Chapter 589: Yang Yan
The imagined scene of being cleaved in two, with blood gushing, did not materialize. What was truly split in half was only the power armor encasing him; the person inside was completely unharmed.
The squad leader, who had just skirted the gates of hell, stumbled out of the pile of scrap metal, greedily breathing in the fresh air to calm his heart, which had been wildly pounding at the precipice of life and death, and his brain, which had been rapidly replaying memories like a magic lantern.
Legend had it that when a person was on the verge of death, their brain would replay their entire life like a magic lantern.
In just those terrifying ten seconds, he felt he had already reviewed the memories of his entire first half of life. If he had been given a few more seconds, he might have even seen the second half.
...
"Bang!" Not long after, the last Observer was suddenly impaled against the wall by a spear of light, transforming into a wisp of smoke and vanishing.
The thousands of monsters that had fled into the residential area indeed caused a bit of a hindrance for the hunting party in the sky, making them hesitate to act for fear of collateral damage.
But it was merely a slight inconvenience, ultimately unable to bridge the immense gap in power levels.
As long as they were willing to lower themselves and hunt them one by one, these thousands of monsters would have nowhere to escape; at most, it would just be the difference between killing one with a single move or ten with a single move.
"This won't do. It'll become an endless war of attrition. And with the main battlefield still on the Moon, whether we win or lose, we'll be at a disadvantage."
With wave after wave of impact, more and more stragglers slipped through. The speed at which reinforcements gathered sometimes couldn't even keep up with the rate of monster growth.
"We must end this quickly."
"The Moon Fortress has fifty-eight minutes left until it completes its final acceleration and breaks free from orbit."
"We can only use that."
"Unfortunately, according to program calculations, even with a self-destructive output, we can only destroy thirty-one percent of the Heavenly River." Someone emphasized the word "unfortunately" with a bite, likely harboring some ulterior motive.
"I suggest we only sever the portion of the Heavenly River entering the Moon, then swiftly withdraw."
"Seconded."
"Our avatars will cover the rear and self-destruct once the Moon Fortress has reached a safe distance."
"Agreed."
...
All communication was completed within three seconds. At least when faced with a crisis of this magnitude, they chose not to bicker, but to unite against the common enemy.
...
"A big one's coming out."
Before the words had even faded, the pink Heavenly River began to boil, and a monster, estimated to be thousands of times the size of a regular Reaper, emerged halfway.
The monster had no eyes, only a bizarre, gaping maw.
Observing the gaps in its mouth, everyone felt it might lead to a kaleidoscopic new world.
But no one had any desire to find out.
The monster struggled, trying to crawl out of the river. However, it seemed there was still a pulling force deep within the Heavenly River, allowing it to only surface with half its body.
Numerous tentacles were randomly distributed over the monster's body, swaying in the wind on the half of its body exposed above the river.
The tip of each tentacle was an exceptionally sharp, specialized scythe. In a sense, it was somewhat like a monster forcibly melded from countless Reapers.
...
"Is the Star-Melting Cannon ready?"
"Yang Yan has completed deployment."
"Then begin."
The Star-Melting Cannon, named Yang Yan, was fundamentally crude and simple. It was merely a launcher that poured energy onto a designated location, with no other grand or sophisticated abilities added.
But even the simplest ability, when accumulated to its extreme in quantity, could unleash world-destroying effects. At least none of their true bodies would have the courage to stand in the path of Yang Yan's firing trajectory.
"Five!"
"No need for a countdown, just fire."
"..."
The next moment, the true strike descended.
From a secret sub-dimension, a power beyond any natural disaster descended. The force arrived at the Heavenly River's location at the speed of light.
The Heavenly River, which had by now expanded to nearly a hundred kilometers wide, almost completely obscuring the entire sky, directly met this energy column, whose diameter was one-tenth its own width.
In the eyes of most people on the ground, it could no longer be described as an energy column. It was a tsunami of light!
Wherever the light touched, the extremely high-density energy shattered the chemical bonds of various substances in the air, causing even their molecular structures to collapse.
Some of the matter couldn't even maintain its atomic structure. Infinite annihilation reactions filled every corner.
...
The colossal monster that first encountered Yang Yan was merely grazed, and its skyscraper-like body was largely vaporized.
Immediately, the "river water" within the Heavenly River also began to intensely evaporate, but this did not hinder Yang Yan's destructive penetration in the slightest.
This colossal sword of light, reaching from heaven to earth, rampaged through the Heavenly River like a dinner knife slicing through butter.
It was just a pity that this "butter" of the Heavenly River was truly too massive, so enormous that it was enough to dull the dinner knife itself.
After all, it originated from Earth, having traversed over three hundred thousand kilometers to reach the Moon.
...
"Don't waste time, the monsters are inexhaustible."
Yang Yan, capable of slaying gods and Buddhas, seemed to possess a magical allure, causing the technicians controlling it to become engrossed. They constantly fine-tuned the angle, slaughtering any monster that dared to show its head in the Heavenly River.
"Cut off the Heavenly River immediately!"
If someone could observe everything from outer space, they would likely believe the Heavenly River was a super-colossal hand extending from deep within the Earth, intending to gather the entire Moon into its palm.
Every tributary branching off from the main current above the Moon resembled a finger of this massive palm.
What they had to do was to use Yang Yan to sever this dark hand at the wrist. Otherwise, the endlessly regenerating fingers would sooner or later drag them all to their deaths.
"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle..."
But when Yang Yan's power was unleashed upon the "wrist" juncture, the most violent collision of the entire battle occurred!
The butter, originally soft and easy to cut, seemed to be extremely compressed into super butter-steel at that instant. Every centimeter Yang Yan advanced required a head-on confrontation.
"Light Execution Aria!"
"Aurora Shooter!"
...
One auxiliary Spirit Art after another was cast, empowering Yang Yan.
Although most of them were not specialists in auxiliary Spirit Arts, they each still had some reserves. Transcendent beings who stood at the pinnacle of society wouldn't have any obvious weaknesses.
This was also a characteristic of the Federation's Spirit Energy technology: the connection between personal cultivation and technological weapons had never been severed; the two complemented each other.
Whether it was the Spirit Energy Network system that accelerated the cultivation of superhumans with technological power, or the even more advanced Super-class Mage Towers, or now, the Yang Yan Star-Melting Cannon that could in turn be empowered by Spirit Arts, all bore witness to this very point.
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