Chapter 142 Great Xia Dragon Sparrow, Interstellar Battleship

The air in the pre-battle conference room of the Heavenly Court Fortress was as thick as an old smoker's lungs.

The holographic projection magnified the star map of the Alpha Centauri system to the extreme; that glaring red navigation route was like a Damocles' sword hanging over humanity's heads.

"You've all been staring at this for ages, have you figured out anything yet?"

Lin Yuan propped his legs up on the conference table, toying with a high-energy crystal he'd just pried from an enemy wreck. Although his body looked no different from an ordinary person's, the hard crystal was being kneaded and deformed between his fingertips like dough.

Sitting opposite him was a circle of big shots with stars on their shoulders, as well as Academician Wang, who had a bird's nest for hair and dark circles under his eyes like a panda.

"Commander, the data is very clear."

A staff officer spoke up with some difficulty, pointing to the markings on the star map. "Proxima Centauri c, 4.2 light-years away. According to the intelligence parsed from the undersea ruins, that is the Mechanical Papacy's No. 109 pasture. Which means..."

"Which means there's a whole pile of resources there waiting for us to snatch."

Lin Yuan interrupted him, his tone as matter-of-fact as a bully preparing to steal chickens from the neighboring village. "Since it's a pasture, there must be feed, fences, and dogs watching the place. Our current assets are thin, but we're exactly in need of these things."

"But..." another steady-minded general hesitated, "we just went through a pyrrhic victory, and our troops are still resting. Isn't an active expedition too risky? If we leave, who will guard Earth?"

"Guard?"

Lin Yuan flicked the crystal, now kneaded into a ball, into the air, watching it trace a faint blue arc before catching it steadily.

"Only the dead stay in a graveyard forever."

He sat up straight, and in that instant, the temperature in the conference room seemed to drop by several degrees, his shimmering eyes sweeping across the room.

"Before, we had no ships and could only cower on Earth like target practice. Now that those gift-givers have delivered the battleship wrecks to our doorstep, and Academician Wang has figured out the antimatter engine, should we not go out now and wait for them to bring their gear next time and slaughter us like pigs?"

He stood up and slammed his palm onto the table, leaving a sizzling handprint on the titanium alloy surface instantly.

"This battle must be fought. And it must be fast and ruthless. Go burn down their cattle shed, tear down their fences, haul back everything you can, and blow up whatever you can't!"

"I agree."

Chen Weiguo, who had been silent, spoke up. The old general stubbed his cigarette out fiercely in the ashtray, the force of it as if he were trying to crush a few aliens to death.

"I'll keep watch at home, you go ahead without worry. If you don't come back..."

Chen Weiguo paused, looked up at Lin Yuan, his eyes filled with determination. "Then I'll bury enough nuclear bombs on Earth, and whoever dares to come, I'll take them to hell with me."

The conference room fell into a dead silence, followed by a synchronized sound of standing up.

"Let's do this!"

Over the next month, Daxia demonstrated what it meant to be a terrifying "infrastructure maniac."

In Earth's orbit, those tens of thousands of floating Mechanical Papacy battleship wrecks were dragged into the Heavenly Court Fortress's giant furnace by countless engineering drones the size of arms, like ants moving house.

These alloy materials from an advanced civilization, even as scrap metal, were god-tier materials on Earth.

The furnace burned day and night, the fire lighting up half of the near-Earth orbit.

Academician Wang and his team practically lived in the shipyard. They were like a bunch of madmen, crazily piling the "antimatter containment technology" reverse-engineered from Lin Yuan's body data onto the newly built skeleton.

Finally, on the morning of the thirtieth day.

A giant battleship three kilometers long slowly slid out from the shadow of the shipyard.

It was not as elegant as the streamlined ships in science fiction movies. It was pitch black, with rough and ferocious lines, absurdly thick armor plates, and sharp-angled turrets and exposed cooling grilles everywhere.

At the bow, instead of a sharp ram, there was a huge and flat firing port, with two blood-red characters spray-painted in wild cursive script—dragon sparrow.

Daxia dragon sparrow, a weapon of slaughter.

"It's ugly as hell."

Lin Yuan stood on the inspection platform, looking at this big guy. Although he was complaining, the light in his eyes was brighter than anyone's. "But I like it. This is what a man's ride should be: tough and durable."

"What the hell do you know about aesthetics!"

Academician Wang rushed over with his messy hair, pointing at the four huge nozzles at the stern and roaring, "Those are four parallel 'Golden Crow-1' antimatter engines! Once ignited, it can push this lump of iron weighing tens of millions of tons to 30% of the speed of light in one minute! Do you know what that concept is? Even if it doesn't fire its guns, just ramming into it could smash a dwarf planet into powder!"

"Alright, alright, you're amazing." Lin Yuan smiled and patted the old man's shoulder, almost shaking Academician Wang's old bones apart. "Then stop talking nonsense and go up and test it out."

Half an hour later.

Bridge of the dragon sparrow.

There were no fancy touchscreens here; all control consoles were solid mechanical buttons and levers. This was specifically requested by Lin Yuan—in a strong electronic interference environment, the most primitive mechanical structures were the most reliable.

"Full ship self-check complete!"

"Reactor output 50%... Antimatter injection stable!"

"Shield generator online!"

Lin Yuan sat in the wide command chair, his palms sweating slightly. This wasn't nervousness; it was excitement.

"Weapons group, that's our old friend." Lin Yuan pointed to a deserted asteroid in the distance used as a target, which was a piece of a previous satellite wreck. "Say hello to it with the main gun."

"Yes! Main gun 'Dongfeng-X' charging! Target locked!"

As the order was given, the hull of the dragon sparrow sank violently.

The huge firing port at the bow did not light up with that kind of charging glow; instead, it caused a visible collapse in the surrounding space.

"Fire!"

There was no sound.

Or rather, the sound couldn't keep up with the speed of the attack.

A pitch-black beam—if that could be called a beam—instantly pierced the void. It was not an energy wave, but a mass of high-density mass bullets accelerated to the extreme, wrapped in the force field of antimatter annihilation.

The asteroid in the distance, over ten kilometers in diameter, didn't even have the process of exploding.

It was as if a piece of a painting had been erased by an eraser.

It disappeared instantly.

Leaving only a plasma cloud that was expanding wildly in the vacuum but was tightly locked by the force field.

"The power..." the fire control officer next to him swallowed, looking at the readings on the data panel, "is equivalent to 50 billion tons of TNT. And that's with the output restricted."

"Good enough."

Lin Yuan leaned back in his chair, a cruel smile curling at the corner of his mouth, "Enough to tear down those bastards' cattle shed."

The day of the expedition was set for three days later.

On the spaceport of the Heavenly Court Fortress, 50,000 soldiers wearing black exoskeleton armor stood in formation.

They were not ordinary people.

In this month, they had all been injected with gene agents extracted and improved from the Mechanical Papacy's biological samples, surviving a death rate as high as 40%. Everyone was an Asura who had crawled back from hell.

No flowers, no ribbons.

Only Chen Weiguo stood alone at the end of the walkway.

The old general wasn't wearing his dress uniform, but his washed-out combat uniform, his spine as straight as a gun.

"Old Chen, go back."

Lin Yuan walked up to him, didn't salute, just reached out to straighten the old man's collar, "You have to keep an eye on the pots and pans at home. If I come back and don't see braised pork, I'll smash all your treasured bottles of Moutai."

Chen Weiguo looked at the young man in front of him who had completely transformed.

He wanted to say something, but his throat felt like it was blocked by a ball of cotton.

Finally, the old general just patted Lin Yuan's arm heavily, his cloudy old eyes brimming with tears.

"Don't worry. As long as I have one breath left, the home will be there."

Chen Weiguo took a step back, raised his hand very solemnly, and gave a standard military salute.

"All units, attention!"

Lin Yuan turned abruptly, his aura changing instantly, from that grinning young man to a god of slaughter commanding ten thousand armies.

"Board the ship!"

50,000 soldiers turned in unison, their footsteps echoing like thunder in the port. Li Na was wearing a tight adjutant uniform, following closely behind Lin Yuan, holding the war blade that belonged to Lin Yuan.

The dragon sparrow slowly detached from the berth.

Under the gaze of billions of pairs of eyes on Earth, this giant ship, carrying the hope of humanity's first active strike, turned its bow toward the "Star Gate" node forcibly opened above the Pacific Ocean.

That node was a stable wormhole entrance formed after the activation of the undersea ruins, leading directly to Proxima Centauri 4.2 light-years away.

"All-ship announcement."

Lin Yuan's voice spread through the broadcast to every escort ship and back to Earth.

"Many people ask me, how high is the sky."

"I don't know either."

"So, let's go measure it today."

"By the way, tell those guys sitting in the sky watching the show..."

Purple light surged in Lin Yuan's eyes, and he waved his hand violently.

"Since you dared to reach your claws in, don't blame me for flipping your table!"

"Engines full throttle! Enter the wormhole!"

Boom—!

Four brilliant tail flames drew long auroras in space.

The dragon sparrow, like a black dragon pouncing on its prey, plunged into that bizarre, twisting, and rotating wormhole vortex.

The field of vision was instantly stretched into countless colorful lines.

The sense of gravity disappeared, and the sense of direction was confused.

This was the first jump across light-years in human history.