The battleship was upon them. Inmu-li suddenly roared with laughter three times. Though one of his arms had just been severed, his face showed no hint of discouragement. He seized an opportunity to unleash a seven-colored rainbow light, which transformed into a magnificent, vast colored wall spanning half the sky, blocking the Blade Emperor who was attacking him.

Although he could not clearly discern the figure of the Blade Emperor through his sight, battles between Fourth-Level Existences required far less visual acuity than conflicts between lower tiers. Once one’s spiritual power reached the Fourth Level, perception became exquisitely detailed; even something as minute as an atom was perfectly clear within the spiritual world.

If the Blade Emperor had remained invisible and motionless, it would have been one thing. But the moment he moved, the subtle currents of air, the faint fluctuations in space, and all associated signs would reveal his location.

Facing the Rainbow Light Wall, the Blade Emperor raised his twin blades high and brought them down heavily. The blade formed from void energy sliced into the colored wall as easily as cutting through tofu, then, with a violent tear, it ripped open an 'X'-shaped gash.

It must be understood that the spells cast by Fourth-Level Existences often possessed sustained effects, the stronger the practitioner, the truer this was. This was because Fourth-Level Existences possessed a profound understanding of the essence of energy; the energy structures of their spells were incredibly intricate, allowing them to absorb ambient energy from the universe to replenish themselves. Some spells remained powerfully potent even after a hundred thousand years.

The Rainbow Light Wall employed by Inmu-li was of this nature; it inherently possessed the ability to self-repair. However, the void energy cleaved by the Blade Emperor carried the power to rip and cause massive damage. When the two forces clashed, the stronger one would prevail. Consequently, the 'X'-shaped opening on the wall expanded dozens or hundreds of times in an instant, causing the entire wall to tear apart, disintegrating into fragments.

Nevertheless, Inmu-li had achieved his goal. Deploying the colored wall was merely a tactic to buy the Blade Emperor a split second of time. Immediately after launching the wall, he flashed back out of the fray and let out a long, upward howl.

Instantly, his body began to grow wildly, shooting upward. In the blink of an eye, he surpassed fifty meters, a hundred meters, five hundred meters, a thousand meters, transforming into something as immense as a mountain!

The storms whipped up by Giant Inmu-li’s every move blasted the ground, sending sand and stones flying high, the dust cloud rising for kilometers, radiating outwards like a physical barrier.

There appeared to be an unspoken understanding among the Fourth-Level Existences of the Orion Arm; seeing Inmu-li initiate his action, they immediately followed suit. In an instant, light and shadow flashed erratically, colors exploding everywhere—some like the Milky Way, others like flames, like colorful sunset clouds, or like the aurora borealis. The clouds floating in the heavens were torn apart by the dazzling light of various hues; the sky roared, the earth thundered, and the land within a hundred-kilometer radius instantly cracked open like dry earth.

Saluo, Emperor Salian, and the others each employed their own methods, even willing to incur injuries of varying severity just to gain the chance to enlarge their physical forms.

Battles between Fourth-Level Existences involved numerous factors. While physical enlargement significantly amplified offensive power, defensive capabilities, and the capacity to endure harm, it was not entirely without drawbacks.

The Blade Emperors were unconcerned by their opponents choosing to grow larger, because there was a limit to how large a Fourth-Level entity could expand its body. The larger the form, the more potent the spiritual energy required to sustain it.

Exceeding that threshold would cause the overly massive body to collapse on its own. Furthermore, regarding the capacity for physical expansion, among the combatants, no one—save Saluo, who was also at the Fourth-Level limit—could achieve a larger physical size than the Blade Emperors.

The thirteen Blade Emperors transformed in a single moment, becoming a host of giants standing one thousand five hundred meters tall. In contrast, the smallest among the Orion Arm’s Fourth-Level Existences barely reached six or seven hundred meters, less than half the height of a Blade Emperor, revealing the gulf in power.

Giants as immense as mountains possessed the power to overturn seas and shatter the heavens with every gesture. When they clashed, the legends of the gods were born from the resulting upheaval of heaven and earth.

Seeing the Blade Emperors also expanding, light flashed in Inmu-li and the others' eyes. Seemingly prepared for this, they suddenly shouted and channeled all their spiritual power, madly unleashing all manner of spells intended to restrain movement—ropes woven from runes, massive chains forged from silver light, energy barrier walls, and Rainbow Light Walls—all shot densely toward the Blade Emperors.

Simultaneously, in orbit outside the planet, the Galan Star fleet, having assumed its combat formation, did not hesitate. They immediately fired their main cannons in unison. Energy beams descended like a torrential downpour, filling the entire sky. Their target was the cluster of gods battling on the surface.

To be precise, their attack focused on the thirteen Blade Emperors who were grappling with various binding spells!

Their targeting was flawlessly precise; not a single energy beam missed the Blade Emperors, all of them concentrated solely upon them. These beams behaved as if they possessed intellect!

A deafening explosion followed, an energy release comparable to the detonation of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads exploding on the ground. In that moment, the heavens and earth lost their color, and the sun and moon vanished from sight. From space, a gigantic sphere of light could be seen expanding rapidly across the surface, and moments later—

An indescribable behemoth enveloped nearly half a continent.

When the sphere of light dissipated, what remained on the battlefield plain was a bottomless, massive crater. The diameter of the opening was about ten kilometers. Looking down, it was an abyss of blackness, pierced only by a faint, intermittent red glow—the color of magma, though mostly obscured by thick, swirling black fog.

Suddenly, a powerful gust of wind swept through, clearing the surrounding smoke and haze.

Mid-air, Inmu-li held the wind in his hands before casually dispersing it. His eyes were fixed intently on the ground, his expression grave.

He had witnessed firsthand how the beams descending from the sky had struck all thirteen Blade Emperors. This strike was the Galan Star race's ultimate move: the perfect fusion of technology and Fourth-Level spiritual power. Even a Fourth-Level Existence could not evade such fierce and precise saturation fire, because this attack did not originate from an ordinary person or a standard computer, but from a Fourth-Level intelligence—Bedak, the fleet’s commander and combat nucleus in space!

The power of technology was limitless. Although Bedak was not as inherently powerful as any single Blade Emperor, his spiritual strength had resonated with the entire fleet through a certain technology, amplifying his power manifold. At the moment of attack, his might momentarily surpassed the limits of the Fourth Level, locking onto the thirteen Blade Emperors and focusing all firepower exclusively upon them.

Inmu-li and the others were only struck by the residual shockwaves. Though these ripples were more potent than some tactical nuclear blasts, having been prepared, they only caused minor inconvenience.

However, gazing at the unfathomable chasm below, Inmu-li felt no certainty that his opponents were dead. Energy beams could not kill a Fourth-Level Existence; that was normal—only a Fourth-Level Existence could slay another. But such energy beams should at least have annihilated the Blade Emperors’ physical bodies, driving them into the shadowed side of the spiritual world, forcing them into a prolonged state of weakness.

Then, Inmu-li and his allies could pursue them into the shaded plane of the spiritual world. While the shift between Yin and Yang was immensely taxing for Fourth-Level Existences, entering voluntarily was far preferable to being forced in passively.

With their current strength, Inmu-li and the others would have a ninety-nine percent chance of effectively eliminating thirteen Blade Emperors who had been forced into the spiritual shadows and were extremely weakened.

But the sensation transmitted through the spiritual world told Inmu-li that the Blade Emperors had not been driven to the shaded side; they were still concealed somewhere nearby.

"They evaded the attack," Saluo stated, his brow furrowed.

"Indeed," the Blade Emperor’s voice responded. They were cloaked in invisibility; without initiating an attack, concealing their forms was quite simple. Even Saluo, with comparable strength, would not find them in a short time.

In fact, just before executing their massive transformation, the Blade Emperors had maintained a contingency. Inmu-li and his allies enlarging their bodies was clearly intended to draw them into doing the same. However, this action only exacerbated the disparity in combat power between the two sides compared to when they were un-enlarged. The gap would not shrink; it would only widen. Inmu-li and the others doing this must have had another motive.

Therefore, what the Blade Emperors had unleashed were, in reality, thirteen illusions. Those mountain-like bodies were physical manifestations of illusion, appearing massive and formidable, and possessing considerable combat strength, but fundamentally they were nothing more than an energy field. (Illusionary techniques could deceive opponents of the same rank, much like the Protoss hero Zeratul once used illusion to deceive the Zerg Queen Kerrigan.)

While casting the illusions, the Blade Emperors utilized the High Spiritual Sense Eye to observe the various possible futures, calculating their options, and gaining a slight understanding of Inmu-li and the others' intentions.

The Galan Star race was renowned throughout the Orion Arm for their seemingly mystical military technology. Rumor had it they could make an entire fleet operate as a single, supremely flexible and invincible entity. While the Galan Star people kept this information tightly guarded, neither the Singers nor Yang Ying’s intelligence systems had ever gathered much detail.

But Yang Ying, possessing the technological inheritance of the Progenitors and having studied for a period at the high academies of the True Human Empire, already surpassed the Galan Star race in his personal comprehension of cutting-edge technology.

He could easily deduce which specific technology the Galan Star race employed to achieve such tactical coordination. In fact, this technology had ultimately filtered down from the True Human Empire itself.

"God Core Art," the Blade Emperor murmured, as if to himself, articulating the term.

"You know of God Core technology?!" Inmu-li exclaimed in surprise upon hearing the Blade Emperor’s words, for the term the Blade Emperor had spoken was the formal name of that very technology.