Chapter 131 The Descent of Eternal Night

This was not a sunset.

Sunsets have a process; the sky turns red, and the light softens. But now, the sun had been snuffed out directly.

Earth, twelve noon.

Over the Atlantic, the sun had been shining brightly, and countless people were looking up at this once-in-a-decade astronomical spectacle—a massive, black, sail-like object unfurling in space, like a hand slowly closing.

The moment the last ray of light was swallowed by that black film, the world did not plunge into total darkness but instead turned a suffocating shade of dark gray. That was the diffuse light remaining in the atmosphere; having lost its source, it was fading rapidly.

In less than ten minutes, true darkness descended.

"Temperature readings... dropping 0.5 degrees per minute."

In the Heavenly Court command hall, Academician Wang's voice was as dry as sandpaper rubbing together. "The tropics are fine; they have the ocean to store heat. But Siberia and Canada... temperatures are expected to drop below minus sixty degrees in two hours. Tonight, tens of millions of people will freeze to death."

No explosions, no smoke of war.

This was a murder of the highest order.

Even more fatal was the energy situation.

"Charging for the guanghan palace main cannon has been interrupted." gaia's projection flickered, a sign of unstable voltage. "The output power of the photovoltaic arrays on the lunar surface has dropped to zero. The link to the Mercury mirrors has been severed. Commander, we are holding a gun, but we have no bullets."

On the screen, that black net enveloping the Solar System was still being reinforced. Those 'Plague'-class assault ships, taking advantage of the darkness like a flock of blood-sucking bats, began to infiltrate Earth's atmosphere.

"This is boiling a frog in warm water... no, it's flash-freezing a frog." Chen Weiguo slammed the table, leaving a dent in the alloy surface. "These bastards want to trap us to death without shedding a drop of blood!"

The atmosphere in the hall was so oppressive that one could even hear the sound of electricity.

Faced with such methods of altering the celestial environment, conventional weapons were as laughable as sticks in the hands of primitive men. Even if you wanted to blow that net open, you had to be able to fly there first. But behind that net were three thousand warships waiting to strike.

"Snap."

A crisp ignition sound broke the dead silence.

Everyone turned back to see Lin Yuan leaning against the command chair, head tilted as he lit a cigarette. The flame flickered in the dark hall, illuminating his expressionless face.

"What a big deal."

Lin Yuan exhaled a smoke ring, the smoke slowly drifting away. "Since they like to turn off the lights, I'll go smash the switch."

"Are you crazy?" Academician Wang's eyes widened. "Every node of that net is a special-purpose warship, surrounded by frigate fleets! You're going to your death?"

"If I don't go, I'm just waiting for death."

Lin Yuan stubbed out the cigarette he had only taken two puffs of, stood up, and stretched his neck, his joints popping like beans.

"gaia, eject the 'mech name' Mark II. Since no one has light, let's see whose blade is sharper."

...

In space, it was pitch black.

Without the light of stars, this was a true graveyard.

But on the catapult track of the Heavenly Court fortress, a point of golden light suddenly ignited.

It was the mech name mech, reshaped by the [Mechanical Divinity]. It was no longer that rugged industrial style; psionic circuits like flowing magma pulsed on its dark golden, streamlined armor, and the thrusters on its back expelled not blue exhaust, but a kind of void ripple that could even distort vision.

"Launch."

Lin Yuan's command consisted of only two words.

The next second, a golden meteor tore through the darkness, charging straight toward the heaven-covering giant net.

The enemy's reaction was fast. Thousands of high-energy particle beams poured over like a rainstorm, weaving into an airtight web of fire.

"Too slow."

In the cockpit, Lin Yuan's pupils turned pure silver. In his field of vision, those light-speed particle beams were as slow as snails. His SSS-rank talent, Void Affinity, was running at full power.

The mech name mech disappeared into the void.

It wasn't stealth; it was a disappearance in the physical sense.

0.1 seconds later, it appeared above a frigate responsible for interception.

Without any flashy moves, the heavy ship-slaying blade in the mech name's hand used its momentum to slice through the warship's bridge from end to end, just like a hot knife through butter.

There was no explosion.

Only the electrical sparks that erupted in that instant illuminated the cross-sections of the warship, which were scattered like garbage.

The frigate snapped in two, the cut as smooth as a mirror.

"One." Lin Yuan counted in the communication channel.

He disappeared again.

This time, it was three kilometers to the left.

An enemy mech attempting to lock onto him didn't even have time to raise its muzzle before its head was crushed directly by a golden mechanical hand.

This was a one-sided slaughter.

With the blessing of Void Affinity, the mech name didn't need any evasive maneuvers at all. It leaped through spatial rifts, and every flicker was accompanied by the fall of an enemy ship.

Lin Yuan's target was clear—a core node of that black net.

It was a spherical special-purpose warship, continuously releasing black nano-clouds.

"Caught you."

The mech name appeared on the armor plating of the spherical warship. Lin Yuan had no intention of using cannon fire; he controlled the mech to draw a thermal dagger, violently pried open the airtight door, and then drilled inside like a nail.

Inside the warship, the alarms wailed shrilly.

A group of semi-mechanized crew members rushed into the corridor with weapons, attempting to stop the intruder.

"Get lost."

Lin Yuan's voice exploded through the external loudspeaker in the narrow corridor.

Accompanying the voice was a violent mental storm.

The enemies rushing up froze abruptly, and immediately after, their electronic brains and organic brains exploded simultaneously, spraying red and white matter all over the walls.

In the face of absolute mental suppression, numbers were meaningless.

Lin Yuan pushed forward steadily; wherever the mech name mech passed, the ground was covered in wreckage. He killed his way to the warship's core reactor, and without hesitation, stabbed a blade directly into the console.

"Blow up!"

Psionic energy poured in.

Golden flames poured into the reactor along the blade.

Three seconds later.

A brilliant firework exploded in space. The node maintaining a corner of the black net was completely destroyed, and a huge gap immediately appeared in the previously seamless blocking net.

A ray of long-lost sunlight leaked in through the gap, shining onto the northern hemisphere of Earth.

"Well done!" In the command hall, Academician Wang punched the air in excitement.

But the next second, the cheers came to an abrupt halt.

The gap did not expand.

Where that node warship had exploded, the surrounding nodes immediately adjusted their output power. More black nano-clouds surged over, like living granulation tissue, quickly repairing the hole until it was as good as new.

The sunlight only lasted for five seconds before disappearing again.

"This thing has a self-repair function!" gaia shouted. "It's a network structure; destroying a few nodes is useless! Unless you blow up that whole circle of nodes at the same time!"

Lin Yuan, piloting the mech name, hovered amidst the burning wreckage, looking at the black net that had closed again, his expression grim.

Hundreds of nodes.

If he hacked through them one by one, Earth would have long since frozen into an icicle.

"To capture the bandits, first capture the ringleader."

Lin Yuan turned his head abruptly, looking deep into the distant starry sky. At the very center of that black fleet was the flagship, "doomsday," which was as large as a mountain range.

Only by taking out the brain issuing the commands would these limbs stop.

"gaia, divert all energy to me." Lin Yuan growled in the channel. "I'm going to the enemy's home base."

"That's impossible! That's suicide!"

"Execute!"

The space around the mech name mech began to distort violently. Lin Yuan prepared to force a jump, boarding the enemy flagship directly.

But just then, a hair-raising sense of crisis suddenly stung his nerves.

It wasn't from a warship's lock-on.

It was from his own kind.

Three pitch-black figures appeared silently in a triangular formation surrounding the mech name.

They were not bloated like ordinary mechs; instead, they appeared slender, elegant, and even carried a sense of religious solemnity. Each mech held a cross-shaped spear emitting red particles.

"Blasphemer."

A cold electronic voice drilled directly into Lin Yuan's mind; it was a conversation of pure data flow.

"Per the Arch-Bishop's judgment, your soul... belongs to us."

Those were three Bishop-class special-purpose mechs.

The energy fluctuations emitted by each one were no less than the "Asura" of the past.

Lin Yuan let go of the control stick and rubbed his throbbing temples, but the corners of his mouth slowly curled up, revealing a mouthful of white teeth.

"Three against one?"

The mech name mech slowly drew the ship-slaying blade from its back, and the golden psionic flames instantly surged a hundred meters.

"Perfect, I'm in a hurry. Come at me all at once."