by <unknown>
The arm was descending slowly, but the opened hand was slowly clenched into a fist whose thumb was raised at Li Yao.
Good luck, Li Yao. Good luck, federation. Good luck, mankind!
Professor Mo Xuan was completely consumed by the silver swamp, marking a complicated, unjudgeable end to his life.
Long Yangjun had crawled out of the Yin Yang, her Colossus, at some point and observed everything behind Li Yao.
"One who dies without regrets has never lived a meaningful life. Every expedition has an end. Perhaps for Professor Mo Xuan, this is the best ending."
She paused for a moment, and inhuman confusion beamed out of her eyes again. She said softly, "Human beings are so… sophisticated!"
"There's no time now. Let's clean up everything and prepare to jump to the Heaven's Origin Sector!" His eyes red, Li Yao stared at the place where Professor Mo Xuan had vanished. He took a deep breath and said, "We cannot let Professor Mo Xuan have died for nothing. The last stop is still waiting for us!"
Professor Mo Xuan had done his best to protect all the Spiriters. He had also recovered thirty percent of the functions of Hundred Flowers City as a hub of the Spiritual Nexus and transportation in the federation.
However, Hundred Flowers City had been seriously affected in the previous corruption and sabotage after all. Right now, most of the communication routes were cut off, and the space sailing routes among the seven Sectors were an utter mess. Most of the citizens were either just freed from the frigidness, the high temperature, the lack of oxygen, and the zero gravity, or experienced the soul-stirring battle in the Spiritual Nexus. Their souls were extremely weak, and it was difficult for them to start working immediately.
Under such circumstances, every second must be seized if a dozen top-tier experts above the Nascent Soul Stage were to be projected to the Heaven's Origin Sector!
Hang in there!
Looking at the bare cabin wall, Li Yao's eyes seemed to have passed dozens of lightyears and saw Jin Xinyue, Ding Lingdang, Guo Chunfeng, Bai Kaixin, and a lot of other family and friends who were gritting their teeth to fight in the Heaven's Origin Sector. He waved his hands and thought to himself, Hang in there. Hang in there just a while longer. I'll be back very soon. I'll be back with the strongest reinforcements at the edge of the cosmos!
…
Right when Li Yao and his companions were deeply trapped inside the Spiritual Nexus, the highest command center of the Defense Counsel of the Federation in the Heaven's Origin Sector was in mayhem, too.
Until the knotted longsword slowly showed up, everything was under the control of the leadership of the federation, or more specifically speaking, Jin Xinyue, Guo Chunfeng, and Bai Kaixin.
Including 'Black Swirl', the flagship, the most elite forces of the Black Wind Fleet had been lured to the Heaven's Origin Sector exactly as planned. Their follow-up troops had not completed the space jump yet and were still behind the brown dwarf. The fleet was divided into two parts, one at the front and one far behind, with dozens of lightyears between each other. They were definitely in the most awkward situation!
Jin Xinyue's so-called 'demon rebellion troops' had torn apart their mask of 'armed insurgency', too, and participated in the assault against the Black Wind Fleet together with the Heaven's Origin Fleet.
With the help of their stalling, the Burning Prairie Fleet, the ace troop of the federation, completed the first jump successfully, too. The latest and strongest main-force warships, including the flagship Burning Prairie, had all appeared between the No. 2 space gate and the No. 3 space gate!
Burning Prairie was no longer the warship modified from 'Heavenly Phantom' as it had been a hundred years ago. It was now a super warship that the most skilled specialists had produced after thirty years of hard work at the cost of tremendous resources!
Chapter 1792: Fierce Fight of Caged Beasts! |
The 'Dim Moon Plan' drafted by Jin Xinyue was about to succeed. All three space gates were under the federation's control. The enemy's reinforcements could not arrive quickly. Even if they risked jumping over without the guidance of star beacons, they would be scattered like dust in the vast galaxy of the Heaven's Origin Sector, which was eight billion kilometers in diameter. It would certainly be a disaster for any fleet!
Warships could only bring out their full combat ability when they were integrated in the system precisely.
Without the protection of the shield starships, the arsenal starships would be like tortoises without their shells. They could only perform a suicidal, one-time attack. They might even be destroyed beyond their shooting range by the super remote heavy weapons that the enemy deployed on the planets.
Without the firepower support of the arsenal starships, however powerful the spiritual shields, the disruption magnetic fields, and the cyberspace competition abilities of the shield starships were, they would not last long under the enemy's barrage.
Even the most reckless commander would hesitate to perform such a hopeless 'blind jump'.
Reaching the battlefield through regular cruise instead of space jump? It was even less likely. The two parties were dozens of lightyears away from each other in the three-dimensional universe. Even if the large-scale battle group could march at the unbelievable speed of one tenth the speed of sound, it would take them hundreds of years to reach the battlefield!
Therefore, the elite forces and the 'brain' of the Black Wind Fleet were isolated and helpless!
Thus, as long as the follow-up troops of the Burning Prairie Fleet arrived in time and destroyed the enemy's sharpest claws and most important brain, there was no way that the federation would lose the war!
There seemed to be only minutes away from the realization of the goal.
The remaining troops of the Heaven's Origin Fleet were still stalling the enemy, who were ten times stronger than themselves, with amazing courage and fighting will. They harassed the enemy like a cluster of stingy mud. Right when they were about to collapse, the 'rebel' demon troops that stayed near the No. 1 space gate reinforced in time and filled in the loophole. They roared at the thousands of pillars of light shot out by the Black Wind Fleet, just in order to buy one second, one more second, and another second for the arrival of the main-force troop!
The Burning Prairie Fleet, the absolute main force of the federation, lived up to its reputation, too. The first attack group, personally led by Chief of Staff Bai Kaixin, performed a textbook space jump.
After they crossed millions of stars and went through the 3D-4D-3D breaking and condensing, their solemn and rigorous battle formation was not disrupted at all. Thousands of straight exhaust flames illuminated the darkness of the sea of stars, like a forest of coldly-shining spears on the shoulders of an ace troop in ancient times!
Led by the flagship Burning Prairie, the forest of spears moved slowly in space and adjusted their relative position by the feedback of the mystic rays. The entire battle group was like the most immaculate work of art. When two starships multiple kilometers long were marching forward side by side, the heads of the two starships would be less than ten meters away from each other. On the universal scale, the distance was hundreds of times smaller than the width of a hair!
After the first attack group arrived at the Heaven's Origin Sector, it did not hurry to lunge at the coordinates where the Black Wind Fleet was. Instead, it changed into a defensive battle formation in an arc shape unhurriedly, creating a safe space for the second wave, the third wave, and other fleets that were arriving from the other Sectors of the Star Glory Federation.
In case of the leakage of information, the 'Dim Moon Plan' was a top secret of top secrets. Even within the Burning Prairie Fleet, only a few leaders were aware of some information about the plan. The regular garrisons of other space zones definitely knew nothing about it.
The local garrisons of those space zones were mostly weak in combat ability. It would take a very long time for them to regroup and jump. But now that the door had been closed for the enemy, t
here was nothing to be worried about. They had taken the full initiative!
The void that had just been ripped apart once was releasing tiny, broken ripples. Invisible electric arcs, under the scanning of the probe magical equipment, were like colorful tides that were running to all directions one wave after another. The second attack group was about to come—it was made of the motherships in the Burning Prairie Fleet that had the thickest plate armor and the largest storage of ammunition and crystals. They were the real 'main force'!
Right then, the thousand star beacons that belonged to the three space gates died out at the same time.
By 'die out', it meant that the Burning Prairie Fleet, the Black Wind Fleet, and the command center of the Defense Counsel on the ground could no longer detect them with all their scanning and navigation magical equipment.
They seemed to have turned into three dead rocks within a moment from the most advanced, precise devices of mankind.
Only the soldiers of the federal army stationed near the three space gates, after putting on special glasses that could detect invisible light, could see that thousands of twisted electric arcs suddenly dashed out of the three space gates and tangled every star beacon like a chain reaction.
As the ball-shaped electric arcs exploded one after another, the glamorous star beacons lost all their glamor, as if they were covered in a thick layer of dust.
The main-force troops of the Burning Prairie Fleet that were about to jump under the guidance of the space gates were immediately thrown into chaos.
A third of the main forces had finished the jump, but they lost their way at the last moment. Like paratroopers who jumped in the middle of a storm, they were scattered in the vast space zone in a radius of almost one billion kilometers.
The remaining two thirds of the main forces that had yet to jump aborted despite the great price. All the space jump units were cracking and exploding.
They were like runners who were sprinting at the highest speed, only to hit the brakes abruptly upon noticing that there was a bottomless cliff up ahead. Although the danger of falling apart was spared, fractured bones were inevitable!
Right now, for the main troops of the two parties, the three 'passes' that connect the outside world to the Heaven's Origin Sector had been blocked by a 'landslide'.
That was only the beginning.
Most of the communication bases deployed around the home planet of the Heaven's Origin Sector, which were used to transit information with the other six Sectors on the Spiritual Nexus, collapsed after the entanglement of a series of invisible sparks and electric arcs.
Even if some of the lucky dogs survived the attack, when the information load that was supposed to be shared by a hundred bases was concentrated on them, a series of information delays and jams took place.
The government network and the military network on the home planet suffered a fatal attack at that moment, too. The enemy seemed to have known the most inconspicuous weaknesses of the military Spiritual Nexus. A vintage sword was even slowly showing up on the 'Gai'-level crystal processor inside the command center of the Defense Counsel that had the highest computational ability and confidential level in the entire federation.
The sword slashed all the data displayed in the 3D pictures into pieces unhurriedly and presented the sharpness of the two edges where spiritual energy was dancing in an almost arrogant way. Then, it curled and gradually turned itself into a knot.
"Peace is better than war."
A slogan surfaced below the knotted sword, one that was very correct to some extent but could not have been weirder or more ridiculous at such a moment.
"All—all our data has been deleted!"
"Damn it. It has tampered with our registered identity information crazily. Even the brainwave features have been messed up and randomly redistributed. I cannot even log into my own work interface, much less trace it down and kill it!"
"What the heck is that? I've never seen a crystal processor virus in such a form with such an attack mechanism before. The contagion is too fast. It is an assault from various nodes of the Spiritual Nexus at the same time, as if—as if it were alive!"
"The three space gates have all been controlled. It—it is not a common virus. Some of the damage is from the outside world. The three space gates have all been paralyzed. Estimated time of repair—unknown!"
"The communication with the outside world has almost been entirely cut off. The other six Sectors are an utter mess now. Hundred Flowers City, as the transportation and information hub, has lost all signals. It is now in a frozen state!"
Including Wan Guqing, Guo Chunfeng, and Jin Xinyue who had just arrived there, all the leadership of the federation were about to be 'frozen', too.
Everybody looked at Jin Xinyue and Guo Chunfeng, as well as Wan Guqing who apparently should take the blame for everything, in suspicion and criticism.
"It's impossible."
Jin Xinyue was still wearing a confident smile on her face, but ice and frost were spreading out of her smile. On the hundreds of 3D light beams in front of her, the same sharp sword appeared simultaneously and minced all the information and data without any trouble before it slowly knotted itself.
"Peace is better than war."
Jin Xinyue felt that she could hear the mockery when the enemy said those words.
But she could not have been more perplexed. "This is completely unreasonable. Even if the Black Wind Fleet did see through my plan, it should have been impossible for them to checkmate us like this. The technology of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus in the federation is no worse than the Imperium's. How can our facilities be taken down by the enemy so easily?"
"Enough!" Wan Guqing, the Speaker of the Federation, was still like an old camel that was so sluggish that it kept its eyes half closed when faced with the most dreadful sandstorm. Even if there was any panic or hesitation in his heart, he did not reveal any of such feelings in his voice which was as calm as ever. "Find a way to kill the virus and reboot the Spiritual Nexus. At the very least, the situation is fair for the enemy and us. Both parties have only delivered the most elite forces to the Heaven's Origin Sector, while the vast majority of troops are still dozens of lightyears away.
"Now that the three space gates have been paralyzed, nobody's reinforcements are coming anytime soon, right?"
"Re—report!"
Hardly had he finished his sentence when some analysis finished examining the data transmitted before the collapse of the Spiritual Nexus.
The data was the appearance of the starships that were teleported in the second wave by the Black Wind Fleet. After careful analysis, it would be able to tell the model, level, and scale of the new starships.
Before the three space gates were completely paralyzed, the Black Wind Fleet's second wave of teleportation had almost been done.
However, none of the analysts had been able to tell which level and model those new 'starships' belonged to in the fleet of the Imperium with the weird data.
Judging from the appearance, most of the starships in the second wave were too weird and did not match any of the starships in the intelligence!
At this moment, after the three starships were all paralyzed. They finally understood everything, and their faces turned pale.
"Report! The Black Wind Fleet did not teleport their main forces in the second wave but sent their space gate!
"They dissected the enormous space gate and transported the parts on many starships!"
Chapter 1793: The Joker Has Come! |
The command center of the Defense Counsel was consumed by silence.
The Black Wind Fleet had established a space gate at a certain point dozens of lightyears away, perhaps in the orbit of some dim star. It was no secret.
No matter how tense the relations between the Black Wind Fleet and the homeland of the Imperium were, and no matter how dangerous the power struggles were, it was impossible for the expedition army to completely cut off the connection with th
e homeland.
By establishing a space gate and a super long-distance communication base, if the nightmare of failure came true, however unlikely, they would be able to ask for help from the homeland.
Whether or not the homeland would send out reinforcements in time, and whatever the purpose of the reinforcement would be after they did come, such preparation work had to be done nonetheless.
However, none of the leadership of the federation had foreseen that Heiye Ming, the commander of the Black Wind Fleet, would be insane enough to teleport the space gate, which was made of hundreds of star beacons and boasted absolutely no defense or attack abilities due to the enormous size and the sophisticated structure, to the Heaven's Origin Sector altogether!
Under normal circumstances, it would be the most idiotic strategy.
The capacity, cost, and scale of every space jump were limited. To teleport the star beacons, which did not have any impetus and were extremely precise, dozens of lightyears away would not only consume an astronomical amount of spiritual energy but also occupy the capacity that should have belonged to warships.
One could not have all the best in the world. One more star beacon teleported could mean the reduction of quite a few arsenal starships or shield starships. Who could tell if the lack of one arsenal starship or a shield starship would be the last feather that decided the outcome of the war at the most crucial moment?
Even if they did dismember the entire space gate into parts and teleport them over at great cost, it would still take a lot of time for the space gate to be assembled, debugged, and charged with energy.
During the whole process, the space gate would be an enormous and fragile target that was at any weapon's mercy.
The first wave of attack from the Black Wind Fleet was not large in quantity in the first place. Logically, as long as the follow-up troops of the Burning Prairie Fleet arrived in time, they would not have any opportunity to assemble and debug the space gate unhurriedly at all. Instead, they would be drowned by the warships and soldiers ten times more than themselves!
