Chapter 1367 - 380: Kill (3)

The Star-Eater seemed to think that this was just like the fireball Chen Ming released earlier to force his fleet to retreat from the stellar material and cover its existence by self-destructing.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, the Star-Eater once again sank into the star, splitting its body once more to immerse its special organs directly in the stellar material, recovering all it had lost.

However, in the phase space, the Insect Queen had already helped Chen Ming gather more than five hundred Hercules-class ships in just a few dozen seconds, all uniformly equipped with the newly optimized energy-accumulating arc emitters by Chen Ming.

The Insect Race’s fleet locked onto the Star-Eater’s weakness through the equipment left by the Climate Transformation Department in the normal universe for observing shallow stellar material.

The next moment.

A thunderbolt composed of countless arcs tore through the vacuum, pierced the shallow material of the star, and blasted the special organs of the Star-Eater soaking in the stellar material.

The dense, web-like trauma caused by the arc spread from the point of impact on the organ, though it did not extend further onto its body, but the damage to that one organ was already enough.

The Star-Eater’s activity was gradually slowing down, the massive beast quietly fell silent in an instant.

It lost the vitality of life.

Its corpse was also gradually sinking into the depths of the star.

But just before it completely sank, Chen Ming’s Insect Race fleet grabbed it from phase space, hauling it out of the star.

More Insect Race tentacles grew from the Insect Race warships that had captured the Star-Eater’s corpse, piercing the organs on the corpse used to store stellar material, allowing the stellar material to return to the star under gravitational pull.

This was to return the stellar material to the star from the corpse.

Chen Ming noticed that compared to the stellar material it absorbed, not much remained on its corpse.

However, he also noticed an area in the lower abdomen of the columnar body inside the split-open corpse, a location where all the "blood vessels" transporting stellar material from the polyhedron head were ultimately connected.

There lay something emitting a brilliance even more dazzling than the star, tightly protected.

Judging by its form and the material it contained, this was an Egg Casing of the Star-Eater.

Inside, there was nothing but highly compressed stellar material.

The stellar material taken by the Star-Eater was mostly concentrated here; the rest had been used to sustain the Star-Eater’s activity.

Chen Ming issued a command for the Insect Race warships to tear open the corpse and extract the Egg Casing.

Although the Insect Race could not directly handle it, the Insect Race was not alone; they also had support from Chen Ming.

Chen Ming had numerous tools to capture the Egg Casing from a distance using various means, including force fields and magnetic fields.

However, just as he issued the command, the Star-Eater’s corpse suddenly changed.

As the stellar material inside its body was expelled, the corpse seemed to begin melting due to a sudden drop in temperature, dissolving into a colorless, odorless, and nearly unobservable clear gel with little viscosity.

Chen Ming immediately re-immersed the corpse in the star, barely saving the remaining half of the corpse.

Nevertheless, in those brief seconds, the Star-Eater’s corpse had reduced to only its upper half.

The lower half, except for the Egg Casing, had entirely melted into the gel-like substance.

Fortunately, the Insect Race fleet reacted quickly, taking action before these substances fell into the star, preserving the majority of them.

Chen Ming cautiously let the Insect Queen taste a little.

As expected, no genetic material was acquired.

This was quite normal.

The Star-Eater was clearly not a carbon-based organism and might even be a form of hydrogen-based life, utterly lacking genes.

Just like how the Plane Nightmare is a manifest result of negative matter, impossible to conveniently acquire what Chen Ming desired solely through consumption.

However, the situation this time was somewhat better than the case of the Plane Nightmare.

Because the Insect Queen understood the nature and structure of this material, it implied that the Insect Queen could attempt to replicate it.

And this substance could be named Star-Eater Fluid.

It can form a kind of isolation layer structure under high heat or energy supply conditions.

Similar to the material Chen Ming found that functions like a Dyson Sphere, though its effect is considerably weaker than a Dyson Sphere.

It can either be used to isolate the temperature of the star or to constitute the Star-Eater itself.

The Egg Casing still intact in the lower half of the Star-Eater’s corpse also seemed capable of secreting this material on its own.

Chen Ming roughly understood the Star-Eater’s purpose for coming to this planet.

It was for reproduction.

It would first parasitize on a star, secreting fluid on the star’s surface to trap the entire star’s heat within the star, then construct a Star-Eater’s egg development nest within the star.

This Egg Casing was the evidence, holding the most direct value on the Star-Eater’s corpse.

And the material of most indirect value would undoubtedly be the Star-Eater Fluid, a substance that might enable the successful construction of a Dyson Sphere.

Chen Ming was eager to take this Egg Casing for study.

However, he did not make an immediate decision but glanced at the star soaking the half body of the Star-Eater.

Following Chen Ming fleet’s attacks, which had torn open the surface layer of fluid covering the star by the Star-Eater, this area of the star had temporarily returned to normal.