Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1135
The tenacity to fight a losing battle was perhaps the biggest difference between a common troop and an ace troop!
"What the heck is that?"
Even Li Yao, as an experienced refiner, had never seen such a weird… what seemed to be a war puppet before.
The iron caltrops that made up its torso and limbs seemed to be space torpedoes that were even larger in size, but the spiritual and magnetic field that constructed the veins and nerves around its body was the key. How was that created? And how was such an enormous giant controlled in such a fluent and flawless way?
"It's—it's the 'Super Deviant Spirit' that Professor Mo Xuan produced, the most awesome artificial intelligence in war!"
A light space shuttle flew close under the protection of more than ten soldiers of the federal army. Li Yao observed carefully, only to discover that the two-seated cockpit of the space shuttle had been simply modified. The pilot was sitting in the front seat, but a huge cluster of shivering 'jelly' was on the seat behind. Inside the 'jelly' was a weird super crystal processor.
It was Liu Wenshan, the refiner who was trapped in the Spiriters' Realm and forced to join Professor Mo Xuan's research project. Li Yao, Long Yangjun, and the federal army had rescued him just now.
The field that he was most adept at was exactly crystal processor automation. Artificial intelligence was his strong suit!
"Do you still remember what I said? I overheard from some members of the research team that Professor Mo Xuan produced nineteen super artificial intelligences after decades of hard work. Other than the two failed products that were eventually obliterated due to logic mistakes and data overflow, seventeen were successful!"
Telepathic thoughts were spreading out of the weird metal brain as Liu Wenshan said in a hurry, "The seventeen super artificial intelligences are different from the other Deviant Spirits that run real-time calculations with the support of big data. Their computational ability is at least a hundred times higher than that of the common Deviant Spirits and very close to the way of thinking of real humans. They have also been endowed with marvelous techniques by Professor Mo Xuan or maybe the extraterrestrial devils!
"According to the seasoned specialists in our research team, such super artificial intelligences even have a special code name in the army of ghosts. They are known as 'Hyper Spirits'!
"Most of the Hyper Spirits are designed to hack and control planetary-level defense arrays, flagship-level warships, and mainframe crystal processors that control an entire space zone. But to ensure security, Professor Mo Xuan seems to have refined one or two Hyper Spirits for single combat purposes. The monster in front of our eyes must be one of them!"
Hyper Spirits…
There was no telling how many Deviant Spirits Professor Mo Xuan had produced in the past few decades, but only nineteen of them were qualified to be known as 'Hyper Spirits'. Two of them had even failed during the experiments!
Even Professor Mo Xuan had failed despite the technical support of the extraterrestrial devils. It was not hard to imagine the complexity and magnificence of the Hyper Spirits.
The computational ability and databases of the Hyper Spirits were powerful enough to hack the mainframe crystal processors of the planetary-level defense arrays and flagships. No wonder they were able to build and control such a complicated force field model!
"Those things are not easy to deal with," Luo Qisheng also said solemnly. "I don't know much about the so-called Hyper Spirits, but I know that the torso and limbs of the giant are made of the most advanced space torpedoes of the federation known as 'Abyss Jellyfish'!
"Those space torpedoes are different from the regular goods just now. Their explosive units have been embedded with high-pressure, artificial marrow crystals. Their surfaces are also carved with ten times more power rune arrays than common space torpedoes. Their speed, agility, and blast are dozens of times greater than common space torpedoes!
"Do you see the crazily flying chains around them? They are the magnetic attraction devices that guide them to fly to the target with the most intense spiritual waves automatically. If the target is not powerful enough, it may even be attracted to them before it is surrounded and blown into pieces!
"The Abyss Jellyfish, as super space torpedoes, are very expensive. It is not worthwhile to deal with regular targets with them. They are specially designed to deal with Colossi!"
"The Colossi?" Li Yao's eyes flickered abruptly.
Luo Qisheng nodded. "Correct. More strictly speaking, it is designed to hinder and block the operation of the Colossi in order to buy more time for the cannons, troops, and Colossi on our side to gather!"
"Is that so?" Li Yao sneered. "Can it stop a Colossus?"
"No magical equipment can really stop a Colossus except for another Colossus." Luo Qisheng smiled bitterly. "But right now, so many 'Abyss Jellyfish' have been turned into such a magnificent structure after Professor Mo Xuan's crazy modification under the enhancement of the 'Hyper Spirits'! There are no Colossi in Hundred Flowers City. The dozens of Colossi that the federation has are all deployed at the capital, the factories of warships, and the major mining bases!
"There's nothing we can do about the monster!"
Narrowing his eyes, Li Yao stared at the ravaging iron troll. He absorbed the spiritual energy and the nutrition materials at a much higher speed. The deep green gel was turning transparent at a visible rate.
He and Long Yangjun looked at each other, both noticing the hunger in each other's eyes.
"We… have failed. We didn't expect that there would be something like this Hyper Spirit." Looking at the soldiers in the front line which were on the brink of collapse, Luo Qisheng sounded hopeless. "The army of ghosts are regrouping. After they finish regrouping and launch a counterattack, our army will completely collapse. Even the bravest soldier will only end up as a target for the army of ghosts. After the collapse, it will be impossible for us to gather an army of such a scale and morale!"
"Then, I guess we don't have a choice now." Li Yao widened his eyes. Every muscle on his body was vibrating like a high-frequency dagger, breaking the medical gel apart immediately and turning it into vague green mist that covered his body.
Long Yangjun broke out of the medical gel, too. Staring at the iron troll, which was on a rampage far away, she calculated the combat pattern and movement of the enemy while turning a Cosmos Ring on her thumb that was from the primeval age unhurriedly in the meantime.
"This must be Professor Mo Xuan's trump card," said Li Yao. "I assume that he must be very annoyed right now, because he has to show all his trump cards when the game just got started!"
"I suppose he is," Long Yangjun said. "Even if Professor Mo Xuan has indeed produced nineteen Hyper Spirits, most of them are certainly prepared to hack strategic mainframe crystal processors instead of fighting solo battles."
"Let's just hope so," Li Yao mumbled. "We will run out of cards after we play the jokers!"
"If I may ask, what are you going to do?" Luo Qisheng was slightly dazed. Realizing what the two of them were trying to do, he was both excited and embarrassed. "Don't go there! You have done enough for the federation! Your physical strength and spiritual energy have not recovered yet. Your crystal suits and Ares Extensions have been blown apart! Even though you are experts in the Nascent Soul Stage, you will be no match for it. It is a terrible weapon designed to slow down the Colossi!
"This is our war. There's no reason why you should be sacrificed. Just retreat. We will cover you! Two high-level Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators shouldn't die for nothing. We only have the hope of the final victory if the available forces are preserved!"
"You… will cover us?" Li Yao felt his eyes turn hot. He recalled the day in the Heaven's Origin Sector a hundred years ago when he was covered, protected, and supported by a million people under the flying flags.
He patted Luo Qisheng's shoulder so hard that he almost broke the guy's armor.
He could not help but grin. With glamorous brilliance beaming out of his eyes, he said, one word after another, "Colonel Luo, thank you for your kind offer. However, there are two things that I must tell you—
"Firstly, you will soon know that this is not just your war. This is also… a war of mine.
"Secondly, we will not retreat or die for nothing!
"Abyss Jellyfish, Iron Troll, weapons born to stop the Colossi? We shall see if you are capable of stopping the Colossi!"
Before he finished the sentence, Li Yao and Long Yangjun accelerated into two streaks of dazzling brilliance and marched back into the heated battlefield!
Chapter 1757: Unstoppable! |
In the front of the battlefield, the soldiers of the federal army who were trapped in the attack range of the iron troll were all grasped by desperation because of the mental attack.
"Too—too strong!"
"What kind of monster is this? Why is it attacking in such a weird way?"
"Ahh!"
The enemy did not have a real body. Or rather, it had an erratic and extensible body. When it was faced with the ordinary soldiers who were relatively weak, all it needed to do was to impose a strong push on the iron caltrops, and the collision would be enough to shatter the soldiers' bodies. When faced with the commanders in the Refinement Stage or the Building Foundation Stage, three to five 'Abyss Jellyfish', the super space torpedoes, would come at them together and be detonated at the same time after they were attracted to the commanders with the magnetic field. The Cultivators on the battlefield, who were small in number in the first place, suffered great casualties!
Under the cover of the iron troll, the army of ghosts on the opposite side successfully completed regrouping. They formed piton-shaped units in groups of three to five. The exhaust flames on their backs that were getting brighter and brighter suggested that they were about to launch a fatal counterattack!
The federal army's battle line that was slightly disordered at the beginning began to slow down, halt and disperse.
Some soldiers were hesitating, some of them were slowing down, some were launching all the ammunitions and spiritual energy on their crystal suits out of fear only to miss all the targets, and some started to charge at the iron troll with passionate roars!
"For the federal army!" Luo Qisheng roared. His throat rolled for a long time, but he could not say another syllable. He simply drew the chainsword that had accompanied him for decades, which he could not bear to throw away even though it had been maintained and strengthened for too many times, and aimed the tip at the iron troll. All the spiritual energy of the Core Formation Stage Cultivator blew out of his abdomen while he followed Li Yao and Long Yangjun's charge!
With everything coming to this point, I shall die without regrets!
When the iron troll glared at him with its weird eyes that were made of deep blue flames of spiritual energy, the old colonel suddenly had such a weird thought.
It was a great way to conclude his hundred years of service in the army. Not bad at all. But it was a pity that…
Right when Luo Qisheng thought that he was about to suffer the iron troll's most powerful mental attack, the most unbelievable scene happened!
The thousand data streams that were projected onto his retina were all jumping crazily, as if two very powerful sources of interference had appeared in front and disrupted all the probe magical equipment on his crystal suit.
The next second, a few data streams soared and soon surpassed the limits!
Certain unbelievably strong objects were summoned to this world!
"This is—"
The seasoned Colonel slowly opened his mouth, finding it hard to believe his eyes. In his trance, he was even wondering if he was having an illusion on the verge of death!
"This—this—this is—"
The soldiers of the federal army, who were all mired in the desperate battle, saw the most unforgettable scene in their entire life in shock!
The cold universe was like a dark swamp.
But from the middle of the invisible swamp, two magnificent, daunting iron giants were slowly ascending out of the darkness, stretching out their limbs and spiritual energy to their hearts' content!
One of them was like a black skeleton, surrounded by deep red thorny veins. Its head was divided into four parts by a huge cross. At the center of the cross, the glittering sole eye was emitting a brilliance that was even more dazzling than a supernova.
The other one was in black and white. It was mysterious and unpredictable, looking like both an angel who had descended from heaven for salvation and a great devil who was about to destroy everything ruthlessly!
In terms of size…
The two giants that were no more than fifty years tall were utterly incomparable to the iron troll that was more than four hundred meters tall after it was completely expanded.
From the perspective of the boundless universe, such a height was nothing but a grain of sand.
However, the flames of spiritual energy that were blossoming from the runes on the surface of the giants, the joints of the plate of the armor, and the eyes of the two giants were burning furiously and expanding into two vivid images in the void that were a hundred times larger than their real bodies!
"Hooo!"
The black skeleton bound by crimson thorns, which seemed to have just crawled out of the bottom level of hell, roared at the iron troll, triggering red ripples that smashed the blue ripples released by the iron troll into pieces. Even the deep blue aura around the iron troll was affected, and its enormous body size was shrinking and became less compact than before!
When the two powerful mental attacks collided brutally and the final victor was obvious, all the soldiers of the federal army around immediately realized that—
They were Colossi, the ultimate single weapons to roam and dominate the universe!
"C—C—Colossi!"
"They're our Colossi! They are on our side!"
The arrival of a Colossus on a space battlefield was often the most powerful excitant for the soldiers on its side. There was no need to mention what kind of effect two Colossi could bring at such a critical moment!
The feeling of controlling a Colossus was completely different from the feeling to control a crystal suit.
Even the most advanced crystal suit would have a tiny lag during control, as if when one was trying to scratch their feet through boots.
However, the Colossus adopted an entirely different method of control. It was especially so for Li Yao, who had the assistance of Little Black, the protective and ancillary artificial intelligence specially designed for the Colossus in the Star Ocean Imperium. When he was soaked inside the body of Little Black, he felt that he was completely melted into the Colossus. He was the Tartarean Skeleton, and the Tartarean Skeleton was him!
"You are trying to stop the Colossi with such a thing?"
Sensing that his telepathic thoughts were spreading to the Tartarean Skeleton's limbs, Li Yao was so excited that he could barely control himself. His left eye was as red as blood, and his right eye was as dark as ink. As weird brilliance beamed out of his two eyes, the flames of light behind the Tartarean Skeleton focused into dozens of narrow and long wings, pushing it to charge at the iron troll.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
He was ten percent faster than the iron troll. Passing through the abdomen of the iron troll seven times, he detonated the super space torpedoes that made up the iron troll with the dozens of wings of black fire that were almost invincible sharp blades.
Not only was the iron troll unable to follow the Tartarean Skeleton's pace when it was waving the four limbs, even the blast of the super space torpedoes after they were detonated were left far behind by Li Yao, too. Also, because they exploded right inside the body of the iron troll, they even increased the instability of the magnetic field of the iron troll. After a few stabs, the number of the super space torpedoes had been greatly reduced, and the deep blue electric arcs were much dimmer than before, unable to keep the giant in the shape of a human any longer.
"Ahh!"
The iron troll deserved to be a Hyper Spirit that could simulate the feelings and emotions of humans perfectly with the immense computational ability. It was actually raising its head and screaming miserably, giving Li Yao a weird feeling that a brutal soul was truly sealed in the middle of the super space torpedoes!
However, the next second, the Tartarean Skeleton uttered sharp alarms. Three tentacles made of hundreds of space torpedoes blew at him from behind without a sound. The chains among the space torpedoes were connected to each other, constituting a cage of destruction!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of enormous light balls immediately consumed the Tartarean Skeleton. As it turned out, the iron troll had altered the magnetic field model in time and turned into an enormous ball from the human shape. Tentacles and flagella were protruding out of the ball anytime, which were rather similar to the Abyss Jellyfish, the basic units that made up the monster.
"Be careful. There's no time and place for you to maintain the Colossus here!"
The Yin Yang, Long Yangjun's Colossus, dashed forward, leaving countless blurred shadows behind. All the blurred shadows dispersed around the iron troll and raised black-and-white light blades that were purely focused with spiritual energy. Almost a thousand light blades pierced into the body of the iron troll's ball-shaped body!
The light blades were not attacking the space torpedoes but affecting the magnetic field and the communication network of the iron troll. As a result, the space torpedoes were removed from its body one after another, when the veins and nerves of the monster were cut apart!
The space torpedoes that had been removed from its body were naturally detonated by the soldiers of the federal army!
More and more space torpedoes were thrown away, and the iron troll was smaller and smaller in size. The forms that it could take became more and more simple. It was much easier to grasp its attack model now!
