To be honest, the group of Old Royal Fleet under Emperor Barrian’s control actually possesses quite formidable combat power. In fact, it can be said that all the lowa Regular Army forces we’ve eliminated so far combined don’t match the strength of this antique fleet. The Judgent Throne, with its bizarre defense chanism that can rebound damage, and the Radiant Ring, which can instantly annihilate anything in the material world once activated, along with the massive number of support warships, these antiques from the Old Empire can unleash their full power enough to confront our Royal Fleet and the Third Legion: Barrian’s confidence and arrogance are not unfounded, and he indeed should have the capital for such arrogance given no unexpected events.
However, the only unexpected thing is: in order to control these starships, Barrian installed a control system with a fatal weakness. The "host" ford by the Human Brain Matrix, although its consciousness is already confined, is still an excellent target for Mind Control for the Yurasis Imperial Power. Barrian obviously doesn’t understand things like Mind Control: you can tell by the fact that he still relies on nerve poisons and brainwashing education to maintain his rule; he doesn’t understand Mind Control at all. He would never have thought that there could be such a powerful entity that can control the entire Royal Fleet on the battlefield.
I even think he still hasn’t figured out what’s happening with the rebellions on those slave planets; those slave uprisings must be inexplicable events in his eyes.
The Yurasis Imperial Power remains untouched by the enemy ships’ attacks. Although the enemy’s attack power is indeed strong, the Glory Starship’s own defensive capability can withstand such attacks for a long ti, and this period is enough for Sandora to complete her mission. She disperses countless Spirit Sparks, almost matching the enemy’s fleet in number, and these Spirit Sparks rush towards the Royal Starships controlled by Barrian, rging with them. Those powerful Radiant Rings and Judgent Thrones have almost no chance to resist. Their fragile control thod destined these ships to have zero resistance to the Soul Taker. Once integrated with the Spirit Sparks, the ships imdiately fall silent, weapon systems go offline, and they are incorporated into the Imperial Army’s identification system. Sandora rapidly and efficiently takes away all of Barrian’s trump cards right in front of him, appearing leisurely and skillful. I feel like the fleets I brought don’t need to take action; it seems like Sandora alone can handle all the enemies.
"Hey, are you guys really just watching from the sidelines?" After a while, there’s no longer any unit with hostility towards the Imperial Army on the battlefield. Sandora finally had a chance to complain to in the spiritual connection.
"Well, there’s really nothing we can help with on this matter." I replied quite helplessly, my gaze falling on the external projection, the gunfire in the sky over the Divine Country had already ceased, and the battlefield was as quiet as a dead water. The Royal Battleships enveloped in the mysterious halo lined up neatly as if waiting for the Imperial Army’s review. They lined up like chicken drumsticks, then like buns, and then into a line of large characters: I’m so hungry, I’m so hungry, I want to eat, I want to eat...
Sandora, having completed her mission, was bored and began to play like this.
And the planet of the Divine Country appeared calm and lifeless. I estimated there should be at least so anti-aircraft gun positions on its surface, but in fact, it showed no response to the fleet in outer space. It seed that besides us, there were no more enemies here.
"Unable to locate Barrian’s communication frequency," the intelligence officer reported the scanning situation, "All communication channels on the target planet have been closed. There are signs of heavy damage on the planet’s surface facilities."
"Should we bomb it?" Sandora suggested in the spiritual connection, "Or should I just crash into it? Do you want to watch a space collision? I think I can knock this planet out by seventy or eighty astronomical units, and then no matter if there are people or not, they’ll surely all be dead..."
Just as Sandora finished speaking, the two one-ter-two people beside imdiately jumped up...
"That would be too easy for him, and also too easy for those radical leaders," I said with a twisted smile, standing up, "These guys deserve to die a thousand tis over, and so debts must be settled face-to-face for peace of mind... Pandora, didn’t you want to execute Barrian ten thousand tis? Let’s go execute him ten thousand tis!"
Emperor Barrian and his most loyal henchn among the radicals must face more severe punishnt than other traitors, and re death is not enough to wipe out the cris of this group of bastards. Now all his resisting forces have been dismantled, we decide to arrest the remaining war criminals on the "Divine Country." Such affairs should have been handed over to the Imperial Soldiers to handle, but after thinking about it, I felt it was more appropriate for us to do it personally. As ntioned before, so accounts must be settled face-to-face—Pandora has been waiting for this mont for a long ti, and she would certainly prefer to personally pin Barrian down and execute him for fifteen minutes.
"Actually, I can use Spiritual Power to sweep the entire planet..." Sandora casually said as we were preparing to set off, "But it seems Little Pandora prefers more satisfying thods, so you guys go ahead. But still, be careful, heaven knows if Barrian has any more tricks up his sleeve. It’s not that I’m afraid he has strong resisting power, just worried he might cunningly escape."
"Don’t worry, if Barrian can still escape under these circumstances, we might as well just commit seppuku to apologize to the world," I waved my hand, "You just help confirm Barrian’s hiding place using Spiritual Scanning."
Sandora’s spiritual power is truly a convenient tool, not only can it be used for direct combat, but it can also serve as nearly an unsolvable radar for intelligent beings; under her mind-scanning abilities that feel like a cheat, the coordinates where Emperor Barrian hid soon got exposed. Except for Miss, who wasn’t skilled at direct combat and stayed on the spaceship, Qianqian, Lilina, the Pandora sisters, and I all landed on this planet, which was completely under control. As for Sandora, who completed the mission, she humd a strange little tune, hopped to the asteroid belt, and as everyone expected, a starving Sandora... decided to act like Pac-Man; she wanted to eat more while she was still big...
... Let’s forget this scene; the Queen in a starvation stupor beca a black mark machine of history.
I still rember the sights I saw last ti I ca to the Divine Country; although this lifeless planet appeared dead, it at least had a magnificent and grand exterior. It was covered in a layer of extravagant and luxurious tallic decoration, with golden totem poles and grand cities everywhere. However, this ti, the scene we saw was entirely different.
The group, leading a troop of heavy soldiers, used space deploynt to directly land in a city near the Antarctic of this planet. The city was large and should have been as magnificent as other places, but now all we saw was a city street and building complex battered with holes and marks of destruction. The city’s alloyed elevated bridges might have suffered from explosive assaults, breaking halfway through, and what was once a wide and smooth city avenue was now potholed, as if bombed by sothing. Most of the large buildings around were partially collapsed or cracked; if they weren’t made from extrely sturdy interstellar alloy, they would have crumbled completely into rubble. All the urban facilities were destroyed, and gray-black embers were evident everywhere, with acrid burning slls lingering in the air. As we walked along the city street for a while, we found the bodies of lowa people.
There were more than a dozen fully ard lowa soldiers, who died in a very peculiar manner. They seed to have died in a frenzied, close-range exchange of fire, forming a circle with their weapons pointed at each other. The high-energy ghost energy rifles blew off half of the deceased bodies, the remaining halves crystallized and solidified at the scene, thus preserving the scene of their deaths. There were no traces of other attackers around, so all of them died by their own hands. The energy slots of their guns were nearly full, indicating they didn’t "waste" firepower elsewhere; all their firepower was used to kill their comrades.
We also found a concentrated ghost energy crystal bomb in the hand of one soldier. It was just taken out and hadn’t been activated; it seed he intended to throw it at a nearby building but didn’t manage to do so before becoming a half-body crystalized death sculpture.
Soon, we found more remains nearby. These dead lowa people, half-crystallized bodies, frozen scenes of mutual massacre, bombs taken out but yet to be thrown—of course, considering the city’s current state, I have every reason to believe more bombs had exploded—such scenes filled the entire city, and I believe, the entire planet. This place had gone through a carnivalesque hell, full of marks of the Divine Country’s rulers killing each other and self-destructing. This city was blown up by the lowa people themselves, and surely other places were the sa.
"Spiritual Plague..." Qianqian muttered, hopping agilely over the pothole-filled road, "No wonder there’s almost no resistance on the planet; this last battle ended like a ga... Sandora’s Spiritual Plague is so powerful?"
I didn’t answer, but inwardly marveled at the scene before . Although I had imagined the outbreak of Spiritual Plague, I didn’t expect it to be so intense. This plague had clearly destroyed the lowa Capital Star, cultivated over millennia. Emperor Barrian’s final bizarre actions were sowhat explained: eighty percent of his n were already mad, the remaining twenty percent were attacked by so many madn, how many could survive was unknown. In such a despairing situation, Barrian couldn’t possibly put up any aningful resistance. Since the outbreak of the Spiritual Plague, the resistance forces we faced suddenly weakened several tis, and the closer we got to the Divine Country, the more chaotic the resistance beca, and the stranger the behavior of those fleets. It seems these deadly spiritual powers have spread with the Divine Country’s external communications; even the lowa fleets we encountered on the edge of the star system, although not as miserable as the direct infected ones of Divine Country, definitely were not much better off. Emperor Barrian, already paranoid to the brink of paranoia and persecution complexes, facing such subordinates killing each other... is his ntal state still normal now?
The Imperial Soldiers guarding us tightly gripped their weapons but encountered no enemies worth shooting; the planet was now genuinely lifeless, nearly extinct by the Spiritual Plague. Finding nothing of value, we sped up our pace, proceeding to an open field according to Sandora’s provided guide.
"There’s an underground bunker; they say there are underground bases everywhere on this planet. Without Sandora’s navigation, who knows where Barrian is hiding... after the atmosphere was sealed, he could only dig into underground holes," I said while looking at the navigational display hovering beside and then rubbed my chin, "Hmm, I think we should put on a little bit of an infiltration operation show; let’s first establish an infiltration plan..."
I had just said half when Pandora already pulled out her Precious Lump Cannon, set to planetary mode, and fired one shot at the vacant ground ahead.
"Boom!!!" The violent explosion blew open the ground, creating a large pit with a diater of a hundred ters, and tens of ters deep; ghost energy’s residual blue radiance wandered like water in the pit, while Visca skillfully and deftly tossed two bombs inside, triggering a larger explosion, turning the pit into a heavenly pit, revealing a black hole beneath and faint lights at the bottom of the cavity.
"Bro, what?" Pandora asked, hugging her Precious Lump Cannon, in unison with Visca.
: "..."
Forget it, with these two Shorties present, any plan of action inevitably simplifies down to the step of "set up the cannon and blast them away," I might as well not waste ti. With a wave of my hand, everyone entered this bunker hidden deep underground.
I have sufficient reason to believe that the two rounds of explosions by Pandora and Visca just now have alerted the personnel stationed in this bunker—if there were indeed still guards here. In fact, we should have drawn their attention when we swaggered through the city, but we’re not worried about anyone escaping. Everything here is locked by radar, any material movent cannot evade those sharp little devils’ surveillance; what’s more, we have a Mind Perception ability and a Prophet’s prediction in space (although the first is mostly focused on squatting in the asteroid belt eating rocks now), this should be a pleasant trip of catching turtles in a jar, with no unexpected events.
The structure of the underground bunker is very complex, but the accompanying Imperial Agents quickly cracked its surveillance system and thus obtained a detailed map. The bunker has a central-to-western main artery, this broad corridor made of interstellar alloy stretches downward. There are several space compression zones along it, so after advancing not far along the corridor, we traversed over a thousand kiloters of real space distance, directly entering the mantle part. Here, we equaled already bypassed the outer protective circle of the bunker and reached its personnel area.
Along the way, we more than once saw lowa soldiers who, like those on the surface, died from mutual slaughter or simply self-mutilation and suicide, lying thusly in disarray, even blocking branching routes in places, yet no one cleared their bodies away—Barrian’s final hiding place is this kind of environnt. Thinking of those natives forced into the Earth’s core struggling for survival, this tyrant and his followers now truly deserve their fate.
Just when we thought that besides Barrian there were no other living people in this underground bunker, suddenly faint voices erged from ahead.
"Covert operations," the accompanying Imperial Agent imdiately ordered softly, his soldiers instantly went into stealth mode, while we also activated our disguise protection, slowly advancing behind these professional agents. After rounding a corner, the group entered an expansive space.
There was a large crowd of surviving lowa people here!
Under the protection of camouflage devices, we approached these people. They hid in this open hall at the end of the corridor, appearing tense, with so even showing signs of ntal abnormalities: beset with nerves, aiming their guns at the hall’s entrances and exits, as if sensing enemies even without hearing any sound. Despair was etched onto everyone’s expressions, a repressive atmosphere pervaded the entire space.
Comparing these people’s attire with the intelligence provided by Tulazo, I confird these were indeed the high-level cadres of the lowa Radicals—they were still alive and had hidden here with Barrian.
A high-ranking officer stuck his sidearm into its holster for the fourth ti, nervously asking the person beside him, "Did you hear that explosion just now?"
Another officer touched the weapon at his waist, "I don’t know, I don’t believe what I saw—are you Tobias?"
"I am, but was it you asking just now?"
"Attention, do not frequently verify with one another," a third officer spoke up, "Illusion, all illusions, don’t believe anything. The space battle should still be ongoing, Emperor Barrian holds their ace battleship from back then, the final victory of this battle belongs to us. For now, don’t speak casually, after the battle ends, we will have ti to slowly consider how to treat this disease."
"Yes, the Emperor will triumph, the Emperor will definitely triumph... But I don’t understand, the Emperor has such a powerful force, why did he wait until now to use it? We’ve already been destroyed by them in almost all our colonies, it’s a heavy loss, we should’ve seized the opportunity before the main army was completely wiped out..."
"Tobias! You mustn’t doubt the Emperor’s decisions," the fourth officer clasped his hands together solemnly, "The Emperor once personally said that he needs to purify so people, and in the end, only the most loyal followers can beco the True God. Until then, the flas are just having ’them’ help burn so trash, the Emperor has reserved this most honorable position for us, you should be grateful... Ah, I seem to hear soone approaching!"
"Illusions, Cole, illusions, we will not fail," the first officer drew his weapon but quickly put it down again, "Illusions, rember, they are all illusions, Tobias, you haven’t drawn your gun, right?"
"Yes, my weapon is in the holster."
"Very good, very good, do not be controlled by illusions... But wait, how can I be sure I really heard your response? Sid, you haven’t drawn your gun, have you? I need to confirm I truly heard your response and not imagined it... Damn, my head’s beginning to ache... Cole, you’re not pointing a gun at my head, are you?"
"Yes, my gun is in the holster... Wait, Tobias, you haven’t drawn your gun, have you?"
"Yes, my gun is in the holster... ah, no, no, I feel like you’re all pointing guns at my head..."
The fourth officer smiled, "Yes, Tobias, we are pointing guns at your head, congratulations, eventually you escaped the illusion, goodbye."
A gunshot rang out.
The officer nad Tobias lay in a pool of blood.
"Illusion, illusion, Tobias, return to your position, we must wait for the Emperor’s audience," the fifth officer helped Tobias’s already crystallizing body up, "Oh, wait, I almost got caught up in illusions... Yes, that’s right, Cole, Tobias was controlled by an illusion, I shouldn’t look at his corpse, this nearly infected too... Wait, I see many people in front of , Cole, is this an illusion?"
We lifted our disguises, a group of imperial leaders, plus dozens of Imperial Elite soldiers and agents ard to the teeth, stood openly before this last group of surviving lowa high-ranking officers.
An officer with a small mustache and wearing a luxurious silver-white uniform pointed at us and exclaid.
Another officer raised his weapon, aiming at us for a while, the others imitated, confirming this action for several seconds, Cole, the officer, resolutely laid down his gun.
"Hmm, it’s an illusion. Tobias, I hope killing you just now wasn’t due to an illusion, the symptoms seem to be intensifying..."
Us: "..." (To be continued. If you like this work, feel free to vote for it on Qidian (qidian), your support is my greatest motivation.)
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