Chapter 129 Death Knocks on the Door

The alarm did not just start ringing.

It exploded into life.

The shrill buzzing sound instantly tore through the taut air in the "Heavenly Court" command hall, as if someone were hammering steel nails into their eardrums.

Li Na's coffee cup remained suspended in mid-air, and the brown liquid splashed onto the freshly polished alloy floor, emitting a wisp of white smoke.

"Spatial readings abnormal!"

gaia's childlike voice distorted severely for the first time, her speech as fast as a chant, "Kuiper Belt perimeter, coordinates X-77, Y-21... gravity parameters are collapsing! It's not a warp! Repeat, it's not a warp!"

Lin Yuan looked up abruptly, staring at the main screen.

It had originally been a calm sea of stars, the perimeter of the South Heaven Gate defense line that humanity had built relying on the asteroid belt.

But now, it was shattered.

There was no warning, none of the brilliant halos or gravitational ripples seen during conventional warps.

That void was like a black mirror smashed hard by a naughty child; visible cracks spread crazily in the darkness, revealing the sickening, dark-red chaotic background behind it.

That was not opening a door.

That was breaking through a wall.

"A week ahead of schedule."

Chen Weiguo gripped the edge of the console tightly, his knuckles turning pale, "These bastards, they won't even give us time to finish calibrating that cannon?"

"Should have expected it."

Lin Yuan's voice was cold; he threw the half-eaten compressed biscuit back onto the table and brushed off the crumbs, "Robbers coming to loot never send you an appointment letter in advance."

Crack.

The starry sky on the screen collapsed completely.

A huge, pitch-black metal prow rudely smashed through the last spatial barrier and squeezed into the Solar System.

Following it were the second, the third...

In less than ten seconds, the once brilliant galaxy disappeared.

In its place was a forest of tombstones cast in steel.

Three thousand ships.

Exactly three thousand black cross-shaped warships, each several kilometers long, like a flock of crows that had smelled blood, hovered over the Kuiper Belt, blotting out the sky.

They were arranged so closely that they visually formed a wall of despair, completely obscuring the starlight from the center of the Milky Way.

The edge of the Solar System turned to night in an instant.

And in the very center of the fleet, the flagship named doomsday was as large as a moving mountain range.

The red signal lights on its hull flickered in the darkness, like the rhythmic blinking of a demon's eye, coldly watching that blue marble thirty astronomical units away.

Oppressive pressure.

Even through the screen, the people in the command hall could feel that suffocating weight.

This was on an entirely different scale from the previous vanguard.

If the vanguard were wild dogs scouting the path, what stood at their doorstep now was a fully armed legion of butchers.

"Bzzt—"

The full-band broadcast was forcibly taken over.

There was no static, the image instantly becoming incomparably clear.

A holographic projection appeared on every human's screen.

It was a mechanical body wrapped in a red robe, its face unclear, only the electronic brain emitting a faint blue light visible beneath the mask.

The Mechanical Papacy Archbishop, the Doomsayer.

It did not speak, or rather, it did not need low-level vibrating organs like vocal cords.

A cold, grand data stream with a certain metallic echo reverberated directly in the hall.

"Carbon-based civilization detected: Earth-01."

"Civilization level: 0.7."

"Evaluation result: A primitive virus colony full of inefficiency, chaos, excretion, and mating."

The Archbishop raised a fully metallic arm, making a gesture similar to a prayer, but it was mechanical and rigid.

"By the order of my master, executing the 'Great Formatting' program."

"For the purity of the universe, please... die."

There was no declaration of war, no call to surrender, and it didn't even consider humanity an opponent.

In its logic, this was like needing to reinstall a system; you don't need to consult the viruses on the hard drive.

There was a deathly silence in the command hall.

Everyone looked at Lin Yuan.

Lin Yuan sat in his chair, his face expressionless.

He just reached out to pick his ear, then pressed the red call button in front of him.

"Finished?"

Lin Yuan's voice followed the high-power communication antenna, crossing the void, and exploded in that Archbishop's channel.

"You pyramid-scheme-running bastards, your opening lines are always so stinking long. Want us to die? Fine."

Lin Yuan leaned forward, the silver light in his eyes surging; it was the sign of boiling murderous intent.

"I'll give you a prayer too—"

"Go f*** yourself!"

Click.

Lin Yuan slammed his fist onto the console; it wasn't a hang-up button, but a physical launch key.

"Fire!!!"

Boom boom boom—!

The silence of the Kuiper Belt was instantly broken.

The South Heaven Gate defense line, which had been lying in ambush there for a long time, bared its fangs.

Tens of thousands of smart mines disguised as meteorites activated simultaneously; they had no thrusters, because they didn't need them.

The enemy had already pressed their faces right up against them.

Nuclear explosions.

Tens of thousands of suns lit up simultaneously in the dark deep space.

That blinding light even penetrated the eight-minute light-travel distance, allowing observatories on Earth to detect the anomalous flash.

The vacuum could not transmit sound, but that world-destroying energy explosion caused the magnetic field of the entire Solar System to shake violently.

"Hit rate 100%!" the weapons officer roared, "At this distance, they can't dodge!"

A suppressed gasp erupted in the command hall.

Everyone stared at the screen, expecting to see the image of that black fleet turning to ashes in the nuclear fire.

The light faded.

The cheers got stuck in their throats.

On the screen, that black wall still stood tall.

Not only was there no ash, not even a flake of paint had fallen off.

In front of that fleet appeared a layer of pale-gold, honeycomb-shaped light film.

That was a "Phase Deflection Force Field" formed by the parallel engines of three thousand warships.

The energy of tens of thousands of nuclear bombs slammed into it, like raindrops hitting a lotus leaf, only stirring up layers of faint ripples, and then... slid away.

"Energy absorption rate... 0%." Academician Wang looked at the readings, his voice as dry as if he were chewing sand, "Our attacks can't even break their defense. This is a technological generation gap, a complete generation gap."

Despair spread like a tide.

And the enemy's counterattack came.

They did not use their main guns; that seemed to be giving humanity too much credit.

The belly hatch of the flagship doomsday opened, and a black "dark cloud" poured out.

Zoom in.

It wasn't a dark cloud, but hundreds of millions of "Mechanical Locust" drones.

They were only the size of a fist, with serrated mouthparts and plasma cutters, rushing towards the outpost observation stations humanity had deployed on the perimeter, blotting out the sky.

No explosions.

Only the teeth-aching sound of chewing.

A few seconds.

In just a few seconds, a space outpost equipped with heavy armor was gnawed to nothing by this swarm of locusts.

Even the personnel inside, the tables and chairs, and even the signal transmission towers, were chewed into the most basic metal powder.

"What... what the hell is that..." Li Na covered her mouth, her face pale.

"Resource recycling." Lin Yuan stared at those locusts, "In their eyes, we aren't soldiers, we are ore."

This was not a war at all.

This was an efficient, cold industrial dismantling operation.

"Beep—"

gaia's voice suddenly became urgent; this time it wasn't just the gravity parameters, even the spatial coordinates were jumping wildly.

"Commander! Something's wrong!"

"What's wrong?" Lin Yuan didn't turn his head, his gaze still locked on the front line.

"Their formation is too stable! Although there are many 'Mechanical Locusts', the main guns of the main fleet have been on standby; they are... they are covering!"

gaia's little hands swiped frantically across the holographic screen, "I detected an extremely weak high-frequency gravitational wave, bypassing the Kuiper Belt defense line, sneaking along below the ecliptic plane!"

Lin Yuan's pupils shrank: "Zoom in on the holographic star map!"

The star map expanded.

Under the cover of the dazzling nuclear explosion light on the front line, a small fleet of about three hundred ships had activated some kind of advanced optical camouflage and gravitational shielding, like a group of invisible ghosts, having already silently crept past the Martian orbit.

They ignored the mechs and turrets deployed on the front line.

Their course was straight, the arrow pointing directly at...

Earth.

"F***!" Lin Yuan cursed, "These religious fanatics can play dirty too?"

"Those are 'Plague'-class fast assault ships." Academician Wang pulled up the comparison data from the database, his hands shaking, "Those are specifically designed for deploying biochemical weapons and ground landing troops! They want to bypass the Moon Fortress and directly 'format' the surface!"

A feint to the east to attack in the west.

Those three thousand warships and the locusts filling the sky on the front were just targets to attract fire. This "Plague" fleet was the real killer move.

At this moment, the Moon Fortress's giant cannon, guanghan palace, was aimed at the Kuiper Belt.

And that ghost fleet was exactly in the firing blind spot.

"Lin Yuan!" Chen Weiguo grabbed the phone, "The ground anti-aircraft fire can't stop this level of assault ship! Once they enter the atmosphere..."

The consequences didn't need to be said.

Three hundred assault ships were enough to plow the Earth's surface three times over.

Lin Yuan stared at the red dashed line rapidly approaching Earth; it was the Reaper's scythe, hanging over the necks of seven billion people.

"Trying to backstab us?"

Lin Yuan took a deep breath, the ruffian-like sneer on his face disappearing, replaced by the ferocity of a beast driven to a dead end.

He turned around, strode towards the command console, and ripped off the button at his collar.

"gaia, notify 'mech name'."

"Notify all 'xingtian demon god' mech units."

"And... drag out my 'Ghost'."

Lin Yuan turned back, looking at the room full of astonished officers, his eyes scraping across everyone's face like knives.

"Using cannons to hit mosquitoes won't work."

"Since they want to play hand-to-hand combat, want to come ashore."

"Then I'll take my people into space and fight them with bayonets!"

"Even if we have to bite them with our teeth, we have to bite these bastards to death on the orbital line!"

Lin Yuan grabbed his helmet and strode towards the hangar, leaving behind only one command that echoed in the hall as the hatch closed.

"Whoever dares to let a single ship into the atmosphere, I won't let them off even as a ghost!"