Chapter 106: Chapter 101: Method to Deal with the Mother Empress

The Federation’s high command wasn’t stupid.

While they might scheme against one another when it came to dividing spoils, they were completely united against the Alien Zerg Race—an enemy with whom there could be no negotiation, only a fight to the death.

Thus, they were constantly devising plans and researching how to eliminate the true enemy within the Zerg Race.

The Mother Empress, the brain that controlled everything.

However, the Mother Empress always remained hidden, only emerging on rare, critical occasions to spew out massive numbers of Soldier Zergs.

Take, for example, the plot to encircle the Thirteenth Division.

A new Mother Empress had landed in Hai City, emerging from the suburbs and heading north to join another Mother Empress. Their plan was to completely encircle and annihilate the retreating Thirteenth Division.

Now, in the Battle of Wu City, the Mother Empress would only drive straight onward to speed things up. This meant she had to choose between breaking through the defensive line and bypassing it from underground.

Most likely, she would choose the latter.

The first option would consume too much time and result in heavy losses among the Low-tier Zerg Race.

And that would mean humanity’s strategic objective had been achieved.

The Zerg Race would be left with a completely evacuated State Capital Jin City. Meanwhile, heavy industries and munitions factories in the rear would be restarted, providing a continuous supply of weapons, equipment, and ammunition to the front lines.

But if the Mother Empress bypassed the defensive line directly, her massive body would inevitably create a huge disturbance as she moved through the subterranean caverns.

The Detectors placed within the defensive line could then pinpoint her location.

In this way, the secret weapon prepared in advance could be put to use!

Cheng Zhan, having learned of this operation through his promotion, began scheming to find this hidden secret weapon.

Through subtle probing, he successfully discovered that the high command had already planted several bunker-buster missiles within the defensive line during its construction.

The warheads were equipped with extremely powerful Cloud Burst Bombs.

The explosive yield of this liquid fuel was three times that of TNT, and the Damage inflicted on living organisms was ten times that of high-energy solid explosives!

A Cloud Burst Bomb detonates in two stages. The first explosion only serves to disperse the fuel from its container, allowing it to mix with the air and form an aerosol cloud. This cloud would expand throughout the entire Wormhole, filling the cavern where the Nest was located.

The subsequent second detonation ignites the cloud, creating a massive deflagration effect.

Not only would the shockwave cause widespread casualties, but it would also consume all the oxygen in the Nest, suffocating the large creatures within.

The 6-ton Cloud Burst Bomb currently developed by the Federation could produce a kill radius of two hundred meters, covering an area of 120,000 square meters—the equivalent of fifteen football fields.

A direct hit on the Mother Empress would inevitably cause severe injuries.

It might even kill her outright!

But the Federation certainly wouldn’t launch just one.

As long as a hit could be confirmed by observing the Swarm’s offensive on the battlefield, several more bunker-buster missiles would follow in quick succession.

They would continue until the entire underground Zerg Race Nest was blasted into collapse.

Upon learning this, Cheng Zhan first notified the Mother Empress to halt her advance. Then, he tried everything he could to obtain the locations of these bunker-buster missiles.

He had to sabotage humanity’s plan!

However, an opportunity presented itself very quickly.

An intense battle broke out on the front line late at night, prompting the divisional command in the rear to dispatch a senior staff officer to the second defensive line to assess the situation and provide timely guidance.

And so, Cheng Zhan secretly detained him.

He was imprisoned in a dim bunker.

By now, his personal guards had all been parasitized. The offspring of the mother parasite had burrowed into their pituitary nerves.

Like Cheng Zhan, they had become human Zerg Slaves, controlled by parasites.

The parasite inhabiting Cheng Zhan, however, was a higher-level specimen: a Spiritual Element, Tier Two Zerg under the Mother Empress’s command.

It was a parasitic matriarch with a Spiritual Value in the hundreds.

It had fused deeply with Cheng Zhan’s brain and body. Not only could it spawn the Zerg Eggs of its offspring from its abdomen to control other low-level Zerg Slaves, but it could also understand and acquire human intelligence.

Thus, its disguise was perfect.

So much so that even his former teammates in the Awakened Camp, who knew him well, hadn’t noticed anything was wrong.

As for the low-level Zerg Slaves now surrounding Cheng Zhan, their memories were severely damaged. They could only understand and execute simple commands, incapable of comprehending complex matters.

The actual interrogation had to be handled by Cheng Zhan himself.

However, this senior staff officer was no fool. Anyone who climbed to his position was sharp, and he quickly deduced the truth from Cheng Zhan’s cold expression and the vacant stares and wooden movements of the nearby guards.

"Talk!"

"Where did you put the bunker-buster missiles?!"

Cheng Zhan’s eyes were savage as he landed another heavy punch.

Seeing the man’s face bruised and swollen but his lips still sealed, he picked up a pair of pliers and aimed for the officer’s shackled hand.

’These are all scenes of human torture and interrogation I found in Cheng Zhan’s memories, though most of them came from movies and TV shows...’

But from the man’s trembling hand, Cheng Zhan confirmed that it was effective.

As fingernails fell to the floor one by one, accompanied by the CRACK of breaking finger bones, agonizing screams echoed throughout the bunker.

Unfortunately, the concrete walls, over a meter thick, muffled most of the sound. Besides, Cheng Zhan had already deliberately reassigned the guard squad from this main bunker.

Half an hour later, the senior staff officer, a Low-tier Awakener, finally spoke.

"If you have intelligence, why not negotiate with us?"

"In this Cosmos, must it be a life-or-death struggle between different species?"

A scornful smile spread across Cheng Zhan’s face. He squatted down, looking at the dying human.

"You are not qualified to negotiate."

"As for life and death... when you humans climbed to the top of this planet’s food chain, it doesn’t seem like you left any path to survival for other species, either."

"But I will give you one thing."

"You humans are certainly stubborn."

"But it doesn’t matter. I can find out even if you don’t tell me."

After he spoke, Cheng Zhan’s mouth gaped open. With a contraction and expansion of his abdomen, a fist-sized object churned upwards, squirming its way up his esophagus and into his throat.

Finally, he spat out a curled, oblong, grayish-black Zerg Egg.

It landed on the senior staff officer.

Immediately, the curled parasite within tore through the mucus-like shell of the Zerg Egg. This low-tier parasite began to seek its host.

Guided by the mother parasite, it crawled onto the senior staff officer’s face like a centipede or a millipede. Then, as terror filled the man’s expression, it pried open his mouth and forced its way inside.

Its body was covered in slippery mucus, making it impossible for the officer to bite it in two. With a SWISH, it slid down his throat. Then, the slender appendages on its sides pierced the flesh next to his cervical vertebrae, burrowing in and connecting to his nerves.

Even a human who was Unyielding in the face of death...

...would become a Zerg Slave.

However, these low-tier offspring parasites couldn’t achieve the same meticulous, complete fusion as their matriarch. Therefore, the pillaging and inheritance of the target’s memories was incomplete.

It was only Cheng Zhan’s last resort.

Interrogating him directly would have been ideal.

Unfortunately, the man was intractable, so it had to come to this.

Once the parasitism was complete, the staff officer, now a Zerg Slave who had retained fragments of memory, opened his mouth and made a series of chittering, clicking sounds.

This was a form of communication used within the Zerg Race.

Hearing the answer given by his offspring, Cheng Zhan’s expression shifted...

It turned out he had misunderstood.

The bunker-buster missiles weren’t hidden within the defensive line.

Instead, they were to be launched by strategic bombers from over a hundred kilometers away in the rear.

But the defensive line still played a crucial role.

Its purpose was to confirm the Mother Empress’s location.

’Humanity’s methods are quite brilliant.’

They planned to exploit the Zerg Race’s behavior by firing trackers at Tier Two Zergs, like the Tiger Spine Zergs, to mark their coordinates.

If a large number of signals converged on a single location, it meant there was a very high probability that the Zerg Race Mother Empress was present at that source.

This would allow them to pinpoint the Mother Empress’s location!

As for how the trackers were launched...