Chapter 213: Greenhouse Effect
This spiritual impact, a culmination of the faith of countless believers, was ultimately unable to reach its core, halting more than a meter from Sa Qia Si Ji's main body thanks to his full-power counteraction.
However, Sa Qia Si Ji paid a considerable price for this; the giant's entire volume shrank by half. Although it was still recovering at a visibly quick rate, it would take at least nearly an hour to return to its original level.
But trading an opponent's trump card for tissue that could regenerate at super-fast speeds seemed quite a bargain, no matter how one looked at it.
"What a shame," the Pope lamented. "This move was originally meant to serve as the church’s final line of defense, a sacred weapon capable of converting invading enemies into believers, but now it’s been expended here."
After the attack, the Pope felt a deep pang of heartache; he had unleashed power accumulated over many years, and estimated he wouldn't be able to use it again for the next decade.
Naturally, the other ability users participating in the encirclement wouldn't miss such a golden opportunity. They intensified their attacks on the shrinking monster, striving to make its recovery speed unable to match the rate of destruction.
The unknown substance's regeneration speed was truly terrifying; in a war of attrition, they would almost certainly be the ones worn down and eliminated.
"Wrath of Thunder!" Recovering amidst the barrage of attacks, Sa Qia Si Ji, at the core of the gigantic monster, transformed once more into his lightning-manipulating form, unleashing incessant bolts of lightning upon the surrounding "mosquitoes."
No matter how fast the reactions of these Unmelting Realm ability users were, they still couldn't compare to the speed of lightning attacks. Soon, some began to sustain injuries.
One, two... several individuals thus fell heavily to the ground, their lives or deaths unknown. The others, locked in bitter struggle, had no time for detailed assessment and could only instruct the medical units waiting on the periphery to brave death and enter the battlefield's core.
"She's dead, and you won’t get off easy either!" a young man from the European Union roared, his eyes bloodshot with extreme fury over his lover’s death.
He plunged four steel needles into his head, then pulled a small box from his trouser pocket and, without hesitation, swallowed the pills within.
"My love, I’ll be joining you soon." After doing all this, his entire being burst into flames, quickly transforming into a streak of light that plunged directly into the gigantic monster’s largest wound, continuously drilling towards its core.
"Is this what you sexually reproducing beings call love?" Sa Qia Si Ji, whose species propagated through fission and had no concept of gender, found the man’s suicidal act of devotion utterly incomprehensible.
"Another disgusting spiritual impact! Why do you insects possess so many emotional fluctuations?!" The streak of light that had plunged into the wound also carried the man’s most intense rage, continuously dissolving the alien matter obstructing its path forward.
"Sister Wu Zhi, wouldn’t it be wonderful if a man could do something like that for me?" Chris Ding, also on the battlefield, spoke to her bracelet.
"Haven’t you already attracted a whole bunch of idiots willing to risk their lives for you?" the bracelet replied, its tone clearly disdainful.
"That’s only because of my abilities... none of them were truly sincere."
"And you expect to receive others’ sincerity when you haven’t offered your own?"
"Forget it, I’m not discussing emotional problems with an old witch like you."
"That old man, the Pope, is getting increasingly displeased with you. He’s probably figured out by now that you have no devout faith and are completely unworthy of your position as Holy Maiden. And your constant poaching of his faction’s clergy using your abilities has really touched a raw nerve for him."
"So what? With external enemies at our doorstep, does he still dare to turn hostile with me?" Chris Ding replied, supremely confident.
"Caution is paramount. He hides his true depths well, and I, too, have weathered centuries of trials."
"Does the magic world you come from truly possess such an ancient heritage? And are there really humans in that world too?" Although she had asked countless times before, she habitually posed the question once more.
"My Heavenly Spirit Race often trades with humans... Are you ever going to stop? Don’t you get tired of always asking the same thing?"
"Let me focus on taking out this big guy first."
"In my opinion, it’s not that simple. While our cultivation system differs from yours, and even from its, some fundamental principles remain similar. Trust me, I wouldn’t harm you." After saying this, the voice from the bracelet gradually faded.
"Sleeping again. Well, I can’t always rely on her, what if..." Chris Ding also remained cautious.
"If self-detonation was all it took, then what’s the point of cultivating?" Sa Qia Si Ji once again blocked the lover’s full-power blow. However, the massive body of its outer shell had shrunk from its initial two hundred meters to just forty.
Yet, even so, to those besieging it, it remained a colossal creature. And merely to achieve such a result, seven individuals out of the dozens standing at the world’s apex had already perished on the spot.
The allied forces, who had originally anticipated an overwhelming victory, felt a profound heartache over such casualties. Behind every apex ability user stood a web of countless vested interests, and another fierce storm of power reshuffling awaited after the battle.
But they were already stuck between a rock and a hard place. Although the enemy's size was immense, its speed was in no way inferior to their own. Even choosing to retreat now would come at a significant cost, to say nothing of the pressure they would face afterward.
"What a pity that anyone with a movement speed under a hundred couldn’t even serve as cannon fodder in this battle." The idea of major power leaders employing cannon fodder tactics utterly failed given the high mobility of both sides.
In just an hour of shifting combat, the center of the battle had already moved nearly two hundred kilometers, reaching the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The blockade line, meticulously deployed before the battle, now seemed like a joke.
The lightning summoned by Sa Qia Si Ji also reached its limit; subsequent strikes had grown weak and powerless, holding little significance against enemies protected by thick Life Fields. Thus, it simply retracted this transformation.
"Boom! Boom!" Realizing that the insects before it were not as weak as it had imagined, it dragged the battlefield all the way to the open ocean, where the shockwaves from their clashes launched massive amounts of seawater into the air.
Deep beneath the sea, Seres, the brain bug supervising the progress of the ice cap melting plan, was also aware of the battle in the Arctic Circle, but it hadn’t expected them to fight all the way to the ocean’s surface.
Its plan had reached its final stage: using the Sea Race to simultaneously unleash the astonishing amount of combustible ice beneath the Arctic seabed, allowing an incalculable quantity of the greenhouse gas, methane, to surge forth. This would drastically accelerate the melting of the Arctic ice cap, indirectly promoting the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, and by leveraging the substantial rise in sea levels, achieve the goal of ocean expansion.
The severe greenhouse effect generated simultaneously would also bring almost insurmountable disasters to their enemies on land, while having little impact on the Sea Race, who resided in the deep sea.
This was far more effective than any invasion. At this stage, the Sea Race capable of coming ashore were still too weak; the true main forces, powerhouses over a hundred meters in length hidden deep beneath the sea, would be sitting ducks on land without buoyancy. Their movement speed simply couldn't compare to that of the elite ability users who were already approaching supersonic velocities.
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