Chapter 103: Chapter 98: The Wu City Blocking Action!

Late on the third night, Lin Feng drove the Lv19 Flying Wing Tank into the outpost, parking it in the supply depot at the center of the fortress.

The area was open to the sky. To facilitate the installation and operation of internal cranes and to save on construction materials, the entire outpost had a hollow, concentric structure.

The fifteen-meter-high structure was divided into two levels: one at the ten-meter mark, with another above it.

The initial shipments of supplies couldn’t possibly fit inside the fortress, so nearly sixty percent of the reserves were piled in the central, open-air depot.

Four cranes remained to transport weapons and ammunition to the two levels of the bunker, which was far faster than relying on manual labor.

The hollow structure also allowed Lin Feng to utilize his Tank’s anti-air capabilities. Although the firing angles were somewhat restricted, its ten Heavy Machine Guns with Unlimited Firepower and three Lv19 Machine Cannons could completely suppress any aerial attacks.

Parked here now was not only Lin Feng’s Tank but also four personnel carriers fully loaded with supplies, positioned tightly around the Flying Wing Tank.

This was the escape route Li Ran had prepared for everyone. If the outpost’s supplies ran out or the Zerg Race’s offensive became too fierce, their only option was to make a tactical retreat.

In any case, they had essentially been deployed as sacrificial pawns. No one expected them to accomplish much.

The new recruits were well aware of this.

But under Lin Feng’s training and guidance, more than half of them had now become Awakeners. The rest were in the Late-stage Enhancement phase; they only needed to kill a few more Red-Armored Beetles to trigger their Superpower Awakening.

Among these fifty new Awakeners, most had a Physical Enhancement Superpower. Only one was special—he could drastically increase the explosive power of his legs, making him a rare agility-type enhancer within the Physique Element.

In layman’s terms, he was fast.

The guy’s name was Liu Hao, a physical education student from Wu City University. He used to be a long-distance track runner, and with no other particular skills, he had chosen to remain on the front lines.

Based on Shen Jie’s earlier recommendation, Lin Feng had him lead a small squad responsible for providing mobile support along the front line.

The Zerg Race’s main thrust of attack wasn’t fixed; they would sometimes suddenly intensify their assault on one flank. When that happened, a mobile squad was needed to reinforce the defenses.

As for the specific defensive arrangements, Lin Feng handed the responsibility directly to the battle-hardened Li Ran.

Even though he was already aware of Lin Feng’s incredible power, the fact that Lin Feng had managed to turn half of the nearly one hundred new recruits into Awakeners in just two days... Li Ran was still utterly astounded!

’If I’d known this earlier, I would’ve had Qin Hu fight tooth and nail to assign more troops for Lin Feng to train.’

’Then we could have quickly assembled a team of Low Tier Awakeners to rival the Thirteenth Division’s Awakened Camp. Our influence in the joint strategic council wouldn’t have plummeted like this...’

’...even getting pushed out of the core decision-making circle.’

Even if it meant just paving the way for Lin Feng in the end, as long as it could inflict greater Damage on the Zerg Race and preserve more embers of hope for humanity, Li Ran, who shared Qin Hu’s way of thinking, wouldn’t have minded using his position for such "personal" ends.

His moral baseline was more flexible than his old captain’s. He had long understood that in these chaotic times, might makes right.

Unfortunately, what was done was done, and there was no changing it.

At that moment, Zerg Race figures were already appearing continuously within a kilometer of the bunker.

The maws of bulging Wormholes appeared one after another, growing in number and drawing ever closer.

After Li Ran finished deploying the outpost’s defenses and a long night had passed...

As dawn broke, countless swarms of black shadows began to surge across the land. Weaving through each other at high speed, they rushed toward the sprawling Wu City defensive line.

It was an army of hundreds, even thousands, of Black Spine Zergs.

They suddenly poured out of the nearby Wormhole entrances, launching their initial assault at the break of dawn. They took advantage of the moment when light and shadow met, a time when visibility was poor and human vigilance was at its lowest.

The Zerg Race’s objective had always been clear.

Annihilate humanity, expand their territory.

But a series of explosions instantly jolted the soldiers guarding the line awake.

The landmines they had planted along their path the day before now served as the perfect alarm system.

Because the four limbs of the Black Spine Zergs were so slender, the pressure exerted at the tips was high enough to trigger the anti-tank mines.

And only anti-tank mines could effectively inflict casualties on the Black Spine Zerg Swarm. Their abdominal Armor, in particular, was not sturdy—just like the Red-Armored Beetles, this was one of the Black Spine Zergs’ few weak points.

As swaths of mines were triggered, the violent explosions killed the front ranks of the Black Spine Zerg Swarm, halting their advance.

Not far from the Zerg Race, the twenty-kilometer-long first line of Wu City’s defenses consisted of a full one hundred main fortresses, each garrisoned by a reinforced company of over one hundred fifty soldiers.

Their heavy weaponry included five Machine Cannons and dozens of Heavy Machine Guns, while the rest of the soldiers were equipped with large-caliber rifles and grenade launchers.

The Firepower Coverage from these weapons was enough to defend a five-hundred-meter section of the line, and with a main fortress situated every two hundred meters...

...their interlocking fields of fire created a dense net, like overlapping Cannon barrages, that ruthlessly halted the Zerg Race’s offensive.

Even with the Black Spine Zergs launching their charge from four to five hundred meters out, they could only fall in defeat at the foot of the reinforced concrete defensive line.

Countless explosions bloomed like brilliant yellow flowers, tearing the Black Spine Zergs limb from limb and shattering their initial assault.

Even the few Black Spine Zergs that used their superior speed and agility to break through the firestorm and reach the base of the wall were stymied; their Giant Mandibles could not break through the concrete, and their efforts were in vain.

After leaving a few gashes four or five centimeters deep on the wall, they were swiftly eliminated by soldiers in the fortress above, who rained down fire from Grenade Cannons and rifles.

At 5:10 AM on the fourth day, main fortresses 48 through 50 at the center of the Wu City defensive line faced the Zerg Race’s first probing attack.

After a half-hour battle, all eight hundred Black Spine Zergs lay dead under a hail of bullets and cannon fire.

An hour later, however, the distant corpses were dragged back into bulging holes in the earth by Red-Armored Beetles.

And this seemingly unremarkable event...

...was the greatest obstacle humanity was about to face.

When a Zerg is killed from hundreds of meters away, it’s impossible to harvest the Upgrade Energy within its body. These still-fresh Black Spine Zerg corpses, after being recycled and reconstituted...

...could be resurrected in the Nest within hours, at only one-tenth the resource cost of a normal hatch, their fatal wounds repaired and restored to full health.

The Mother Empress relied on this very feature of her biomass-recycling system to constantly wear down the human defenders.

By leveraging a force that already outnumbered humans ten to one, combined with the extremely low recycling cost, the Zerg Race forced humanity to expend a hundred times the ammunition just to withstand their successive waves of attacks.

For humanity, this was completely unsustainable.

No nation would be insane enough to stockpile over a hundred times its normal ammunition reserves; even during the Cold War, when entire populations were militarized, such a feat would have been nearly impossible.

It would cripple an entire nation’s economy.

This was the truly terrifying aspect of the Zerg Race.

As long as they could recover their dead and ultimately win the battle, they would never suffer a net loss.

The Swarm was endless, and the more they fought, the more resources they amassed.

A true war machine.

In the mixed-arms companies along the Wu City defensive line, many of the new recruits were feeling complacent, but the junior officers in command did not let down their guard.

They were all veterans, survivors of the Battle of Hai City. After several rounds of recruitment and expansion, the lowest among them now held the rank of squad leader.

Back then, they had fought from nothing but makeshift trenches, forced into close-quarters combat with Red-Armored Beetles and Black Spine Zergs. They understood perfectly well how terrifying the Zerg Race could be.

The daytime attacks were merely probes; the real danger came from underground and at night. Even with landmines as an early warning and the protection of reinforced concrete, the Zerg Race’s relentless harassment would leave them mentally and physically exhausted, living in a constant state of fear.

Humans needed rest, but the Zerg Race’s Low Tier units had forgone higher intelligence. They were like precision instruments; as long as they had enough Energy, they could operate 24/7, relentlessly executing the Mother Empress’s commands...

The grueling defensive war had only just begun.

To the south, beyond the main defensive line, the new recruits in the outpost bunker at the highway service area nervously watched the front.

In the distant wasteland, entire patches of green vegetation collapsed and vanished, consumed as Energy by Red-Armored Beetles digging Wormholes.

As earthen mounds rose one by one, revealing new tunnel entrances, countless Black Spine Zergs began moving beneath the surface.

The outpost bunker hadn’t been allocated additional weaponry, so naturally, no landmines had been deployed...

They relied entirely on rotating patrols to keep a constant watch on the distant earthen mounds, ready to report to their superiors at the first sign of activity.

At noon, just when the humans’ nerves were frayed and they were most in need of food and rest...

the Mother Empress launched,

her first probe against the outpost bunker!