Chapter 159
The moment Su Jing's fingertip hovered over the zoom-in button on the monitor screen, the black figure in the image made her pupils shrink—
At the crossroads in the center of the abandoned city, three half-meter-long iron-shelled beetles were slowly crawling across the road.
Their shells were dark black, covered with diamond-shaped raised patterns, like they were covered with a thick steel plate. Their six spiked legs crushed the gravel, making a crisp "crack" sound. At the same time, the communicator popped up: "[Second-tier monster 'Iron-Shelled Beetle' detected]"
Its outer shell has a hardness of 80 HRC, making it impenetrable by ordinary laser weapons. Weaknesses: The abdominal shell is relatively thin, and the demon core is located in the chest cavity.
"Number 1, test the beetle's back with the laser gun to see just how strong its defense is."
Su Jing gave the order into the communicator, her fingers unconsciously tightening around the mining blade at her waist. Robot No. 1 raised its mechanical arm and fired a laser gun, the pale red beam instantly shooting towards the outermost iron-shelled beetle. After a "sizzle," only a light white mark remained on the beetle's carapace, without any damage.
As if provoked, the beetle turned around, its head covering eyes facing the surveillance camera, and its legs moved rapidly, crawling towards the abandoned supermarket. The metal shelves along the way tilted at the slightest touch, demonstrating the visible defensive power of its shell.
"Su Jing! The laser can't penetrate it! This bug's shell is incredibly hard! Ten times harder than the previous Stone Bug!"
Xiao Jin leaned closer to the monitor screen, its dark eyes fixed on the beetle's shell. Its voice, tinged with tension, darted to Su Jing's trouser leg with its tiny paws. "I just smelled the monitor footage. This bug's 'temperament' is much fiercer than the Blue-striped Snake! It's irritable and will attack people on its own!"
Su Jing opened the system chat area, and sure enough, the screen was filled with wails about the Iron-Shelled Beetle: "China-Wang Qiang" posted a short video.
In the scene, his companion is shooting at the beetle with a laser gun, but the beam has no effect on the shell. Instead, the beetle pierces his shoulder with its legs.
"The second-tier beetles are too ruthless! The lasers are completely useless! We've retreated into the abandoned building, and we can't hold on much longer!"
"US-Lily's" message was even more desperate: "Our protective netting has been punctured by beetles! They've stormed our makeshift outpost, and people have already been trampled! @IamGodofWealth, do you have any weapons that can penetrate armor? I'll trade all my points for them!"
"Ordinary lasers won't work; we need to make armor-piercing projectiles. We'll use the hardness of manganese crystals combined with carbide steel, and then inject some kind of special energy. That should be able to penetrate it."
Su Jing turned and walked towards the smelting area of the control room. The miniature furnace here still retained the residual heat from when she made the ore blades. She took out a fist-sized manganese crystal and a section of carbide steel rod from her spatial storage.
Manganese crystals have high hardness, and carbide steel has high toughness; the combination of the two makes them the best material for armor penetration.
"Number 1, set the furnace temperature to 1800℃. This time it needs to be 300℃ higher than when we made the ore blade, so that the manganese crystal and carbide steel can fully fuse. Number 2, prepare the energy transmission device. I'm going to inject the enhanced ore energy into the bullet core."
Little Jin ran over with a mini ore sieve in its mouth, filled with tiny fragments of manganese crystal. Its inner voice was full of excitement: "I sieved the purest manganese crystal fragments for you! I smelled them just now, and these fragments have the most energy. The projectiles made from them will definitely be able to penetrate insect shells!"
It squatted beside the furnace, its little paws gripping the furnace wall, occasionally peeking out to look at the flames inside. "Su Jing, don't let the temperature get too high! Last time the furnace was too hot, it almost melted the ore blade out of shape!"
"Don't worry, this time it has an enhanced ability that can precisely control the temperature."
Su Jing placed the manganese crystal and the carbide steel rod into the furnace, and a brighter, pale blue supernatural power emanated from her fingertips—
After absorbing 17 Azure Serpent Demon Pills, her mineral control ability not only increased in strength, but also unlocked the "precise energy conduction" characteristic, which allows her to directly inject her ability into casting materials and change their molecular structure.
When the furnace temperature reached 1800℃, the manganese crystals and carbide steel began to melt, forming a light blue liquid metal. Su Jing injected her supernatural power into the furnace through the conduit, and fine energy patterns instantly appeared in the liquid metal, like a blue net wrapping the liquid.
"Number 2, prepare the core mold. It should be pointed for better penetration."
Su Jing gave the order, and Robot No. 2 immediately pushed the specially made metal mold to the furnace outlet. The pale blue molten metal flowed into the mold through the outlet, and after cooling, it formed armor-piercing projectile cores about 5 centimeters long.
The bullet core has a pale blue sheen, and energy patterns pulsate on its surface. Touching it with a fingertip activates the communicator. [Second-tier armor-piercing bullet core: material: manganese crystal + carbide steel + supernatural energy, hardness 95HRC, capable of penetrating the armor of a second-tier monster, compatible with laser gun firing].
Next comes assembling the armor-piercing projectile—Su Jing inserts the projectile core into a specially designed cartridge case, with a miniature energy excitation device installed at the bottom of the cartridge case, which can give the projectile core extra acceleration during launch.
She picked up the assembled armor-piercing bullet, loaded it into the laser gun's magazine, and pulled the trigger at a piece of iron-shelled beetle shell she had collected earlier (which Robot 1 had salvaged from the ruins).
With a "bang," the armor-piercing round, trailing a pale blue flame, shot towards the armor shell. With a crisp "crack," a small hole was pierced through the shell, and the core of the round became embedded on the other side, achieving an effect far exceeding expectations.
"Success! We hit it!" Xiao Jin jumped up excitedly, his inner voice filled with joy. He ran over and picked up the pierced shell. "Su Jing, let's go to the ruined city and kill the beetles now! With this bullet, we can definitely kill them!"
Su Jing checked the magazine and found that she had made a total of 20 armor-piercing rounds, enough to deal with the first batch of beetles.
She gave the order into the communicator: "Number 1 and Number 2, load the armor-piercing magazines and take the spare ammunition; Number 3 and Number 4, stay at the villa, reinforce the protective netting, and add metal spikes to the outside of the netting to prevent beetles from crawling over."
"On the 5th, I'm organizing the collection box. This time, I need to collect more second-tier demon cores, which can enhance my abilities."
She glanced at the iron-shelled beetles still wandering the ruined city on the monitor, and then scanned the wailing in the chat area. She knew that dealing with the threat of the second-tier beetles was the priority.
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