A Question of the Truth?

"Hmph, I already know this news, but the longer it drags on, the smaller the chances of Chloe surviving. If she dies, we'll all be in trouble." Major General Porter finally spoke to General Masai, who had been "resting" for a long time, in a somewhat unpleasant tone.

Although General Masai was a rank higher than Major General Porter, Major General Porter was also a general with real power, and if he really got upset, Masai would have to give him some face.

"What should we do? We've already sent nearly 100,000 people to search, but this nest is very strange; we still haven't found their Granary."

The rescue operations at other bases went very smoothly. With a well-planned approach, not only were many people successfully rescued, but the troops suffered minimal losses.

These troops, scattered across various bases, didn't rest after completing their combat missions. Judging from the situation at the Chloe Base, the Zerg were extremely vengeful; having dug up so many "Granary" today, it was hard to guarantee that the Zerg wouldn't retaliate.

Therefore, some of the troops returned to their respective bases to defend, while the rest assembled and rushed to the area where Chloe disappeared to conduct a thorough search.

Over two days, these troops advanced thousands of meters through the underground tunnels, digging several large pits hundreds of meters deep in search of the hidden underground passages. Strangely, they have yet to find the Zerg's Granary.

They obviously couldn't find it, because the Granary of this nest hadn't even started being built yet. The large-scale mobilization of the Riken Race also gave the Swarm a big fright.

The fact that a base commander has gone missing, and that they're searching for him at such a cost, suggests that this young female Riken Race is more important than the Swarm realizes.

Fortunately, Chloe's transformation site is hidden deep underground, Riken Race cannot find it for the time being. However, how to get through the seven-day transformation period has become a problem.

In just two days, the Riken Race has made such a commotion. Based on past experience, they should have discovered the "Granary" long ago. Now, the Swarm has no choice but to drag it away. As for the anomalies they've exhibited, Riken Race experts can only try to come up with some "reasonable" explanations.

At the meeting, Dr. Bart, a biological expert, spoke and offered some constructive suggestions for the action based on current research.

In addition to adding two new combat units, the Acid Spitter and the Scout, to the Zerg based on this attack, he also put forward some other interesting viewpoints.

"Although I don't know why the C13 Insect Nest (the Riken Race's Insect Nest designation; C13 is the Insect Nest designation for the location where Chloe disappeared) hasn't been Granary yet, I've discovered some interesting things from my research on the Granary Insect Nest the first 12 hives."

Dr. Bart paused slightly, looked at everyone's curious eyes, smiled, and continued, "The Zerg we discovered prefer to preserve small, fresh food. In all the Granary, we found no dead matter, and all the creatures in the Insect Cocoon were alive and well, except for being weak."

"And judging from the satellite footage, although it's not very clear, the Zerg's diet doesn't just consist of small prey; large creatures exceeding three meters in length are also on their menu."

"Why have we never seen any large creatures stored in the Granary? Because these large creatures are difficult to transport. Among the Zerg units we've discovered so far, regardless of their role, they are all relatively small. Transporting large creatures as a whole is quite difficult for them. Therefore, when they capture larger prey, they will cut it up on the spot and then transport it back to their nest."

"But how will this help our operations?" a captain couldn't help but ask.

"Don't rush, let me finish. These cut pieces of meat are not easy to preserve because of the high temperature of T853. Therefore, the Zerg will prioritize eating these pieces. The smaller prey will be stored away, and when the Zerg's prey supply is not ideal, they will choose some small prey that are about to die to eat."

"Although we haven't located Colonel Chloe yet, we can use this discovery to increase her chances of survival. We can drop a large amount of food into the target area; this food must be fresh and perishable, such as injured Ox Demon. With ample food, the Swarm won't kill the smaller prey in the Granary."

Upon hearing this, everyone felt it made perfect sense. Therefore, in order to increase Chloe's survival rate, the Riken Race army would capture a large number of large creatures every day and release them into the Insect Nest territory before the Zerg's fixed hunting time. To ensure that the Zerg could capture them, the Riken Race would also beat these large creatures half to death, making it easier for the Zerg to capture them.

Rowan and his group of Intellect were baffled by the actions of the Riken Race, wondering what kind of scenario the Riken Race experts had imagined. After some analysis, they guessed the general reason.

Rowan was just wondering how to reasonably ensure Chloe's survival. Now that the Riken Race had come up with a reason, the Swarm had to cooperate.

Thus, the Riken Race continued digging and blasting burrows throughout the day, and at night the Swarm would go out to hunt as usual, breaking down the large prey left at the entrance of the burrows and taking them all back with them.

With the tacit cooperation of both parties, time flew by, and seven days passed in the blink of an eye.

"So that's how it is." After listening to the information Chloe gave him, Rowan fell into deep thought. The Riken Race didn't have any powerful backers. They dug up an Ancient Spaceship from who-knows-where, and then used the technology to reverse engineer the spaceship to trigger a technological explosion.

Chloe's identity on the spaceship was special; she actually had an older sister who was involved in the front-line work of reverse engineering Ancient Spaceship. Although her sister didn't reveal too many details to her, even the minor ones, she knew more than most of the captains in the Rickon Expedition.

According to Chloe, the spaceship that was unearthed was an ancient relic from tens of thousands of years ago. At that time, although life had already appeared on Riken Star, civilization had not yet been born.

The reason this spaceship appeared on Riken Star's satellite at that particular time is unknown. The spaceship's technology was extremely advanced; according to Chloe, the Riken Race had only managed to reverse engineer some of its basic capabilities.

Was this really an accident? Look at what the Riken Race now know about accidents; they were all orchestrated by the Swarm. Although there are some minor flaws due to the Swarm's limitations, we can still see some things. Some things can't be judged by appearances alone.

Based on the technological level of the advanced civilization's spaceship described by Chloe, its travel speed must be extremely fast. If an accident were to occur and it were to collide with the satellite of Riken Star at that speed, it would probably destroy most of the satellite, and the resulting chain reaction would be enough to wipe out the primitive life on Riken Star.

Archaeological studies of the Riken Race have not revealed any similar occurrences. Furthermore, without external interference, it is unlikely that natural evolution could have produced a highly intelligent civilization from nothing over tens of thousands of years.

Based on this analysis, the spaceship deliberately landed on the satellite. But given their technological level, why didn't they land directly on Riken Star? Was it due to the atmosphere?