Chapter 337 The Evolved Zerg
The president also felt strange when he heard Chen Ming's question.
When he was infected for the first time, he really didn't feel anything related to spatial abilities and spatial effects.
Not to mention the rifts closely related to the scarlet dimension.
But after hearing Chen Ming's speculation, the president suddenly had an idea.
"When I experienced my first dimensional infection, the target of the dimensional infection was my eyes."
"What appears in the crack now is also an eye. Is there a connection?"
"Is it possible that the galaxy that I threw into other dimensions has returned to the scarlet dimension and learned some of the ability to move between spaces through my exile?"
But Chen Ming immediately recounted what happened when he experienced the nominal second, but actually third, dimensional infection.
That time no rift opened...
wrong.
As Chen Ming spoke, he suddenly realized something.
Cracks exist.
Right on that deformed heart.
However, the rift was not strong enough at that time, and the dimension-infected entity did not have enough "nutrition" to supply, and lost the ability to connect to the scarlet dimension. In the end, Chen Ming's consciousness could only be forcibly dragged into the consciousness space.
Then...
In the consciousness space, Chen Ming remembered that during his final showdown with the aberrant heart, he sensed something coming in the starry sky in his consciousness space.
At that time, he didn't know what it was, but now it seems that it is definitely something closely related to the scarlet dimension.
As early as the first dimension infection, Chen Ming had already begun to come into contact with the scarlet dimension.
The rift is what is really there.
But this rift also did not appear directly in the normal universe. Even the distorted heart could not directly call for that kind of existence in the normal universe. Instead, it attracted things that Chen Ming had never seen before through the consciousness space.
The normal universe has indeed never opened a rift to the scarlet dimension.
There must be some hidden reason behind this.
As for what the president said, it was because the Scarlet Dimension was imitating, so the rift was not opened before. This situation can only be said to be doubtful.
Since the rift has never been opened in the normal universe, the president's conjecture can only be regarded as a conjecture for now.
The president easily accepted and understood Chen Ming's words. He also agreed with Chen Ming's idea: "Then let me go through the previous documents and see if there is anything missing. I will talk to you when there is news. .”
The president ended the communication with one sentence.
Chen Ming closed his eyes and held his forehead.
His head hurt slightly.
Let’s put the matter of dimensional infection and phase space aside for a while and let others deal with it.
He still had to wait for his mental strength to recover and deal with the next matter.
His mental strength is still recovering.
Although the total amount of mental power has reached a terrifying level, with the blessing of the hive mind network, ectoplasmic stones, condensed psychic energy sources, ship spirits, and even various drugs, the recovery speed is still quite fast.
It seems that things will be back to normal in a few hours, and it won't have too much impact on Chen Ming's continued work with the three fronts.
However, there is always a priority when doing things on the third line.
Two laboratory projects.
Ontology research tasks.
As well as the development fleet here, the response and counterattack measures against the mechanical race.
Arranged according to the degree of urgency and the consequences of failure, the most urgent matter must be that the pioneering fleet is about to encounter an attack from the machine race.
So Chen Ming will definitely focus on dealing with this matter next.
He had already made arrangements before.
But he had prepared well in advance to seize control of the colony from Yuhui. It took several days to prepare the goods for migration. In the end, he had to rely on Chen Ming's psychic power to run continuously for a day before sending them away.
Although there is not much expansion in scale now, not much expansion does not mean there is no expansion.
It's not easy to move your base quickly.
So if he was attacked by the mechanical tribe now, the situation would seem to be a bit bad.
Like... now.
Chen Ming only ended the call with the president a few minutes ago.
He sensed that something unexpected had happened in some of the small strongholds left behind by the pioneering fleet for resource development.
As long as they were near the three-way junction of the Machine Tribe, Yuhui and the Empire, or even any stronghold within two jumps further outward, they almost all encountered a small fleet of the Machine Tribe.
The mechanical fleet, composed of a destroyer and four frigates, launched an attack on Chen Ming's strongholds at almost the same time.
Such a fleet is very weak, and its life is just as cannon fodder on the battlefield.
But in the small strongholds left by Chen Ming, a fleet of this size was enough to completely destroy the strongholds.
"It came so quickly."
Chen Ming frowned.
Although he had learned the news before, he was surprised that his territory was discovered so quickly and he was ready to attack.
Chen Ming’s original plan was to...
Forget it, there's no need to think about the original plan any more.
The mechanical tribe arrived so quickly, of course the plan was completely disrupted, there was no need to think about it again.
He must change his original plan and take countermeasures as soon as possible.
Fortunately, Chen Ming maintains a high degree of connection with all afterglow cores. Even the weakest gamma-level core has a direct connection with Chen Ming.
Therefore, when these small strongholds were attacked, Chen Ming basically had time to pick up the Afterglow Core.
Only some of the Afterglow cores that had the bad luck to discover that the attack was slower and were hit by the core itself were destroyed in this attack.
The number is about twenty, which is not too much.
It's just that although Chen Ming's repair power can repair the afterglow core itself, it cannot repair the consciousness within it.
So if these afterglow cores are lost, they are really lost.
Chen Ming only has tens of thousands of afterglow cores in total now, and losing a few makes him heartbroken.
Not to mention that the stronghold itself, the equipment in the stronghold, and a considerable part of the materials can only be discarded there, destroyed or plundered by the machines.
You must know that when Chen Ming's pioneering fleet has made four jumps, there are quite a large number of these small strongholds located relatively close to the empire, and the receipt of materials accounts for about 40% of Chen Ming's material circulation.
This allowed Chen Ming to be less dependent on the empire for resources to develop.
Once these small strongholds are lost, in order to maintain the pioneering fleet, he will have to spend extra money to fill the holes, and he will also have to bear the impact of closer ties with the empire.
For Chen Ming, who had always thought about running outside the empire, these losses were real losses.
Chen Ming also thought that the mechanical tribe would directly come to trouble the large army.
So the afterglow has not been taken away from these places.
Because the investment cost has already been earned back, as long as the resources are mined for one more day, there will be an extra point of income.
He really didn't expect that the attacks of the mechanical tribe would go so "deep into the grassroots".
Views through those afterglow cores spread throughout the trail.
Chen Ming could tell that at least one-third of the spacecraft of the lower-level fleets in the mechanical race in their star field had been pulled out and used to clear out Chen Ming's small strongholds.
As for the remaining two-thirds, in addition to leaving part for use in the mechanical race star field.
Others were probably tasked with finding the coordinates of Chen Ming's strongholds in the past, and are still responsible for finding his real strongholds now.
Chen Ming's small temporary strongholds can be said to be extremely scattered and distributed over a fairly large area.
If it weren't for the massive fleet searching, it would have been impossible to lock down almost all of Chen Ming's small strongholds.
This scale can be said to be unprecedented.
Of course, what Chen Ming was talking about was from his perspective and the history of this mechanical star field.
In addition, he could also see that there must be mechanical cruisers bringing a large fleet to fill the surrounding star field to further search for the star system where Chen Ming's pioneering fleet is located.
Instead of the middle and lower-level ships of the mechanical race, they are searching in hyperspace.
So if Chen Ming does nothing.
It could take a few hours or three days as quickly as possible. The two temporary strongholds he currently has at the third and fourth jump positions, one behind the other, will inevitably be discovered.
And as long as the Machine Tribe finds him, there will immediately be a fleet of armies from the Machine Tribe.
Chen Ming would not give himself any credit, but judging from what the Mechanical Tribe had just done, he could only believe that the Mechanical Tribe had invested almost all of its middle and lower-level spacecraft in searching for his presence in the nearby star field.
Now that the middle and lower-level fleets of the mechanical race in the entire star field have been mobilized, at least there will definitely be at least a thousand cruisers mobilized, and there is even the possibility that they will directly dispatch the capital ships.
The last time the Machine Tribe surrounded and suppressed Chen Ming was when Chen Ming attacked the Machine Tribe's stronghold in order to expand the Machine Tribe's hive network and seize the Machine Tribe's colonial ship.
At that time, the mechanical clan had two batches of fleets: one batch of twenty or thirty ships, and the second batch of more than eighty ships.
Although the second batch was followed by a phase beast.
But it is also enough to show that when dealing with threats, the mechanical tribe is definitely prepared with strength that far exceeds the threat.
Earlier, Chen Ming had just demonstrated his destructive ability against the mechanical race.
So this time, the armed forces they prepared may really exceed Chen Ming's imagination.
There may even be a foreign mechanical fleet.
According to the news from Baiquan, Jialuo's front line has not encountered any decent resistance during this period. It is obvious that the empire has been advancing smoothly without really investing much war power.
Not only was there no decent resistance during this process, there was also no sign of the arrival of the foreign mechanical fleet.
Even some reconnaissance fleets that were deeper on the front line did not detect any ambush at all.
It is impossible for the machine queen controlled by Chen Ming to provide false news.
Isn't there only one possibility left?
The machine tribe really regarded Chen Ming as a greater threat than the empire.
Think about it too. For the mechanical race in this area, the threat posed by the empire is similar to the threat posed by Chen Ming, and the highest risk is the destruction of the star field.
For the mechanical race in the entire universe, Chen Ming's danger is greater than that of the empire.
The expansion of an empire takes time and is limited.
Chen Ming can run around anywhere.
In particular, Chen Ming also developed a fleet outside and established various strongholds. This behavior allowed the machine clan to elevate Chen Ming's threat to a level that exceeded that of the empire.
Even for the mechanical race, if Chen Ming can be killed here by sacrificing a star field, they definitely have the possibility to do such a thing.
Therefore, the number of fleets attacking this time will only be more than Chen Ming guessed, not less.
His guess was even quite conservative.
At such a scale, Chen Ming felt that his pioneering fleet should have little room to struggle.
There were less than twenty cruisers in total. Even if they could exert several times their effectiveness with the blessing of Chen Ming's psychic power, they would not be able to put up any resistance in front of the battleships.
Even when facing a fleet whose number exceeds a certain limit, Chen Ming's psychic powers will not be able to play a sufficient role.
Although he was also preparing, his preparation was not for a head-on battle with such a fleet, let alone that he had not had time to prepare.
And there is a more troublesome place.
That is, the mechanical tribe attacked Chen Ming just when he had just participated in the experiment, experienced the destruction of two dimensions, and was exhausted of his mental power.
Even now, Chen Ming can't quickly use his spiritual energy to block or speed up the relocation.
He could only verbally urge a few afterglow cores, and then see if there were any other ways to stop the mechanical fleet from searching for his location.
There are no reinforcements from outside the empire, so everything depends on Chen Ming himself.
The situation has really taken a turn for the worse.
Chen Ming could prepare comfortably before, and even stayed at ease for quite some time without anything happening.
But today there were two sudden incidents in succession.
He can no longer continue with his previous stable mentality
He had to figure out a way to deal with it as soon as possible.
The first thing he has to do now is to avoid the worst case scenario, and he must not let the mechanical fleet overwhelm the situation.
There are two ways to stop the machine fleet.
Prevent the machine race's fleet from discovering his pioneering stronghold, or move away directly.
Chen Ming had already been preparing for the next migration, but if he did nothing, it was expected that it would take another four or five days to prepare.
This is an impossible time to accept.
If you want to solve it, you must find a way to restore your mental power as soon as possible.
Chen Ming's mental recovery speed is very fast, so the most convenient way is to delay it.
And delaying time coincides with another method of organizing the mechanical fleet, which is to block the mechanical fleet.
As long as the speed of the mechanical tribe's search can be delayed, the rest will be easy to handle.
As for the way to delay...
It's not enough to just use the cruisers to get over.
The mechanical race is not a fool. If they find that Chen Ming's fleet has attracted the most attention in the past, it will definitely continue to search for his existence.
If you want to stop the Machinery Clan, you must release a large number of middle and lower-level ships just like the Machinery Clan, and affect the Machinery Clan's search in the same way.
But this can only cope with the mechanical fleet that has been released.
It would not be so easy to solve if it was a fleet that was following the mechanical cruisers to jump to the outside world.
There is even a certain probability that they will jump directly to Chen Ming's face.
They are an absolute pain to deal with.
Just when Chen Ming was thinking about how to solve the problem.
His perception was that the insect queen had awakened in its cocoon, and it had completed its evolution.
It seems that luck is still on his side.
Chen Ming immediately turned his attention to the insect queen's nest planet, and happened to see the moment when the insect queen emerged from the cocoon.
Only a few tentacles were seen tearing open the outer cocoon of the biological cruiser that wrapped the insect queen from the inside out, revealing the current appearance of the biological cruiser.
The outer black carapace is covered with fluorescent lines, and some of the blood discharged during evolution has changed from the original gray-green to clear, exuding fluorescence like fairy leaves.
Even some of the muscle tissue in the carapace gaps and the energy crystals sandwiched between the muscle tissue on the body of the queen have become similar.
But soon, under the control of the insect queen, the carapace turned black again, and the flesh turned gray-green again, making it no longer so conspicuous.
Only the clear, transparent and slightly fluorescent appearance of the energy crystals in the queen's body was retained.
This energy crystal contains more powerful energy.
In addition to these easily detectable changes in appearance.
All the deeper changes that occurred in evolution were transmitted to Chen Ming through the consciousness link between the insect queen and Chen Ming.
Everything is left unsaid.
After understanding the changes in the insect queen.
Chen Ming breathed a big sigh of relief. It seemed that the trouble would be solved soon, unless the machine clan really used the capital ship.
Chen Ming did not dare to waste any more time and immediately said to the insect queen: "Quickly gather the insect nest and prepare to migrate and fight."
The insect queen also started taking action without a moment's hesitation.
The entire planet's insect nest seemed to come alive in an instant and became extremely active.
A considerable number of Zerg individuals inside the insect nest were immediately decomposed by the insect nest and transformed into new highly concentrated energy crystals.
Provide nutrients to the insect nest structure, allowing the originally fixed insect nest to gradually transform into the same structure as the insect queen.
A core control node, or Zerg neural tumor, is wrapped in the shell of a biological cruiser.
Almost all the insect hive structures have begun to undergo such changes, constructing one heavy black insect cruiser after another.
Limited by Chen Ming's own spiritual power, which imposes restrictions on the number of spaceships that can be directly controlled, he has always been considering solutions to his lack of large-scale combat power in space.
One of the solutions is the insect queen.
Until today, he finally has a large-scale space combat force that can be used at any time.
But to be honest, Chen Ming's total amount of mental power has already exceeded that of the Worm Queen by an unknown amount. The Worm Queen can control so many biological cruisers.
However, Chen Ming could only control a few cruisers, which made it difficult for him.
Fortunately, after Chen Ming's psychic power reaches the upper limit of the number of cruisers he can control, the number of lower-level ships he can control is almost unlimited.
As long as you get more armor-piercing ones, the effect will be similar to that of cruisers.
There is nothing else that can be done, spiritual energy is too metaphysical.
Perhaps when Chen Ming can control the battleship, the cruiser will not have so many restrictions.
After Chen Ming gave more detailed orders.
The insect queen also gradually adjusted the process of insect nest transformation.
Mainly give priority to the insect nests located in the shallow layers of the insect nest planet to start recycling and transforming the insect race.
The deep insect nests continue to breed a large number of worker insects at a crazy speed, continue to mine the planet's own resources with crazy efficiency, and devour everything on the planet.
The new concentrated use effect of the Insect Queen's psychic powers after evolution was demonstrated by it.
Physical enhancements can focus on strengthening certain parts of an individual's body.
The workers responsible for digging have strengthened their digging limbs, and the workers responsible for digestion have strengthened their digestive organs. Even the nest tissues responsible for converting energy into energy crystals have been strengthened with corresponding organizational structures.
The insect nests are frantically devouring the planet they host, converting the planet into energy crystals and turning them into resources for the insect race.
Just a few dozen minutes passed.
All the insect nests in the shallow layers of the planet have been transformed into insect cruisers.
There are already some places where the rock layer has been exposed due to the transformation of the insect nest, but it was immediately covered by the carpet that has now evolved again, and its expansion speed and strength have reached a new level.
It can be seen that the deep insect nests continue to breed the insect race and continue to devour everything.
The number of Zerg cruisers transformed by the shallow Zerg Hive alone has exceeded 100,000 Zerg cruisers.
When Chen Ming got this number, he found that he was wrong, and it was very wrong.
He had always misjudged the power of the Insect Queen, and he had misjudged it quite a lot.
He originally thought that it would take time for the Insect Queen to form a large-scale combat power after evolving.
At most, it can produce some temporary combat power in a short period of time, and at most, it can help him solve the problems in front of him.
But now it seems.
The Queen of Insects even has the ability to fight head-on with an entire mechanical race star field.
Chen Ming has always liked to observe many things from a pessimistic perspective, and has always made predictions based on the worst-case scenario.
Therefore, he felt that after the insect queen had evolved, it would at most give him a certain ability to compete with the incoming mechanical fleet.
But in fact, the situation was much better than he thought.
After all, the Zerg are not humans, afterglows, or machines. They do not need to consider the planning and construction of industrial colonies, or the production of ships.
What the Zerg have to do is to devour everything, convert everything into nutrients, and then convert the nutrients into battleships.
This is the terrifying efficiency of the Zerg.
Under normal circumstances, the average length of a cruiser is one thousand meters. After the Zerg cruiser evolved from the worm queen and was optimized with Chen Ming's limited mental power, the average length was about 1,200 meters.
The circumference of the earth is 40,000 kilometers.
Nowadays, the Zerg warships can circle the earth more than three times together, not to mention the height and width of the warships.
These numbers may seem exaggerated at first glance, but if you think about them carefully, you will find that they are not exaggerated at all.
Because there is something more exaggerated.
(End of chapter)