Chapter 873: Iron Cells

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Author: Three Hundred Jin's Smile

These are zombies! He saw many humanoid zombies among the piles of corpses, and even rare mutated plant zombies. What on earth killed these terrifying monsters here, piling them into a mountain of skeletons? This place was unprecedentedly eerie. Or rather, the entire continent had become incredibly bizarre.

"Cap-captain, should we retreat?" Someone was terrified, their legs turning to jelly as they gazed into the sinister depths of the factory workshop.

"Let's go in and see. If you're afraid of death, you'll die sooner or later anyway." A fierce glint flashed in the captain's eyes. "You need to understand, in this world, where do we have a way out? If we don't figure out the source, death will come sooner or later. If we encounter something strange and don't immediately figure it out and solve it, should we wait for it to evolve and mutate further?" This captain was clearly a ruthless individual, and choosing him as the leader of the exploration team was the right decision.

Thud, thud, thud.

They braced themselves and walked forward. At this moment, they held the empire's most advanced equipment: miniature spatial railguns, something unimaginable in ordinary times. Clearly, a huge investment had been made. Their equipment was already the empire's finest.

Click!

They continued onward, their thermal imaging goggles illuminating the dark and gloomy workshops from their perspective, making the pitch-black factory floor as bright as day. The deeper they went, the stronger the mechanical roar became, as if a colossal living being was making a struggling, wheezing sound. As they drew closer, large sections of the workshops collapsed, revealing a vast, flat ruin.

Under the gloomy sky, a hybrid creation of a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster stood tall, resembling a strange amusement park. The Ferris wheel's steel was heavily rusted, with black and red rust stained by blood. Some parts of the steel were wrapped in tattered red rags, and even at a sharp point, a corpse's stomach was impaled, hanging high in the air. The roller coaster cars slid along the tracks, and mechanical arms on the pulley cars continuously modified them with clicking sounds. A reverberating tremor echoed. Among them was an eerie sound, as if a child was whistling, accompanied by faint, innocent laughter.

"Is this a roller coaster shaped like a Ferris wheel? Or a Ferris wheel shaped like a roller coaster? How interesting. But why are amusement park rides in a military industrial workshop, and why are they still operating?" A soldier sighed in relief. But the next second, the captain seemed to discover something, exclaiming in horror, "My God! This isn't an amusement park at all, it's a deformed and modified mechanical military production line! Look, what's that twisted red plaque?"

Everyone looked. On the edge of the enormous roller coaster track was a twisted, deformed plaque, crumpled like a piece of used tissue, with large, crooked characters written on it like a centipede: Seventh War Vehicle Workshop.

"My God? These tracks aren't roller coasters; they're workshop assembly lines! But how did they pull out and twist into circular roller coaster shapes?"

"How is the mechanical AI here still working? Wait, why are there rebar raw material stockpiles under this workshop? And it's still ingesting rebar raw materials. Is it planning to produce something?" This military production line looked far too bizarre. It looked as if it had been modified. In this situation, who would modify something like this? Also, aren't military production lines usually a considerable distance from raw material warehouses? This situation was almost as if the military production line had walked here on its own. A terrifying thought emerged in everyone's minds.

"We must be dreaming; this is such an absurd, surreal idea." They instantly found themselves ridiculous. A large military manufacturing assembly line, several stories high, would just walk over by itself? It must be that the corporate conglomerates in this subspace region experienced unimaginable changes due to the zombie uprising, leading to this state.

But the next second, everyone witnessed a horrifying sight they would never forget.

The entire assembly line workshop slowly began to vibrate. Its body twisted and coiled, shrinking into a ball, and suddenly four short legs grew beneath it.

Thud, thud, thud!

The ground was shaking. It wobbled as it walked, like a cute, chubby child, tottering. Its four short legs adopted a sumo-like walking stance, waddling left and right as it left the raw material storage area, uttering, "Eat... full... baby... baby... will give birth... to many little babies..."

They witnessed an even stranger scene. The military factory seemed to have diarrhea, producing as it walked, with the assembly line making clicking sounds. Medium-sized military factories, about the size of small houses, were being produced. And these medium-sized military factories were surprisingly hopping along behind the super-large one, also engaging in spontaneous, continuous production. Even smaller military factories, ultra-miniature ones comparable to toy cars, also began to be born, wobbling along behind the medium-sized military factories...

"My God!!"

"What the hell did we just see?"

"What on earth is this thing? Has this military factory's intelligent AI been infected? Can viruses infect machines too?" Someone hiding in a corner screamed in terror. Everyone's skin crawled, their eyes wide with disbelief.

Clatter.

In the distance, the colossal, desolate mechanical factory, towering into the clouds, waddled along like a large duck, followed by a flock of cute ducklings. The captain took a deep breath. "Even the intelligent AI in the workshop has mutated? Has it been infected by the virus?"

"Everyone, this is terrifying information. Even the workshops have grown those strange prismatic black crystals?"

"It must be the mechanical control room, that small room, which has transformed into a massive prismatic crystal... that is, the brain of this military factory," the captain analyzed. This was too terrifying. Plants, animals, beasts—nothing alive escaped infection. Even mechanical AIs, which approached biological intelligence, were directly infected. They had already imagined all the horrors happening here.

This military production line was originally coiled within a square workshop building, but its intelligent AI control room, for some mysterious reason, transformed into a large demonic core. And so... the entire square workshop was torn apart like a fragile cardboard box, and the military production line itself swaggered out. It even used its assembly line to produce its own legs and arms, attaching them to itself, mimicking humans, and even adorning its head with a small fresh flower. Furthermore, it altered the mechanical design blueprints and structures that humans had programmed into it, changing them to produce its own kind. Thus, it became a military production line zombie capable of reproducing.

"A military factory zombie?" They were filled with horror.

What they didn't notice, however, was a small mechanical workshop behind the row of workshops they were hiding from, which bore the large characters "Meat Processing, Canteen Supply Only." A black camera high above the entrance subtly rotated, emitting a faint rustling sound.

Gurgle!

Behind them, a huge rebar net lunged forward. Everyone turned their heads and looked in terror.

Whir—

A sharp sword streaked across the sky. The entire mechanical factory was instantly pierced, and crackling sounds erupted. Everyone turned their heads back. This was a handsome royal swordsman with dark golden short hair, dressed in a neat, well-fitted black suit. Behind him followed a curious little girl with a cat's tail. Seeing this person's face, everyone immediately got goosebumps. They were perfectly clear about this person's information:

"Three thousand seven hundred years ago, the first swordsman of the Xibomiya Empire, known for his swift strikes, Gusla, who commanded the god of wind and thunder, and was the first War God of the Natural Deity lineage under Dessa, the supreme goddess of nature who nurtured wind and rain."

How could a god from the native world appear here? They were utterly terrified. They were sworn enemies; meeting meant certain death.

"It was your empire that invited us outsiders to jointly cleanse this continent, to exterminate all survivors, viruses, and all living things." Gusla smiled. "We've reviewed the information on this virus. It's terrifying beyond imagination. We will surely be destroyed in less than a week... In fact, supreme gods have already gone to request that mysterious entity in the Cosmic Garden to see if it can intervene..."

The entire team was filled with dread. Exterminate us? Facing a god, their first reaction was to raise their spatial railguns.

Click!

The next second. The spatial railgun in their hands fell into the little girl's grasp. "So this is what you use to slay gods? Just 'snap,' and you've captured a god?" The little girl happily played with it, her face full of curiosity.

Everyone was terrified. Higher-dimensional space-time. This little girl was the descendant of a god! They held small weapons capable of threatening gods, but lacked the means to enter higher-dimensional space-time, which required bulky, large spaceship instruments. For convenience, they could bring a cloned god and use instruments to connect to the cloned god's world. These were two common methods for entering higher-dimensional space-time. Therefore, though they possessed this spatial railgun, they could only strike epic-level powerhouses below that of a god.

"Hehehe, it's such a waste to let you people hold onto this stuff. But the conglomerates here must be truly desperate. Their inventory is frighteningly large; even ordinary people are equipped," Gusla the swordsman chuckled. "Put it down. We won't listen to your empire and exterminate you directly. Come with us." Soon, they led the group to a ruined workshop. The team was filled with apprehension.

"Don't worry, the number of these intelligent zombies is extremely small. Perhaps there are fewer than a hundred 'mother' entities on the entire continent, but each one is immensely massive and can produce offspring... Their potential numbers are also the strongest." The swordsman smiled, gently looking at the little girl beside him. "Mansa, have you finished the inspection?"

"Confirmed another one; it's pretty much certain now." The little girl, holding alchemical equipment, continued her research. "This isn't a normal infection. They are a variant life form, half-flesh and half-machine..."

"Half-flesh?" The captain was startled. "How is that possible? They're clearly machines; we all saw that."

"How could pure machines grow legs?" The little girl's face was serious. "Their metal alloy structures are undergoing a special rearrangement... metal particles are transforming into a unique type of cell... perhaps we can call them 'iron cells'."

"Iron cells?"

"Yes, you can understand them as a special type of extraordinary metallic cell. We suspect that the metals, under the terrifying light-heat explosion and high radiation of that star-destroying cannon, combined with the virus, and even the particulate cells of that enlightened infant... coincidentally formed a unique set of evolutionary conditions, causing them to mutate and fuse."

"Yes, these iron cells seem to have merged with that particulate infant, yet they are quite different, forming a unique kind of individual."

"This mutation is largely unknown; it's a convergence of countless conditions, requiring a specific ratio that is practically impossible to achieve. The computational power of this virus perhaps seized that precise moment, utilizing favorable timing and conditions to complete the mutation."

"Viral mutations are terrifying, but what we see here... might be even more terrifying. Currently, it appears to be a transcendent metallic life form that can absorb radiation, light, and even physical impact." The young divine descendant said, "But the specific intensity of the mutation and its future implications are still largely unknown to us."

"Also, have any of your people been here before?" the little girl asked.

"No." The exploration team members shook their heads repeatedly.

Gusla the swordsman paused slightly, then looked at an adjacent workshop, his expression growing serious. He said:

"We arrived earlier. Nearby, there's an even stranger humanoid creature. It seems to be dissecting a 'Spirit Tea Mechanical Factory' while drinking tea and eating fruit... It's truly bizarre."

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