted.

A giant rock rammed its hard shell into the side of the ship, and the camera above captured the moment. The steel hull was visibly dented.

"The salvage operation is severely hampered! The stability of the robotic arm is decreasing!"

"Stay calm, stay calm!" the captain whispered.

On the screen, the dot representing "Tadpole-07" rises and falls with the waves of the ocean.

To make matters worse, the strange winds of the Devil's Sea also began to blow.

Just when everyone was on tenterhooks, a massive, javelin-sharp, metallic-colored giant horn suddenly burst out from underwater directly in front of the ship!
puff--!
Its massive body, carrying immense force, slammed its sharp head into the bulletproof glass of the bridge!

Click...

The sturdy bulletproof glass was instantly covered with spiderweb-like cracks, and then shattered completely with a loud bang.

The icy seawater, mixed with shards of glass, poured in, and half of the giant rock actually squeezed into the warship's unmanned cockpit!

The attack from the Great Horn Rock was terrifying.

The creature seemed stunned by the impact; its tentacles thrashed wildly in the confined space, smashing the precision instruments and equipment in the cockpit to pieces, ripping wires, and sending sparks flying.

"Fuck me!"

The ship's operator, watching the camera feed of the monster wreaking havoc in the cockpit, panicked.

"Recovery team! Hurry! It's about to dismantle the cockpit!"

"Don't rush me! We're almost there!"

The recycling team operators handled the process with patience.

In the command center, Brigade Commander Fu looked at the tentacles on the screen, which were stuck in the steel structure of the ship and were still writhing wildly. His Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily.

He had no doubt that if a real person were sitting inside, they would have been flattened into a pancake by now.
The very next second, the camera inside the bridge was also smashed by the tentacles, and the footage was completely cut off.

"Caught!"

The recycling team operator shouted!
At the bottom of the screen, the cursor representing the recycling net finally successfully caught the faint point of light that was falling rapidly!

"Pull it up! Return to base at full speed!" Brigade Commander Fu practically roared, without a moment's hesitation.

"Roger that!"

The engine of the 022 unmanned surface vessel roared again, dragging the "Tadpole-07" that had just been retrieved, and rushed towards the base at full speed without looking back.

Looking at the battered and desperately fleeing warship on the screen, everyone in the command center breathed a sigh of relief.

The giant rock, with half its body stuck in the cockpit, continued to struggle.

sizzle...

It seemed that its body had come into contact with an electric current, and then the creature suddenly trembled a few times before ceasing its movements.

It was electrocuted!
The main camera on the bridge went completely dark instantly. "Damn it, it short-circuited!"

"Where's the backup circuit? Try restarting!"

"It's no use! That beast tore down the backup line too!"

Is the engine still operable?

"Yes, yes!" The ship's operator, his eyes glued to a string of red error codes, roared, "But switch to the drone's feed! The camera power supply is completely down, I'm blind!"

From the outset, to ensure survivability in extreme conditions, the unmanned surface vessel's internal operating system and cockpit were designed to be in separate areas, and the power supply system was also an independent multi-path parallel system.

It was this design that prevented the unmanned boat, which had been "splittered" by the monster, from turning into a floating steel coffin on the spot.

The screen quickly switched, and the viewpoint instantly zoomed out to a bird's-eye view at high altitude.

The hovering "Nine Sky" cargo drone transmitted back a clear view of the sea below.

On the screen, the Type 022 missile boat was just a tiny arrow trailing long white waves.

"Closer, closer!" the operator said, pushing the ship forward.

He's playing a game where the graphics are incredibly realistic, but if he loses, his equipment will be destroyed.

The enormous noise and turbulent eddies constantly attract predators lurking in the deep sea.

On the screen, large swaths of red dots surged in from all directions, densely packed, making one's scalp tingle.

"Drop the bombs and give the sea monsters behind us a good bath!" Commander Fu's voice was icy.

Below the belly of the cargo drone hovering high in the sky, the hatch slid open silently, and "intelligent remote-controlled seepage bombs" that looked like depth charges detached from the racks and crashed into the sea with a whoosh.

It did not explode immediately.

The pursuing school of strange fish didn't even notice the falling metal lumps.

next second.

Rumble…

A muffled, loud roar came from underwater. First, huge water bubbles suddenly bulged up on the surface of the sea, then burst open, creating towering waves!
A terrifying overpressure shockwave spread wildly through the water, and countless strange fish instantly floated belly-up, their internal organs shattered.

The sea behind the Type 022 missile boat looked like a pot of boiling blood and flesh soup.

Those ferocious sea monsters that managed to escape were instantly enraged by the strong smell of blood. They no longer cared about chasing the source of the noise ahead and turned to pounce on the corpses of their own kind, tearing and devouring them frantically.

"These beasts are really bloodthirsty!" someone muttered in the command center.

A patchwork of eerie crimson spread rapidly across the ocean, temporarily halting the pursuers' advance.

As the missile boats gradually moved away from the canyon fault zone and closer to the shallow sea, those large vessels that were extremely sensitive to sound and vibrations finally became much less numerous.

But the crisis is far from over.

"Report! Three nautical miles from the coastline! The waterjet propulsion system of 022 is severely damaged, with a 40% loss of power, and the speed is still dropping!"

"Report! Sonar has detected three groups of high-speed fish, flanking us from the left, right, and rear!"

"Again?" Brigade Commander Fu sneered, picked up the communicator, and said, "Coastal artillery units, listen to my orders!"

On the artillery positions, everyone was eager and impatient, and all ears were straining to hear what was happening.

"Target location XXX, XXX. Three rounds of rapid fire, plow that sea clean!"

"put!"

With a roar from the messenger, the steel jungle composed of 203mm and 155mm heavy artillery and 406mm giant mortars instantly spewed out destructive fury!

The heavy shells, trailing flames, streaked across the sky and landed precisely at the predicted location of the chasing school of fish.

Plop, plop...

The shell entered the water without making a ripple; it simply sank silently.

The pursuing fish were completely unaware of their impending doom.

The 1.5-second delay felt like the chant of death.

Boom—boom—boom!

Three continuous muffled sounds came from the depths of the sea, as if an ancient behemoth was beating drums underwater.

The entire sea surface was violently lifted upwards by this force, and then exploded with a deafening roar!

The violent shockwave struck the fish behind as if they had been hit by an invisible giant hammer, killing them in droves, their white bellies floating to the surface.

After three rounds of shelling, there was no living creature left in that sea area, only wreckage bobbing with the waves.

Inside the command center, there was a deathly silence; everyone was stunned by the terrifying power of modern industrial weapons.

The 022 unmanned surface vessel finally shook off all its pursuers and slowly made its way toward the temporary coastal base.

Commander Fu looked at the ship on the screen, which was almost falling apart, and then glanced at the small dot representing "Tadpole-07". His tense facial lines relaxed a little.

The Time-Space Gate Base, the monitoring and command center.

Su Mingjin smiled as she watched the tumultuous deep-sea expedition.

Commander Pan looked at the Type 022 missile boat, which was covered in battle marks, and his clenched fist trembled slightly from the force.

"Commander Man, are you unhappy?"

Commander Man shook his head: "During this exploration of the forbidden area, we also conducted some tests. Forgive my bluntness, but the sea route is a bit difficult!"

"Noise impact?"

Commander Man nodded: "The bait we dropped in the forbidden area, as well as some of the sail models we made before, will definitely attract sea monsters and schools of fish to attack us by creating sonar, and the same goes for the propellers!"

He pursed his lips: "Scientists have captured a lot of marine life before, and the hearing and current sensing systems of these creatures haven't exceeded the range of local fish populations by much. But the fish populations and sea monsters are extremely aggressive!"

As is well known, fish do not have an external ear. Sound waves from the water, transmitted from the lateral line or the outside world, are conducted to the inner ear through thin bony plates in the ear region of the head, causing the endolymph in the inner ear to vibrate in the same way, and then transmitted to the auditory cells and the brain.

Because they lack an external ear, fish have a very poor auditory system, which is far less sensitive than that of humans.

Normally, without much interference, these marine predators would only be curious if they heard sonar or similar sounds.

However, the fish in the Devil's Sea are unusually aggressive.

In comparison, the giant octopus caught in Changhu Lake before, with its many uses, wasn't as outrageous.

When humans are using motorboats to fish, those creatures don't come out.

The sonar decoys deployed did not provoke any anger from the enemy in the later stages.

Fishing to catch them makes it much more difficult to obtain raw materials.

This once led scientists to suspect that the marine life here might be controlled by some entity.

"The water will straighten itself when it reaches the bridgehead; we must trust the scientists!"

"That's the only way!" Commander Man thought for a moment, then suddenly said, "President Su, the highly aggressive fish in the Devil's Sea attack all ships that rely on propellers for propulsion, and the strange gales affect sail-powered ships. Could this be a special defense zone like that ancient ruin?"

Commander Man's suspicions are based on reasonable inferences.

In the vicinity, apart from relatively difficult-to-control aircraft like hot air balloons, any other aircraft released by humans will go out of control once they exceed a certain speed and altitude.

It was as if an invisible hand was controlling everything.

In the ocean, there are highly aggressive groups of seafood. Strange, almost periodically occurring gales hinder the navigation of propeller-driven, waterjet-driven, and sailing warships.

In this place where productivity is not very high, the Devil's Sea is an absolute forbidden zone.

“It’s possible, but we need to test it little by little,” Su Mingjin rubbed her temples. “Let’s go eat something first, and then wait for the scientists to extract the information recorded by the tadpole detector.”

"Ok!"

More than 100 kilometers away, at the command center where Brigade Commander Fu was stationed.

At that moment, Brigade Commander Fu was staring intently at the screen until he confirmed that the ship was gradually approaching. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief and grab the communicator.

"Arrange for the marine crew and research team! Prepare to rescue the tadpole probe!"

His voice was tinged with suppressed excitement, and his gaze immediately fell on the screen, on the huge shadow that was captured by the optical lens and stuck in the cockpit of the 022 missile boat.

"And that big guy, take it down too!" Brigade Commander Fu's voice was as cold as ice. "Priority acquisition. Send it to the research institute to see why these guys are so crazy!"

"Yes!"

A few kilometers away.

On the dock, the sea breeze carried the smell of gunpowder and a faint stench of blood from the east.

The deep sea area is a mess, with large numbers of carnivores devouring fish that have been killed by humans.

It's as if human attacks have no effect on fish whatsoever.

If scientists didn't know that the seven-second memory of fish was a hoax, they would really want to catch all fish for research and experimentation.

Near the dock, Butcher's special forces team and the researchers who had been waiting for a long time had already occupied the best positions for rendezvous.

As the Type 022 missile boat slowly docked, the sight of its battered hull made everyone present gasp in shock.

On the hull, large craters burned by the corrosive liquid were emitting wisps of smoke, clearly caused by the blood from the mutated giant octopus after its explosion.

In many other places, there were craters from the impact, and in some places, jagged bone spikes like javelins were stuck in the ground.

Those are physical souvenirs left behind by a giant hornstone and a giant swordfish from another world.

Special forces member Liu Heng leaned closer to the butcher and clicked his tongue: "Captain, will we be treated like this when we travel by boat in the future? This boat is really miserable. If this ocean is full of these kinds of monsters, won't our ability to catch seafood be greatly affected?"

"Stop thinking about food all the time!"

A soldier not far away focused his attention on the underside of the Type 022 missile, looking at the armor steel which was only slightly dented, and said with a smile, "It's a good thing the designers added thick steel plates underneath these things, otherwise, with the bone spears of these underwater creatures, they would definitely have made several holes in the ship's steel."

As is well known, although modern warships are more powerful and can easily defeat old warships from World War II, their armor is not the super-thick armor steel of the World War II era.

Taking the Type 052D destroyer as an example, the armor steel thickness in many places is only a few centimeters.

Modern warships are designed for high speed and long-range combat and anti-drug operations.

World War II warships were the epitome of armor-on-bullet combat at visual range, with their armor often reaching hundreds of millimeters in thickness.

Facing these fish that attack from the sea, they are completely able to withstand the impact from underwater, except for their propellers and water jet propulsion, which are their weaknesses.

If scientists hadn't discovered the highly aggressive nature of the creatures in the Devil's Sea and made targeted modifications, the consequences would have been unimaginable.

The butcher's gaze swept over the gruesome wounds, finally settling on the behemoth that had smashed its head through the cockpit's bulletproof glass.

Despite being described as a colossal creature, it is actually a long, narrow thing with a pointed head, resembling a large tree.

That enormous horned stone monster is now considered a trophy of humanity.

As they got closer, everyone could feel the terrifying size of this marine predator.

Its shell resembles a straight biological javelin, gleaming with a cold metallic luster, and is estimated to be over ten meters long.

The cavity at the rear was tangled with octopus-like tentacles, and even though it might have been severely injured by electric shocks, several thick tentacles were still twitching unconsciously.

Perhaps once it regains consciousness, its tentacles will pull itself out of the glass enclosure again.

“Dr. Xiang, this thing should still be alive.” The butcher turned his head and said to a man in a white coat beside him, “It will take some time to capture it alive!”

Xiang Siyuan, the life scientist in charge of biological sample recovery, is a middle-aged man in his thirties with hair starting to grow into a mountain-shaped hairstyle.

He smiled and pushed up his glasses, but his eyes behind the lenses gleamed with a fanatical light.

"Capture alive? Who said we were going to capture them alive?" he asked without turning his head, his tone full of self-righteousness.

The butcher was stunned for a moment.

Xiang Siyuan turned around, a hint of excitement on his face: "Captain Tu, where are we going to put such a large live specimen at our base? These things are everywhere in the Devil's Sea, they're not rare creatures at all!"

"So please send it on its way and end its suffering sooner!"

"..."

The butcher was utterly speechless, thinking to himself, "Are scientists these days so simplistic and crude?"
He subconsciously looked at Zhao Jingzhong, who was in charge of transportation support, not far away.

Zhao Jingzhong is a mature and steady engineering soldier. Because of a movie he starred in a few years ago, many of his comrades jokingly call him Dybala Zhong!

He walked over and then silently turned the mission terminal on his wrist to the side. The screen displayed only one line of text: "In scientific operations, follow Dr. Xiang's instructions."

The butcher sighed and looked at Xiang Siyuan again: "I'm sorry, Dr. Xiang, I was overthinking it. Tell me, where should we hit?"

“It’s alright. It’s normal that you don’t understand; everyone has their own expertise,” Xiang Siyuan pointed at the huge creature in the distance. “Do you see the seam where its head and body connect?”

"Yes, right there. If its physiological structure is similar to its ancient relatives on Earth, as well as some nautiluses, then that is its nerve center."

He paused, then added, "Just to be on the safe side, give it another short burst at the base of its tentacles, where the secondary ganglia are, to prevent it from playing dead."

"understood."

Without further hesitation, the butcher raised his rifle, switched to single-shot mode, and steadily placed it on the dock railing.

"Oh!"

A crisp gunshot rang out, and the bullet precisely pierced the crevice of the creature's body that Xiang Siyuan had pointed out.

The limp, massive hornstone shuddered violently after being struck, then began to struggle again.

Bang!Bang!Bang!
After a few shots, the giant rock's tentacles struggled even more violently, and after a while, it finally went limp like a puppet with its strings cut.

The butcher didn't stop. He lowered the muzzle and fired another three short bursts at the base of the tentacles.

Completing missions cautiously and calmly is how many combat units describe Butcher's personal style!
This time, the behemoth was completely silent.

"Alright, perfect." Xiang Siyuan nodded in satisfaction and urged, "Let's start hoisting it. Be careful not to break the shell. This hard shell is a treasure."

The butcher lowered his gun and waved to his team behind him: "Get to work!"

His gaze passed over the massive corpse and landed on the rear of the wrecked cockpit.

The Tadpole-07 probe is currently hidden inside a steel storage container...

Liu Heng leaned closer, grinning, and asked, "Captain, Dr. Xiang, is this edible?"

"Don't try to eat everything. Test it for poison first before deciding whether to deep-fry or braise it!"

"If this thing isn't poisonous, it's like snail meat. Just boil it in water, add minced garlic and oyster sauce, and the taste should be pretty good!"

"Stop talking nonsense and put on your protective gear quickly."

Seeing everyone busy, Xiang Siyuan pointed to the area where the warship's paint had been corroded, likely due to the blood of the giant octopus.

"Young comrades, be careful in those areas, don't touch them! Those wearing protective gear, come help us collect this thing..."

"Dr. Xiang, do you collect blood from every place where it's found?"

"Yes, collect all the flesh and blood tissue. The specimens collected before were relatively small, but these are much larger. Although there may be cross-contamination, they still have some research value!"

(End of this chapter)