Chapter 105: No Matter How Hard It Is, You Must Hold On!

Salty Fish restarted his pad and opened the drone's perspective, finding that Xue Jie hadn't been exaggerating.

In the infrared camera, the area near the latest nuclear explosion point was now a dense expanse of red, with an average temperature of 112 degrees Celsius, like the fog of war in an RTS game.

Before the heat left by this nuclear bomb could cool, the next missile, like a sharp sword, pierced through the “fog of war” and exploded about 44.5 kilometers away from the camp.

He truly felt fear.

“This process won't stop! It will keep repeating! Until the plasma fireball generated by the nuclear explosion engulfs the camp.”

On the mountaintop, the remaining Ye Xing “luckily” witnessed the hellish scene.

New mushroom clouds continuously rose, each one slightly larger than the last, with extremely precise time intervals, like a towering giant, constantly striding forward, crushing everything in its path.

The explosion flash gradually evolved from being merely dazzling to being able to feel the heat, and then to being sufficient to burn exposed skin.

Boom!

The sixteenth nuclear bomb exploded.

This time, the nuclear blast wave was only 8 seconds later than the flash, sweeping across the mountaintop like a storm, blowing away a large number of solar panels that hadn't been collected in time.

Many of them were “old heroes” who had been silently contributing power since the first day of the game's internal testing, plummeting from the mountaintop over 200 meters high and shattering into pieces.

For the mushroom cloud of this explosion, Ye Xing already needed to look up to see it. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing power armor, he would have been blinded by the light radiation and suffered second-degree burns all over his body by now.

Ye Xing involuntarily took two steps back and glanced at the live stream, finding that although the number of viewers was rapidly increasing, the number of playful comments was actually decreasing. Many people clicked into the live stream just to see a super big fireworks show, but after seeing a real nuclear explosion up close, they instinctively felt uneasy.

In reality, there are also nuclear weapons.

“Folks, it seems, it's a bit scary—”

“Can this camp survive? The developer set the difficulty too high, right? I haven't even played it yet.”

“Is this real nuclear war? It's fake, right? They're launching nuclear bombs like they're free!”

“And they're even just using them to clear the way—”

“Such a war, let's just watch it in the game, hopefully.”

Similar situations also appeared in Liu's conference room.

Although 80% of the live viewers in their own live stream had left, the shareholders at this moment were surprisingly not paying much attention to this matter. One by one, they were looking up at the nuclear explosion on the big screen, not saying a word, wondering what they were thinking about, and whether it was still related to the game.

Probably thinking about where to run if a real war breaks out, Liu thought.

Damn, I also need to run, I want to go to Switzerland!

At this time, in the Desert east of Devil Mountain, twelve mushroom clouds merged into an indescribable large area. The height of each one exceeded thirty kilometers, and the caps blocked the scorching sun, leaving the area below dim and gloomy.

The clear sky that used to be in the Desert was long gone. The air became turbid and hot, showing a strange deep brown-red color, with extremely low visibility.

Due to the large temperature difference between the explosion area and the surroundings, coupled with a large amount of air refilling the explosion center area after the momentum of the shock wave dissipated, sandstorm cyclones also began to form.

For a time, sand and stones flew, and the wind speed quickly exceeded level 10.

As soon as this hellish scene was broadcast live, the popularity of Star Sea exploded, making it a trending topic of the day.

“Players Worked Hard for Two Months, Only to Have It Vanish Instantly? This Game Subverts Industry Understanding.”

“The Most Realistic Nuclear War Simulation Ever, Actually Appeared in a Game?!”

“This Online Game Makes the Nuclear Weapon Research Institutes of the Five Great Powers Sweat Profusely.”

In major forums and online communities, spontaneous discussion threads began to appear, and a large number of workers who were slacking off in the morning participated in the discussion about this nuclear bomb siege.

After all, in real life, the distance between similar events and ordinary people is only a sufficiently crazy president away.

“Brother Ye, if it doesn't work, let's withdraw. At least don't stand on the mountaintop. I'm really scared—”

A devoted fan kindly reminded Ye Xing.

“Run? Can't run—”

Just as he finished speaking, the seventeenth nuclear bomb exploded!

This nuclear bomb entered the true killing radius, and the overpressure of the shock wave was enough to destroy buildings. Ye Xing didn't stand firm and was directly blown over. He rolled several times before stopping, almost falling off the cliff.

Fortunately, as an Investigator, his physical attributes were high enough. He immediately got up and checked the nearest laser cannon.

“The lens is broken! Someone, help me replace it with a spare one.”

They stayed on the mountain to prevent this.

“What's the point of changing it!” Fang Xue Hou Tian Tai Jian, who was sitting on the ground next to him, covered in dust and very dejected, said, “We've only fired once since the fight started! When I revive, see if I don't kill that Jubian kid!”

In the cave, Salty Fish felt very powerless and desolate.

The subsequent nuclear bombs were likely to directly hit the camp.

“Everyone still on the mountaintop, retreat as soon as possible. We are abandoning the laser cannon position.”

“Ah? Oh— received! By the way, Salty Fish, we've already repaired the communication antenna.”

The cave here might collapse. If they're lucky, it will seal the entrance. If they're not lucky, it will smash and bury the valuable equipment inside. “Um, is anyone looking forward to a hero appearing?

Although we now have an industrial ship and can start over from there, the beginner village that we built with such difficulty, just like this...*

“Hello? No? I'm so sad.”

Wait!

This!

This is that Chang Kong kid's voice!

At this time, Chang Kong was piloting an aerospace plane through the atmosphere, rushing back from synchronous orbit!

“Everyone in the cargo hold, hold on tight!”

He pulled the control stick, performed a beautiful large-angle aerial turn, aimed the tail of the plane towards the Devil Mountain Camp, and then tried to maintain stability.

The cargo bay door opened, revealing three laser cannons inside, a brand new phased array radar, and players who were ready to fight.

This equipment was originally planned to be installed on space fighters, but it was now being used for emergency purposes.

The players saw the dozen or so mushroom clouds, linked together and over thirty kilometers high, and were momentarily stunned.

Putting aside the faction issue, the power of nuclear energy is truly spectacular. “Apollo launched three nuclear bombs in one go, probably to ‘seal the deal.’ They will soon enter the inside of the mushroom clouds. We will search and intercept from the side of the mushroom cloud belt, which can minimize the millimeter-wave Rayleigh scattering caused by dust and maximize radar accuracy.”

Jubian stared at the nuclear explosion area, speaking in his usual hard-to-understand way.

Caoyuan: “In short, you can handle it, right?”

“It's not that simple,” the accompanying Butler robot said. “The mushroom clouds will still interfere with the automatic aiming program.

You must perform manual calibration.”

Caoyuan: “Are you kidding me?!”

Butler: “No, Mr. Caoyuan, I am an advanced artificial intelligence. I do not hint, do not use metaphors, do not use irony, and certainly do not joke! The human brain benefits from a complex neural network structure and has an extremely strong ability to qualitatively analyze massive amounts of data and exclude interference in a short period of time, surpassing not only primitive binary automatic programs but also me. You generally refer to this ability as ‘intuition’; at least in the 24th century, automatic aiming still cannot completely replace human gunners on warships.

“Believe in yourself, you can do it!”

Good for you, AI, you don't joke, but you give motivational speeches, huh—

Caoyuan looked at the radar screen, which was simply a mess, like a chaotic cloud map.

Every sudden spurious signal could be a flying nuclear missile.

And his task was to sense the movement patterns of the nuclear explosion dust, manually exclude spurious signals, and then capture the real targets.

As long as the target was specified for the computer, the program could increase the hit rate to nearly 100%.

Caoyuan couldn't help but recall the days he took sniping classes.

Modern snipers' shooting is more like artillery. They need to calculate distance, windage, and bullet drop. Theoretically, as long as all calculations are correct,

the bullet can hit the target.

There isn't that much so-called “marksmanship,” only cold mathematics. Many people overlook that being a Soldier is a science and engineering profession.

However, historically, there have been many combat snipers from farming backgrounds who could achieve extremely high kill rates with iron sights without understanding these calculations.

How can this be explained?

It cannot be explained. This is the non-numerical computing ability of a top human brain, this is “intuition.”

Fortunately, I was already an excellent marksman!

Come on!

Caoyuan took control of the laser cannon and concentrated fully.

Success or failure depends on this one move.

Chang Kong: “I'll be out of range in two minutes! We need to hurry!”

“Understood, that's enough.”

Caoyuan calmed down, neither anxious nor impatient. In the last ten seconds, he continuously pulled the trigger, firing multiple pulsed lasers into the mushroom cloud.

“Hit, really hit! Small explosions detected inside the mushroom cloud!”

When it was confirmed that all three remaining missiles had been intercepted, Jubian desperately shook Caoyuan's shoulder.

“You kid must have psychic talent! Amazing!”

However, the warhead of one of the missiles was not damaged and continued to fly flat due to inertia, finally rolling to a place less than three kilometers away from the camp.

Bad...

“BOOM~! Game over!”

Minister Omar chuckled and manually pressed the detonation button.

The ground shook violently, and Salty Fish almost couldn't stand still. Crushed stones fell from the cave ceiling, but fortunately, there wasn't a large-scale collapse. Hot strong winds poured in from the entrance, still strong even hundreds of meters deep.

Salty Fish knew that this nuclear explosion had actually hit the camp and didn't dare to think about what it looked like outside.

“Are there any survivors on the ground?”

The communication from the aerospace plane was intermittent.

Ye Xing: “Barely alive—fortunately, we listened to Salty Fish and retreated from the mountain in time. The mountain blocked most of the nuclear blast wave, and the power armor protected against the rest.”

Jubian: “That's good. Get ready. I just saw Apollo's plane land near you. There are twelve power armor infantry entering the canyon.”

Ye Xing: “Understood. We'll defend it even if we die.”

Jubian: “Okay, don't worry! We'll be responsible for cutting off the retreat of those Bs!”