Zhao Chen thought a moment, then gave his fleet group's Panda-Girl commander a decisive order: "Have our interstellar warships release some scientific survey equipment. Look that great wall of flesh over thoroughly. See whether there is any other chance of wrecking it quickly."
"Yes." The Panda-Girl commander set about it at once.
Destroying it by firepower alone struck Zhao Chen as somewhat unrealistic.
And if the T6 Supernova Ultimate Bomb were used right here, the effect would be very poor, at most it could destroy about a third of this Hive Nest before them.
That would come nowhere near the effect Zhao Chen wanted.
Meanwhile, Chu Xuan and the others were still commanding the battle.
But on the battlefield, some changes began to take place.
The hive-race close-in guns, already checked, were no longer a threat.
But a new threat came with it.
All at once the 'ground' of the great wall of flesh split open, and huge tentacles thrust out, one after another.
These tentacles lashed at astonishing speed toward the Owl Dragon interstellar warships and the Owl Dragon hive-race.
Most remarkable of all, these tentacles could ignore star-shield defenses outright and plunge straight in!
A T4 Hive Mothership under the Hive Princess had drifted a little too far forward, and in a moment's carelessness was wrapped up by a tentacle.
However the T4 Hive Mothership struggled, it could not break free.
The Hive Motherships and Owl Dragon interstellar warships around it gave fire support one after another.
But the tentacles were plainly very hard.
And because they were so close, some heavy weapons, used at this range, risked hitting their own.
So this T4 Owl Dragon Hive Mothership could only be watched helplessly as it was dragged away.
Like a falling meteor, it slammed hard into the great wall of flesh.
Then more tentacles wrapped around this T4 Owl Dragon Hive Mothership.
The next second a huge rift opened in the ground, and a gaping, bloody maw thrust suddenly out and swallowed this T4 Owl Dragon Hive Mothership whole.
"What was that just now?" Zhao Chen frowned, raised his hand, brought up the frame he had just captured, and kept enlarging it.
It was a hideous great mouth; within it could be seen barbs packed thick as teeth.
The mouth was at least twenty kilometers across in diameter alone!
That meant it could swallow the great majority of interstellar warships whole.
And most important of all: why would it appear within this great wall of flesh?
And what, too, were those tentacles, with their astonishing toughness?
"Little Bug, have you ever seen a hive-race combat unit like this?" Zhao Chen asked with a frown.
On the command channel the Hive Princess at once shook her head, then hesitated… "A living thing that size, I've never seen. But I've seen one much smaller than it."
"Tell me," Zhao Chen asked directly.
The Hive Princess raised her hand and called up an image.
It was a creature like a worm, with a similar gaping, bloody maw, that generally liked to live in sand.
"We call this kind a sandworm. It's one of the ground-dwelling hive-race, and a fairly big one on a planet. They say its body can grow to over 400 meters long and about 40 meters across, and when it opens its mouth it's an abyss over 40 meters wide that can swallow anything. And its body is very hard; it can withstand attacks a grade above its own. But most of the sandworms we've observed only have T2-grade fighting power. Only a few sandworm kings can reach T3 grade. And since they can't travel or fight among the stars, they're basically of no use in this interstellar age. But that monster we just saw… that gaping maw of it opens at least ten or twenty kilometers. How could those two… be the same creature? And I can't sense any hive-race signal from it at all," the Hive Princess said with a frown.
A sandworm…
Beside that monster just now, this sandworm looked rather like a little darling.
But think of Order's control over the hive-race, and they could very likely have remade it into a great many different interstellar creatures.
The undead creatures before, for instance, who could say they were not something Order had remade?
So that possibility could not be ruled out.
"Then, supposing it were such a sandworm, is there any effective way to deal with it?" Zhao Chen asked.
The Hive Princess thought, then said, "Sandworms are generally afraid of water. Beyond that, there's only firepower strong enough to beat their defenses."
That was as good as saying nothing.
In an interstellar setting like this, where was one to get water?
Besides, the thing hid inside that strange great wall of flesh, which made it harder still to destroy.
As for firepower, need that even be said!
Did Zhao Chen not know that firepower solves everything?
Zhao Chen frowned slightly.
Before coming here, he had known this Hive Nest would not be easy to deal with.
But he had not thought it would be this hard.
By now Chu Xuan had ordered the fleets at the forward positions to pull back some distance, so as not to be caught by those tentacles and then swallowed by that huge sandworm.
It worked quite well.
But it also meant that not a few Owl Dragon interstellar warships and Owl Dragon Hive Motherships were now out of effective firing range, and so the threat to this Hive Nest was weakened too.
"Reporting, we've found something!" the Panda-Girl commander reported to Zhao Chen.
"What have you found?" Zhao Chen asked.
"We have a kind of penetrating scanner, and we scanned the interior of this Hive Nest before us. We found a remarkable sight."
The Panda-Girl commander brought up a black-and-gray image.
In the black areas could plainly be seen the black tentacles and those huge sandworms; the gray areas were presumably the 'background'.
And behind these black tentacles could be seen something like a 'great tree'.
All those black tentacles were joined to the great tree!
"The tentacles that attacked are all connected to that tree-shaped thing. Which means that if we can destroy the great tree, the trouble with the tentacles should be settled with it," Zhao Chen said, turning it over.
Tao Beibei, beside him, brightened. "That's possible."
But the great tree lay rather deep.
To pour an interstellar fleet's fire onto that one point alone would waste a fair amount of ammunition.
That set Zhao Chen thinking of the T6 Rakshasa-Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought.
Were the Rakshasa-Hades here, its mode of attack would be just the thing to settle this great trouble.
But to bring the Rakshasa-Hades over for this?
He truly did not want Charlotte drawn into the fighting here at this time.
Suddenly, staring at Tao Beibei beside him, Zhao Chen thought of something.
Stared at by Zhao Chen, Tao Beibei was somewhat embarrassed, and lowered her head shyly. "Your Majesty… I… I'm still young…"