Chapter 606: Murdered
With the continuous victories in the surface landing operations, the vanguard forces quickly established a foothold on Mars. Massive amounts of supplies and logistics troops began to be continuously transported from the Moon to the front lines, and the base was a scene of bustling activity everywhere.
"Reporting, Commander. Our forces have currently secured approximately thirteen hundred square kilometers of land, established one large military base, and eight temporary auxiliary bases, awaiting further instructions." The battlefield command AI stated in a stiff, synthesized voice.
"Something just doesn't feel right..." Mars surface commander Mai Hao Li was a very cautious man, and he felt uneasy about the pervasive atmosphere of underestimation of the enemy, from top to bottom, within the military.
"Have the Divination Corps report to the command center."
"Yes, sir."
The Human Federation army, a blend of technology and cultivation, had diviner mages accompanying every legion. Although the predictive abilities of these mages varied, they still held an irreplaceable position on the battlefield.
They might not be able to predict the enemy's complete troop deployments, but they could generally foresee which positions would face the fiercest attacks or which regiments would suffer the greatest casualties.
With preparation, corresponding losses could be avoided.
The auxiliary AI could perform complex inferences based on vast amounts of known information, while the diviner mages, in their own way, provided the AI with information from various mysterious sources.
Of course, the diviner mages' role went far beyond this. In scientific research, they had an even more heaven-defying effect, able to greatly reduce the frequency of trial-and-error through their respective divination spells.
Once a scientific hypothesis was proposed, they could use divination spells, bypassing the costly experiments themselves, to directly predict the correctness of the hypothesis. Though the success rate wasn't heaven-defying, it still saved a lot of detours.
...
"An anomaly will occur seven days from now." A middle-aged man resembling a mage said directly after entering the command center.
In a sense, conversing with a diviner mage was quite effortless, as many times, they wouldn't need to wait for the other party to speak, but would simply state the answer themselves.
"The entity causing the anomaly is beyond our predictive scope, but inferred from circumstantial information, it appears to be something targeting technological weaponry."
"Targeting modern weapons?" The commander's first thought was the special environments of the Four Great Mystical Realms on Earth.
Within the Mystical Realms, a special electromagnetic pulse was omnipresent, causing all electronic components in equipment to fail under its influence.
"If that's truly the case, then we're in trouble."
...
"Mars' planetary consciousness is awakening?" Bai Mo, invisibly outside a certain city, also noticed a trace of abnormality.
The long-standing worship and faith of countless Martians towards the Spirit of Nature had finally created a consciousness body infinitely close to the seventh stage. As its believers faced a collective crisis, it slowly began to awaken.
"It's a pity that adding one more muddled Gaia won't change anything."
Including the few six-stage powerhouses who ignored worldly affairs and focused solely on arduous cultivation, the Human Federation on the Moon possessed over twenty six-stage superhumans.
Equipped with specially designed spirit energy technological weapons, they could even take on two equally powerful Martian experts with one person.
Mars had only four six-stage powerhouses in total. Even with the addition of a six-stage perfected planetary will, the disparity in high-end power remained vast.
The only reason the battle hadn't completely collapsed was that the Federation's high-ranking officials were still slacking off and passing the buck to each other, stuck in the "three monks, no water" stage.
No one was willing to fight to the death against opponents of the same stage, because in such an invasion war, they might very well encounter individuals willing to take their opponents down with them.
Competition among the high ranks was extremely brutal. If one lost their combat capability, even if they achieved monumental merits in the war, their subsequent loss of power would be almost inevitable.
Winning honor, losing the kingdom.
"Knock, knock, knock." A knocking sound came from a dormitory room in Federation Mars Military Camp No. 12.
"Who is it?"
"I'm here to fix the air conditioning!" An inconspicuous man outside the door replied.
"Fixing the air conditioning? One moment, I'll open the door."
The temperature on the surface of Mars was as low as negative fifty degrees Celsius. Even though temporary, simple atmospheric circulation devices had been deployed inside the military base, the air temperature was still terrifyingly low.
Before a complete atmospheric circulation and temperature control system could be established, it was necessary to install convenient air conditioners for heating in the military dormitories. Otherwise, basic soldiers, still mere mortals of flesh and blood, would likely be frozen half to death if they tried to remove their power armor.
Thus, these days, those installing and repairing air conditioners for the military dormitories were all busier than bees.
"Please show your ID." The squad leader, who had already opened the door, casually asked for the ID as a matter of routine.
Although military regulations explicitly stated that doors should only be opened after confirming the identity of personnel, he didn't take it to heart at all. On a desolate place like Mars, what spies could possibly be there worth noting?
"Here." The man, with a large toolbox behind him, handed his ID card to the other party.
"Come in." The squad leader merely glanced casually, then turned around, preparing to lead the man from outside into the room.
"Shk!" Before the pain could even register in his brain, the unfortunate officer, his back to the air conditioning repairman, was accurately and flawlessly stabbed through the heart by a dagger shimmering with an eerie light.
"You--!" By the time the searing pain reached his brain, he could only manage to utter a single "you," not even given the chance to turn his head.
Centered on the wound, the black light from the dagger madly devoured the victim's body. In less than ten seconds, the murdered officer was consumed until not even a speck of bone dust remained.
"I'm sorry. While we bear no grudge or enmity, I regret that you were in the way." After killing him to silence him and destroying the body, the man, who had been posing as an air conditioning repairman, quickly reverted to his true appearance, and even, with a hint of reluctance, made the sign of the cross over where the body had been.
As it was premeditated, no one else was passing by the dormitory at the time, and as an officer qualified for a private dormitory, there were no cohabiting roommates. So, the man effortlessly took control of the place.
"Ivy... for the time that remains, I shall live it for you." The man with fiery red hair rummaged through a drawer and found the officer's personal identification, and began reading the murdered man's file.
"In half an hour, I'll be back on the Moon."
The murdered officer was named Ivy, and in a sense, he died quite unjustly. The only reason he was killed was that in half an hour, it would have been his turn to accompany the aerospace transport plane returning to the Moon, flying back to the Federation's supply base.
PS: Thanks to the squabble between two great masters, I came up with an entire arc's plot...
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