54: Chapter 54: Hidden Cards Revealed

Lu Hai and Qin Yao both looked over.

"Among my mechanical units, I have a batch of burrowing robots specifically designed for mining and surprise attacks. We can have them dig a tunnel underground, bypass this group of Goblin Tyrants directly, and emerge behind them. When that happens, we can launch a pincer attack from both the front and back, and their defensive line will definitely fall into chaos!" Lin Xiaoxiao quickly explained her plan.

Lu Hai's eyes lit up. "Good idea! As long as we disrupt their formation, those shamans and archers will lose their protection, and killing them will be as easy as pie."

Qin Yao also nodded in agreement. "It's worth a try."

Lin Xiaoxiao immediately summoned over a hundred burrowing robots that looked like pangolins. These robots were equipped with high-speed rotating drills at the front, and as soon as they touched the ground, they burrowed in rapidly, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

"Wait until my robots are in position, and then we will launch the attack together," Lin Xiaoxiao said confidently.

Underground.

The burrowing robots advanced rapidly, heading straight for the feet of the Goblin army.

On the side of the Goblin defensive line.

The Goblin Shamans standing in the back row suddenly stopped their movements. They were Goblins, naturally extremely sensitive to vibrations in the earth, and furthermore, they were high-ranking shamans proficient in earth magic.

An old shaman slammed his staff onto the ground and closed his eyes to sense the surroundings.

"There is something coming from underground," the old shaman snorted coldly.

The other shamans also sensed it one after another.

"Trying to launch a sneak attack from underground? They really don't take us Goblins seriously."

The old shaman raised his staff and shouted, "Earth Spike Assault!"

Four hundred shamans cast earth magic simultaneously.

The previously flat ground suddenly began to shake violently. Immediately after, countless thick and sharp earth spikes grew from underground, stabbing toward the robots.

The burrowing robots underground were digging vigorously when they were suddenly pierced directly by these incredibly hard earth spikes.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A series of muffled explosions came from underground.

Lin Xiaoxiao's face instantly turned pale. She had a mental connection with her mechanical units, and in that instant, she felt that all the burrowing robots she had sent out had lost contact.

"What's going on?" Seeing that Lin Xiaoxiao's expression was wrong, Lu Hai asked hurriedly.

"They're all destroyed..." Lin Xiaoxiao bit her lip. "My burrowing robots, they were all wiped out underground."

"What?" Lu Hai's eyes widened.

Qin Yao sighed. "There is only one explanation: the Goblin Shamans are earth mages, and they were the ones who destroyed the robots."

Lin Xiaoxiao stared fixedly at the collapsed ground, her expression extremely ugly. "The underground is sealed off too! We can't hold the front, we can't fly over, how are we supposed to fight this?"

There wasn't much time left; there was only one hour until the end.

Time passed minute by minute, and Fang Chuan's points continued to rise; clearly, he was having a great time killing in the Core Area.

"We can't wait any longer!" Lu Hai became impatient. "At worst, we'll use our lives to fill the gap! I don't believe their mana is infinite!"

Looking at the anxious Lu Hai, Qin Yao suddenly spoke up. "I have a method that can break through their defensive line."

Lu Hai and Lin Xiaoxiao immediately turned to look at her.

"What method? Tell us quickly!" Lu Hai urged.

Qin Yao took a deep breath and said, "My main believer has mastered a forbidden-level skill called the Vitality Bomb. Its power is immense, and it will definitely be able to blast open this group of Goblins' defensive line."

Lu Hai was overjoyed. "Then what are you waiting for? Use it quickly!"

Qin Yao shook her head. "It's not that simple. The Vitality Bomb needs to absorb a massive amount of elemental energy to take shape. Relying solely on my current believers, I can't gather enough energy. Moreover, the charging time is very long, and it cannot be interrupted during this process."

"Then what do you need us to do?" Lin Xiaoxiao asked.

"You go and drain them." Qin Yao pointed at the Goblin defensive line in front. "You send troops to fight them, the more intense the battle, the better. A large amount of scattered elemental energy will be produced during the battle, and my main believer can absorb this energy to condense the Vitality Bomb. As long as there is enough energy, I guarantee a breakthrough in one hit."

After listening, Lu Hai's brows furrowed tightly. "Go and drain them? That would mean using lives to fill the gap! You saw it just now; that group of Tyrants' Magic Flame Slash wipes out a whole row with one swing. The elite troops we have in hand wouldn't even make a splash if we threw them in."

Lin Xiaoxiao also nodded. "That's right, the cost of my mechanical units is too high; I can't just let them die in vain."

Qin Yao looked at the two. "Then what do you propose we do? If we don't break through the defensive line, none of us can get in. Fang Chuan is in there taking all the points, and we, three SSS-rank geniuses, won't even get a sip of soup."

Lu Hai gritted his teeth and turned to look behind them. Behind them, over a hundred students from other schools had gathered. These students had originally come to the Core Area to try their luck with their respective leaders, but now they were all blocked here.

"Borrow troops!" Lu Hai said viciously. He walked directly in front of the group of students and shouted loudly, "Everyone listen up! We are going to launch a frontal assault on the defensive line ahead. Hand over all the believers you have, and they will be under our command!"

"For all students participating in this total assault, after the exam ends, my Lu Family will compensate you tenfold for your losses! Whether it is resources or high-star believer cards, as long as my Lu Family has it, we will not be stingy!"

"My Lin Family is the same!" Lin Xiaoxiao also stood out and shouted in agreement.

"I, Qin Yao, guarantee in my personal capacity that the promises of both their families will absolutely be fulfilled!"

Three SSS-rank geniuses made the promise simultaneously. Tenfold compensation! This price tag made everyone gasp.

Under a heavy reward, there must be brave men. Moreover, in the current situation, they had no other choice. Either take a gamble and fight for a massive fortune, or wait until the exam ends in disgrace and gain nothing.

"Damn it, let's do it! For Young Master Lu's promise!"

"Tenfold compensation! I'll send my last werewolves up!"

"What's there to be afraid of! This is a virtual exam hall, if believers die, it's not for real! Trading one death for tenfold compensation, I'm making a huge profit!"

Under the temptation of huge profits, the remaining reason was replaced by greed. Over a hundred candidates summoned their last remaining believers again. Some were three-star, some were two-star, and there were even some newly matured believers who weren't even level ten.

They were no longer an army; they were true cannon fodder.

Soon, a "suicide squad" consisting of Lu Hai and Lin Xiaoxiao's remaining elite troops, as well as the cannon fodder believers of over a hundred candidates, with a total number again approaching thirty thousand, was reassembled.

In their eyes, there was no longer the previous high spirits, only a numb madness remaining.

Qin Yao walked to the front of the formation, and the Star Spirit Envoy behind her slowly opened its eyes; in those eyes, it seemed as if a galaxy was flowing.

"Begin," Qin Yao said softly.

"For glory!" Lu Hai raised his longsword and let out a final roar.

"Kill—!"

The army of thirty thousand had blood-red eyes, and accompanied by earth-shaking roars, they launched the most tragic death charge toward that insurmountable steel Great Wall.

"Boom—!" The army of thirty thousand and Fang Chuan's Goblin defensive line crashed into each other fiercely, like two monstrous waves colliding head-on. This time, there was only the most primitive and bloodiest collision. The battle entered a white-hot state as soon as it began.

"Kill! Kill for me! Don't stop!" Lu Hai's eyes were bloodshot, and he roared crazily. His remaining Griffin Knights gave up their advantage in the air and, like sharp arrows, crashed into the faces of the Goblin Tyrants without fear of death.

"Puchi!" After paying the price of his life, a Griffin Knight's spear finally pierced the shield of a Goblin Tyrant, leaving a shallow wound on his chest. But in the next second, that Goblin Tyrant's giant axe swept across, cleaving the Holy Light Human and his Griffin mount into a sky full of blood mist.

Lin Xiaoxiao's robots also gave up ranged shooting; they activated self-destruct mode and, like mobile bombs, charged into the Goblins' formation and then detonated themselves.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" Violent explosions occurred one after another, and flames and shockwaves continuously battered the Goblin defensive line.

However, under the constant healing and shield buffs from the Goblin Shamans, these self-destructions could only make the Goblin Tyrants sway a few times; they couldn't cause any fatal damage at all.

And those cannon fodder legions composed of ordinary students were even more miserable. They were like stalks of wheat charging into a meat grinder, falling row by row. The Goblin Tyrants didn't even need to use large-scale skills like "Magic Flame Slash"; they simply swung their giant axes, and every chop and every sweep could take away the lives of dozens of believers.

This was no longer an exam hall, but a true meat grinder.

"Hold! Hold for me!" In the back, Lu Hai and Lin Xiaoxiao watched their believers fall one by one, feeling extremely anxious, but they could only grit their teeth and constantly urge their troops to move forward, forward, and forward again. Because they knew that for every believer who died, Qin Yao's Vitality Bomb would become a fraction stronger.

At the very back of the battlefield, Qin Yao and her main believer, the Star Spirit Envoy, had become the center of the entire battlefield. The soul energy dissipated by countless dead believers, as well as the violent elemental fluctuations on the battlefield, all turned into streams of colorful energy visible to the naked eye, surging crazily toward the Star Spirit Envoy.

The Star Spirit Envoy hovered in mid-air, hands held high above its head, and an energy ball emitting an aura of destruction was slowly condensing in its palms. The energy ball was initially only the size of a fist, but as energy continuously poured in, it began to expand at an astonishing speed. One meter, ten meters, a hundred meters...

Qin Yao's face became paler and paler; maintaining such a massive energy compression was also a huge burden for her. Her divine power was being consumed at an unprecedented rate.

"Faster! A little faster! It's still not enough!" Qin Yao urged Lu Hai and Lin Xiaoxiao.

"Damn it! Charge! Everyone charge!" Lu Hai's eyes were bloodshot from killing, and he even sent his reserve believers into the fray.

The battle was incredibly tragic. Although Lu Hai's side suffered heavy casualties, the Goblin Tyrant side was not unscathed either. Under the reckless and crazy charge of the thirty-thousand-strong army, the shields on some Goblin Tyrants were broken continuously, and the shamans' healing couldn't keep up.

"Puff!" A Goblin Tyrant was hit by the simultaneous self-destruction of over a dozen advanced robots, its huge body was blown away, and a charred blood hole appeared on its chest. Another Goblin Tyrant was tightly entangled by over a hundred believers at the cost of their lives, its body covered in blades and swords, blood streaming down. The defensive line showed signs of loosening for the first time.

But this loosening was exchanged at the cost of tens of thousands of believers from the coalition forces dying. Watching the army of thirty thousand about to be wiped out, the energy ball behind Qin Yao finally condensed to its limit.

It was a massive Vitality Bomb with a diameter exceeding a thousand meters! The terrifying pressure it emitted caused the entire space to start distorting. Even the Goblin defensive line in the distance produced a stir because of this pressure.

"Enough!" Qin Yao used her last bit of strength to issue the command to the Star Spirit Envoy. The Star Spirit Envoy's indifferent eyes locked onto the most densely packed central area of the Goblin defensive line. Then, its raised hands suddenly pushed downward!

That thousand-meter-diameter Vitality Bomb, dragging a long tail of flames like a falling sun, with the momentum to destroy the world, slammed fiercely down toward the center of the Goblin army!

At this moment, the whole world seemed to lose its sound. Everyone's gaze was focused on that falling "sun."

"Boom—!!!" A strong light, more dazzling than the sun, instantly swallowed the entire battlefield. Immediately after, an incomparably huge mushroom cloud, mixed with destructive energy shockwaves, shot into the sky!

The shockwave swept in all directions with the force of crushing dry weeds and smashing rotten wood. Bearing the brunt were those coalition cannon fodder who hadn't had time to retreat. The moment they touched the shockwave, they were like ice and snow under the scorching sun, directly vaporized, leaving not even a trace.

Although Lu Hai and Lin Xiaoxiao's troops were further away, they were also affected. Countless believers were blown away, and the formation was in chaos.

When everyone saw the scene at the center of the explosion clearly, everyone couldn't help but gasp. In the spot, a giant crater with a diameter of over two kilometers and bottomless depth had appeared!

At the edge of the crater, everything was razed to the ground, the surface presented a vitrified state, and it was still emitting rolling thick smoke. And Fang Chuan's originally indestructible Goblin defensive line was now, right at the center of the crater, forcibly torn open, revealing a huge gap several hundred meters wide!

Near the gap, hundreds of Goblin Tyrants lay on the ground; their hard bodies had become charred, and some were even missing arms and legs. Although they weren't dead yet, they had obviously lost their combat effectiveness.

"Success! We succeeded!" Looking at the huge gap, Lu Hai couldn't help but let out a wild, unbridled laugh. Lin Xiaoxiao also clenched her fists, her face flushed with excitement.

They had paid such a heavy price, and finally, finally, they had broken through this desperate defensive line!

Just at this moment, the Star Spirit Envoy behind Qin Yao also saw its light become incomparably dim due to energy exhaustion; it was clearly unable to continue fighting in the short term.

"Qin Yao!" Lu Hai and Lin Xiaoxiao immediately stepped forward to support her.

"I'm fine..." Qin Yao waved her hand weakly. Her gaze was fixed tightly on the gap, and she said urgently, "Don't worry about me! Go! Take this chance, charge in! Their defensive line is broken; this is their weakest moment!"