Wasteland Development Diary

The Breaker was constrained by the Dark Domain, like being tethered to a charging cable of a specific length, limiting its range of movement.

Zhou Yi's tactic was simple.

Harassment and attrition.

Under his command and close-quarters baiting, with the Spine Hunter as the core artillery, the Red Falcon and Lin Chi acting as combat radars, coupled with the Warrior Crabs' poisoned cleavers and javelin throws, the special operations team was locked in a fierce battle with the Breaker.

The bad news was that the Breaker identified Zhou Yi, the leader, as the key target, focusing all its firepower on him alone. Fortunately, Zhou Yi's health bar was thick enough to withstand it.

The good news was that it was indeed a glass cannon, vulnerable to even the Warrior Crabs' ranged attacks.

Lin Chi's [Appraisal] skill also played a significant role.

"Implementing assessment, the Breaker's machine damage rate has reached 7%."

"7.7%."

"7.9%."

...

Zhou Yi endured the Breaker's attacks while commanding, only allowing the Warrior Crabs to participate in a round of attacks after the enemy's shockwaves subsided, then ordering them to retreat to a safe zone, weakening the opponent while maintaining safety.

As the main attacker, the Sea Hunter's [Light Prism Exoskeleton]'s death ray blasts inflicted tons of damage on the Breaker.

With the situation unfavorable, the Breaker frequently hid in the Dark Domain cavities.

However, the constant severing and shrinking of its body was a predicament it had to face.

The Black Warriors collected the severed limbs to prevent them from reattaching to the Breaker.

During the continued confrontation, 1 dual-blade wielder and 4 Warrior Crabs had already been killed.

The Breaker's machine damage rate approached 70%, with only two fingers remaining capable of attacking.

As the battle continued, Zhou Yi's understanding of the enemy before him deepened.

Aside from having no points allocated to defense, the Breaker's combat power was highly correlated with the number of fingers it had. Now, with only 1/6 of its peak destructive power remaining, it could hardly make a dent in Zhou Yi.

This battle lasted for 37 hours, and the opponent finally couldn't hold on any longer.

The Breaker's two fingers made a strange gesture—its two fingers bent, somewhat like the starting stance of praying mantis boxing. At first, Zhou Yi wondered if it had some special skill.

However, the opponent simply maintained that posture.

The Red Falcon and Lin Chi could not confirm the actual meaning, as the Breaker was an alien life form, as incomprehensible as the Dead Sea aliens.

Zhou Yi had a guess.

He decided to try it out.

Zhou Yi overruled the objections and walked alone to the Breaker's two-fingered mantis claw, reaching out to touch it.

The broken black hand did not react excessively.

Energy, input.

Consciousness entered the same frequency.

"Can we talk now?" Zhou Yi offered the opponent a way out.

"..."

This time, the Breaker didn't remain stubborn, simply saying, "What do you want from me? I don't have anything you want. Why are you holding onto me?"

"Let's take it one by one."

Zhou Yi told the opponent, "First, the bone fish in the seabed nearby are all raised by me. You killed them all, and you have to compensate for this loss."

"..."

"Then, the Dark Domain you entered is the construction material area of our company. The chaos you caused has severely affected the construction progress of our Emerald City, causing huge economic losses."

"..."

"Finally, my 5 valuable employees sacrificed themselves to protect this place. They are my loyal subordinates, and we have also invested a lot of manpower and resources in the battle. All of this needs to be compensated by you. Reasonable, right? If we can agree on these things, it's not impossible for you to continue operating here."

"..."

The Breaker was silent for a long time this time.

"I'm just an ordinary, poor explorer; otherwise, I wouldn't have come to such a dangerous coordinate to pan for gold. In our eyes, you are all the same, just black monsters. I don't know what you're doing... I've never heard of explorers being able to... talk to the monsters here."

Zhou Yi's heart stirred.

It seemed that the Breaker from the other world called itself an explorer, and in the eyes of life from both worlds, the other appeared as a black monster.

However, signing the indemnity agreement was the priority.

Zhou Yi didn't waste any words: "Take out anything valuable you have and let me see."

The opponent said, "I haven't gained anything since coming here."

Seemingly afraid that Zhou Yi wouldn't believe it, the Breaker explained, "We explorers enter this gate to find precious 'Life Cores.' But after arriving here, I tirelessly killed monsters, but I didn't obtain a single Life Core."

"It seems that no monsters in this area possess Life Cores; they haven't reached that level."

Zhou Yi asked: "It's a luminous energy body containing a lot of individual life information, right?"

"Yes, that's it."

The Breaker said: "Unfortunately, I haven't found a single one. You must have collected them all."

"All my savings were used to open this gate. If I can't get a Life Core, I'll never have another chance to open it again when I go back..."

Zhou Yi expressed his sympathy.

The problem was that genetic seeds could only be condensed by B-level life forms, and the threshold itself was very high.

"Why do you need genetic seeds? Is it to enhance yourselves?" Zhou Yi asked instead.

With the situation being what it was, the other party honestly answered one by one.

"For survival."

"We need the Life Cores of this world to promote the life process. The solidification and stagnation in our world are much more serious than here. Existing life cannot break through the cycle of death on its own, nor can it continue the next generation. Only Life Cores can help the continuation and reproduction of life."

Zhou Yi was stunned.

Hearing this, how did the Life Core seem like a new DNA?

Zhou Yi asked, "Only creatures with high physiological structure and strength can have Life Cores, right?"

"No, it has nothing to do with strength; we just need the Life Cores of new species. We rely on it to self-sustain and reproduce."

However, different from the definition of reproduction on the Wasteland side, reproduction on the Breaker's side was asexual reproduction. A single entity could reproduce offspring, but it must have the Life Core as a key catalyst.

The Life Core seemed to not be the same thing as the genetic seed, but more like something that has a crossover.

Zhou Yi had an idea in his mind.

However, the current priority was to settle the compensation matter first.

"How much energy do you have in your body?"

The other party didn't understand: "Are you talking about Life Grids?"

Zhou Yi didn't care whether it was or not, and said yes first.

Then the Breaker spat out a pile of light seeds, illuminating the vicinity. It itself also shrank and withered, turning into a black soft body smaller than a palm.

Zhou Yi first collected the light seeds with the Light N納 Box.

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Over 31,000 light seeds were bagged.

Adding the broken limbs collected and converted before, the total income from this battle reached 45,000 light seeds. It not only made up for all the previous losses but was also the largest income to date.

"What's your name?"

"Haruk."

"Then Haruk, the conflict between you and our Wasteland Development Company is written off."

The other party was stunned for a moment, then said, "Okay, okay."

The undersea battle officially ended with Haruk's compensation.

Zhou Yi looked at the palm-sized Breaker and said, "Now I have a new experimental project related to you Breakers. I don't know if you're interested?"

"What is it?"

The other party was now a little cautious.

Zhou Yi asked, "Can you leave the Dead Sea?"

"I don't understand."

So he described the Dead Light environment.

"Are you talking about the Current?"

Haruk responded, "No, we are Current Life; we can only survive in the Current."

According to the Breaker, the Dead Sea was to them like oxygen to prehistoric humans; even a decrease in content was a devastating blow. However, because they were Current Life, they could quickly absorb the power of Dead Light, condensing Life Grids (i.e., light seeds) to maintain a larger and stronger machine.

The strength and weakness of the machine, to Current Life, was more like a self-adjustment method to adapt to the environment.

If the energy density of the Current itself was insufficient, maintaining the smallest state was the best strategy. Only when the Current density was extremely high could it support the operation and stability of a huge machine.

Zhou Yi couldn't help but frown.

Then how could he experiment with the idea in his mind?

He suddenly thought.

Wasn't his body a special container?

If he swallowed something and sealed it inside his body, he wondered if it would work.

He said to Haruk, "Wait for me."

An hour later.

Zhou Yi returned, holding a thorny grass in his mouth. Because his machine was sealed, the plant was not directly irradiated by the high concentration of Dead Light, maintaining its grassy smell and astringent, hard touch.

After repeated attempts, Zhou Yi found that his White Suanni body could indeed delay Dead Light radiation but could not completely prevent it. Therefore, he needed to race against time to bring the grass in his mouth to its destination before the Dead Light decomposed it.

Then he encountered another problem.

How could he let Haruk come into contact with the grass?

He used consciousness synchronization to tell the other party about his experiment.

Haruk said, "That's not a problem. I can read it as long as I get close. The most important thing about the Life Core is the effective information inside. As long as you let me read it up close, you can rest assured that it's difficult for us to read complex life forms like you that are externally sealed unless you open it..."

Zhou Yi suddenly understood why Haruk had been hunting various creatures before.

To them, this behavior was like cracking open a nutshell to get the kernel. Before opening it, you don't know whether the thing inside is good or bad.

He grasped the small black hand and brought it close to his face.

Then silver lights appeared again on the black hand, as if restoring its most basic line structure, gradually outlining the appearance of the thorny grass above it.

Haruk, in the form of a black hand, began to tremble violently.

"These strange and precious information... Life Core, it's a Life Core!"

"The preservation is quite complete, such a wonderful morphological structure."

"I can actually find a Life Core!"

"Can you give it to me? I'll give you Life Grids; you can have as many as you want!"

Zhou Yi was also stunned.

He didn't expect that it was really what he had guessed.

He had a detailed exchange with Haruk, completely clarifying the whole situation.

As a Breaker's Current Life, what they wanted were the Life Cores of creatures that they didn't have, but in the Dead Sea environment, there were only light seeds.

The Dead Sea light seeds, under long-term irradiation of high-intensity Dead Light, would lose the ability to reproduce autonomously and needed to continuously grow and evolve to B-level to complete themselves.

This was completely different from the land light seeds. Although the land groups were much weaker, because they lived under weaker radiation, their reproductive ability was preserved.

The inconspicuous ordinary weeds of the Wasteland world were treasures that Current Life were willing to chase at all costs.

Zhou Yi remembered an old saying.

Some die of drought, and others drown.