The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 142 "Tail stabilized armor-piercing projectile"

The muscles squirmed, transporting a slender warhead with a cone-shaped structure into the gun chamber, and began to inject propellant into the reaction chamber, getting ready for launch.

Under the cover of other saw-toothed saw ants, Lin Yi controlled this individual to bend its abdomen, pointing the nozzle at the end forward, and then secreted enzyme tissue. The two liquids in the propellant reacted violently immediately, producing high-temperature and high-pressure gas, pushing the warhead It quickly came out of its chamber and shot towards a giant horseshoe crab.

Immediately, behind the warhead, four short flat structures quickly unfolded to form four projectile wings, allowing the warhead to remain stable in the air, and shot towards the head of the giant horseshoe crab with a shrill whistling sound!

The warhead itself is a smaller-sized individual with a conical shape, a streamlined front end, and a cylindrical tail end.

The front part is composed of an extremely hard exoskeleton layer with no living cell tissue, while the rear part, except for the extremely rudimentary nervous system, is a gland that stores two kinds of liquids and enzymes, which serve as the "charge" of the warhead warhead.

At the very end, there are four flat appendages with a structure similar to elytra. When the warhead is in the chamber, these four structures are close to the surface of the projectile. When the warhead comes out of the chamber, these four pairs of appendages open and adjust. The angle forms a "bounce wing" to help the warhead better stabilize its body shape.

At this time, the warhead was stabbed by the four-piece elastic wing structure and roared towards the huge body of the giant horseshoe crab spider.

The Giant Horseshoe Spider has a foot span of about five meters, not counting the appendages, and the length of its main body is also about three meters. It can be called a giant, and there is no chance that this projectile will miss.

Amidst the whistling sound, the tip of the warhead instantly sank into the body of the giant horseshoe crab. The exoskeleton, which was strong and could withstand shotgun blasts, was as fragile as paper in front of the new 2 warheads, and was easily penetrated.

Subsequently, under Lin Yi's control, the two liquids and enzymes inside the projectile immediately began to react violently. The violent, high-temperature and high-pressure gas with nowhere to vent immediately burst the shell of the warhead!

Blue blood and tissue fragments were sprayed out from the mouth of the giant horseshoe crab along with a small amount of meat. Although there were only a few cracks on the outside, inside the body, the flesh and blood tissue of the giant horseshoe crab had been destroyed by the warhead that exploded inside. It was blown to pieces and died on the spot.

The other two saw-toothed saw ants loaded with new warheads also selected their targets and fired the "single-head bullets" aimed at large and heavily armored targets, directly at the other two giant horseshoe crab spiders.

The Giant Horseshoe Spider and the hive mind of the hive behind it also realized that something was wrong, and took steps to avoid it. However, their heavy bodies made of heavy armor found it difficult to dodge the projectiles fired by the Saw Ants. difficulty.

Whistling, tearing and popping sounds continued, and the other two giant horseshoe crabs also died on the spot.

Lin Yi originally planned to use such projectiles against the enemy's tomb-like mounds. Since the mounds they built were built in a construction method similar to termite mounds, they had a high hardness, so Lin Yi came up with this idea. He tried to use a crooked move to explode the mound directly.

As a result, he did not wait for the opportunity to attack the mound. Instead, he happened to encounter a heavy armor class like the Giant Horseshoe Spider, which played the original role of this type of ammunition.

That's right, because the Saw Ant uses a smoothbore barrel structure, the warhead cannot obtain rotational force through the rifling, and therefore cannot maintain stability through spin.

Therefore, when Lin Yi designed the ammunition, he chose the fin-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile used by later tanks and also suitable for smoothbore guns, which is commonly known as "steel needle".

However, because the structure of the bullet holder is relatively complicated to produce, and currently, Lin Yi does not have much armor-piercing needs, he does not need to make the warhead structure too slender. Instead of using a sub-caliber warhead, resulting in excess armor-piercing capability, it is better to use full-caliber armor-piercing bullets normally and increase the charge, so that they can cause stronger damage after entering the target's body, which is a greater "after-effect".

Therefore, the final result is such a four-dimensional tail-stabilized full-caliber armor-piercing projectile.

In order to solve the functions of tail fin expansion, timing fuze and other functions, the warhead itself is a living grade individual, allowing it to independently deploy the warhead fins and control the timing of detonation, causing greater damage to the enemy.

Before the appearance of the giant horseshoe crab, this brand-new bomb type was just a casual test for Lin Yi, but now, the emergence of the giant horseshoe crab has given it meaning - let the crazy-toothed saw ant face a giant horseshoe crab with such a heavy body. The level of the exoskeleton also has enough attack power to destroy it.

With all the giant horseshoe crabs dead, the final outcome of this battle was no longer suspenseful.

The remaining terrestrial spiders, ancient web-winged cockroaches and the original wingless cockroaches are no match for the combined efforts of the ferocious saw ants and the fire-breathing saw ants. It is only a matter of time before they are wiped out.

But the appearance of the giant horseshoe crab gave Lin Yi some other ideas.

Evolution itself is an endless arms race. The battles between nest groups have intensified the intensity of this arms race, just like Lin Yi's arms race with the Straight Spiral Stone Nest Group.

He created micronized torpedoes, and the Orthogonal Nests responded with the Nether Torpedo. When the Fearless Troopers came out, self-exploding torpedoes appeared on the opponent's side. The subsequent carrier horns, inkjet horns, and even the "Kraken" were all of this armament. product of competition.

At present, the emergence of terrestrial arthropod nests means that a new round of arms race has begun.

Lin Yi created the saw-toothed saw ant, and the other party developed swarms of ancient web-winged cockroaches to deal with it. He improved the fire-breathing saw ant, and the other party created the giant horseshoe spider to deal with the crazy-toothed saw ants and fire-breathing saw ants. What will happen in the future is yet to be known.

Therefore, although Lin Yi currently has the upper hand with the help of the Crazy-toothed Saw Ants, in order to avoid repeating the mistake of being caught off guard by the self-exploding horned stones and other new levels of the right spiral horned stone nests, this time, he planned to strike first.

Although I don’t know what the opponent’s next level will look like, what characteristics it will have, and how to target it. But in a sense, Lin Yi could perform many more operations on land than in the water at that time.

On the one hand, it is the enhanced gene editing ability brought about by the various gene sequences absorbed during this period. On the other hand, it is that on land, from the memories of previous lives, Lin Yi can copy and evolve more.

After all, human civilization in later generations already has a fairly complete land combat system after going through the racial wars between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the primitive period to the two world wars in the industrial era.

Now, Lin Yi just needs to imitate this efficient killing system and implement it in a way suitable for the biological civilization of true social hives.

(End of this chapter)