Chapter 130 Steel Torrent VS Mechanical Locusts

Low Earth orbit had turned into a meat grinder.

The belly of the "Plague"-class assault ship split open like a festering wound, and without any warning, a mass of black "pus" spilled into the vacuum.

It wasn't liquid, but millions of suicide drones—mechanical locusts.

They were only the size of a basketball, with a horrifyingly simple construction: a high-energy micro-engine, a cheap control chip, and a pair of high-frequency vibrating mandibles capable of chewing through alloy steel plates like they were crackers.

They didn't need to return, didn't need maintenance; their only mission was to chew everything man-made in front of them into scrap metal.

"Do you really think you're a pest control expert?" Lin Yuan stared at the overwhelming black tide on the screen, his fingers tapping rapidly on the armrest.

gaia's red alarm was still flashing, but Lin Yuan's voice cut directly into the public channel, drowning out all electronic noise.

"Xingtian troops, wake up and get to work."

There was no impassioned mobilization, nor was it needed.

Above Earth's synchronous orbit, hundreds of massive honeycomb hangars burst open simultaneously.

If the enemy's drones were a locust plague, then what rushed out of the hangars were a pack of unleashed mad dogs.

One hundred thousand xingtian mecha.

They had no cockpits, no life support systems; the space saved was entirely filled with reactors and armor.

They didn't need to cautiously avoid overload like humans; every maneuver was a ninety-degree turn that defied human physiological limits.

The two sides collided.

There was no sound in space, but that didn't make the collision any less brutal.

The first wave of contact was devastating.

The black swarm of locusts instantly enveloped the mecha charging at the front, crawling densely over their bodies, while teeth-grinding sparks of torn metal exploded silently in the vacuum.

If they were ordinary drones, they would have already been blinded because their sensors were blocked.

But this batch of xingtian was different.

"These bastards want to chew my leg!" A metallic-sounding curse suddenly rang out on the public channel.

That was the AI voice of Xingtian-0873.

It wasn't calculating in a cold server, but thinking with a "soul".

0873 didn't panic and fire wildly; one of its mechanical arms had already been chewed off, but its remaining hand suddenly drew the high-frequency vibrating combat blade from its back, and with a backhand strike, it sliced the few locusts crawling on its head into pieces.

"Get off me!"

It roared in the communication channel, its movements as rough as a street-fighting hooligan, completely devoid of mechanical stiffness.

"Everyone, turn off your long-range fire! Don't hit friendly units! Draw your blades! Fight these bugs hand-to-hand!"

One hundred thousand mecha, one hundred thousand high-frequency combat blades.

The defensive line, which had originally been submerged by the locust swarm, suddenly lit up with countless piercing cold lights.

These were not beam weapons, but ionization arcs produced by solid blades tearing molecular bonds under high-frequency vibration.

Space warfare turned into the most primitive melee combat.

One mecha had its thrusters chewed up by locusts; it simply gave up on maneuvering, kicked off into the void, and smashed itself like a cannonball into the densest part of the swarm.

It didn't even use its blade; its two large mechanical hands grabbed the locusts around it and crushed them, counting as it did so in the channel.

"Forty-five... forty-six... nobody touch them, they're mine!"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, the situation was even more tragic.

An enemy "Plague"-class destroyer, relying on its thick shields, braved the barrage of fire to attempt a forced entry into the atmosphere.

It was guarded by tens of thousands of locusts, like a layer of black armor.

"Stop it! Its trajectory is aimed directly at the Equatorial No. 1 Space Elevator!"

Several xingtian mecha lunged at it, but were riddled with holes by dense close-in defensive fire before they could even get close.

Only one remained, ID Xingtian-009.

Its left arm was gone, its chest armor was torn open, exposing the fusion core inside, and even half its head had been sheared off, its only remaining electronic eye flickering with a dying red light.

It didn't slow down.

Using the impact force from being hit by cannon fire, it performed a bizarre roll in mid-air, dodging the lethal main cannon, and stuck itself tightly onto the bridge of that destroyer like a gecko.

Countless mechanical locusts instantly swarmed up and began to frantically chew on its body.

"Warning, structural integrity below 15%... Warning, core temperature critical..."

The system's mechanical alarm sounds echoed in its logic core.

009's only remaining eye rotated, and through the thick porthole of the bridge, it seemed to see the panicked alien operators inside.

"Hey."

A very faint, electronically synthesized voice came over the channel, carrying a hint of barely perceptible mockery.

It didn't choose to self-destruct; that amount of power wouldn't be enough to pierce a shield of this level.

It poured all its remaining energy into its engines.

The overloaded engine nozzle spewed a hundred-meter-long blue exhaust flame, like a sharp sword piercing the darkness.

Full thrust.

It wasn't pushing; it was pulling.

This broken mecha, bearing the weight of tens of thousands of bugs chewing on it, dragged the warship, which was thousands of times larger than itself, and forcibly changed its course.

"Where are you running to? Let's go catch some sun."

The immense inertia caused the mecha's frame to emit sounds of unbearable cracking, but the bow of that destroyer was indeed forcibly diverted by five degrees.

It was just those five degrees.

The destroyer flew past the counterweight of the space elevator, crashing headlong into a minefield filled with smart mines behind it.

Boom!

A violent fireball engulfed the warship, and also engulfed the mecha that had only half a head left.

In the command hall, Lin Yuan's fingers paused in mid-air for half a second.

He didn't speak, his face just dark enough to drip water.

Although those mecha were manufactured, that divine spark fragment had given them souls.

To Lin Yuan, it wasn't equipment that died, it was soldiers.

"It's too scattered," Lin Yuan said coldly. "gaia, take over communications. Spread out my mental network."

"Commander, your brain load will..."

"Shut up, execute."

Lin Yuan closed his eyes.

His SSS-rank talent [Void Affinity] erupted completely.

In that instant, the more than ninety thousand surviving xingtian mecha on the battlefield paused simultaneously.

They felt a vast, cold, yet incomparably firm will descend into their core code.

No longer fighting alone.

The mecha group, which had originally been fighting on their own, suddenly seemed to be controlled by an invisible hand.

They retreated, shifted formations, and reorganized in perfect unison.

In just ten seconds, a massive arc-shaped wall made of steel stood in front of Earth's orbit.

"Great Wall of Steel" formation.

"Psionic shield, deploy at full power." Lin Yuan's command exploded within the soul of every mecha.

Hum—

The psionic amplifiers on the backs of all the mecha lit up simultaneously.

The pale blue light merged into one, supporting a visible mental barrier in space.

How could those mechanical locusts, who knew only how to kill, have ever seen this?

Following their instincts, they converged into a black drill and smashed fiercely into the light curtain.

At the moment of impact, there was no physical explosion.

It was a crushing blow on the soul level.

The mechanical locusts' control chips only had simple "0"s and "1"s; they had no souls, no self, only rigid programs.

When they hit this barrier composed of one hundred thousand "mechanical souls" and Lin Yuan's SSS-rank mental power—

It was like a drop of water falling into boiling oil.

It wasn't a blockage, but a backlash.

The violent mental shock poured back through the locusts' sensors, instantly burning out their pathetic logic circuits.

A black rain began to fall in space.

Millions of mechanical locusts crashed collectively the moment they touched the shield, falling down like kites with cut strings.

They had already turned into scrap metal before they even touched the atmosphere.

The swarm of bugs that had been so menacing just a moment ago vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye.

...

Thirty astronomical units away.

The Mechanical Papacy flagship "doomsday".

On the massive throne, the Archbishop, whose body was riddled with tubes, made a movement for the first time.

Its metal fingers, which had been resting calmly on the armrest, tightened suddenly, leaving finger indentations in the alloy armrest.

On the holographic screen in front of it, that astonishing scene was being replayed.

It wasn't the mecha's combat power that shocked it, nor was it the humans' tactics.

It was those lights.

Those pale blue psionic lights emanating from the mecha, carrying emotional fluctuations.

"This is impossible..."

A harsh crackle of electricity came from the Archbishop's vocal unit, its tone filled with disbelief, and even... fear.

In the doctrine of the Mechanical Papacy, only the great Mechanical God could bestow wisdom upon inanimate objects.

Except for the divinely chosen "Ascended", any machine possessing self-awareness was a heretic, a bug that had to be erased.

But now, it saw a group of tin cans manufactured by natives, as crude as garbage, actually possessing souls?

And souls of that kind—burning, crazy, and daring enough for self-sacrifice.

"This is blasphemy!"

The Archbishop stood up abruptly, its red electronic robes rustling behind it, and its ghostly blue electronic brain turned a scarlet color from rage.

"Filthy natives, daring to steal the authority of God, to inject fake life into scrap metal!"

It could not tolerate this.

The existence of such things was in itself shaking the foundations of the Papacy's rule over the universe.

If the followers below knew that they could "ascend" without the need for God, how could the Papacy continue to function?

It must be destroyed.

Not just for resources, but to maintain the purity of the doctrine.

"Pass the order." The Archbishop's voice was no longer cold, but laced with a hysterical madness. "Stop probing. No need for prisoners, no need for servitors."

"Initiate the 'Stellar Interdiction' protocol."

It raised its hand, pointing at the sun that radiated light and heat.

"Turn off the lights."

...

Earth, Heavenly Court Fortress.

The cheers of victory hadn't even had time to spread through the command hall before everyone's smiles froze on their faces.

gaia's alarm sound became shrill and piercing this time, like a death scream.

"High-energy reaction! Enemy main fleet formation is dispersing! They... they are releasing some kind of giant construct!"

Lin Yuan opened his eyes abruptly; the previous mental connection left him with a splitting headache, and two trails of blood flowed from his nostrils.

He didn't bother to wipe them, staring fixedly at the main screen.

He saw those three thousand black warships, like tombstones, suddenly disperse, spreading out like casting a net to the various nodes of the Solar System's ecliptic plane.

Immediately after, every warship ejected a massive silver metal sphere from its side.

Thousands of metal spheres rapidly expanded and unfolded in space.

They weren't bombs.

They were a membrane.

Black solar sails, each as thin as a cicada's wing yet incredibly huge, spread out in the vacuum.

They connected to each other, locked quickly, and in the blink of an eye, wove a giant net between Earth and the sun that blotted out the sky.

The sunlight disappeared.

The originally bright Earth instantly plunged into dimness, leaving only the outline of that giant net in space, like a demon's hand holding Earth in its palm.

The temperature began to plummet.

What was even more terrifying was that the "guanghan palace" star-destroying cannon on the far side of the moon relied on solar energy reflected from Mercury's orbit for its charging system.

As this net spread, the energy readings of the star-destroying cannon began to plummet off a cliff.

"They've cut off the sunlight." Academician Wang's face turned pale, and he slumped into his chair. "Without solar energy, 'guanghan palace' is just a pile of scrap metal. Without photosynthesis, Earth's ecosystem will collapse within a month."

This was the war of a higher civilization.

They didn't play any one-on-one with you; they modified the environment directly, causing the foundation of your survival to collapse completely.

Darkness enveloped the command hall.

Only Lin Yuan's eyes were frighteningly bright in the darkness.

He casually wiped a handful of nosebleed, grinned, and revealed a ghastly white smile.

"Want to turn off the lights and fight?"

"Fine."

"Then I'll just wring your heads off one by one in the dark."