Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 649 - 174: Hatching
The robot suddenly went silent, the eerie red light in its eyes gradually dimming. An emotionless electronic voice emanated from its mouth: "Operating system initialized... Searching task log... No data... Restoring factory settings... Cutting power..."
A few seconds later, the robot squatted down and curled up, with all the indicator lights on its body going out... It actually shut down automatically.
Meanwhile, Yang Qi's urgent voice came through the earpiece: "Sun Hang! Sun Hang, can you hear me? The communication is clearly unobstructed! Hello? Hello?! Sun Hang?!"
"I can hear you, I can hear you... What's wrong?"
"I saw you staring at the screen in a daze just now and thought there was another problem," Yang Qi said.
"Aren't there enough problems already?" Sun Hang glanced at the shut-down robot out of the corner of his eye, then pulled the keyboard in front of him. "How do you operate this thing?"
Sun Hang thought that if the reboot process was too cumbersome, he might as well use his ability directly, considering it had already been invaded by Chimera 17. He could come up with some excuse later to cover it up.
"Enter the code I sent you, open the backend control interface. Then log into the admin account again, select device initialization... Pay attention to the telescope's parameters, if the lens angle is off or not focused, search the historical parameter configuration..."
"No historical parameter configuration." Sun Hang opened the backend control interface as Yang Qi instructed. "The historical operation log is completely blank, all wiped clean, or rather, it's been restored to factory settings directly."
"Wait a moment, I'll check the parameters used by the previous bunker observation staff... These should have been recorded, fill in the parameters according to those records, you should be able to see the current status of Chimera 17..."
"Uh... are you talking about these things on the table?" Sun Hang found a thick stack of photos next to the keyboard, all of them images of Chimera 17, with several lines of tiny text in the lower right corner of the photos, detailing the parameters used by the equipment to take these pictures.
"Yes, just fill them in accordingly!"
Sun Hang selected a full-body photo of Chimera 17 and directly entered the parameters on the photo into the control interface... Soon, the screen switched to the real-time image observed by the telescope, and the image clarity was continuously improving as the AI built into the equipment made fine adjustments.
At first, Chimera 17 on the screen was a large blurry halo, but Sun Hang and Yang Qi soon noticed the anomaly—a few bright red spots and lines were mixed within the milky white light cluster, stretching across the entire giant cocoon, emanating a faintly disturbing aura.
"Holy shit, what is that?" Song Yarong's voice came from next to Yang Qi, who quickly hushed her: "Don't make noise... wait until the focus is complete before looking."
Due to the initialization of the telescope and the connected observation equipment, the focusing process took a full five seconds, and when the clear image finally appeared on the screen, there was a sharp intake of breath in the communication channel.
The giant cocoon of Chimera had already been damaged—the red spots and lines they saw earlier were actually the cracks and peeling places on the cocoon surface... Looking through these cracks and openings, the contents of the cocoon looked like a giant fireball, the crimson viscous liquid inside flowing slowly like magma, emitting light far brighter than the cocoon shell.
"Chimera 17's cocoon... has cracked..." Yang Qi murmured.
"Has that thing hatched?" Sun Hang asked.
"I... I'm not sure..." Yang Qi quickly responded, telling Song Yarong next to her, "Quick, gather all the experts for a meeting! Immediately analyze the current state of Chimera 17! Also, notify all units involved in the final operation, and move up the final operation to two hours later!"
"Two hours later, should I come back?" Sun Hang scratched his head.
"No, you don't need to come back, we'll come to find you!"
...
...
The experts' video conference lasted less than twenty minutes. All the participating experts, including the seasoned veterans from Dubhe Tower, unanimously agreed that Chimera 17's incubation process had entered its final stage, that it could "break out of the cocoon" at any moment—although the nuclear explosion's power caused by "breaking the cocoon" would be slightly reduced from the pre-estimated yield, it would easily flatten the entire city of Tianfu.
This feeling is akin to a ticking bomb with a definite countdown turning into a Damocles sword hanging overhead, whose horsehair string has been stretched to its limits... No one knows when it will snap, but everyone knows it is about to.
Just after shutting down the video conferencing interface, the phone placed next to Yang Qi's computer started vibrating. She picked up the phone, seeing the call was from the highest-ranking official on the military side participating in the final operation. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺
"Is the insecticide ready for use?" The bigwig didn't mince words, getting straight to the heart of the issue.
