After two full days of travel, Warrif's caravan finally reached the Eastern Pass, the final point of separation between the mountains and the desert of Canduras.

And Xue Hua's swarm fleet also officially broke out of the fold orbit on the second day of the caravan's departure and came to the vicinity of the target point indicated by the Star Spirit Beacon.

After the turnover, what appeared in front of the Zerg fleet was an asteroid that was almost half the size of a moon in a huge asteroid belt.

Stokoff strictly adhered to the mission plan set by Xue Hua, and first asked the accompanying Superintendent to scan the asteroid and confirm that there were no other biological signals on the asteroid except for the biological signals of the star spirits, and then ordered the swarm fleet to start approaching the asteroid.

At first, the plan went smoothly, the Zerg fleet successfully entered the asteroid's gravitational circle, and the king insects also smoothly put the swarm troops on the surface of the asteroid.

However, when the Monitor King Worm was following the Astral Spirit's biological signals and preparing to approach the Astral Facility, it was attacked by the Astral Spirit's automatic defense system, the Photon Turret.

The Photon Turret is the base defense of the Starling, and these unmanned auto-defensive weapons fire Photon Cannons at any unit identified as a hostile target within range.

However, the activation of the Photon Turret requires the Keldarin Crystal to power it, but it is known that the Astral Spirit's backup base will not have any Keldarin Crystals until it is activated.

This is to prevent certain unnecessary mechanical wear and tear.

And this means that the star spirit facility that appears in front of the Zerg troops now has been activated.

After learning about this situation, Stokoff did not rush to act rashly, but asked the king worm and the supervising king worm to spread out on the entire asteroid to confirm whether there was only this astral spirit facility on the asteroid.

This move quickly proved to be very wise.

Because the Overseers soon discovered another Star Spirit Facility hidden in a crater less than twenty kilometers away from the first Star Spirit Facility.

It was an astral hub.

This is what the game terminology calls the "Protoss base".

However, it is a bit strange that although this Astral Spirit Hub is still operating, the king worm has not detected any biological signals in it.

All psionic signals come from those astral buildings.

Although the King Worms were unable to make in-depth observations due to the presence of the Photon Battery, judging from the existing observations, the functional buildings in this Star Spirit Base are inevitably too strange.

The entire base complex covers an area of about several hundred square kilometers, but the number of photon batteries alone accounts for one-third of the total area.

The entire outside of this base is surrounded by dense photon batteries, exactly like the situation of the first Star Spirit facility.

With the exception of the Photon Turret, all units exposed to the Swarm Scout are only Probes and Mechanical Sentinels, and all Astral Buildings exposed to the Swarm Scout are only Furnaces, Crystal Towers, Portals, and Hubs.

There are no fanatics that a normal Astral Spirit military base should have, and there is no control core.

Moreover, the base may appear to be thriving on the surface - probes are constantly collecting unidentified minerals from the craters formed by meteorite impact and returning them to the hub, and mechanical sentinels are constantly patrolling between photon batteries.

But Stokoff always felt that something was wrong with the base.

So far, all of them have been mechanical units of the Astral Spirit, and not even a single living Astral Lifeform has been seen.

But the biological signal detection report of the monitoring king insect shows that there should be a living star spirit in these two star spirit facilities, right?

What's more, if there was no one to preside over this base, then what was they launched in the first place?

Show Xingling's scientific and technological strength?

Stokkov did not dwell on it for long, and gave the order for a full-scale attack.

No matter what mystery is inside, just knock open the outer shell and poke your head in to see if it's over?

Of course, the attack orders were only for the two Hive Lords and the saboteurs who had already landed successfully.

Since the defenses of the Star Spirits are all photon turrets, it is the best choice to choose the unit with the longest range to dismantle it step by step.

The two Hive Insect Lords quickly attacked first, their massive bodies flying towards the second base of the Star Spirit, and stopping at the edge of the attack range of the Photon Turret.

Then, several small crab-like bugs, about the size of a table, appeared on their backs.

These little bugs are nestworms, they are the biological cannonballs of the nest lords, and they are also the origin of their name.

The nest bugs were launched at a great speed with the help of the gliding track on the back of the nest lord, and the photon turret instantly sensed the invasion of the swarm, and they turned the muzzle of the cannon and began to fire photon cannons at the swarm of the nest insects.

Unfortunately, that didn't help.

The hives are very fast, and most of them avoid the spherical shells of these photon cannons, and only a few are hit by the photon cannons, and then dissolve into nothingness in a burst of white light.

Moreover, the number of nest worms is also very large, the nest worm lord can project a dozen nest worms at a time at the target, and the interval between the two launches is very short, so an army of nest worms can quickly form on the ground.

The nest insect cannonball quickly hit the defense line of the Star Spirit Photon Cannon head-on, and since all Star Spirit units, whether it is a building or a class, have shields, the nest insect that hits the target first just smashes into the shield of the Photon Cannon.

But these shields couldn't last long under the saturation blows of the two nest insect lords, and soon the shields of the photon cannon shattered into spots of light in the sky.

Without the protection of the shield, the photon cannon is simply not enough to resist the attack of the nest insects that have gathered tens of thousands of nest insects in a short period of time, especially when the number of these nest insects is still increasing.

As one photon cannon after another turned into floating cosmic garbage in the firelight, the outer defense line of the Star Spirit Base was quickly torn open.

A large swarm of mechanical sentinels poured in from the center of the base, and these combat drones created by the astral spirits to reverse the numerical disadvantage of the army on the battlefield had quite good combat power and some ability to use psionic technology.

They create an impenetrable obstruction field on the battlefield to break up enemy units or block attacks from enemy melee units, which is useless against large units, but can be used against small units.

The Mechanical Sentinel can also center itself and create a defensive shield called the "Guardian's Shield" in a hemispherical area around it, which weakens the attacks of enemy ranged units against allies protected by the shield.

In addition to this, the Mechanical Sentinel also has the ability to create illusions, which can spawn illusions of two astral units, which are very fragile and cannot deal any damage to enemies, but can be used for reconnaissance missions or to bluff enemies.

The Mechanical Sentinels are a great combat unit, as they not only allow the Spirits to reduce their personnel damage, but they can also be used to carry out vigilant missions.

However, when these combat drones are faced with a tide of insects formed by tens of thousands of nest insects, even if their combat effectiveness is ten times stronger, it is useless.