In the stark silhouette of Long Lekong, the scattered fleet array of Beidake unleashed a chaotic barrage of beams, missiles, and torpedoes—the entirety of the fleet’s firepower, marshaled under Beidake’s control, poured down upon the eleven Blade Emperors darting erratically within their formation.

To minimize their profile against the bombardment, the Blade Emperors reverted to their natural scale. They slashed and weaved through the fleet, effortlessly evading the torrent of light beams. Their formidable psychic might granted them movements so incredibly agile they defied belief; even so, they continually conjured phantoms to draw the enemy fire.

Although Beidake commanded hundreds of thousands of high-yield energy cannons, millions of lower-yield variants, and countless mobile armaments like fighters and mechs, capable of instantly unleashing destructive power equivalent to dozens of Level Four limits, the actual threat posed to the Blade Emperors remained meager.

One Blade Emperor shot toward a massive battleship like a projectile. Kicking out, the Emperor struck the center mass of the hull. The rear of the vessel immediately ripped open, its two ends curling upward while the middle buckled, the single kick cleaving the kilometer-long warship clean in two, reducing it to a shape resembling the Chinese character for ‘one’ (!).

Compared to the battleship, the Blade Emperor was like an ant to an elephant, yet this "tiny ant" possessed godlike strength! They battered the vessels with fists and feet, or sliced through them with Void Energy Blades, destroying squadron after squadron of warships. Where they passed, only wreckage and explosions remained. They trod upon the debris, relentlessly pressing toward the core.

At the heart of the fleet, several wormholes had already opened. Emperor Salian and the others clearly understood that this fleet could now only buy them time.

Had Yingmuli not died, they might have held a slim chance of victory, but now, the only recourse was retreat—preserving their vital forces while awaiting a chance for future vengeance.

Beidake steered the warships into successive lines of defense before the Blade Emperors, showing no sentimentality for the vessels; they were mere tools.

Thanks to the use of God-Core technology, these ships required no independent decision-making; they merely executed Beidake’s commands. Creative command, in fact, would only be detrimental, interfering with Beidake’s control.

Consequently, the vast majority of the fleet’s movements were governed by the central intelligence system autonomously. The few positions requiring manual control were filled almost entirely by combat bio-constructs; true Galan beings were few to the point of being negligible.

To the Galan race, fleets like this were expendable consumables rolling off the assembly line, easily replenished, deployed on the battlefield solely for attrition.

Soon after, the Blade Emperors reached the inner ring. At this point, Emperor Salian and the four other Level Four entities who had escaped the planet, along with Beidake and a fraction of his fleet, had already withdrawn through the wormholes. All that remained was empty space and three or four thousand warships, to which the departing Beidake had issued orders for suicidal attack runs.

These remaining vessels charged toward the center, unleashing their firepower without restraint. Lacking Beidake's command, their efficiency plummeted a thousandfold. The energy beams spraying in every direction were merely like a light drizzle to the Blade Emperors; they continued their advance unimpeded.

Their sole purpose was to maintain their spatial jamming instruments, distorting the Blade Emperors' ability to pinpoint the coordinates of the wormholes on the other side, thus buying precious time through sheer numbers.

Fifteen minutes later, the final warship was cleaved down the centerline by a single stroke from a Blade Emperor, bringing a definitive end to this rearguard fleet.

The Blade Emperors sheathed their Void Energy Blades and gathered again. Without a word, one of them stepped forward, tearing open a wormhole, and they all stepped through.

On the other side of the wormhole lay the Joint Command Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, established on a relatively intact inhabited world to coordinate and resolve various issues and disputes arising during the occupation of colonized planets.

Evidently, the news that the Level Four entities had been caught in a sudden attack and suffered heavy casualties had already reached this post.

The moment the Blade Emperors exited the wormhole, they saw thousands of starships, large and small, hastily fleeing the planet toward deep space. Countless other vessels were still ascending from the planetary surface, and crowds of people were running everywhere on the ground, surging toward spaceports, landing pads, and every other location where ships were docked, their faces still etched with the terror of a world ending.

One Blade Emperor stepped forward, raised a hand, and a flash of golden light erupted. As the light subsided, an endless swarm of the Zerg army materialized behind him.

This army comprised twenty Swarms, each containing a minimum of ten million and up to thirty million units, all commanded by a single Cerebrate.

Recently, the second batch of over three hundred Cerebrates had broken their cocoons. To grant the Zerg greater operational flexibility and expand their reach, Yang Ying had once again subdivided the Swarms; some larger clusters were split into three, four, or even five or six new groups. Currently, the Zerg boasted over four hundred Swarms, their presence spread throughout the entire Perseus Arm.

The twenty Swarms summoned by the Blade Emperor were predominantly aerial forces, centered around Mutalis and Scourge, supported by Devourers, Guardians, Queen Strains, and newer units like the Corruptors and Hive Lords, totaling four hundred million combatants—a mass that appeared like a suffocating, dark cloud.

The Blade Emperor pointed a finger, and the Zerg host instantly shrieked and charged toward the planet! The planetary defense system quickly detected the arrival of the Zerg army, and the defense alarms blared deafeningly. The starships attempting escape suddenly panicked, scattering wildly at the sight of such a colossal swarm before them, throwing the entire planet into utter chaos.

The Zerg host advanced upon the planet in an overwhelming deluge. These Zerg units possessed grotesque limbs, bloodthirsty eyes, and spat forth Creep Tumors, corrosive acid, and parasitic agents, a sight terrifying enough to raise the hackles on any observer.

They quickly collided with the fleeing ships. Though these vessels tried desperately to escape, the Zerg swarm surrounded them on all sides, leaving no route open.

Streams of Creep Tumor projectiles, globes of acid, and various parasites rained down upon the ships and the ground.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, all the ships in the air were annihilated; their fragments and wreckage fell toward the ground like meteorites.

The fleet guarding the Joint Command Headquarters reacted relatively quickly, launching immediately to intercept the Zerg host. This guardian fleet numbered approximately one million warships, sourced from the various races participating in the Expeditionary Force—a multi-racial joint unit, a necessity for establishing the Joint Command.

Before the guardian fleet could even close the distance, their various beam cannons opened fire, unleashing energy beams of Level Seven, Eight, and Nine intensity upon the Zerg host.

The Zerg army retaliated in kind, spitting acid, Creep Tumors, and parasites into the guardian fleet. These attacks mimicked the destructive pattern of kinetic projectiles, yet possessed advantages that physical shells lacked.

Warships struck by acid immediately experienced corrosion on their outer armor—a corrosive effect of extreme potency. Nearly every hit was certain to burn through the outer plating; a few more impacts would inflict fatal structural damage.

The corrosion also caused widespread destruction to the internal systems. Vessels hit by the acid frequently suffered damage to the energy transmission lines of their propulsion systems, leading to reduced power and erratic operation; communication lines were also severed, resulting in communication failures, and so on.

However, the corrosive effect of the acid paled in comparison to the corruption inflicted by the Corruptors. Warships attacked by Corruptors were infected by a specialized parasitic spore. This spore rapidly converted the ship's internal resources, engineering them, based on the instincts coded in the spore’s genome, into Zerg turrets.

Thus, on the battlefield, vessels attacked by Corruptors could be seen sprouting gun muzzles with alarming speed, turning their fire upon their former allies.

Of course, as the perennial mainstay of the Zerg aerial force, the Mutalis achieved the most glorious results. They were fast, their Coiling Worm attacks could leap between enemies, and they swarmed the guardian fleet, enveloping it from all directions. The guardian fleet deployed its fighters and mechs to engage the Mutalis in close-quarters combat. While fighters and mechs boasted robust hulls and diverse weaponry, the Mutalis possessed superior maneuverability, being living organisms requiring no joysticks or buttons to control their flight and attacks.

A single Mutalis attack often struck multiple targets. Although the first impact carried the greatest force, subsequent strikes weakened, combat was not a game; the Coiling Worm attacks were explosive, and each successful hit disrupted the target’s balance, sometimes even causing loss of control, leading to errors such as colliding with allies or failing to evade attacks that would otherwise have been dodged.

With a few more leaps, the Coiling Worm could influence even more enemies; even as its direct power waned, its disruptive effect remained profound.

At this critical juncture, the numbers of Mutalis in the Zerg army surpassed the combined total of the guardian fleet’s fighters and mechs, granting the Zerg a significant battlefield advantage.

The Mutalis carved a path for the Scourge. These units, possessing no attacks other than self-detonation, were extremely fragile defensively. Without escort, they often failed to penetrate the guardian fleet’s anti-air barrage, but once through, the damage inflicted by their impact on a warship was enough to compensate for their inherent weakness.

Scourge, despite their relatively small size, possessed formidable destructive power. Having undergone four or five generations of evolution, a single Scourge detonation could yield a power comparable to a Level Seven energy cannon. Just three or four Scourge impacts on a warship with fully charged shields were enough to sink it.

Throughout the sky, guardian fleet warships, trailing fire and thick smoke, occasionally plummeted to the planet’s surface. Each impact dealt devastating damage to the world; if the power core detonated, the result was the explosive force of a hydrogen bomb, or even greater.

For a time, this planet descended into an abyss of torment.

“Ugh,” I really don’t know what to say. The more I try to write, the more I freeze up. After revisions and edits, it’s nearly midnight again. Forget making up Chapter Three; I don’t even have time to finish Chapter Two for today. I’ll do my best to catch up tomorrow. F

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