LRAB Page 450
Page 450
Ruoning's expression changed drastically as she said:
"Oh no, Your Majesty! We've been tricked! That scoundrel Karl is plotting against us!"
Ruoning's voice was sharp, with a tremor she herself didn't even realize. As a former left-wing guard under Keisha, her knowledge and combat skills far surpassed those of these scum whose minds were filled only with desire. The moment Vishnu raised his hand to "delete" the vanguard fleet, she understood that this was not a war at all, but an execution.
That wasn't any attack method she could comprehend. There was no energy surge, no spatial tearing, and no trace of dark energy manipulation. The warships and warriors were like unsatisfactory sketches from an artist's brush, effortlessly erased by an unseen hand.
"Plan?"
Hua Ye whirled around, grabbed Ruoning by the collar, his狰狞 (zhengning - ferocious/hideous) face almost pressed against hers.
"You mean, I was tricked by that pervert?"
His pride was stung more than the loss of the fleet. He, Hua Ye, the King of the Heavenly Palace, the most noble being in the universe, had actually been used as a pawn by a Grim Reaper hiding in the gutter?
"Your Majesty! Now is not the time to pursue this!" Ruoning struggled anxiously.
"That thing... we have absolutely no idea what it's capable of! It's reading our technology! The black hole engine can no longer be used! We must retreat immediately!"
"retreat?"
Hua Ye seemed to have heard a joke even more ridiculous than being outmaneuvered by Karl. He shoved Ruoning aside, pointed at the god-like figure outside the flagship, and roared with unbridled arrogance:
"I am the king! The entire universe shall submit to me! What right does this mere, strange-looking beast have to make me retreat? Listen to me, not only will I not retreat, but I will also chop it up and use it as decoration for my throne!"
He was overwhelmed by an unprecedented sense of humiliation. He refused to believe the reality before him, blaming everything on a malfunction of the black hole engine or a flaw in the technology provided by Karl.
"All units! Open fire! Throw everything you can at that thing's face! I don't believe it can erase the entire universe!"
Hua Ye's orders were transmitted through the flagship's command system to every single Skyfall warship that was still in shock.
The surviving fleet seemed to have been injected with a powerful stimulant, and despair and madness replaced fear. Countless cannon fires imbued with void energy, like a dense rainstorm, tore through the deathly silence of the universe, bombarding Vishnu from all directions.
Lasers, dark energy cannons, antimatter missiles... the Fallen Ones unleashed everything in their arsenal.
In an instant, the airspace where Vishnu was located was completely engulfed by the light of the explosion, forming a turbulent sea of energy.
"Hahahaha! See that? So what if it's bizarre? Before absolute power, everything is futile!"
Looking at the dazzling "fireworks," Hua Ye regained his kingly confidence and laughed wildly.
However, his laughter quickly caught in his throat.
On the demon's wings, Morgana was holding a handful of popcorn that had just been produced from the demon's gene pool, watching with great interest.
"Damn, look at this, Atto, this idiot actually believes he can do it."
She pointed at the screen, laughing so hard she almost fell over.
"What is he doing? Is he trying to solve a paradox about the ultimate truth of the universe using a bunch of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division? He's so talented, so incredibly talented!"
Atto stood to the side, his expression serious, but a hint of strangeness lurked in his eyes:
“Your Majesty, this thing…it seems to be enjoying this attack.”
"That's for sure,"
Morgana popped a piece of popcorn into her mouth; it crunched.
"It's eating right now. Didn't you see it didn't move an inch? It's analyzing, learning, treating this energy like a buffet. That idiot Hua Ye not only came here personally to be the examiner's practice partner, but he also brought his own food."
Angel Nebula, in He Xi's laboratory.
On the enormous holographic star map, countless data streams refreshed like a waterfall.
“It’s been recorded,”
He Xi's voice was devoid of emotion, but her fingers gripping the pen tightened slightly.
"The energy frequency, material structure, and dark information encoding of all attacks... 0.01 seconds before they come into contact with the target, the target's surface has already generated a corresponding absolute defense model. It's not resisting head-on, it's... nullifying. It temporarily erases our attacks from the concept of existence."
The angel Yan beside her, looking at Vishnu on the screen, who was bathed in gunfire yet unharmed, felt a chill originating from her very life instincts, running up her spine.
"Is this... the teacher's test question?" Yan's voice was a little hoarse.
"No,"
He Xi shook her head. She looked at another corner of the star map, which led to Earth.
"These are just stationery items for the exam. The actual exam questions haven't been handed out yet."
On the battlefield, after the light of the last cannonball went out, Vishnu's figure became clear again.
It remained suspended there, its four arms outstretched as if embracing something. The ancient golden patterns on its sickly blue-green skin seemed to have brightened slightly.
It absorbed all the energy and information of the attack.
Hua Ye's smile froze completely on his face.
"No...this is impossible..."
Vishnu seemed to have lost interest in him. He slowly raised one of his arms and pointed it toward the right flank of the scum fleet.
Then, with a light swipe.
It's like drawing a line on a canvas with a paintbrush.
An invisible "crack" appeared instantly in the space where the right-wing fleet was located.
The next second, all the warships on that "crack," along with the celestial debris inside, were neatly and uniformly cut in two, like a piece of paper sliced by this line.
The cut was as smooth as a mirror, without any explosion or energy dissipation. The fundamental structure of matter was severed directly from an incomprehensible dimension.
Immediately afterwards, Vishnu made a "twisting" motion with his other hand toward the rear of the fleet.
It's like wringing out a wet towel.
The entire rear fleet, spanning hundreds of kilometers, along with the dozen or so warships within, was instantly twisted and folded by an invisible force. The steel warships were crumpled into balls like pieces of paper, the immense gravitational force erupting and then vanishing in an instant. Having lost the fundamental laws governing their structure, the twisted warships began to collapse from the inside out, turning into meaningless clouds of metallic dust.
"Crazy... Crazy..."
A captain of a ship with a catastrophic humiliation was completely driven to madness by the sight before him. He screamed and turned the ship around, trying to escape this hellish place.
"Your Majesty! Order a retreat! We can't win! This is a devil! This is a god!"
"Shut up!"
Hua Ye's eyes were bloodshot, and he appeared to be insane.
"Anyone who dares to retreat! I will be the first to kill him!"
His last shred of dignity wouldn't allow him to admit defeat.
But Ruoning was much more clear-headed than him. Ignoring Hua Ye's roar, she snatched a communication channel and screamed shrilly:
"All units! Scatter and break out! Every 937 that can escape is a shoo-in! Call for help from the Angel Nebula and the Demon Wings! Send these coordinates to the entire universe!"
She wanted to muddy the waters so that Keisha and Morgana would also have to face this monster.
However, Vishnu seemed to have seen through her thoughts.
Its featureless face turned towards Hua Ye's flagship.
It slowly raised its third hand.
This time, it didn't attack, but instead made a "grabbing" motion.
Inside the command center of Huaye's flagship, everyone felt a strange sense of suffocation. It was as if the entire space had turned into a solidified piece of amber, and they were the insects trapped inside.
"Warning! Spatial parameters locked!"
"Unable to warp drive! Unable to enter warp drive!"
"Conventional engine power...is dropping to zero!"
The piercing alarms blared one after another.
They discovered that it wasn't the spaceship that was broken, but rather that the act of "escaping" itself was forbidden. They could move forward, fire, and do anything else, except "leave" this airspace.
Vishnu turned this battlefield into a closed cage.
"no no……"
Hua Ye finally broke down, collapsing onto his throne, his body trembling violently. He looked out the porthole at his subordinates, who were still attacking in vain and then being "erased" in all sorts of unbelievable ways, his eyes filled with endless fear and regret.
He finally realized that he had not come to reclaim the throne.
He came from the snare.
He wasn't the main character either.
He was just a piece of draft paper that was taken out first to test whether the newly bought eraser was any good...
"Ah ah ah ah ah--!!!"
Desperate screams echoed across the completely sealed-off, deathly silent bridge of the flagship.
Chapter 423 Keisha's Question
Hua Ye's screams were particularly piercing in the absolutely silent bridge, yet they also carried a sense of powerless absurdity. The once invincible King of the Heavenly Palace was now like a child whose toy had been taken away, unable to do anything but scream.
Ruoning yanked him off the throne, her eyes as cold as the vacuum of the universe outside.
"Shut up! Your wailing will only please the enemy!" she growled, her voice devoid of its previous panic, replaced only by a resolute determination to fight to the death.
"My lord, you are now the army's only hope!"
"Hope? What hope?"
Hua Ye muttered to himself absentmindedly.
"We've been locked up, Ruoning...we're all going to die here..."
"uncertain."
Ruoning's gaze was fixed on the garbled characters that kept displaying error messages on the holographic star map.
"This thing... its behavior pattern doesn't seem to be simply killing. It's demonstrating, testing, recording. It's like... like a scholar conducting an experiment."
Her intuition told her that there must be a "question setter" behind this.
Carl, Keisha, and Morgana all knew of the existence of this "question setter." They tacitly pushed Hua Ye forward to test the limits and rules of this being.
"We are the test subjects,"
Ruoning's voice was frighteningly calm.
“Since they are experimental subjects, they have the right to provide feedback to the experimenters. Wang, do you remember? When Karl, Keisha, and the others were discussing this plan, they deliberately avoided using a certain title…”