Armor-Piercing Munition: Face Me, Carbon-Based Monster!

Inside Base 011.

Chen Jian stared closely at the images of Mountain City sent back by the long-endurance drone and asked Lei Jie:

"Is there any news from Lin Yu's side?"

"No."

Lei Jie shook his head and said:

"We have already delivered communication equipment to the city and clearly marked the drop point with smoke."

"But as of now, two hours have passed, and we still haven't established contact with Lin Yu."

"At the same time, the long-endurance drone has conducted two hours of continuous reconnaissance of Mountain City without spotting any signs of human activity."

"I suspect they might have already perished."

"Or at the very least, lost the ability to move."

"Understood."

Chen Jian nodded slowly, his expression a bit grave.

He certainly knew how difficult it was to survive in such a city, but until the drone arrived over Mountain City, he still held hope for a good outcome.

What if?

What if they could survive?

Mountain City is so large; what if they could find a suitable shelter to hide in?

If they could survive, the significance to Base 011 would be far more than just preserving two meritorious individuals.

Subsequent reconnaissance and assault operations could also gain substantial information support.

But unfortunately, it seems this hope is nearly dashed judging from the current situation.

Everything from here on out can only start from scratch.

But fortunately, this time the aerial reconnaissance went very smoothly.

"Has the defensive distribution map of Mountain City been output?"

Chen Jian asked.

"Yes, it has."

Lei Jie gently swiped the screen, and a flat map immediately popped up.

"No conventional anti-aircraft weapons were found inside the city, but we discovered many, even massive amounts of microwave and laser emitters."

"These emitters form the city's entire three-dimensional defense system. It's unclear if they have been completely destroyed."

"But judging by current results, most of the defensive facilities should be out of commission."

"Honestly, it's puzzling."

"This is clearly a city with a high level of industrialization and intelligence, so why would they abandon traditional weapons?"

"Doesn't a single anti-aircraft missile have more deterrence than a bunch of lasers?"

"It's not like they don't have missiles—at least they have cruise missiles."

"The issue isn't technical, perhaps it's a matter of raw materials..."

"Probably a raw material issue,"

Chen Jian chimed in:

"Mountain City's self-seclusion is frighteningly high, and this city almost never interacts with the outside world."

"They most likely can't procure enough materials to produce chemical products, or they don't want to prioritize materials for weapon manufacturing, so they chose a more 'economical' option for them?"

"It's possible."

Lei Jie nodded and continued:

"But this results in a consequence—the entire defense system's resistance to attacks is very poor."

"We can now see that just a single nuclear strike has essentially crippled the entire city's defense system."

"Who could such a defense system stop?"

"It can stop everyone."

Chen Jian said solemnly:

"Haven't you noticed? Unless we appeared in this world due to some anomaly, the entire Mountain City would be invincible."

"Because under Mountain City's dominant trend, all abnormal factors would have been snuffed out."

"There's no force in the world that can develop to the stage of using nuclear bombs, let alone nuclear missiles."

"Deploying laser and microwave non-kinetic weapons on a large scale is indeed the best choice for achieving limited self-circulation in a closed environment."

"Makes sense."

Lei Jie nodded thoughtfully.

"They never anticipated our appearance... No one in this world could predict our appearance."

"To us, a place like Mountain City is an aberrant variable, but in reality, it's a product of natural evolution."

"And we are indeed the biggest anomaly..."

"Right."

Chen Jian spread his hands.

"So, everything makes sense."

"We've gained a big advantage, an information disparity advantage."

"Even Mountain City severely underestimated our capabilities; probably in Mountain City's AI deductions, we're just an incidental force with intelligence and development slightly above the world average, similar to those previous 'primitives'."

"But it never expected that we are actually a variable emerging from the void."

"This breaks the limits of the AI's logical calculations."

"Right, Fu Xi?"

"No."

Fu Xi's voice came from the speaker.

"If it's at my intelligence level, I can to some extent ignore logical consistency and define inexplicable facts as constant variables, achieving conditional coherence."

"But if the AI controlling Mountain City is only Lingxi, then it might indeed overlook such an aberrant variable."

As Fu Xi's words faded, Chen Jian slowly nodded.

"Either way, the facts are now certain."

"After two rounds of nuclear bombings, Mountain City's self-repair capability has been greatly impaired."

"From high-altitude reconnaissance images, a large number of damaged unmanned machines can be seen on the ground."

"These machines are the core of maintaining Mountain City's operations."

"And by count, Fu Xi determined that Mountain City's loss rate of unmanned machinery is at least over 40%."

"Considering it certainly has vast underground facilities, which also require unmanned machines for routine maintenance, the available unmanned machinery on the surface has dropped to a critical level."