Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1422
"If both questions are negative, what are you worried about? Carry out the order immediately and concentrate all the spiritual energy in the anti-air fire net. Aim all the anti-air magical equipment that can be launched at the flagship of the Godly Might Fleet. Make sure that it will be shot down in the first round of attack!"
"Understood!"
Yun Chenghua stood at attention. Then he bulged his eyes and said, "Report, the flagship of the Godly Might Fleet sent a request for communication!"
"Ignore it. Carry out the order."
Looking at the light beam, deep in thought, Lei Chenghu suddenly turned to Li Yao. "By estimation, our queen should be arriving soon, right?"
"Report!"
Before Li Yao replied, Yun Chenghua exclaimed in shock again, "Our far-end observatories have detected that objects of huge masses are tearing apart the barriers of the four-dimensional space and jumping to the Mystic Ice Sector quickly!"
"Hehe."
Lei Chenghu smiled and bared teeth as sharp as a tiger shark's. "Connect to the communication channel of the flagship of the Godly Might Fleet. Use their communication signals to increase the precision of your aiming. When the Heaven Battering Cannons are fully charged, launch them directly!"
Chapter 2227: War Tolerates No Mercy! |
The image of Dongfang Lei, the commander of the Godly Might Fleet, appeared on the light beam.
It was a handsome, vigorous young man who had eyebrows that looked like swords. His straight uniform highlighted his perfect and athletic body figure, as if it were part of his body. His attractive face was full of the pride of the upper-class men. One could tell at first look that he was a core descendent of the four Kurfürst families who was meant to control the lives of thousands of people after he was born.
Indeed, it was possible to distinguish him from Yun Chenghua just based on their faces.
One of them was a man who had no reliance in the family and was destined to spend his entire life suffering in the desolate land if there was no accident.
The other, however, had only come to the Godly Might Prison to gain more experience. This place was nothing more than a platform for him to climb to the higher sky.
Therefore, even though Dongfang Lei's military rank was lower than Yun Chenghua's and he was theoretically under the warden's command, he was, in fact, free to act on his own and did not need to bother with Yun Chenghua's orders.
It was also the reason why Li Linghai would rather infiltrate the deputy advisor and part of the captains of the Godly Might Fleet. Dongfang Lei, as the commander-general, was too tricky to deal with. It was impossible for him to be persuaded or bought over.
Lei Chenghu never thought to buy Dongfang Lei over either. He simply stared at the highest commander of the Godly Might Fleet emotionlessly.
Dongfang Lei, however, was greatly surprised by the mess in the control center as well as Lei Chenghu whose clothes were soaked in blood and whose left arm was gone.
Looking at Lei Chenghu and then at Yun Chenghua, who was commanding his subordinates to operate quickly next to him, Dongfang Lei immediately understood everything. Intense fear and fury spurted out of his eyes.
The fear and fury flashed quickly and were hidden in the deepest part of his pupils. Dongfang Lei took a deep breath and made the final attempt. "Marquis Liaohai, I surrender!"
Lei Chenghu made a "launch immediately" gesture at Yun Chenghua as he said casually, "Okay."
"The Heaven Battering Cannons have been fully charged with spiritual energy. Launching in the extreme bombardment mode!"
With dense sweat of blood leaking out of his forehead, Yun Chenghua clenched his fists. He looked at Dongfang Lei, not without ecstasy, and smashed the control panel hard!
At this moment—
The hundreds of small warships that belonged to the Godly Might Fleet had all broken into the atmosphere. Drifting below the sky and the clouds, they completely exposed their abdomens to the anti-air fire net of the Godly Might Prison.
In order to increase the speed of the descent and to boost the anti-gravity rune arrays, they did not even activate the spiritual shield to 100%. They never thought that their allies would bare the sharpest tusks at them.
Dongfang Lei's flagship was floating in the atmosphere, caught in a predicament.
By the time he discovered that he had been locked onto by four Heaven Battering Cannons and hundreds of anti-air weapons, there was already no time to either change the direction or to activate the spiritual shield!
A universal war had to follow the most ancient military common sense—that the firepower based on the continent was always higher than the firepower based on vehicles.
For even the super heavy warships more than ten kilometers long, it was already the limit to allocate one to two kilometers for the cabin of main weapons. It was needless to say that a starship could only accommodate limited fuel and ammunition. Even with the dozens of Cosmos Rings that were carried on board, it was not enough to sustain the long-time roaring of destructive cannons.
It was also the reason why the crystal suits and the Colossi prevailed in the war in space. Due to the restriction of the fuel and ammunition, both parties of the war had to adopt the most "cost-effective" way of fighting, which was the melee battles.
The firepower based on the continent, however, was totally different.
Even the smallest planet often had a diameter tens of thousands of meters larger than the length of a starship. Their sizes were even exponentially bigger.
Compared to the starships, which had limited rooms and had to worry about supplies all the time, a planet always had an infinite load of weapons and ammunition.
Some of the important military fortresses could totally dig a dozen kilometers into the ground to establish the appalling cannons, which could launch tons of bullets multiple times faster than the speed of sound with almost infinite fuel.
Unfortunately, the Godly Might Prison was such an "important military fortress". The four "Heaven Battering Cannons" that were deeply buried below the ground, if dug out and placed on the ground, would have been skyscrapers rising to the clouds. It was not hard to imagine how powerful they were!
What was ironic was that although the Imperium worked on the Godly Might Prison for hundreds of years and built such four super anti-air cannons at the consumption of tremendous resources, the first time they were used was to be aimed at the Imperium's own starships.
The Heaven Battering Cannons adopted a dual-attack mode with both super radiations and electromagnetic bullets. First of all, four mystic rays rose to the sky like a lightning storm and immediately locked Dongfang Lei's flagship from four angles, destroying the spiritual shield that had been raised in a hurry unstoppably.
In the end, four cannonballs filled with highly-explosive crystals, dragging daunting exhaust flames behind, broke the void like the claws of devils and snatched the enemy.
Dongfang Lei's flagship dodged hard. But the two parties were too close to each other, and the super radiations in the first wave significantly disrupted the anti-gravity rune arrays and the power units of the starship, making the starship unable to move at all as if it were caught in a vortex.
BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
With the price of almost tearing his starship apart, Dongfang Lei dodged the attack of the first highly-explosive cannonball. But the remote detonation rune array on the cannonball had been set in advance, and it exploded brutally when it was almost flying out of the atmosphere. The blast greatly disturbed his evasion, allowing the following three cannonballs to penetrate into his flagship one after another. Three deafening explosions, like a series of thunders, echoed in the front, middle, and rear parts of the flagship at the same time. The sky was immediately dyed red by the fireballs, only to be blackened by the intense smoke!
In the picture of communication, Dongfang Lei was completely consumed by the blast and the flames before he even had the chance to scream!
Despite the cruelty of the bombardment, Lei Chenghu did not let go of the flagship of the Godly Might Fleet that had been reduced to debris. He commanded Yun Chenghua to concentrate all the firepower on the ground, even including the single weapons of the spiritual puppets and the ground troops, to barrage the fireball in the sky crazily.
For a moment, ten thousand gold lines were blossoming in the sky and on the ground at the same time. The barrage almost dazzled everyone's eyes.
The spiritual energy of the Godly Might Prison went completely dry. Even the lights in the control center were flashing.
The flagship of the Godly Might Fleet had broken apart and fell to the snow in billions of burning pieces, thawing the snow into thick, rising pillars of smoke that looked like a splendid gray forest.
All the starships of the Godly Might Fleet, as well the soldiers on board, saw the scene where their flagship was destroyed with their own eyes.
For a moment, the whole world and even time itself seemed to be frozen by the everlasting snow. On all the starships, all of them, from the captains to the common soldiers in the engine compartment, was dumbfounded!
"The Heaven Battering Cannons are broken. The whole anti-air fire net and the internal defense system are down too!"
Yun Chenghua gnashed his teeth and said, "The bombardment just now intensified the burden on the energy supply bases. Whatever left of the few reactors has been wasted too. We won't be able to launch a single cannonball to the sky in the next three hours!"
"That's alright. Continue locking onto all the starships in the sky and sending the signals out without disguise to show them that we have aimed at them accurately. Then, connect to the public channel of the fleet. I would like to speak to all the soldiers of the Godly Might Fleet."
Lei Chenghu cleaned himself with his remaining right hand as the enormous light beam before him was dissected into almost a hundred sections, in which the picture of the bridges of almost a hundred starships was displayed.
Naturally, the bridges were teeming with the pale, confused soldiers of the Godly Might Fleet, who were even more panicked when they heard the sound of weapons aiming at them.
Seeing "God of War" Lei Chenghu all of a sudden, most of the captains and advisors were greatly shocked, and even more confused about what was going on.
"Brothers of the Godly Might Fleet, I am Lei Chenghu. I'm sorry that I blew up your flagship the moment we met, causing the deaths of countless innocent brothers."
Frowning hard, Lei Chenghu announced solemnly, "However, I had no choice, because the Godly Might Prison is at the most perilous moment!
"The spies of the Covenant Alliance had long snuck into the Godly Might Prison and the Godly Might Fleet. They were carrying out the greatest prison break in the history of the Imperium. The underground volcanoes were detonated, and half of the Godly Might Prison was already destroyed!
"The Covenant Alliance's operation went so well because their spies had infiltrated your heart and your brain. Your highest commander, as well as a large batch of captains and advisors, was a spy of the Covenant Alliance, or had been brainwashed and controlled by them!
"Should you land, the spies of the Covenant Alliance would've joined the captives below the ground and killed all of you, before they seized your starships and ran away. That was their plan!
"I was entrusted with the mission to crack the enemy's plan in the emergency, but I was one step too late. So, I had to destroy the flagship that was completely controlled by the Covenant Alliance, although there must've been our own brothers who knew nothing of the matter. I didn't have a choice!
"Have you detected massive objects jumping out from behind? That is the main force of the Astounding Thunder Fleet, which has come to suppress the prison break. There is no need to panic. The reinforcements have arrived. The Godly Might Prison is still in our hands!
"I announce now that the Godly Might Fleet is officially under my command from this second. To prevent the spies of the Covenant Alliance who have snuck into the fleet from further sabotages or suicide attacks, all the starships shall cancel the spiritual shields and descend to one hundred meters from the ground in three minutes!
"I repeat. In three minutes, all the starships that are not controlled by the Covenant Alliance but still loyal to the Imperium will cancel the spiritual shields, descend to one hundred meters from the ground, and wait for the reinforcements!
"Three minutes later, the starships that have not canceled the spiritual shield and descended to the altitude of a hundred meters will be regarded as rebellious starships controlled by the spies of the Covenant Alliance. They will be destroyed without any mercy by the anti-air fire net and the soon-to-arrive Astounding Thunder Fleet like Dongfang Lei's flagship!
"In the meantime, everybody on the bridge, watch your surroundings closely. It is very possible that the spies of the Covenant Alliance are lurking next to you! I authorize you to take any action necessary to those around you to descend the starship to the altitude of one hundred meters. As long as you find a spy of the Covenant Alliance, you will be duly awarded after the battle!
"Brothers of the Godly Might Fleet, please trust me that I do not want to fight any of you. However… war tolerates no mercy!
"You have only three minutes. All the starships staying at high altitude in three minutes will end up exactly like Dongfang Lei's flagship!'
Chapter 2228: The Situation Is Settled! |
After Lei Chenghu finished his resolute announcement, he simply cut off the picture of communication on his end without waiting for the captains' questions. He only retrieved a bloody countdown and displayed it on the opponents' light beams.
From the pictures of communication on those guys that were still on, it could be seen that all the captains, advisors, and other people on the bridges were astounded and overwhelmed, at a loss of what to do.
Some ground their teeth, looking around to check other people's reactions. Some were touching their swords and sabers nervously, with confusion in their eyes. Some other people on the bridges looked at their superiors in wariness after whispering to each other for a while.
The countdown elapsed without any mercy. Two minutes and fifty seconds, two minutes and forty seconds, two minutes and thirty seconds…
All the detection magical equipment on the starships and in the control center of the Godly Might Prison were shrieking. Not far away from the near-planet orbit, countless high-mass and high-density objects were ripping apart the barrier of the three-dimensional space. Like behemoths popping up in an intense fog, they revealed their hideous claws one after another.
Shaking off the dust on themselves, they lunged at the prey brutally.
"General, our anti-air fire net is far from repaired for a second launch. It cannot even shoot down an armed shuttle!"
Yun Chenghua asked in a low voice, "What if some of them do not surrender in three minutes?"
"Firstly, there are our guys in the Godly Might Fleet. Under their lead, in not three minutes but one minute at most, all the starships will land and surrender."
Lei Chenghu said calmly, as if he were merely stating the most obvious fact, "Secondly, if some starships are too stubborn to surrender three minutes later, we will just command the starships that have surrendered to shoot down those pigheaded 'traitors'."
Yun Chenghua bulged his eyes. "Well…"
Lei Chenghu smiled and stopped talking. He even shifted his attention from the Godly Might Fleet to the Deep Sea Fleet that had jumped out of the four-dimensional space and was gathering outside of the near-planet orbit.
The eyes of the general were covered in consolidated blood. There was no telling what he was thinking behind those eyes.
It was a very difficult psychological war.
However, the Godly Might Fleet, which had just witnessed the explosion of their flagship and had to resist the immense pressure of the Deep Sea Fleet in their back and the "reformists" among themselves, was destined to be the loser.
When there were still two minutes to go on the countdown, the Godly Might Fleet had completely collapsed. One starship after another, they canceled their spiritual shields and descended to the altitude of a hundred meters.
They set good examples. As more and more starships landed, the starships that were still hovering in the sky by themselves looked more and more eye-catching and shouldered more and more pressure. The signals of being aimed that crashed the shells of the starships were denser and denser too, raising such incessant sounds of collisions that the ears and nerves of everyone on board were being savaged brutally.
As a result, even though the captains of those starships wanted to procrastinate, the scorching eyes of the people on the bridge and their impatient weapons forced the captains to join the crowd and land.
Three minutes later, all the starships descended to one hundred kilometers from the ground and canceled their colorful spiritual shields. They looked like bare chickens in the blowing wind.
All the captains sent signals to the control center of the Godly Might Prison through the public channel. "We would like to obey the command of General Lei Chenghu!"
The riot within the Godly Might Prison, on the other hand, was also approaching the end in the hellish slaughter.
However determined, ruthless, and fearless the captives of the Covenant Alliance were, and even though they were the best slaughter machines, their number was too small after all. They were only sent to the Godly Might Prison when the place was temporarily regarded as a captive camp.
Most of the criminals locked in the Godly Might Prison were ferocious, insane felons.
Those dangerous criminals were ten times more than the captives of the Covenant Alliance. Even though there was a slight gap in the combat and organization abilities of the two parties, it was easily made up by the gigantic gap in the demography.
