Chapter 707: Triumphant Return! (part 4)
The light in the command room grew brighter as the main engine of the Sky Destroyer roared for the first time in a long time but the illumination did not grow to the point of becoming obtrusive.
"Wow, so I can actually delegate more people to help me control this thing." Bai Zemin began to talk to himself as a large amount of information flooded his head.
The Sky Destroyer simply had too many functions. Although Bai Zemin"s brain was strong and fast enough to process a large amount of information in a matter of seconds, he was, at the end of the day, a First Order existence; considering that he was piloting a battles.h.i.+p capable of ma.s.sacring Fourth Order existences with its strongest weapon it was already a miracle that Bai Zemin"s head didn"t explode.
In fact, if the Sky Destroyer was in its optimal condition it was hard to say whether Bai Zemin would still be able to sit comfortably in the seat of the s.h.i.+p"s commander; the amount of information that would flow into his mind would be overwhelmingly higher and a great part of that information would be too heavy.
Although it was still necessary to find the right and trustworthy people for the task, the fact that Bai Zemin could take several men to divide the tasks was a great relief to him not only mentally but also in the middle of the battlefield. There would be more than a few times when Bai Zemin would have to personally be on the battlefield leading, therefore, he might not have time to control the Sky Destroyer depending on the circ.u.mstances. Besides, it was hard to be attentive to the functions of the battles.h.i.+p, dodging attacks with such a large sh.e.l.l, detecting enemies, antic.i.p.ating their movements, aiming and attacking accurately, etc.
Rumble...!
The battles.h.i.+p began to tremble and the giant magic circle suddenly glowed. Under the shocked eyes of the few people who with Bai Zemin"s permission stayed in the command room, the ground beneath their feet disappeared.
"Woah! Is this a virtual map or something?" Chen He looked at the scene under his feet in amazement.
Shangguan Bing Xue noticed that the map view seemed to be a few thousand feet above the ground. There were mountains, forests, and even some mutant beasts could occasionally be seen running around, which meant that the map was actually a kind of live video display.
"What kind of strange function is this?" Nangong Lingxin was shocked as this was the first time she had seen something like this. She hadn"t even seen something similar in movies!
"After the Sky Destroyer"s main engine is turned on, the battles.h.i.+p automatically unlocks a function that bestows two types of views that can be changed at will by the commander of the s.h.i.+p." Bai Zemin explained as he sent several mental commands and the Sky Destroyer moved accordingly. "The Sky Destroyer has two views of 180 degrees each, one of them allows you to see everything from the sky at 5000 meters high with the battles.h.i.+p as the center while the other is from the bottom with 20000 meters below with the s.h.i.+p as the center."
"That"s crazy!" Cai Jingyi exclaimed with wide eyes. "With that kind of eagle eyesight.... then our enemies can forget about even launching surprise attacks!"
"Hehe..." Bai Zemin laughed softly but said nothing.
Although the eagle-sight of the Sky Destroyer was powerful, it was actually not invincible by any means. Bai Zemin could think of at least two or three ways to ignore the effect of this wonderful function or at the very least lessen its effect considerably.
RUMBLE....!
Suddenly, everyone inside the s.h.i.+p felt their surroundings begin to rumble noisily and several of them had to lean against the walls or cling to whatever was closest to them to avoid falling to the ground as their feet began to falter.
"What"s wrong?" Wu Yijun quickly asked as she looked around the room with a hint of worry on her face.
This was the first time she had climbed on such a foreign object after all!
"Don"t worry, you"ll see soon enough." Bai Zemin didn"t explain too much and instead ordered in a deep voice, "Magic cannon number 4, set up medium level firepower."
A small part of the screen in front of them separated from the rest and showed the movement of one of the cannons. The cannon was very large, approximately 20 meters in diameter and about 60 meters long. It was located on the highest floor of the battles.h.i.+p, and under the surprised eyes of everyone, a large bright red magic circle was illuminated right in front of the muzzle of the cannon.
The jet-black cannon moved slowly until the mouth where the magic circle was pointed towards the sky. It was clearly visible in the image that with each pa.s.sing second, the magic circle became brighter and brighter, which probably meant more power.
But... where was that cannon going to shoot? Wouldn"t it destroy the roof of the battles.h.i.+p? Everyone inside the command room began to sweat bullets when such a thought flashed in their minds.
But none of them had time to ask questions or say a word because after two or three seconds Bai Zemin waved his right hand and calmly said, "Fire."
Bang!
The sound of something going off could be clearly heard even from the command room which was two floors below the room where the cannon number 4 was located. On the holographic screen in front of them, everyone watched wide-eyed as a beam of red energy shot out from the muzzle of the cannon, but to everyone"s amazement, the worst didn"t happen.
Instead of destroying the roof of the battles.h.i.+p, a part of it opened up an instant before the shot was fired so the 20-meter diameter energy beam broke beyond it, soaring into the sky at lightning speed and disappearing from their sightlines in an instant.
Booooom!!!
Followed by a powerful explosion and the rumbling of the area they were in, everyone stared in shock as a small red dot appeared on the large energy screen showing what looked like the clear sky and quickly grew larger and larger.
"Ah!" Wu Yijun cried out in fright and subconsciously moved closer to Bai Zemin as she saw the red beam grow larger and larger.
In fact, for a moment there were several of them who backed away with pale faces and it wasn"t until Bai Zemin"s laughter rang out that they realized what was happening.
The giant screen in front of them was dyed bright red, and the light was so powerful that the entire room took on a reddish tone for a couple of seconds before it slowly began to return to normal as the energy beam began to weaken.
"Th- That was..." Liang Jing was so panicked that for a moment he apparently forgot to cough.
"The eagle-eye view of the Sky Destroyer currently allows us to see from an alt.i.tude of approximately 5000 meters. We are currently approximately 3,000 meters underground, just inside and below one of the mountains near the Five Silver PaG.o.das." Bai Zemin calmly explained as he controlled the battles.h.i.+p to ascend slowly out of fear of hitting something. "The cannon from before was one of the secondary cannons and they have an approximate range of 300 kilometers in the mid level before their power begins to decay rapidly. What you witnessed before was the energy beam flying into the sky."
300 kilometers range?
It didn"t seem like a big deal when you compared it to the weaponry of the current era; some missiles even had the ability to cross continents at the speed of sound. However, when each and every one of them observed the result of the shot from the cannon before, none of them felt that the power of the cannon was lacking and actually felt that it was simply bone-chilling, to say the least.
The Sky Destroyer that had been soaring all this time at controlled speed finally seemed to reach "the exit door". Of course, the exit door was actually the peak of one of the many mountains that surrounded the mountain range around the Five Silver PaG.o.das.
"My G.o.d..." Chen He took several steps closer to the walls, and when his eyes landed on the areas of the mountain that had been hit by the trajectory of the energy beam from before, he froze in shock.
In fact, the others were not much different from Chen He in terms of reaction and even Bai Zemin himself was secretly shocked.
The walls of the command room seemed to have turned into huge screens showing the surroundings of the battles.h.i.+p. As the s.h.i.+p slowly moved beyond the mountainous walls, everyone saw how the solid stone had been melted and its edges were still red hot with several traces of lava running through the rocks.
The power of the energy beam fired by one of the secondary cannons at mid-fire level had reached such a high power that over 5000 meters of thick giant rocks and earth had been penetrated and disappeared as if it was paper!
"Molecular-level destruction?" Shangguan Bing Xue gasped. She abruptly turned to look at Bai Zemin and said with disbelief in her eyes, "That destructive power is comparable to the power of a nuclear bomb!"
"Just a small one," Bai Zemin chuckled before pointing out, "The Sky Destroyer"s secondary cannons are not as destructive as a true nuclear bomb, after all, nuclear bombs not only affect the area of impact but the shockwave from the explosion is just as if not more terrifying than the explosion itself. These secondary cannons only affect what is in their path without altering the rest of the map... In theory and from a destructive point of view, the secondary cannons of the Sky Destroyer are less powerful but far more effective in dealing with specific targets."
Although Bai Zemin seemed to be trying to downplay the armament of the battles.h.i.+p, the few people present simply shook their heads as in their hearts they knew the truth well; they were seeing with their own eyes as the s.h.i.+p ascended into the now visible blue sky how thousands of kilometers in the firing path with a diameter of over 6 kilometers was turned into a pile of nothing.
The Sky Destroyer"s secondary cannons had not only been built with Rank 3 metals but among the runes that had been drawn on the weapon were several effect multiplication runes, which boosted the power and range of the shot fired tremendously as the energy beam moved further away from the s.h.i.+p.
"Finally blue sky!" Feng Hong laughed and even couldn"t help but shed a few tears as he shouted out loud, "I swear to G.o.d, I don"t want to go back into any d.a.m.n cave for at least two lifetimes!"
In fact, Feng Hong wasn"t the only one excited.... Everyone inside the battles.h.i.+p was so excited when on the holographic screens in the corridors or in the cafeteria they saw the blue sky that they couldn"t help but shed tears of joy and bitterness; this applied especially to the soul evolvers that had entered the fifth ruin and had been underground for about a whole week.
Each and every one of them had thought they were going to die on this expedition. The first step into the forest had been a war against millions of enemies, and even though Bai Zemin had led them to a great victory during that first war, they all could not help but feel somewhere in their hearts that this would be a one-way trip with no return.
The first combat had required them to kill millions, what was awaiting them deeper then?
Millions of weaver ants in the mutant forest, at least 200,000 mechanical golems with power equivalent to 200,000 First Order existences and among which there was no lack of shooters with enough firepower to threaten Second Order soul evolvers, around 30,000 golden golems whose power was equivalent to that of Second Order existences, survived a confrontation against a Fourth Order existence... Some of them fought for days against millions of weaver ants among which there were First Order, Second Order, and even Third Order weaver ants!
The fact that approximately 75% of all those who arrived were still alive was simply unthinkable; a miracle that no one expected to happen.
But... They had survived.
No, they had not just survived.... Each of them had contributed their little grain of sand to achieve victory after victory!
Now, they could all go home with their heads held high! Rewards? Praise? Honor? They would have it all thanks to the fact that they had risked their lives interned inside a mountain range for almost half a month!
"If this isn"t a triumphant return, then what is one?" Sun Ling shook her head as the battles.h.i.+p came to a halt after reaching 20,000 feet in alt.i.tude.
"Let"s return, let"s go home!" Bai Zemin waved a hand in excitement to see his family.
The Sky Destroyer began to accelerate in a northwesterly direction, slowly gaining speed until it soon became a flash of bright light that disappeared into the distant horizon.