Absolute Advantage

Chapter 40: 1.40 Absolute Advantage

"Crack, crack, crack..."

Amidst continuous volleys of gunfire, a group of War Sheep that charged out of the jungle fell to the ground. After the battle, Wei Keng's men finished them off with steel forks before dragging them to the fire rack for processing.

Life on Pandora Field is incredibly resilient. While bullets could shatter internal organs and stop their movement, unlike on Earth where death was final, they could regenerate internally. Thus, they had to be completely killed.

Fifteen hours after their first strategic contact with the southbound Gene Colony, Wei Keng's forces maintained their combat posture and established a temporary camp. Ten sheep were being roasted over a fire.

While one group of Wei Keng's men roasted the mutton, another group statistically recorded the skeletons. During this process, Wei Keng discovered something: some skeletons showed obvious signs of later splicing.

Wei Keng couldn't imagine how the twenty-meter ram horns of the Giant Sheep could develop naturally. How would animals with such appendages graze? The Natural World lacked abundant, conveniently protruding troughs. So, Wei Keng performed an autopsy and discovered that the internal tissue of the ram horns contained cell walls. Slices even revealed plant vascular channels.

Simultaneously, Wei Keng found that the tips of these ram horns were polished. This was clearly not something the animals could do themselves. Judging by the fusion of the skulls, their modifications must have occurred within the last year.

Coupled with the sheep's organized, dense charge against their machine gun nests, Wei Keng suspected something was behind this force.

At the main bonfire, "Zeng Jiakan, come here," Wei Keng called out to the accompanying group. Zeng Jiakan, clutching his record book, ran over. His face, having had some Tumor Tissue removed by a scalpel, appeared considerably more stern.

This operation was no longer solely Wei Keng's men; twenty-four individuals from this Plane accompanied the legion. Of course, to resist the radiation from the Gene Colony, they had been injected with Wei Keng's blood, ensuring they were under the protection of Wei Keng's Human Genes' collective radiation.

Wei Keng explained the current situation to Zeng Jiakan.

Zeng Jiakan carefully examined the fusion point of the two tissues and then said uncertainly, "Have you heard of a place called Yu City, located in the mountains upstream of the Nanhua Great River?"

Wei Keng opened his system data and nodded, "I have. It's a Gene Colony with a very high concentration of Human Genes, and it's at war with the Jianye City-State Group downstream of the Yangtze River."

Zeng Jiakan glanced at Wei Keng, trying to find the right Tone, and continued, "Yes, they have many Human Genes and possess much of humanity's former craft technology, but they... are not human."

Even this tough man, Zeng Jiakan, couldn't help but twitch his face when mentioning Yu City. This was because a merchant group he was associated with had encountered the forces of Yu City in the north. Those who returned alive described the situation as extremely bizarre, and it later became even more so.

Wei Keng looked at the skeletons on the fire, at the spliced fusion point, and said, "Well, it seems we need to attack them first."

Following the direction of Wei Keng's Command Stick, Zeng Jiakan hesitantly asked, "Them?"

The camp was currently situated on a hillside with a good vantage point. Wei Keng pointed to the northwest, north, and northeast: "I can sense the direction of the surrounding Life Radiation Groups, and of course, they can sense my direction."

Another Wei Keng approached, opened the map, and took out wooden token chess pieces, labeling them and placing them on the map.

Wei Keng pointed to a wooden token labeled with a Gene Colony code on the map and explained, "These Ram Horn Creatures that just attacked us came from this colony. They are the fastest and most likely to cause us significant trouble in the overall battle. I'd rather be chased by twenty Turtles than have a Fox trailing behind me."

As Wei Keng spoke, he pushed the chess piece representing his combat group a considerable distance forward on the map.

Zeng Jiakan watched Wei Keng's chess piece push forward, forcefully inserting itself into the positions of over twenty colonies! Then, he saw Wei Keng use his own chess piece to threaten one of them! His face couldn't help but twitch. Of course, he knew that Wei Keng was telling him this, rather than hiding it and moving forward unilaterally, was to give him a sense of security.

Zeng Jiakan counted the Distance between several points on the map and continued to inquire, "What are the odds of success?"

Wei Keng: "If we can end the battle within three days, we have a ten-tenths chance of success."

Wei Keng opened the map again and said, "Look at this area. Based on my experience from several battles, they cannot gather more than 50,000 troops within ten days. Our firepower is strong, and our supplies are currently abundant. After a direct breakthrough, we can immediately contract."

Zeng Jiakan: "Then what do we need to do?" (he) thought about the people who were following Wei Keng's corps.

Wei Keng: "All actions will follow command!"

After several battles, Wei Keng basically understood what it meant to be strategically contemptuous and tactically attentive.

Infiltration must be bold! When the enemy shows clustering, to maintain a stable defensive posture, each module's reaction is conservative. When formulating our strategy, we must not be intimidated by them; we must actively charge in. As for formulating infiltration tactics, we must prepare with all our might, doing more and better than the opponent in all aspects of preparation.

With a clear combat objective, Wei Keng immediately began to act, launching a forced march that covered a straight-line distance of forty kilometers in one day. During the march, everyone chewed on a honey candy every hour; everyone slept only five hours a day, and some members on duty slept even less.

This was the marching strategy of the Wei Keng Collective to preserve the energy of the main combat forces, and it was also the marching speed determined based on the external movement status perceived by Life Radiation Perception. If pushed to the limit, Wei Keng could sleep only three hours a day.

Pandora Plane, October 2, Year 134, starting from 4 AM.

When Wei Keng suddenly accelerated and drove straight into the area where the various life colonies were located, the coordination between these colonies became chaotic, like an ant nest stirred by a stick.

Wei Keng could march more than forty kilometers a day, but gene colonies could not migrate!

Taking elephants as an example, they can indeed travel tens of kilometers a day, but they can only travel four hundred kilometers in forty days.

And a gene colony is a much larger scope, with various small and medium-sized animals inside. They need to maintain the tacit understanding of the life colony among themselves. Under the condition of maintaining such a connection, their mobility is at most ten kilometers a day.

Therefore, no main body of any gene colony could quickly respond to Wei Keng's advance; they could only send out some species to collide.

And before these species could even make contact with Wei Keng's main force, they were annihilated by the long-range firepower of the Type 38 Rifles used by the combat teams Wei Keng had deployed on the outer perimeter.

After hitting these creatures, Wei Keng didn't even fire follow-up shots because these injured targets were too far from the colonies, and their mobility had become zero. Therefore, the possibility of recovery after being shot dead was less than one-tenth. Now, Wei Keng focused on cost-effectiveness in actions and would not waste too much energy on these secondary targets.

As for Wei Keng's objective this time!

It was a gene colony that could use handicraft to standardize and modify species, and also enable some species to possess company-level organizational coordination.

Now, it suddenly felt the malice charging straight at it! Towards these colonies with some Human Genes, one could clearly feel the "brutality." Humans are the most brutal species on this planet; to achieve their goals, they can reach heights that no other species can.

Wei Keng's regiment approached the target, now less than five kilometers away.

Wei Keng looked at the mountain and suddenly noticed what seemed to be writing on a large rock. (he) scraped away the moss and saw, "Jiulian Mountain National Forest Park."

Wei Keng: "Hmm, this place seems to be Gannan."

Then (he) opened the map and checked. It was indeed Gannan, but to the Northwest was Yue Region's Shaoguan. This was precisely the border between Gan and Yue.

And ahead, the density of fire grew higher and higher. On almost every small path, Wei Keng encountered resistance.

Often, centaurs were seen attempting to hurl spears tipped with feathered insect wings from high ground. Of course, there were also some large flying birds, attempting to throw self-igniting warheads.

Naturally, none of this had any effect. The view had auto-aim, and simultaneously, Wei Keng, who shared space via telepathy, was essentially cheating at the company-level combat. Basically, as soon as a threat appeared, it was immediately locked onto. Even if the target moved five hundred meters away, the bullet would already be on its way.

Two hours later, the most intense contact battle erupted.

As Wei Keng attempted to flank eastward to occupy high ground, one hundred fifty centaurs charged forward with imposing momentum.

At that moment, Wei Keng's four platoons, eighty men, immediately set up positions on a dirt mound to resist.

The final battle situation was that this assault collective was wiped out by the combined fire of grenade launchers and rifles when they got within a hundred meters.

On slightly flatter terrain, such troops, traveling on four hooves, would still have impact. But now, on this terrain, they were merely marching into a slaughterhouse with their heads held high.

Under strong life radiation, the combat effectiveness of these humanoid collectives had a kind of magical hue. They possessed powerful vitality, could withstand a few more bullets, or were fearless of death, charging relentlessly even if all were to fall. This might indeed have frightened many from the old era.

But in reality!

Wei Keng was even more miraculous! It was just that this miracle was somewhat like "old wine in new bottles." At first glance, one couldn't discern anything special. This was the first time the Wei Keng collective had, in combat, standardized and made efficient the classification of telepathic information, forming a practical operation akin to a language system.

For example, in terms of tactical communication. Wei Keng's telepathy could directly transmit information, accurately describing the target's space, time, and specific characteristics within 0.03 seconds. This key information allowed another self on the battlefield to mentally fill in the remaining details without direct observation.

It could be said that in the current shared stereoscopic view of Wei Keng, most of the clear every plant and tree were not seen in real-time. Instead, information observed by each individual over several minutes formed a background impression. On top of this background, each Wei Keng added real-time key target information, including those moving hostile creatures, branches that might trip them on their path, and possibly camouflaged jungle color blocks.

The Wei Keng collective communicated faster, and the key points were clearer. What did this mean?

The tacit understanding of Wei Keng during combat was terrifying when it came to tactical coordination!

As soon as Group A Wei Keng's grenade round fell, Group B's coordinated bullet landed less than half a meter from its evasion point. Group C would then peek and fire a second before the previous two groups' actions, like a cat teaser, attracting its attention. Then, a hidden Wei Keng a hundred meters ahead would suddenly rise and land a headshot.

In combat, not just once, but multiple times, Wei Keng's selves made predictions based on another self's prediction. This prediction could even be nested several layers deep, forming networked predictions among the various selves.

This was not a single Superman; it was Godlike coordination.

After this battle, Wei Keng's shooting sense improved, increasingly pursuing the effect of long-range headshots. Therefore, even with Spider-Man's reaction speed, such a joint observation strike would be fatal!

In the high-dimensional space bubble, as the information transmitted by the Wei Keng nodes could support panoramic information, Bai Linglu was also observing the battle.

"Weapons, tactics, organization – complete superiority. So, what do you have to fight us with?" The girl, who had been observing the battlefield, became more and more excited as she watched. She couldn't help but put herself in the situation and speak with full confidence.

In a high-risk plane, starting with a completely new mode and now developing into a push-over, anyone would be excited.

Bai Linglu, with a hint of internal showmanship, presented the current war record to the upper echelon for "humble" consultation, asking the seniors to identify any shortcomings.

The various high-dimensional entities summoned by Bai Linglu gave optimistic evaluations of Pandora Wei Keng's situation. At this point, only Wei Keng remained vigilant. When the entity trapped in its fire net was about to run out of health, it suddenly transformed, gaining a second life and doubling its combat power. (Wei Keng: This is the kind of tactic used in games. Must guard against it.)

The gene colony surrounded by Wei Keng at this moment is the merged will of Yu City and Dongting! It is the will that Qi Shengxun condensed after melting into the Dragon Blood Collective. If the mission is completed, the two types of consciousness will separate, and Qi Shengxun's residual will will re-condense and return to the Yu City Collective.

But now! Old Master Wei Keng has noticed that this colony is somewhat flexible and cunningly human. He directly said, "Why be so cruel to each other?" Wei Keng said, "For a wartime opponent with humanity, showing the greatest respect is respecting humanity."

But this made the will of the colony feel wronged. He was here to assist! To observe from the sidelines! To lend a hand on the outer perimeter!

Now the wills of Yu City cannot understand why they were chosen as the node of the campaign outbreak.

After the centaur's surprise attack on the east side failed, Wei Keng had already seized the high ground blocking the entire mountainous terrain. And it seemed that due to understanding the combat gap, Wei Keng began to boldly envelop them. That is, six hundred people were divided into five combat teams, surrounding this gene colony of nearly six thousand in various directions.

However, within the encirclement, the colony felt uneasy because after the war began, they discovered that Wei Keng's life radiation amount had almost doubled!

Brain consciousness communication on Wei Keng's side consumes a lot of energy. Now, basically, every hour he consumes a palm-sized dried mutton and a pot of water.

Although Wei Keng's total life scale is still weak, this sudden outburst! A double outburst, it looks insane no matter how you look at it. Humans are such a species that, to achieve their goals, they don't hesitate to walk the path of destruction, and before self-destruction, they first destroy your species.

The logic of 21st-century nuclear war, oh, if you launch nuclear weapons at me, don't tell me about "after the madness of nuclear war, humanity still needs seeds." "You are crazy, I will go crazy with you, crazier than you. As for whether there is hope in the future, you must have me first, and then I will consider all this!"

Wei Keng is now carrying such an apocalyptic aura! And this style, Wei Keng himself did not notice, but it made the merged gene colony of Yu City feel a genetic tremor.

In the Central Forest, a jackal with a humanoid upper body and a snake body lower half, with many centipede tentacles on its snake body, faced injured individuals, opened its snake belly, and swallowed them for healing. Among these injured individuals, many were headshot, so the energy consumed for healing was too great.

The mid-level priests in this colony, one-third of whom were human and the rest of whose torsos were half-beasts, were already overwhelmed by the backlog of severely wounded units—but this "combat thinking" was now completely thrown aside. Their "decision-making ability," which was originally weaker than Wei Keng's, had now completely become zero.

To counter encirclement with infiltration? This requires a contest of intelligence capabilities, as well as the action planning ability of each team.

Wei Keng used all six hundred of his brains to coordinate various targets. He even assigned some tasks to Zeng Jiakan and the others. As for this gene colony? How many brains they had to use for this, and even if they had brains, they were not compatible with each other, and their communication ability was limited.

There is a military joke from the 21st century: during a joint naval exercise between the United States and India, communication could only be done by flag signaling because the different ship equipment, Russian command system, and American command system could not be fully interfaced! The commanders of both sides could only guess. Guessing could only be done for the simplest coordination commands. If they forced complex subjects, they would only collide ships.

So! Don't say Wei Keng's colony is not diverse, they are all humans, and they are of mediocre talent, without various supernormal evolutions. Wei Keng's side has standardized brains, fully utilizing group collaboration (informationization advantage).

Back to the topic.

Three hours later, these priests made an extremely simple strategic defense decision, which was to contract and continuously call for help from surrounding colonies. Even recording it in a written report would not exceed three hundred characters.

That's all there is to it.

There is no draft. Fifty percent of the fifty thousand characters in the first volume were torn up. The remaining content is the skeleton of this volume, and the first volume is not yet finished. Therefore, I really dare not do a double update.