Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“Heaven’s Artillery is to be activated in ten, nine, eight, seven…”

The earth was shaking, the wind was blowing, sand was everywhere, and mystic rays were rising up in every corner. An enormous bud seemed to be blossoming slowly inside the silver bowl. The ivory petals enveloped nine Colossi and almost two thousand Exos. Illuminated by the brightness, everybody became transparent and intangible, as if they were turning into brilliant stars that would stab at the center of the universe.

This was the first time that Ding Lingdang had been launched by the Heaven’s Artillery.

Whenever her body was disintegrated, and her brain cells and memory cortexes were unfolded in the four-dimension, redisplaying the past for her, she could not help but recall Li Yao and the place where they first met.

It seemed to be… inside the war memorial museum on Distant Expanse, known as the eternal flagship of the federal army, in the Far East Ocean, when the Nine Elite Universities were admitting students, right?

At that time, she was a girl who had just graduated from college and was about to start working, and Li Yao was nothing more than a silly boy.

Her first impression of the silly boy was that he was quite interesting.

Her second impression was that—she needed to find a way to trick such an interesting, sturdy, silly boy into the Grand Desolate War Institution!

Shua!

The ivory flowers blossomed. The nine Colossi were all as clear as glasses, reflecting the sunlight in colorful ripples. The ripples turned into waves, and the waves gathered into tides. The tides surged and resonated with each other, drawing Ding Lingdang and everybody else into a turbulence made of a billion colors.

Her muscles, veins, nerves, bones, guts, and soul were all shattered in the turbulence!

The distance of teleportation was too short for the launch power of the Heaven’s Artillery. Not only was it unnecessary for them to be teleported to another Sector, they did not even reach the edge of the Heaven’s Origin Sector.

Therefore, when the weird feeling of ‘breaking the void’ had just occurred to her, the colorful turbulence around her dispersed before Ding Lingdang enjoyed the feeling in it.

What replaced the colorful turbulence was a profound universe, burning stars, and the flames of starships that were even fiercer than the burning stars.

The teleportation had succeeded!

The astronomical parameters in the Heaven’s Origin Sector, at least in the area around the home planet, had all been well documented. The distance of teleportation was quite short, too. A hundred enormous crystal cameras were even helping to lock onto the coordinates of the destination. Therefore, they were teleported to the rear of the Black Wind Fleet precisely, comprising the most vulnerable star beacons and their guardian fleet.

One of the starships of the Black Wind Fleet in front exploded for no good reason when it was not attacked by anything. It was immediately swallowed by a gigantic light ball.

Ding Lingdang was slightly dazed. Then, she realized that it was a rare ‘space-time conflict’, meaning that an Exo was directly teleported to a critical location on the Imperium’s starship, perhaps deeply ’embedded’ into the warehouse of crystals, the arsenal, or the engine unit.

When different materials superimposed on the same location, such a powerful ‘rejection reaction’ was immediately triggered!

The space was too vast a place. Even in a battle of starships that was in a dense battle formation, the distance between starships was still often very far away from each other. The odds of someone directly jumping into the enemy’s starship were little to none, almost theoretically impossible.

On the other hand, it was further proof of the accuracy of the teleportation. They were like burning daggers that were stabbed into the bottom of the Black Wind Fleet!

Sensing the sudden arrival of the Colossi, the Imperium’s starships that were already agitated by the Big Bai Fleet became even more anxious.

Dark spurts appeared on all the starships of the Imperium. A large batch of crystal suits and space shuttles swarmed out like bugs, forming a dense, deadly nebula. The few Colossi that were dealing with the Big Bai Fleet far away also abandoned their previous targets and lunged aggressively at the new arrivals.

It would be quite troublesome for a space fleet when the crystal suits or the Colossi cut into the interior.

Compared to starships, both the crystal suits and the Colossi were small and weak in spiritual energy, but they were too swift and agile, which made it difficult for them to be locked onto and destroyed.

Besides, every barrage of the main guns of a starship would consume astronomical crystals and ammunition. Even if they could destroy a few crystal suits after several shots, the cost would outweigh the gains.

Dealing with the crystal suits at a close distance with starships was almost like shooting mosquitoes with cannons. The efficiency could be very low, and the effect might not be satisfactory at all.

Also, in the case of dense battle formations, friendly fire had to be taken into account, too. Generally speaking, without the disturbance of an enormous gravitational source, the trajectories of the mystic-ray weapons were almost always straight lines. However advanced the Imperium’s technology was, they could not make a beam of destructive rays turn at the speed of light. The attacks might hit the enemy, but what if the friendly starships were right behind the target? If the friendly starships performed emergency evasion, the whole battle formation would be disrupted.

Therefore, to some extent, only crystal suits could deal with crystal suits, just like how only Colossi could deal with Colossi!

If the space was classified into eight quadrants with Ding Lingdang as the base point, the sparkly light of the Burning Prairie Fleet had already appeared in the seventh quadrant.

So, their mission was to dig deeper into the wound in the soft belly of the Black Wind Fleet together with the Big Bai Fleet before the Burning Prairie Fleet arrived, not giving the wound the chance to ‘heal’.

Ding Lingdang had never been good at giving motivational speeches. In most cases, she liked to ask her fists to speak for her!

“Kill them!”

The Draconic Phoenix led the charge with flames of light almost a hundred meters long surging out. Nine raging dragons of spiritual energy rested around the Colossus. The strongest God of War of the federation charged at the group of Exos from the Imperium under the protection of the dragons, as if she was a living Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars flag!

The flag was utterly invincible wherever it reached. Neither the crystal suits nor the space shuttles could survive one round under her attacks. They were wiped out like chickens and dogs. She was not even interested in stopping for a moment to destroy more crystal suits but simply shoved away the annoying crystal suits around unstoppably, lunging at the nearest shield starship!

The federal army had long become used to the tactics of the ‘Blazing Tyrannosaur’. The other eight Colossi and more than two thousand crystal suits flooded in through the gap that she had just opened, pushing forward relentlessly. Like three hundred soldiers assaulting the camp of a hundred thousand enemies at night in ancient times, courage and determination mattered more than tactics and equipment.

Faced with the Draconic Phoenix, the shield starship of the Imperium was like a defenseless city.

No matter how crazily it activated its counteroffensive measures and spiritual shield, there was no stopping the Draconic Phoenix from turning into a streak of crimson brilliance and approaching quickly.

The arsenal starships were either affected by the crystal suits of the two parties that were engaged in a fierce fight or blocked by the shield starship itself. They could not find an appropriate route of attack at all.

Even if they could find an appropriate attack route, the stealth and disturbance units on the Colossi that far exceeded this era made it difficult for them to be locked onto by regular weapons.

A Colossus was right next to the warship, the furious flames from it were even clearly visible to the naked eye, but the fire control system in the crystal processors could not determine the location and distance of the target at all. It was not unusual in space battles at all.

Boom!

The Draconic Phoenix smashed at the head of the shield starship that was almost one kilometer long. Two crimson flames suddenly appeared on its arms, which then immediately turned into two enormous drills that blew up the super alloys, the strengthened porcelain, the reflective glass, the soft heat-proof layer, and the defense rune arrays embedded among the layers.

Once the Draconic Phoenix entered the shield starship, its doom was inevitable.

Most starships had their own anti-invasion systems, but such systems were only prepared for the enemy’s crystal suits. It was impossible to stop the Colossi.

No matter how much the internal fire points bombarded the Colossus, and no matter how many soldiers jumped at the Colossus carrying their chainswords and vibration sabers, they were as useless as the stinging of a needle.

Flames almost a hundred meters long surged out from the Draconic Phoenix blatantly, congregating into tentacles that looked like magma in the narrow cabins and pathways. All the crew members that did not have the time to escape from the starship, be they wearing a mustard-seed combat suit or not, could not avoid their fate of being turned into ash.

Over the past ten years, from the Imperium’s captives and the debris of the Imperium’s starships retrieved in the Battle of Firefly, the federation had deduced the structures of a lot of Imperium starship models, which allowed Ding Lingdang to know the location of the bridge, the arsenal, the crystal warehouse, and the engine compartment.

The Draconic Phoenix went forward unstoppably and broke into the bridge, which was the brain of the shield starship, as easily as a burning stone sinking into a piece of tofu.

The nine dragons around its body rushed out, transforming the scorching magma into even more violent tornadoes. After only one moment, the crystal processors and commanders on the bridge were obliterated. The whole ‘brain’ was melted and burned!

When the Draconic Phoenix finally broke out of the shield starship from the rear, what was floating behind her was nothing more than an empty iron coffin.

When did she gain special feelings for Li Yao?

It was probably the time when he suffered heavy wounds during the Limit Challenge Competition on Devil Flood Dragon Island, fell into a coma, miraculously woke up, and gritted his teeth to work hard without giving up hope although his spiritual root was ripped apart and his Cultivation hit rock bottom, right?

Ding Lingdang had once had a similar experience. She saw herself inside Li Yao. Perhaps she looked at the silly boy in a different way because of the sympathetic feeling.

To this day, she could still recall the time they flew into the clouds to eat and drink. Whenever she thought about it, she felt like laughing.

However, she could almost swear that she did not have any ‘evil thoughts’ at that time. Well, probably?

The Draconic Phoenix suddenly performed an unbelievable dodging movement, shooting out almost a hundred red shadows in all directions. Dozens of dazzling mystic rays arrived without a sound and minced all the blurred shadows, but they could not stop the real Draconic Phoenix from jumping up in the gap of mystic rays and lunging at the source of the rays, an arsenal starship that had been armed to the teeth. Before the second round of mystic rays surged out, she dived into the arsenal starship and began a new slaughter!