Resurrection Empire

Chapter 1323 - 501: New Conceptions, New Crisis (Part 2)

Of course, for safety’s sake, the Source Star Science Academy did not recommend building surface cities in the short term. Instead, they proposed modifying all ships to enhance the performance of their anti-gravity devices, and on the basis of the existing ships, first building Floating Cities to avoid the crustal movements that would inevitably continue for many years to come.

After the Level Fourteen gale subsided, the interstellar long-range vessels, including the Annulus Ship, could in theory stay safely within the atmosphere.

All in all, forty years at the latest, humanity from Source Star would obtain a perfect new homeworld whose volume and mass exceeded Source Star’s, with even greater potential.

Ren Zhong rubbed his chin. Without much hesitation, he had already made up his mind.

Liu An had used administrative means to toss him into this godforsaken place, South Nine C, because he fundamentally believed that the harsh environment created by tidal locking would drastically limit Ren Zhong’s development.

But with a single blast, you could pull the rug out from under that, turn trash into treasure—why not?

Ren Zhong immediately distributed this wild, out-of-the-box report. As for how to actually implement it, how to fine-tune the blast plan, and how to rapidly manufacture Three-Phase Bombs of the appropriate yield, that naturally was no longer his responsibility.

Right after that, Ren Zhong opened the report signed by Chen Yinghua.

This was still his first indirect contact with the head of the Commerce Company.

Though they had never met, Ren Zhong’s impression of this person was quite good: someone with strong initiative, decent overall planning ability, and reasonably reliable in getting things done.

Opening the report, the first thing he saw was a large number of high-definition photos, and at the same time he saw the joint analytical report by Chen Yinghua and the Source Star Commerce technical team on Destiny.

Ren Zhong slowly straightened up, his expression turning grave.

More or less at this moment, the Source Star Fleet had already arrived over South Nine C.

The fleet was currently in the process of gradually changing formation.

Next, they still needed to haul the main body of Source Mercury to the vicinity of South Nine C and add propulsion so that it would become a planet sharing an orbit with South Nine C and revolving around South Nine Star at the same speed. This too was a massive project.

Meanwhile, Ju Qingmeng was already presiding over a meeting, preparing to first dispatch a high-performance, improved Shuttle Ship to land on the surface of South Nine C, conduct more precise on-site surveys, and bring back some samples.

Ren Zhong immediately took over control, recalled the Shuttle Ship that had already been sent into the atmosphere and was cautiously pushing into low altitude to attempt a landing, and instead ordered an Armed Ship to fire a pure kinetic missile without a Blast Department warhead at the surface of South Nine C.

Immediately after, another Shuttle Ship specially fitted with a macro close-up optical telescope entered the atmosphere, but only hovered at high altitude, using the telescope to monitor.

By the time another two hours had passed and Ren Zhong returned to the Throne Hall of the Tracker Spaceship, the atmosphere in the conference room had already grown exceptionally heavy. No one was in the mood anymore to eagerly debate whether the landing plans proposed by the Fleet Science Academy or the Source Star Science Academy were superior. Everyone was seized with dread at the ant swarm on the ground, moving like a black storm.

The new kinetic missile possessed astonishing mass and an incredibly sturdy structural material. Aside from a small amount of lab-made Super Alloy, this was basically the best-performing material currently available within the fleet.

Whether for the Underground City Plan’s concept of interconnected underground cities or the Floating City concept, they would have to rely on this material, perhaps using it as domes and alloy pipelines, or as grounding supports and tension cables.

But clearly, before that terrifying ant swarm, this alloy was nothing more than delicious rations.

In just two short hours, that kinetic missile weighing thirteen thousand tons had been riddled with holes.

Flying ants like a black storm clung to it, piling up into a creepy little hill.

Over the next few hours, the Shuttle Ship dropped small quantities of more than a hundred different materials one after another.

The result was no different. These flying ants were utterly fearless, with excellent bite force; whether organic matter, alloys, or even ordinary rock, they devoured it all without exception.

After they finished all the samples that had been dropped, the ant swarm spread out again like a black tide, rushing toward the bare rocky surface of the planet.

Under the measurements of precision optical instruments, one could detect the rock surface thinning almost every second.

Even more frightening, the total volume of matter on South Nine C was shrinking.

The density of this ant swarm seemed extremely high, yet they were still capable of flight.

Just as Chen Yinghua had previously judged, South Nine C would, in the near future, be completely destroyed by this ant swarm.

Only at this point did Ren Zhong finally understand where Liu An and Sosgate Augustus’s real trump card lay.

These people had never intended to leave him a planet at all. What they were giving him was a ruin.

He had no proof, but his intuition told him that the appearance of this unnatural lifeform on South Nine C was absolutely man-made.

Ren Zhong had indeed guessed right.

The ant swarm was indeed the Augustus family’s current trump-card technology under development, fusing biotech and mechanical science, possessing terrifying reproductive ability and an instinct to devour all matter.

To develop this ant swarm, the Augustus family had taken on the task of developing Star Destroyer–class weapons, temporarily named the Star Annihilation Ant.

The project was now in its final stage.

If they could successfully deploy it onto the Ascenders’ planet, or onto large-scale space units including the Mother Empress Ship, it would push them into an irreversible phase of extinction.

The most insidious part of the Star Annihilation Ants lay in the fact that both the corpses they left after natural death and the waste they excreted while alive were completely useless—true garbage.

"What do we do now?"

This time, even Ju Qingmeng, who had always been the one with the best ideas, looked lost. She turned her head to Ren Zhong and asked.

Ren Zhong frowned tightly. "No rush. First we try sustained bombardment with Energy Weapons and see if we can kill them."