by <unknown>
"Come on out."
Li Yao took the storm bolter from the commander who had turned into a statue made of mud. He then curled his finger toward the other seven Exos and casually said, "Fellow Cultivators, in the name of 'Team Red Lotus', the Speaker's private guards, you are under arrest for treason!"
…
The antecedent of the Black Stone Jail was a heavy cargo starship that had been designed to transport dangerous products. The thickness of the shell, the defense rune arrays deployed in the cabins, and all the other safety measures were of the highest level.
As the strongest prison where the most dangerous criminals on Firefly were caged, Black Stone Jail had been strengthened and modified countless times in the past hundreds of years. It had long been built into an impregnable iron fortress where no water could flow in and no bug could fly out.
When Ding Zhengyang and Cheng Xuansu planned to seize control of Firefly, they had infiltrated and strengthened the place in every way possible. After they secretly captured a lot of technical staff who were loyal to Captain Tang Dingyuan and many MPs who might prove to be hindrances in their crucial posts, they had moved and locked all the captives, too. Not only had the alert of the Black Stone Jail been improved to the 'war preparation state', two legions of Exos of the Republic Guard Corp had also been mobilized there. The two elite troops of a tough combat ability were important targets of infiltration and transformation. Their commanders were all Immortal Cultivators who only listened to Ding Zhengyang and Cheng Xuansu's commands.
Therefore, it was not hard to imagine how appalled the commanders of the two Exo legions were when they saw three 'ordinary people' approaching unhurriedly from the end of the pathway wearing not crystal suits but the clothes of ordinary people as if they were having an enjoyable hike on weekends.
"How—how is it possible?"
"This is a military forbidden area. Haven't the areas up ahead been blocked and disconnected from the main area of Firefly? Where are those three guys from exactly?"
"Black Arrow Squad, come in immediately. Why did three strangers pass your defense line? Who are they immediately? Black Arrow Squad? Black Arrow Squad!"
"Not good. We're in serious trouble!"
Huala! Huala!
Ear-splitting alarms echoed in the enormous cabin where Black Stone Jail was located. The entire cabin was soaked in panicking redness. Dazzling electric arcs burst out of the cracking defense rune arrays. Railguns, crystal cannons, missile launchers… Countless protruding barrels were aimed down the pathway. Starry brilliance was taking shape inside the darkness. Flames of spiritual energy were interweaving among the magnetic rails, and all the damaging rune arrays were humming!
"They are Immortal Cultivators! The Immortal Cultivators have just assassinated the Speaker and are blatantly sabotaging Firefly right now. They are trying to attack Black Stone Jail and rescue their conspirators!"
The commanders of the Exo legions hurried to incite the general soldiers who did not know what was going on.
However, their fancy words were hardly convincing as the three strangers slowly approached because the three of them simply looked too weird!
The one on the left was sloppy and weaselly, with a patch on his forehead. He looked like a dirty, smelly beggar.
The one on the right was even more unbelievable. He was a dwarf who did not have a hair on his head, which made his head look like a smooth melon. A dwarf!
Only the woman in the middle appeared normal, but there was nothing attractive about her, either. She did not boast the air of an expert at all.
At first glance, all the weapons that the three 'ordinary people' had were the sword that the dwarf was holding in his arms, which was no larger than a toothpick. Not a chainsword, not a magnetic blade, not a high-heat saber, and barely even a piece of 'magical equipment'. It was just the most common short sword!
Were the three of them… Immortal Cultivators? Had they come to the Black Stone Jail, heavily defended by at least a thousand Exos, for a prison break?
The Immortal Cultivators hiding among the guards of the jail had made a hundred different battle plans to deal with any possible changes.
But never could they have dreamt that such bizarre-looking fellows would pass through the defense line at the periphery uncannily and arrive right in front of them out of nowhere.
"Stop moving. This is a military forbidden area. Identify yourselves!" the commander of the jail's guards screamed. It was not supposed to be his job to shout at the strangers, but he was too anxious to control himself not to. The whole situation seemed to be slipping to a bottomless abyss!
A second later, his concerns became reality.
One of the strangers raised his wrist and tapped on the tactical crystal processor softly. After a few beeps, the friend-or-foe identification rune arrays on the jail immediately recognized who they were.
They were allies who belonged to a troop that had a much higher rank and was directly under the command of the Speaker!
"Team Red Lotus is here to take over jail by the order of the Speaker." The unarmed and seemingly harmless woman in the middle stepped forward and smiled. "Commanders of the Black Stone Guards, please transfer your command and accept our dispatchment immediately."
"You—"
The commander of the jail faced with the woman's smile, like the commander who had been faced with Li Yao, was also sweating hard, turning into a drenched chicken caged in an iron box.
In the secret communication channel, he spoke to his accomplices. "Turn off the defense rune arrays and the identification arrays on all the magical equipment. Activate the manual control mode. Fire at will!"
The woman opposite should not have been able to hear what he said in the private channel.
However, she seemed to have caught exactly what was on the commander's mind. She sighed gloomily, and her innocuous smile turned into one of surprise and confusion, as if she found it hard to understand why those people were resisting meaninglessly after hearing the name of 'Team Red Lotus'.
The woman—Long Yangjun—glanced casually at the cannons, railguns, and missile launchers behind the rune arrays as well as the hundreds of fully-armed Exos who were shivering in fear. She then said to Yan Liren and Ba Xiaoyu, "Take them down!"
At almost exactly the same time, world-shattering explosions burst out in the depths of Black Stone Jail. The intense black smoke consumed the entire heavy carrier of dangerous products.
931 years after the starship was built, twelve of the most fatal 'dangerous products' had been activated!
…
On the bridge of Firefly, in front of the mainframe crystal processor that was as enormous as a hill, thousands of ever-changing and flashing light beams congregated into a vague ocean of brightness that completely drowned Ding Zhengyang, the acting captain.
Half an hour ago, the ocean of brightness had still appeared tranquil. The picture displayed on every light beam had been under his precise control and arrangement.
Although Speaker Cui Lingfeng seemed to have found some loopholes and made up his mind to investigate, the backup plan that they had switched to promptly without any hesitation had filled in the loopholes.
However, after only half an hour, the peaceful ocean of brightness had turned into surging tides as if a devastating tsunami was surging. The erratic, unpredictable light and shadow grabbed his heart hard and completely dragged him into the uncontrollable abyss!
Ding Zhengyang was more than two meters tall. He was strong and had a resolute face. When he commanded on the deck floor, he was best known for his calmness even when he was faced with the most dangerous crisis. Many sailors and operators called him 'Pillar'. Even the gravest fault on the starship would not make his eyebrow twitch in the slightest.
However, at this moment, as he read the subtle changes of the situation on the light beams, Ding Zhengyang's previously red and glowing face turned paler than that of a dead person.
Cheng Xuansu. What exactly h
appened to the woman? She was only asked to kill a Speaker who does not even have the strength to catch a chicken. How could she possibly have failed?
Team Red Lotus? What—what's that? I've never heard such a troop of Exos on Firefly!
The Speaker is alive… He—he—he really is alive!
The Black Stone Jail has been compromised! Well—
At a loss, Ding Zhengyang looked at the furious fire named 'Red Lotus' burning, raving, and rushing on the light beams, his mind completely disturbed.
Chapter 1626: Master Lu |
The pictures displayed to the acting captain of Firefly were collected by the crystal cameras installed in various cabins and by the sensors on the crystal suits of the Immortal Cultivators.
However, even if there were ten times more crystal cameras and sensors under his control, it would still barely be possible for him to clearly see what 'Team Red Lotus' was exactly because Team Red Lotus was simply too fast.
It was especially so during the assault that Black Stone Jail suffered. Except for the three warriors of Team Red Lotus who walked up to the defense line slowly at the beginning, other people never showed up in front of the crystal cameras or left their appearances clearly at all, as if they were well aware of the distribution of all the crystal cameras!
Even the three of them also turned into unpredictable shadows after the explosions echoed and they took action for real. They were unstoppable flashes, they were white mist that was breaking the sonic barrier constantly, and they were residual images that lingered on the retina and the crystal cameras!
However hard Ding Zhengyang bulged his eyes, to the point that surging spiritual energy almost blew out his eyeballs, the only thing that he could see was that the Immortal Cultivators who were loyal to him were screaming miserably and dancing like marionettes fighting the invisible devils. They were thrown high up and smashed into the ground, their bones broken. Some of them were cut in half before they could react. Their crystal suits, although known as the 'king of magical equipment', seemed to be made of tofu, and the fracture was even smoother than a mirror!
The mind-boggling picture displayed on one of the light beams left a particularly deep impression on Ding Zhengyang.
Inside the picture, the Immortal Cultivators loyal to him seemed to have captured the trace of one of the intruders. Three crystal railguns that were a hundred meters away from each other adjusted their angle at the same time and were all aimed at the warrior of the Team Red Lotus who appeared to be a dwarf. The long-prepared magnetic rails were spluttering, and the electric arcs were pressed down like springs. The cannonballs of spiritual energy at the end of the rails could hardly wait to dart out.
Then, the picture suddenly blinked. The bald dwarf waved his hands casually, as if he were just yawning or driving away several annoying flies…
But the three crystal railguns a hundred meters away from each other broke apart at the same time, not slashed at a slant, but cut right in the middle vertically into two parts as if they were nothing more than sugarcane!
Boom, boom, boom!
The furious spiritual energy, like a flood breaking out of the dam, immediately went out of control and surged out crazily. They tied up the batteries like rampant boas and instantly evolved into three ever-expanding lightning balls. The artillerists inside, whom Ding Zhengyang had gone through a lot of trouble to turn into Immortal Cultivators, were vaporized into ash before they had the chance to scream. The only things left behind were some faint remains!
"What—what was that sword art? How can there possibly be such a terrifying sword art in the universe?"
Ding Zhengyang would not have been so surprised even if the bald dwarf had blown up the three batteries with the invincible strength of the Divinity Transformation Stage, because it was at least something that he could understand.
But he was absolutely certain that, judging from the spiritual waves around the bald dwarf, the guy was only showing the Cultivation of the peak of the Core Formation Stage at best. He had achieved everything purely with his 'sword art', not his 'spiritual energy'!
Ding Zhengyang's experience and understanding of the arts of training collapsed all of a sudden.
His ambitions fell apart at the moment, too.
"Where is the bald dwarf from exactly? This—this—this is too unbelievable!"
The explosions and riots deep inside Black Stone Jail gradually died down.
However, based on the soldiers who gave up their weapons, kneeled on the ground, and surrendered outside of the jail, Ding Zhengyang, however optimistic, found it hard to believe that the peace was because the intruders had all been annihilated.
In the meantime, on another light beam, Ding Zhengyang saw that Speaker Cui Lingfeng, who should have been dead, was striding toward the Third Military Academy, escorted by a seemingly unattractive man in a mass-produced Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.
The man in the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit looked stranger and did not appear as tough as the bald dwarf in the Black Stone Jail.
Ding Zhengyang did not see him attack because the guy did not have to at all. Behind him and Speaker Cui, countless soldiers at the bottom level had gathered. There was no telling what kind of drugs the man had given to the disordered and disorganized soldiers, but they were a hundred times braver under his lead!
Like magma, like a red lotus, like iron torrents that were flowing forward unstoppably, they marched into the Third Military Academy, supporting Speaker Cui!
When the mysterious man raised Speaker Cui to the flag tower and broke into the arsenal with the soldiers, retrieving enough attack magical equipment to arm the thousands of students in the school, Ding Zhengyang's last hope perished.
For a moment, he even wished that everything was simply a foul trick. Was it possible that the enemy had hacked their mainframe crystal processor and played fake videos that had been recorded previously, and all the pictures were in fact virtual and synthesized and the actual situation was not that bad?
However, the panicked screams, the desperate roars, and the cries for help in the private communication channel soon dragged Ding Zhengyang back to the cruel reality.
The air pressure was extremely low on the enormous bridge. Everyone was whispering to each other. It was the calm before the storm.
Ding Zhengyang had plotted to send Tang Dingyuan, the previous captain, to prison and control the bridge. However, of the hundreds of operators, navigators, communication officers, and other works on the bridge to keep Firefly functioning, no matter how hard he tried to influence and persuade them, only one fifth were his co-conspirators. The other eighty percent of them did not know the truth at all.
Just now, he had sent a message to them under the name of Cheng Xuansu, stating that the Immortal Cultivators had launched a rebellion that threatened the Speaker's life and the safety of Firefly. Those people had bought it for now.
However, the best that Ding Zhengyang could do was block the pictures sent by the crystal cameras. It was impossible for him to stop all the messages between the bridge and the outside world. They would grow suspicious very soon!
What do we do?
Ding Zhengyang noticed that a lot of his co-conspirators were dropping hints at him with pale faces.
Pretending to be calm, he nodded at his subordinates, implying that everything was under control. He tried to control his nerves and muscles, as he walked to the captain's office in the deepest part of the bridge.
After he slammed the door, his hands began trembling beyond his control. He tried four times to complete the simple movement of retrieving a secret crystal processor from his Cosmos Ring and activating a top-secret communication channel.
An extremely twisted, lackluster light beam, full of streaks and snowflakes, gradually lit up.
The ripples and snowflakes slowly condensed into a face, one whose eyes were unfocused and whose eyebrows were furrowed, as if the guy had been meditating the whole time.
The owner of the face appea
red to very young, but the hair that was dangling from his head was gray. Perhaps his brain was a greedy beast that continuously sucked his vitality.
"Did I not tell you that the secret route must not be activated unless it is absolutely necessary?" the gray-haired man in the picture reproached expressionlessly.
"Master Lu!" Ding Zhengyang took a long breath in relief. "It is absolutely necessary right now! We've been exposed. We're done and doomed!"
"Oh?" If Master Lu was surprised at all in his heart, he certainly did not show any of it on his face. He was as calm and peaceful as before as he said, "No need to be hasty. Take your time. Tell me what happened."
"How can I not be hasty? It was an absolutely perfect plan, but we did not expect that the Speaker had been keeping Team Red Lotus, a secret armed force, to himself the whole time!"
Gnashing his teeth, Ding Zhengyang quickly explained the key events with a twisted face. In the end, he begged, "Master Lu, what do we do now? Can we only fall back to the Dragon Snake Space Zone now?"
"Let's see." Master Lu had been listening attentively the whole time and was not anxious at all even to this moment. Pondering for a moment while holding his forehead, he raised his head and stared at Ding Zhengyang.
Ding Zhengyang was impatient. "Master Lu, do you have a solution?"
"I do." Master Lu nodded and casually said, "It's time to sacrifice."
"Huh?" Ding Zhengyang was slightly dazed, not knowing what he meant. "I—I beg your pardon."
"It's time to sacrifice!" Master Lu's head grew huger. He seemed to have moved his head close to the crystal camera. Breathtaking brilliance was glowing out his deeply hollowed eyes, as he solemnly declared, "The situation on Firefly is hopeless now. The key is to keep the fellow Cultivators hiding in the Dragon Snake Space Zone and within the federation unaffected. Therefore, we will have to sever the arm to save the body! Sacrifice now, Fellow Cultivator Ding. Summon all our fellow Cultivators on board who are aware of the secrets and shed your blood for the true path of immortality!"
