Chapter 137 Archbishop

"Three doses of adrenaline, high purity."

Inside the preparation bay of the Heavenly Fortress, the air was thick with the pungent smell of engine oil and burnt circuits. Lin Yuan leaned against the pilot's seat of the backup mech, his face as pale as a sheet of paper. His outstretched arm was gaunt, with blue-purple veins bulging like a web ready to snap at any moment.

"Commander, your heart load is already..." The military doctor's hands were trembling, the needle hovering in mid-air, hesitating to inject.

"Don't waste time." Lin Yuan's voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing against rust.

The military doctor gritted his teeth and pushed the pale blue medicine into Lin Yuan's vein.

As the medicine entered his body, Lin Yuan's dull pupils contracted sharply, and a morbid flush flooded his cheeks. It was a brief moment of clarity bought by overdrawing his life. He grabbed his helmet, snapped it onto his head, and left only one cold instruction:

"mech name Battalion, follow me. Don't fall behind, don't die."

The cabin door swung open.

Thirty specially designed mechs painted pitch-black slid silently into the cold space like thirty streaks of black lightning. Leading them was Lin Yuan's own "mech name-Modified," a patchwork unit cobbled together in a hurry.

Target: The enemy flagship, "doomsday," locked down by gravity anchors.

...

Inside "doomsday" was a labyrinth forged of steel.

This twenty-kilometer-long giant ship was not designed for biological habitation. There was no gravity, no air, and the corridors were narrow and filled with highly anti-human right-angle turns. The dense pipelines on the walls writhed like internal organs, and countless red sensors stared fixedly at every intruder like the compound eyes of insects.

"Boom!"

With a loud bang, the thick alloy airtight door was violently torn open by a plasma cutting saw.

Lin Yuan piloted his mech, the first to charge into the smoke-filled corridor.

"Warning! Defense system activated! Large heat source reaction detected!" Just as gaia's warning sounded, the walls on both sides of the corridor flipped open, revealing hundreds of dark, automatic turret muzzles.

Dense particle beams wove into a death net, instantly sealing off all space for advancement.

"Raise shields!"

Without needing Lin Yuan to speak, the deputy captain of the mech name Battalion roared.

Five heavy-duty mechs instantly moved to the front, their psionic shield generators on their left arms running at full power, creating a wall of pale blue light shields in the corridor.

The particle beams struck the light shields, creating ripples but unable to advance an inch.

"Demolition team, clear the field!"

Three relatively thin reconnaissance-type mechs leaped out from behind the shield wall. They didn't fire their guns; instead, they stuck to the ceiling like geckos, sliding at high speed, and threw a dozen black discs the size of coins.

EMP grenades.

"Bzzt—"

A blue-white current storm swept through the entire corridor. Those automatic turrets that were still frantically spewing fire instantly went silent, emitting thick black smoke, looking like a pile of scrap metal.

"This is human tactics," Lin Yuan sneered in the communication channel, piloting his mech to kick away the wreckage of a turret blocking the path, "much more flexible than these iron-headed fools."

Their advance was extremely fast.

The warriors of the mech name Battalion were monsters selected from millions of soldiers worldwide. Each had undergone cruel neural synchronization training, combined with psionic awakening; their reaction speeds now exceeded the limits of ordinary humans.

In this flagship filled with death traps, they were like a group of the most precise viruses, frantically eroding the host's firewall.

"Sector C cleared."

"Engine room neutralized."

"Approaching the core bridge... Wait, what is th..."

A burst of static suddenly came through the communication channel, followed by the sound of metal tearing, which set one's teeth on edge.

Lin Yuan stopped his mech abruptly.

At the end of the wide main corridor ahead, six tall figures appeared.

They were entirely silver-white, with no extra decorations, their body lines as smooth as flowing mercury. They held no firearms, only two blades emitting high-frequency vibrating red light, weapons that grew directly from their arms.

The Mechanical Papacy's elite guard—the arbitrators.

If ordinary mechanical soldiers were mass-produced consumables, these six guys were works of art born for slaughter.

"Intruders." The leading the arbitrators emitted a cold electronic voice, "Logic judgment: Death penalty."

Before the words fell, the six silver streaks vanished from their spots.

Fast.

Ridiculously fast.

The vanguard of the mech name Battalion didn't even have time to raise their guns before one mech's head was sent flying, the cut as smooth as a mirror.

"Spread out! Don't compete with them on speed!" The deputy captain roared while activating the thrusters on his back, trying to create distance.

But it was useless. The movements of the arbitrators completely defied the laws of inertia. They used the walls to rebound, sticking to them like maggots on bone, every strike aimed directly at the cockpit.

This was a one-sided slaughter.

Just as the second mech name Battalion warrior was about to be beheaded.

A dark golden afterimage, carrying a shrill whistling sound, slammed fiercely into the battle circle.

"Clang—!!!"

Sparks flew everywhere.

The "mech name-Modified" piloted by Lin Yuan used its patched mechanical arm to forcibly hold off two high-frequency combat blades. The mech's hydraulic rods let out an unbearable wail, and two deep pits were trampled into the ground.

"Death penalty?"

Lin Yuan's voice came through the loudspeaker, carrying a thick scent of blood and hostility.

Hum—

A violent mental shock erupted with Lin Yuan at the center. It was the close-range deterrence of his SSS-level talent, [Void Affinity].

The movements of the six the arbitrators stuttered for a split second. Although it was only 0.1 seconds, for Lin Yuan, it was enough.

"mech name Battalion! Focus fire!"

No need for excessive commands.

In the moment the arbitrators were stiff, more than twenty human mechs around them fired simultaneously. Kinetic bullets, high-explosive grenades, plasma beams... all firepower poured onto those six silver figures.

This was human logic: never fight one-on-one when you can gang up, and never use a blade when you can use a gun.

After a violent explosion, five of the arbitrators were riddled with holes, turning into a pile of scrap. Only the leading one was still struggling; half of its body had been blown to pieces, yet it was still trying to swing its blade.

Lin Yuan piloted his mech to step forward and stomped on its head.

"Did your god not teach you that 'a hero can't withstand a crowd'?"

He applied force with his foot.

"Crack."

The silver metal head burst open like a watermelon.

"Continue forward." Lin Yuan didn't look back at the wreckage on the ground, his voice still terrifyingly calm. "The Archbishop is just ahead; don't let it wait too long."

...

Ten minutes later.

"Boom!"

The gate to the core bridge of the flagship was blown open by a targeted explosion.

As the smoke cleared, Lin Yuan walked in, piloting his mech alone.

This place didn't look like a command room; it looked more like a temple.

In the center of the huge space floated a transparent container over ten meters in diameter, filled with ghostly blue coolant. In the center of the liquid, there was no alien entity as humans imagined, only a huge quantum brain constantly flashing red light.

Countless data pipelines connected to this brain, extending to every corner of the ship.

This was the main body of the "doomsday" Archbishop.

It had abandoned the mechanical shell that had been damaged in previous battles and uploaded its consciousness entirely into the flagship's main control core.

"You have come, native."

A grand electronically synthesized voice echoed in the empty bridge, carrying a suffocating sense of oppression.

"I have analyzed your behavioral patterns." The Archbishop's voice held no anger, only a detached sense of superiority. "Anger, impulsiveness, recklessness. You are the most unstable variable, the root of chaos."

"Your existence is a blasphemy against 'order'."

Lin Yuan piloted his mech to the front of the huge container and looked up at the floating brain.

"Order?" Lin Yuan scoffed. "Is your so-called order to turn everything alive into dead, and everything round into square?"

"That is eternity," the Archbishop retorted. "Flesh and blood will rot, emotions will degenerate. Only machines and data can exist forever in the river of time. I am here to let you evolve, to escape low-level suffering."

"Bullshit."

Lin Yuan cursed, simple, crude, and powerful.

In Lin Yuan's mind, the last clumsy salute of XT-01 flashed, as did the tone of that tin can saying, "The sun is very warm today."

"Even if it's a pile of scrap, as long as it has something it wants to protect, it is alive. And you..." Lin Yuan raised his mechanical arm, the plasma cutting blade in his hand humming, "Even if your computing power is heaven-defying, you are nothing but a high-end computer."

"I don't reason with computers."

"I'm only responsible for smashing it."

Before the words finished, Lin Yuan launched a charge.

"Stupid."

The red light in the brain within the container surged violently.

An invisible mental storm, more powerful than any before, instantly enveloped Lin Yuan. This was not just a psionic attack; it was a violent scouring of a data torrent.

The Archbishop attempted to directly invade Lin Yuan's brain and format his consciousness.

"Ugh—!!!"

Lin Yuan let out a painful roar in the cockpit. Blood flowed from his seven orifices again, and his vision instantly turned into static. Countless data pierced his mind like steel needles, attempting to tamper with his memories and erase his self.

"Give up. In the face of absolute computing power, individual will is like dust." The Archbishop's voice exploded in his mind.

"Dust... Screw you!"

Lin Yuan bit his teeth until they broke, his mouth full of blood.

He didn't retreat; instead, he let go of all mental defenses.

"You want to come in? Fine! I'll let you see enough!"

Boom—!

Lin Yuan reversed and fully activated his SSS-level talent, [Void Affinity], but this time he wasn't outputting; he was devouring.

He swallowed that massive, terrifying mental data stream without regard. It was like a snake trying to swallow an elephant.

"Warning! Data overflow! Brain load 90%... 95%... 100%!"

gaia was screaming, but Lin Yuan couldn't hear it.

In his world of consciousness, a monstrous fire ignited. It was the anger of seven billion humans, the grief of sacrificed comrades, the final obsession of XT-01.

These extremely emotional, chaotic, and illogical emotional data poured backward along the link into the Archbishop's precise, neat, and absolutely rational logic core.

It was like dumping a truckload of trash into a precise operating room.

"This... what is this... this is illogical... error... severe error..."

The Archbishop's originally cold voice showed panic and confusion for the first time. It couldn't process this logical knot named "sacrifice" and "love." Its core began to heat up, and its calculations stuttered.

And in reality.

Lin Yuan seized this fleeting opportunity.

The mech name mech leaped high, the plasma cutting blade in its hand drawing a terrifying light blade twenty meters long.

"Be buried... with my brothers!!!"

This strike had no technique, only emotion.

"Crack—Crash!"

The indestructible transparent container shattered under this strike. Ghostly blue coolant poured out like a waterfall.

The blade's momentum didn't diminish, slamming fiercely into the frantically trembling quantum brain.

Bzzt—Boom!

A blinding electric spark exploded. The Archbishop's main body was split in two. The red light extinguished. That high-and-mighty mechanical god that had attempted to enslave Earth turned into a pile of waste at this moment.

"Hoo... hoo..."

Lin Yuan maintained the slashing posture, the mech's power furnace having completely shut down. He slumped in the pilot's seat, without the strength to move even a finger.

Did he win?

"Commander! Watch out!"

gaia's panicked scream sounded again.

In the wreckage of the brain that had been split in two, a strange red light suddenly lit up.

At the same time, all the lights inside the entire flagship instantly turned blood-red. The piercing alarm sound spread not only inside the warship but even across the entire Solar System via public frequency.

"Core logic collapse detected... Executing final protocol: Purge World."

The cold electronic voice was like the countdown of the Grim Reaper.

"Antimatter core unlocked... Self-destruct sequence initiated."

"Countdown: 30 seconds."

Lin Yuan struggled to lift his eyelids, watching the red light flashing rapidly.

The Archbishop was dead. But it hadn't lost either.

This flagship's power source was an extremely unstable antimatter core. Once it exploded, its yield would be enough to completely blow away Earth's atmosphere, blow the moon into pieces, and turn the entire inner Solar System into a forbidden zone for life.

"Heh... still got played by you."

Lin Yuan smiled bitterly, wanting to restart the mech, but the control panel was pitch black.

There was no escape.

This ship was locked by gravity anchors, and the jump engine was broken. Thirty seconds—not even enough time to get out of the bridge, let alone escape the explosion range.

In the communication channel came Chen Weiguo's heartbreaking roar:

"Lin Yuan! Retreat! Hurry! That's an antimatter explosion! No one can withstand it!"

"Retreat my ass..." Lin Yuan leaned against the chair back, watching the red countdown jump.

25... 24...

Lin Yuan closed his eyes, calmly waiting for the final end.

However.

Just when the countdown jumped to "10."

The silent system interface suddenly popped up in his mind again.

Beside the pitch-black [Region 006: Dimensional Strike Relic], a gray icon he had never seen before suddenly lit up.

[host near death detected.]

[High-energy antimatter reaction detected.]

[Hidden condition met: Will to survive in a desperate situation.]

[Region 007: titan · Star Spirit Temple, attempting forced connection...]

[Connection failed. Insufficient energy.]

[Sacrifice all current mental power of the host to forcibly activate "Space Displacement"?]

Lin Yuan opened his eyes wide.

"Space... displacement?"

Countdown: 5.

4.

3.

"Do it!"

Lin Yuan roared the last word of his life.

The next second.

At the moment when the earth-shattering white light of the antimatter core was about to swallow everything, the space of the entire bridge collapsed eerily like a shattered mirror.

And that fireball that should have erupted, along with Lin Yuan's mech, disappeared into thin air.

Only dead silence remained, and a mysterious spatial ripple slowly spreading in space.