Gu Xiechen chuckled, the might of the Boshan Crown was indeed extraordinary. Though it was a defensive artifact belonging to a Peak Master, its power when used offensively was terrifyingly potent.

However, it wasn't an artifact he had personally forged; when he manipulated it, there was a distinct feeling of stiffness and lack of fluidity. Furthermore, pouring his own true essence into the Boshan Crown left him feeling somewhat weak and spent. The artifact's rank was too high, and his own cultivation too low. The Boshan Crown could only be used in emergencies; it was not Gu Xiechen’s optimal choice.

"I still need to forge a set of life-bound magic tools for myself," Gu Xiechen reaffirmed this point once more.

With a gesture of his finger, the Boshan Crown suddenly dissolved into a column of white mist soaring toward the heavens. Dozens of clumps of milky-white mist spewed forth from the crown like raindrops, making the nearby warships rock violently. Through the transparent alloy viewport of the bridge, Gu Xiechen clearly saw the deathly pale faces of the officers and soldiers in the command centers of those dozen or so vessels.

"Hah!" With a booming laugh, Gu Xiechen shook his head. The three 'Zuan Xing Mang' ornaments in his hair transformed into three water-barrel-thick, thousand-meter-long streams of finely fragmented starlight that shot into the sky.

These three streams of starlight were composed of countless polygonal shards of blue light. Every point of blue light exuded a chilling coldness; they were extremely solid, immensely heavy, and incredibly sharp. Forget a human body; even a small mountain would be pulverized if caught in the vice of these three streams.

His mind turning with his will, Gu Xiechen fixed his gaze on a warship that was slowly turning to aim its main hull cannon directly at him. The three starlight streams traversed the void silently, arriving before the warship in a flash. The three streams of starlight, like three massive scythe wheels, swept over the warship in a frenzied rotation, much like billions of carnivorous ants swarming a plump, tender piglet.

That warship endured for barely a thousandth of a second before exploding into a vast spray of sparks.

Gu Xiechen let out a light chuckle. With a gentle wave of the Fuyao Fan, three streams of azure starlight danced and circled around him, resembling three living, colossal dragons. Added to this, the mound-shaped white mist above his head continuously spewed out immense bursts of energy, sending the surrounding warships tumbling chaotically in space. The sight was truly akin to an immortal descending.

"I could die for him!" In the cockpit of the Great Horned Falcon, Jin pressed her hands tightly against her chest. Her pair of beautiful, exotic eyes were flooded with shimmering, pinkish waves.

"Cough, cough!" Fuya Ming coughed lightly in the holographic screen, laced with a hint of jealousy. She offered a completely irrelevant reminder: "Jin, Excellency Xiechen is my ally."

"Oh, an ally? Not a bed partner, so it's fine," Jin tilted her head, gazing at Gu Xiechen's ethereal yet magnificent silhouette on the screen. A surge of heat rushed from the depths of her bones, threatening to melt her entire body. "Hee-hee, if he's just an ally, even if he were your husband, Fuya sister, if I asked you to give me half, would you?"

"So handsome!" Jin propped her chin with both hands, staring foolishly at Gu Xiechen.

"This woman is done for," Fuya Ming muttered inwardly, grinding her teeth with resentment. She cursed under her breath, "Damn girl, have you gone mad?" Yet, seeing Jin in that state, Fuya Ming felt a sour, unpleasant twisting in her own heart. "If I had known Excellency Xiechen possessed such formidable power, why did I bother asking this girl for help? Wasn't it just to share the scientific achievements of Yaphic? A Celestial Star Grand Venerable—even gifting him half the kingdom would be worthwhile."

Fuya Ming's face suddenly flushed crimson. Gifting half the kingdom to Gu Xiechen? That thought was highly ambiguous. According to Yaphic tradition, the Queen's husband automatically ascended to the rank of a non-hereditary Prince, and in name, he could possess half the ownership rights of the Yaphic Kingdom. It was indeed ambiguous.

The four captains of the Blood Fang Adept Corps screamed in panic over the comms channel; they were utterly stunned by the might of Gu Xiechen, who appeared as terrifying as a celestial deity.

A dreadful thought struck all their minds simultaneously: a Seven-Star Grand Venerable. The absolute pinnacle of power theoretically proposed by the Star Alliance Adept Council.

"It must be a Seven-Star Grand Venerable! A powerhouse capable of confronting warships—that has to be a Seven-Star Grand Venerable!"

The four captains descended into utter chaos. One desperately shrieked orders for all cannons to fire upon Gu Xiechen; another yelled for everyone to abandon ship and flee in escape pods; a third roared maniacally for all warships to immediately initiate warp jump procedures; and the fourth simply screamed for everyone to leap out of their vessels and fight Gu Xiechen to the death!

With the four leaders of this expedition in such disarray, one could only imagine the state of their subordinates. All the Adepts of the Blood Fang Corps ran around frantically inside their warships, unsure of what they were supposed to be doing.

The soldiers from the three kingdoms also abandoned any pretense of maintaining their royal dignity by continuing the charade; they hurriedly piloted their warships, desperate to flee this accursed place and distance themselves from the terrifying entity known as Gu Xiechen.

It was too late. The Four Heavenly Kings of the Mo Clan had already attacked. The life-bound artifacts, newly reforged, seemed to possess power no less than the original articles. Mo Liqing unfurled the Qingyun Sword in his hand, and instantly, the waters, fire, earth, and wind danced across the sky, an overwhelming torrent of gale, fierce flame, black stone, and poisonous water, mixed with billowing smoke, engulfing the entire fleet.

Every second, hundreds of thousands of massive stones, buffeted by the gale, embraced by the inferno, and swept along by the toxic water, bombarded the energy shields of these warships.

Perhaps due to the nature of the Mo Clan, these attacks could not directly shatter the shields. However, they caused violent tremors, making the energy shield generators on the hulls emit a burnt, scorched smell from the overload. Mo Lihong roared and charged in. With a spread of the Hunyuan Umbrella, the void itself was plunged into chaos, grinding all surrounding energy into a thin gruel. Over a hundred warships, whose engines were running at full capacity, having just begun a blind warp jump sequence, suddenly lost their accurate spatial coordinates. Their partially energized hulls were twisted by the infinite spatial forces, instantly dissolving into streaks of white light that merged into the boundless energy tide of subspace.

The radar and navigation systems on all other warships lost functionality, causing hundreds of vessels to collide with each other in their desperate flight. Mo Lihai hummed a cheerful, folksy tune, leisurely plucking the strings of his exquisite white jade pipa. Circles of visible sound waves—shifting constantly between cyan, red, white, and blue—surged from the pipa strings. Though these waves also carried the elements of water, fire, earth, and wind, what was more terrifying was that wherever these sound waves passed, the occupants of the warships—be they ordinary soldiers or powerful Adepts, common humans or alien races with far superior physiques—all collapsed onto the deck, clutching their ears or auditory organs in a frenzy of agonizing struggle. Mo Lishou was simpler: wielding a twenty-four-segmented, three-edged battle whip, he began smashing indiscriminately into a warship. His divine strength and brute force rapidly cracked the ship's armor, after which the Flower-Coated Vixen, which had manifested simultaneously, gleefully darted into the vessel.

With just a single opening of its mouth, a beam of white light enveloped every living being inside the warship, sucking them in to be devoured and chewed with relish.

Then came Xin Jia and over five hundred others, who quickly arrived. They instantly set up the Heavenly Net and Earthly Snare formation, and the purple-gold mist instantly enveloped the entire fleet.

However, unlike the formation used on Earth, the power of Xin Jia and the others had been significantly enhanced. The Immeasurable Divine Chains and the various artifacts within the formation were either innate treasures or genuine immortal artifacts. The might of this formation was at least a hundred times stronger than when they trapped the Dry Bone Divine Monarch!

Countless chains, as thick as bowls and shimmering with golden light, locked onto every warship. Lightning surged down the chains, striking the vessels. How could the Demon-Subduing Heavenly Thunder summoned by the Heavenly Net and Earthly Snare formation be compared to mortal lightning? Not only was the power of this heavenly lightning thousands of times greater than earthly thunder, but the mysterious power contained within the lightning was what made the Demon-Subduing Heavenly Thunder truly terrifying. The thick armor of a First-Tier warship could easily withstand the assault of an ordinary thunderstorm, but facing the bombardment of the Demon-Subduing Heavenly Thunder, the electrical energy penetrated the hull unimpeded, incinerating every living being inside into charcoal.

From the Adepts to the ordinary soldiers, no living creature remained aboard the warships. Only the four strongest captains managed to survive. A small escape pod was silently ejected from the stern of an eight-kilometer-long super-giant vessel. The pod's engine was shut down, relying entirely on the kinetic energy imparted by the warship’s ejection, fleeing into the pitch-black void at a speed of two kilometers per second. In a high-tech battlefield, such an escape method would undoubtedly be effective; radar waves would struggle to detect a small escape pod only a few meters long.

But when the opponent was a cultivator, such high-tech trickery became utterly useless. Gu Xiechen's divine sense locked onto the tiny escape pod with lethal precision. He chuckled lightly, sweeping his great sleeve through the air. The Waterfall Sleeve transformed into a streak of white light several li wide, carrying the muffled roar of a tidal wave as it swept outward.

The small escape pod was caught in the white light, spinning wildly like a piece of paper in a whirlwind, before being brought back before Gu Xiechen by his sleeve. Peering through the narrow viewport of the pod, Gu Xiechen looked at the four captains of the Blood Fang Corps huddled together in the cockpit, and he showed a very benevolent smile.

"Gentlemen, do not be afraid. You injured my brothers, but you at least left them alive. Coupled with the sheer number of people you killed, the anger in my heart has somewhat dissipated."

"Actually, I am a merchant, an honest merchant."

"Come, let us strike a deal. Hmm, how much do you think your lives are worth?" Gu Xiechen smiled with overwhelming amiability, but to the four captains, he looked like a demon that had just bounded out of hell.

In the universe, how could such a terrifying existence be possible? A fleet composed of three thousand First-Tier warships! Three thousand First-Tier warships! Not mere models! Terrifying, utterly terrifying. Was this something a person could achieve? A top-tier Six-Star Venerable could only deal with three to five First-Tier warships simultaneously; how many ships did this individual eliminate alone? Was this a realm reachable by human effort?

Trembling, the dark-skinned captain forced a fawning smile onto Gu Xiechen’s face: "Of course, we much prefer doing business with merchants like yourself... How much do you think we are worth?"

Gu Xiechen tilted his head, pondering for a moment.

He pursed his lips into a slight smile, then waved his great sleeve, instantly knocking the four men unconscious.

"Worth how much? Heh heh heh... There is a type of merchant called a skinning, treacherous merchant. You haven't seen one before, have you?" Gu Xiechen laughed heartily.