Wasteland Border Inspector - Chapter 566
Chapter 566: Chapter 202: A Clear Path, the Leader’s Road
The repeated dehydration process isn’t difficult to execute; just collect some unburnt vines as fuel and use the materials from the living unit to build a makeshift sauna.
Currently, the area around the campsite is full of fire-dried kindle, enough to burn for three days.
But the issue is with the ‘repeated dehydration and rehydration fluid exchange’ process—how much life would be left in a person after going through the whole procedure?
This isn’t merely a matter of steaming for half an hour to sweat, taking a shower, and then sleeping comfortably.
According to the instructions on Firewood Communication, you have to start with ‘two dehydrations and two exchanges’ and wait until the sweat completely stops secreting gray substances.
Roughly calculated, just this step alone takes at least two and a half hours.
Not easy!
If only a few dozen are infected, after steaming they can lay in the living units to recover, and plans can be made after the assessment ends.
However, if there are over a hundred, even two hundred, detected as parasitized, most of the workforce would ‘clock out,’ halting all subsequent defense and infrastructure operations.
Before leaving the city, Cheng Ye hadn’t imagined the assessment would throw up such variables.
For a moment, he absurdly wished that the number of infected in Luokuke’s camp was higher than his, but then he felt this thought was somewhat born out of desperation. Thousands of residents followed the Inspector to explore wilderness, out of trust in Happiness City, support for the Inspector’s work, and hope for a better future.
The primary goal for everyone is to survive; in such circumstances, less infection is always better—how can one have the thought of winning the assessment by any means?
Moreover, counting the two killed by a water leech during the day and two recently missing during patrol, five people were already gone before the first day was over.
No matter how strong Luokuke’s tactics, the morale in the Red Zone might have shaken.
Though he has fewer numbers, as long as everyone still trusts him and is willing to work together, this morale may just fill the gap in headcount.
Suppressing distracting thoughts, Cheng Ye shifted his focus to the specific details concerning the infected body.
It began with a few illustrations that Luokuke showed him, not much different from the aberrant state of that middle-aged man.
But the fusion body depicted further down made Cheng Ye’s heart skip a beat.
The fusion body in the picture was a towering three and a half meters high, dragging four menacing crab claws, plus the original pair of hands—like a six-armed Demon God.
Even more horrifying, its entire skin was covered in a layer of black-green carapace, gleaming with a metallic cold light, which suggests immense hardness at a glance.
Compared to the once sustainable recovery-focused Zhang Can, this monster exudes a brute force aura just based on its appearance.
And the text descriptions below further confirmed his judgment.
[Corrupted Water Claw (Special Infected Body; Environmental Pollution Type)]
[Second-Phase Infected Body Strength: Affected by parasitic host, physique increased by 45%, strength increased by 105%, speed decreased by 57%, defense increased by 350%]
[Third-Phase Fusion Body Strength: Affected by parasitic host, physique increased by 270%, strength increased by 1550%, speed increased by 47%, defense increased by 2850%]
[Infected Body Countermeasures:
1. The only visible weakness for the Corrupted Water Claw infected body is the eyes. By using weapons to destroy its eyeballs, the infected body will lose its ability to see, retaining only basic environmental perception, thereby decreasing its attack precision and creating conditions for subsequent elimination.
2. The Second-Phase infected body has no special resistance mechanisms; its only deadly weakness is the human form’s heart area (the core of the parasite within the infected body). Destroying this area with weapons will trigger an ‘instant kill’ effect, completing the elimination directly.
3. Third-Phase Fusion Body Strength: B-
Detailed data for the Third-Phase fusion body is not fully recorded yet; actual strength must be referenced based on the host’s physical condition prior to parasitism, the degree of parasitism, and fusion level.
The fusion body’s deadly weakness remains the heart area, but this area is tightly protected by the carapace generated by the fusion body; tests show the heart area’s carapace thickness of no less than 18.5 cm, and regular weapons cannot pierce it.
1. Use specially designed armor-piercing bullets for precise shooting at the carapace in the heart area. After penetrating the carapace, destroy the core weakness.
2. Prioritize attacking the connective tissue between the fusion body’s carapace (this area lacks carapace protection, and its defensive capability is relatively weak). By destroying the connection structure, you can cause the carapace to fall off, exposing the heart core for subsequent attacks on the core weakness.
After the Third-Phase fusion body is killed, the containment of the infection source (fusion body remnant core) must be completed within 30 seconds. Exceeding the time limit results in the infection source automatically seeping into the ground, significantly disrupting the groundwater series balance and causing secondary environmental pollution risks.
]
Compared to Stand-In Starfish, the infected body parasitized by Ghost Water Cave Crab has an immensely boosted individual combat power.
Although ordinary infected have doubled strength and defensive power, speed is greatly reduced, allowing humans to navigate with agility.
But the fusion body obviously surpasses the coping limit of ordinary people.
It only has one deadly injury, protected tightly by hard carapace—the armor-piercing bullets specially designed can barely pierce it.
Just this alone determines that even with firepower suppression, the guards’ ordinary pistols would hardly cause damage.
Can Thunder 1 break defense?
Hard to say; having flipped defensive power twenty times is really frightening, not to mention the fusion body’s speed not only didn’t decrease but increased by nearly half, making targeting that deadly injury difficult.
What concerns Cheng Ye further is that the evolutionary path of Ghost Water Cave Crab resembles the path he chose.
Absent the Stand-In Starfish’s ‘Carnivorous Recovery’ special mechanism, it’s purely about stacking stats, relying on brute force and defense to crush.
This can be seen from the attack methods, which are very crude, whether it’s the two crab claws of the ordinary infected or the four crab claws of the fusion body, only possessing the most primitive methods like smashing, pounding, grabbing, and crashing.