by <unknown>
Although his military rank was major, Helian Lie did not have any specialty in commanding or leadership. He was a pure battle-type Cultivator who always led the charge in dangerous battles, and he did not know the first thing about the competition of warships.
However, he was still a field-tested veteran in the federal army, and he could tell the situation of the battle based on his own observation and judgment.
His criterion was the unity of the exhaust flames of the starships. Regardless of the scale and capability of the two parties in the battle, it had almost always been the party whose exhaust flames were better organized that won in his experience.
Even if the two parties were mired in a mess and everybody was fighting on their own, the party that restored their exhaust flames' order would most likely recover from the chaos first and secure the final victory!
This time, the exhaust flames from the mysterious fleet on his own side were not just 'standardized'; they were almost immaculate!
Helian Le was not a man good at playing with words. Years of fighting and training had failed to grant him enough artistic cells. However, he still sensed astounding beauty from the rotation, flipping, and turning of those exhaust flames as well as the changes of their colors.
Wild bees were dancing wildly, razor blades were shaving, and a wolf pack was roaring. The charge, attack, and evasion of the mysterious fleet were so brilliant that even an outsider such as Helian Lie was able to locate the weakness of the Black Wind Fleet under their guidance that was as precise as scalpel. The whole battlefield seemed clearer than before just because of the arrival of the mysterious fleet!
Helian Lie noticed that the first and second attack groups of the Black Wind Fleet had a certain distance between each other because they had been teleported in two goes.
Before, the Heaven's Origin Sector had been completely crushed, and the Burning Prairie Fleet had been too far away to stop the two parts of the Black Wind Fleet merging and regrouping.
However, the mysterious fleet had crawled out at the most precarious moment for 'Black Swirl' and lunged at the rear of the Black Wind Fleet, which had not been stabilized yet and carried a lot of redundant objects.
Like the sharpest cleavers, they peeled the shell of the Black Wind Fleet layer after layer. Then, with their stormy bombardment, the vulnerable star beacons were all turned into fireballs!
They were far smaller than the Black Wind Fleet in terms of number. The firepower onboard did not seem as impressive, either. But when it came to the control of timing and the coordination of the starships…
They were definitely the most awesome fleet that Helian Lie had ever seen.
Helian Lie saw that the Black Wind Fleet's bottom was on fire, and its head, with 'Black Swirl' as the core, was taking a turn in fury. The enormous fleet extended six 'tentacles' made of hundreds of starships as if it were a universal octopus, trying to besiege the mysterious fleet from six directions.
The mysterious fleet, on the other hand, was like the most cunning fish that slipped out of the circle before the 'tentacles' arrived. Swimming among the interconnected pillars of light casually, it even seemed to be roaming through the courtyard of its house.
Then, it suddenly switched battle formation and began to hassle the Black Wind Fleet from the external side. Like mosquitoes that could drive people mad, the starships stood in the middle of the Black Wind Fleet's two sides and stopped them from joining each other.
The swift charge, the fierce firepower, and the effective dodging made it impossible to capture, kill, or drive away the mysterious fleet. It even did not seem to be made of enormous warships hundreds of meters long but single shuttles enveloped in bubbles!
Helian Lie did not know if the arrival of the mysterious fleet could change the whole situation. After all, their number and firepower paled in comparison to the Black Wind Fleet. The best they could do was probably stall the Black Wind Fleet for a moment through harassment.
However, the mysterious fleet did attract the enemy's full attention. The main battlefield became the joint between the two parts of the Black Wind Fleet. The Exos of the Imperium who had been cleaning the battlefield all returned crazily. The debris of the Heaven's Origin Fleet where he was at immediately cooled down.
Nobody paid any attention to him or the thousands of common soldiers who had already been killed or who were still floating quietly inside the iron cans.
If this was really a sign from the wretched heavens, it would be all the more reason why he should not idle by and wait for help.
Helian Lie searched the battlefield for a long time and found more medication drugs and high-energy food from the first-aid boxes on the crystal suits of a few comrades who had passed away. He poured the supplies into his own first-aid box. Then, luckily, he also found several jet plugins. If they were installed to his broken crystal suit, it might be slightly accelerated.
There were still intact and undamaged chainswords and vibration sabers on the battlefield, but Helian Lie could not bear to part with the dragon-slaying sword that had followed him for a long time but had already broken apart from the middle.
After all, the enormous saber had originally been almost four meters long. Even though half of the weapon was broken, even though it was full of dents and cracks and might completely fall apart at any second, it could still be dedicated to a battle!
Helian Lie turned around the handle of his saber and tapped his helmet hard. He bellowed to himself, "You are Helian Lie! You are Helian Lie! You are f*cking Helian Lie!
"Do something! Anything!"
Refreshing himself, Helian Lie activated the power rune arrays and the jet units and rushed toward the area where thousands of starships were engaged in a fierce fight.
Right now, he did not know what he could do.
But first, he needed to come up with a quote, a gallant and blood-boiling one.
…
Amateurs watched a game for fun, and insiders watched a game for observation. Unlike an outsider such as Helian Lie, the highest command center of the Defense Counsel of the Federation was experiencing a storm ten times more powerful because of the mysterious appearance of the Big Bai Fleet.
Under the arduous efforts of the specialists of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, one communication route after another was repaired, and more and more probe cameras were reconnected. The previously fuzzy battlefield became clear again.
The Big Bai Fleet's trajectory of attack that was as fast as the wind and as rampant as fire was transformed into unbelievable data for all the leadership of the federation to review.
"They have directly pierced through the front part and the rear part of the Black Wind Fleet, causing large-scale chaos at the enemy's rear. Their own damage can't be higher than two percent!"
"Fifteen minutes! In only fifteen minutes, they have changed from the cone-shaped attack formation to the butterfly-shaped formation that highlights both attack and defense. Even the Burning Prairie Fleet has never achieved this in its drills! A fleet of such a scale needs at least twenty minutes to change the battle formation, not to mention one that is under the bombardment of such high-intensity firepower!"
"Is this really the Big Bai Fleet? Isn't the Big Bai Fleet a miscellaneous troop that was founded with carriers and space pirates? Despite years of training and education, their tactics were always guerilla warfare that the space pirates were best at before. How on earth can they place themselves into such an immaculate battle formation in a head-on clash between major fleets?"
"More than that. Far more than that! Look at the coordination of cannons and Exos of the Big Bai Fleet, and look at their prediction of the Black Wind Fleet's counterattack. With their shocking sense of pace, they are taking the full initiative in the battle. There's no need to mention the organization of hundreds of starships that are almost like one! Which commander even in the Burning Prairie Fleet can possibly have such amazing commanding skills?"
"Is it really Bai Xingjian t
hat is commanding the Big Bai Fleet right now? The incompetent rogue who was kicked out by the Burning Prairie Fleet?"
Chapter 1797: Five Hundred Years of Preparation! |
Looking at the Big Bai Fleet on the light beam that was charging, turning, attacking, retreating, and dispersing unpredictably, haunting the enemy like a ghost, the leadership of the federation found it hard to believe their eyes.
Right then, an advisor of the military, who had wrinkles all over his face, suddenly cried, "Yan—Yan Xinjian!
"The tactics that the Big Bai Fleet is adopting today are quite similar to Yan Xinjian's classic case where he gathered the space pirates and assaulted the coalition fleet of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City under the cover of the cosmic storm!"
Upon hearing that, the specialists of starship battles beamed with interest and started recalling that battle.
The starship specialists and commanders of all levels were mostly from the Flying Star Sector. The most powerful fleet in the Flying Star Sector over the past five hundred years was the coalition fleet of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City.
Yan Xinjian, on the other hand, was the only one who had been a commander of the fleet and who had completely destroyed it later!
It was no longer debated whether he was right or wrong, but the classic cases left by the best commander of starships in the past five hundred years had always been included in the textbooks and studied by the schools of starship commanding in the federation.
In the most famous 'Counterattack of Spider Den', the six sects of Heavenly Saints City summoned all the forces of the major sects of the Flying Star Sector first and established an enormous army that marched to Spider Den overwhelmingly.
Yan Xinjian established his authority over the disobedient space pirates as the supreme space pirate. In less than one year, he suppressed all the dissidents and built the ruffians into a strong army governed by strict rules.
At that time, the secret sailing routes and jump points from Spider Den to the outside world were almost all discovered and blocked. The space pirates were isolated and had nowhere to run. They were short of reliable logistic bases and factories. The number, level, firepower, and defense ability of their starships were far worse than the specifications of the coalition fleet.
The new commander of the coalition fleet, the leaders of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City, and even most space pirates, did not think that there would be any suspense in the battle. They thought that the final battle would be fought on the orbit of Spider Den, if not on the ground of the planet.
However, under the cover of a once-in-a-hundred-years cosmic storm, Yan Xinjian threw the helve after the hatchet and commanded the fleet of space pirates to bypass the main troop of the coalition fleet and assault the logistics fleet at their rear!
In the battle, Yan Xinjian's marvelous command was best demonstrated. He obviously had the chance to completely destroy the logistics fleet, but he did not. Instead, he mixed his own fleet among the enemy's supply starships, taking the enormous and clumsy carriers as his 'shields' and 'barricade'. In such a way, the main force of the coalition fleet's firepower was limited to the maximum extent. Eventually, they were lured into the fiercest turbulence in the cosmic storm, and Yan Xinjian secured a miraculous triumph!
The classic battle where the weak defeated the strong influenced the future generations for almost three hundred years.
At the very least, during the years when Li Yao and Professor Mo Xuan visited the Flying Star Sector, the six sects of Heavenly Saints City still had not entirely recovered and were unable to organize a coalition fleet of the same scale. They had to count on the 'Grand Illusionary Soldiers' to besiege and clear Spider Den.
The current battle was almost like a recurrence of the battle years back.
After passing through the enemy's battle formation and testing their firepower, the Big Bai Fleet simply dived into the depths of the second wave of the Black Wind Fleet's starships and regarded the components of the star beacons and the space gate as shields to resist the infinite fury from 'Black Swirl'!
Such a highly dangerous game was like a dance on the edge of a blade. When they were disrupting the enemy's battle formation completely, they would very likely be disrupted by the enemy. One moment of carelessness, and they would never be able to get out if the guardian starships around the star beacons managed to stall them.
In the past five hundred years, or perhaps forever, Yan Xinjian was the only lunatic who had been audacious enough to make use of such a tactic.
Even the countless starship commanders of the New Federation, after studying for a hundred years, had to come to the conclusion that such a unique, insane tactic was inimitable and that it should not be copied at all!
That was because such a tactic to maintain high calmness and control during a close-distance charge, thereby completely disrupting the enemy while changing one's own battle formation freely, was too demanding for the computational ability, the commanding ability, and the insight on the performance of the starships. It was so demanding that it was almost a natural-born gift that could not be earned through training!
Any commander who had not reached Yan Xinjian's level would embrace their own doom if they copied his tactic recklessly.
"Yan Xinjian's sharpest sword can only be used by himself."
It was a very popular conclusion among the starship commanders in the Star Glory Federation.
But today—
"No. It's not a recurrence." Gazing at the 'sword auras' on the light beam that were sharp, eccentric, fierce, or fickle, a lot of starship specialists remarked almost feverishly, "This is almost a 'strengthened version'. It is even more impressive than Yan Xinjian's performance!"
In terms of both personal combat ability and commanding ability, Yan Xinjian had been one of the most distinguished people at the edge of the cosmos in the past thousand years.
However, a lot of starship specialists and historians believed that he had never brought out his full potential or reached his own 'limits'!
Despite his immense capabilities, he had been so greedy when it came to the so-called 'treasures of the Star Ocean Imperium' on Spider Den that he betrayed the six sects of Heavenly Saints City and degraded into a shameful space pirate from a glorious Cultivator. Eventually, he had been haunted by his own guilt and even killed miserably because of mental derangement when he was trying to break into the Divinity Transformation Stage.
After his death, his soul had been attached to countless rats that mauled and brutalized each other until they gradually died off in the years that followed. That was truly a miserable ending.
More importantly, Yan Xinjian had been born at a wrong time. When he distinguished himself, the seven Sectors of the New Federation were still separate from each other, and their techniques, magical equipment, and tactics could not be shared. The experts from different Sectors had no chance to discuss and debate with each other, either.
The competition between the coalition fleet of the six sects of Heavenly Saints City and the fleet of space pirates, from today's perspective, was nothing more than a storm in a teapot.
Even if one was born a dragon, one would never be able to soar into the sky if one grew up in a small pond!
Yan Xinjian had been very strong, but he could have been stronger if he had been born two hundred years later and grown up today when the New Federation had splendid collisions with the Imperium, the Covenant Alliance, and even more formidable foes. A lot of starship commanders and specialists of military history all believed so.
Then, right now…
An even stronger 'Yan Xinjian' had revealed himself right before them. The glamor of Yan Xinjian's sword was displayed again, in an even sharper, more fluent, more natural, and more sordid way.
Yes. It was more sordid!
Although Yan Xinjian was known as the supreme space pirate, he had received the strictest education for Cultivators since childhood, and he had been the most conventional sta
rship commander in the beginning.
Although his tactics were aggressive and cunning, they still had the rigidity and strictness of a regular army, which was slightly different from the style of the real space pirates who fought unpredictably and lawlessly just based on their animalistic instincts.
But the Big Bai Fleet before everyone's eyes had perfectly combined the strictness and aggression of the regular army and the cleverness and keenness of the space pirates. It was like a wolf in space that had been armed to the teeth!
"What did the Big Bai Fleet go through in the drill last year?"
The commanders of all levels and all the specialists looked at each other in bewilderment, not having the first clue what was going on.
Even Guo Chunfeng stared at Jin Xinyue weirdly. Nominally, Bai Xingjian was the top general under her banner.
"Hey, let me ask you…" The two 'compatriots' who were both transformed into humans from demons whispered to each other. Guo Chunfeng could not help but ask, "Is this Bai Xingjian Yan Xinjian's b*stard son? Why didn't you tell us about such an important trump card?"
"I don't know anything about that, either!" Jin Xinyue did not know how she should feel. "The dates do not match. When Bai Xingjian was born, Yan Xinjian had already been gone for almost two hundred years. Besides, even if he were Yan Xinjian's b*stard son or true disciple, that still can't explain why he is so strong!"
"No wonder this boy couldn't stay in the Burning Prairie Fleet for long." Guo Chunfeng sighed and grinned. "I thought that he was too arrogant, but after witnessing his true capability today, I've finally realized that he was too modest!"
At this moment, almost a hundred analysts inferred the changes in the next couple of hours based on the situation of the battle so far.
The first data that jumped out, on the other hand, was the capability of the commander of the Big Bai Fleet after their comprehensive evaluation.
Divinity Transformation Stage!
