As the head of the expedition, Shen Chao has not given up on any of the expedition team members in any mission. Now, with Hargrett's disappearance, he is not ready to abandon this principle either. But he was well aware of the dangers of keeping the brigade here.

The longer they stay here, the greater the danger they face. That's right, the Covenant is not desperate enough to bombard the ruins with naval artillery, because they are still counting on finding the "treasure" in the depths of the ruins.

Although they could not know the true origin of the expedition, even the most stupid enemy could be sure that the members of the expedition in the ruins were all human through the information gathered by Guò. And it is likely that because of this, they will be regarded as their enemies, and the people sent by the UNSC. Based on this, the Covenant will not know about the true force comparison between the expedition and them.

The expedition's presence here is tantamount to proving to these Covenant army leaders that there is a treasure in the ruins that they don't know about, and in order to obtain this treasure, the Covenant army will inevitably try to attack again after tonight.

But eventually, perhaps it won't be long before they back down in the face of huge casualty figures and look for a safer way to deal with them. And they will soon realize that the safest way is to destroy the ruins completely, destroying the "treasures" in the ruins along with the human enemy.

Although their current location is located thousands of meters underground, the architectural strength of the ruins themselves is also high. It seems indestructible, but this ruin is not a space fortress after all, and it is still fairly easy to destroy all the physical buildings here with a slow attack from the orbit with a naval cannon.

"Yes, our enemy is likely to make the decision to burn in the face of heavy casualties, but that's exactly why we need to hurry up and strengthen our defenses. What we need is time to figure out what's going on in the Think Tank, not just a show of force and increase the Covenant's casualty figures! Custer broke through the key point in this dilemma.

That's right, as the side of the expedition. What they need most now is not to effectively inflict damage on the Covenant as they try to explore the ruins, but to buy enough time to solve their problems, and the way to buy time is not only through straightforward combat.

Shen Chao quickly understood what Custer meant, what he said about strengthening the defense and his own imagination of strengthening the defense was not the product of the same idea, the strengthening of the defense in Shen Chao's heart meant sending more troops, using more powerful weapons to destroy a large number of Star Alliance troops in a more aggressive way inside and outside the ruins.

Custer's mention yì is a literal reinforcement of defense. That is to artificially strengthen the existing physical obstacles in the ruins, making the excavation of the Covenant extremely slow. They didn't need to inflict any massive damage on the Covenant's forces during the whole process, as long as they were slow enough to lose their threat.

There is no doubt that this building of Custer is more suitable for their current situation. Guided by this new idea, Shen Chao ordered the withdrawal of the troops who were still in ambush in the passage at this time, and instead connected to a large quarry in the rear belonging to the Plane Reconstruction Committee through the Guò Space-Time Gate, preparing to block all the passages leading to the depths of the ruins with the boulders and other building materials produced in the quarry.

At the same time, he also mobilized a group of engineering mechs to help with the work. After all. Inside the space-constrained ruins, large humanoid mechs are far more efficient in this type of work than traditional construction vehicles.

At his request, the quarry in the rear was quickly requisitioned, and hundreds of transports and a large number of mechs were brought in to participate in the operation to block the passage. In the beginning, their speed is limited, after all, it is like a relay game, it takes a certain amount of run-in to become proficient.

After almost half an hour of running-in and acclimatization. The progress of blocking the passage began to speed up in vain. The Atlas mech once again shows its adaptability here, when used as an engineering mech. Its table xiàn is much more efficient than in combat.

With the help of these humanoid mechs, the progress of the project was 800% faster than when it was only construction vehicles and personnel. With such a huge increase in efficiency, the seemingly tall and wide relic tunnel was quickly blocked.

In just one night, they blocked the nearly 100-meter-long road in the main passage with all kinds of building materials from the quarry and other areas. By the time the new forces sent by the Covenant finally returned to the final advance of their brother forces yesterday the next day, they were heavily armed and saw the tightly blocked passage instead of the explosions and ambushes they had expected.

In the absence of other options. The elite commander on the scene had to let his soldiers search for digging tools to advance while cleaning up the corpses along the way. Yesterday's advance force suffered so many casualties that the survivors retreated without even having time to confirm the casualties of their own troops.

While carefully searching for ways to break down obstacles, the Covenant's forces searched for survivors along the way. Yesterday they withdrew too hastily, and many of the wounded were left in the passage. The Covenant's headquarters were in a panic again last night. No one was sent to venture in to search for survivors, so the final rescue operation could only take place at this point.

However, after all, they arrived too late, most of the wounded left behind by the Covenant had already died, and the few remaining ones with strong vitality were also refilled or captured by the expedition. The few "wounded" they can find now are not what they thought they were.

At this time, at the exit of the ruins, a wounded boar beast was limping to the nearest field hospital with the support of other clansmen. If we look closely, we will see that this boar beast is very familiar, because it is Raqqa, who was captured by the expedition before.

The other day, he was in the prisoner of war camp of the Legendary Plane, assisting the Parliamentary Army in managing the Covenant's prisoners of war. As a result of his outstanding work, he became the senior head of an entire sub-district in a prisoner-of-war camp, regaining some of his freedom and being paid.

At this time, the reason why he appeared in his mother plane as a wounded man was certainly not because he escaped, in fact, even if he was asked to leave the control area of the Space-Time Council, the current Raqqa would not necessarily be willing. Because his reputation has been completely ruined among the Covenant prisoners of war.

In order to save his life as much as possible and take revenge on the elite who bullied him, in the prisoner of war camp, Raqqa and some other wild boar beast interpreters used their power to rectify many prisoners of war of other races.

If the prisoners of war captured by the expedition are released in the future, many of them will surely take revenge as much as possible for "aiding and abetting" them in the prisoner of war camp. Raqqa and several other boar beast "survivors" were here because the expedition needed someone to ventilate the outside world.

Having worked for the council for some time, he gained the initial trust of the expedition and became a temporary spy. In the coming days, it will observe the situation in the field hospital outside the ruins, and notify the expedition team at the ruins if there is any important change.

Like other boarmon of the same kind, Rakka's injuries were fake, and the subcutaneous tissue of his head near his ears was implanted with a short-range transmitter that allowed him to report his findings in a covert manner.

When Raqqa walked out of the ruins, the sun had only just risen, and the surface of Chamhak had just come to life. In the field hospital, not far away, the atmosphere was completely different. A large number of wounded Covenant patients are struggling to survive in field hospitals.

As a boar beast with a low status and no serious injuries, Rakka, who impersonated someone else's identity, naturally would not be at the front of the queue for rescue by the Covenant's doctors. Like several other boar beasts who received similar tasks, Raqqa was able to sneak into the camp without anyone noticing.

As spies temporarily recruited by some expeditions, Raqqa's mission is simple, and in fact, there is only one, that is, to give a window of time before the Covenant prepares to strike the ruins with naval guns.

If the Covenant's fleet commanders eventually lose patience and decide to carry out an orbital strike, they will inevitably evacuate all nearby forces first. The scale of such an operation will never go unnoticed. And as long as this happens, Raqqa and they can give an early warning, so that the expedition team deep in the ruins has enough time to put everything to the end.

In this case, the stealth battle between the expedition and the Covenant army in the ruins continued. To the surprise of both sides, there was no substantive exchange of fire between them for the next two or three days.

After seeing that the Covenant had really begun to dig up the obstacles they had set up honestly, and at such a slow pace, they even turned off the automatic defense system inside the ruins. Under such circumstances, the contest between the two sides has completely turned into a contest of excavation speed and landfill speed.

The Covenant troops gradually adapted to this atmosphere, and in order to speed up the progress of the tunneling, they also specially mobilized professional tunneling equipment. However, even according to the most optimistic estimates, it would take months to dig a passage to the bottom of the ruins, as the expedition had already blocked more than 1 kilometer of the passage with increasingly hard building materials from the rear.

As Custer had said, with the pressure of casualties gone, the Covenant forces outside began to become more patient, and the expedition bought the time they needed. The only bad news is that there is still no news from Hagrett.

In order to find out what happened in the think tank, and most importantly, whether Hargret was still alive, Shen Chao had screened a group of volunteers and prepared to send them to the think tank according to the previous method, so that they could investigate what happened. But before he could send these people on this mission, a new change took place. (To be continued......)

PS: First of all, thank you for the monthly pass of "Bastard + Level 3", and I will change a chapter tonight, and if no one calls me out tomorrow, I will stay at home and code the words.

See you tomorrow