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Chapter 160 Taking the Earth on a Wandering Journey, Anyone Who Stands in My Way Will Be Tear Them Apart!
The explosion in the Boulder Starfield, bright enough to blind half the galactic arm, finally extinguished.
The great xia dragon sparrow lay askew in the void, its hull covered in metallic lumps that had melted under high heat and then solidified. Of the more than three thousand warships, less than half could still keep their lights on. Most of the frigates that hadn't survived were shattered by the aftershocks of the divine punishment's main cannon, turning into twinkling debris in the sea of stars.
Chen Weiguo stood before a porthole with a hairline crack, his hands shaking so much he couldn't hold a cigarette. He used to think that war was just about risking one's life, but today he had witnessed that in front of a planetary-level monster, risking one's life was sometimes a luxury.
"We won, but we're tapped out."
Chen Weiguo's voice was terribly hoarse. A briefing had just arrived from the Proxima Centauri base; to withstand that world-destroying red light, ninety percent of the half-finished surface fortifications had collapsed.
Just then, a figure resembling a tattered sack was pulled steadily through the hatch by a gravity beam.
It was Lin Yuan.
His current appearance was simply unbearable to look at. His clothes had long since been burned to ash, and a listless dark gold luster shimmered through his translucent flesh. Even his eye sockets had sunken in considerably.
"Old... Old Chen, give me a hand."
Lin Yuan stumbled the moment he landed. Academician Wang rushed over like mad with a group of medics. While injecting various glowing blue potions into him, Academician Wang muttered, "My dear ancestor, you can't die! Your body is worth more than the core of the divine punishment right now!"
Lin Yuan slumped on the stretcher, his consciousness not yet fully clear, as a constant dinging sound echoed in his head.
[Ding! System mission settlement complete.]
[Battlefield cleanup in progress... Since the 'divine punishment' is in a self-destructed state, it is judged as giant space junk.]
[Performing forced recycling! Due to the excessive volume, the core module will be extracted first.]
[Congratulations to the host: Obtained complete schematics for 'planetary engine' technology; obtained blueprint for 'Strong Gravity Deflection Device'.]
[Key achievement reached: Godslayer.]
[System Upgrade: Current Level — Intermediate Scavenger.]
[New permissions unlocked: Everything Can Be Scrapped! Current recycling range limit increased to 'stellar-class'.]
Hearing that last announcement, Lin Yuan's eyes, which were about to close, suddenly snapped open.
stellar-class?
Did this mean that if he didn't like the look of a certain sun in the future, he could just bag it up and sell it for points?
As soon as this thought surfaced, Lin Yuan passed out in satisfaction.
...
Half a month later.
Lin Yuan woke up in a specially designed nutrition pod aboard the great xia dragon sparrow. As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw Academician Wang's wrinkled old face pressed against the glass, with a pair of glasses as thick as bottle bottoms perched on the tip of his nose.
"He's awake! This kid is as strong as an ox; he took an antimatter bomb and didn't even die!" Academician Wang excitedly slapped the glass.
Lin Yuan pushed open the pod cover, took the metallic robe handed to him by gaia, and moved his arms with some effort. He found that his body was now incredibly heavy; every step felt like he was stomping a hole into the floor.
"How's the situation outside?" Lin Yuan's first words were about business.
Chen Weiguo walked in, his face as dark as the bottom of a pot. "Our reputation is through the roof, but so is the trouble."
He pointed to the holographic star map on the wall. The gray area representing the Mechanical Papacy was flashing frantically, and countless red dots representing high-energy signatures were converging toward the Solar System from deep within the Orion Arm.
"The one you killed the other day was just one Cardinal. That fanatical organization, the Papacy, has twelve monsters of that caliber. They view the destruction of the divine punishment as a desecration of a miracle. Now, the Heresy Tribunals throughout the galaxy are on the move," Chen Weiguo said worriedly. "It took us a year to scrape together three thousand ships. If three more like 'wrath' show up this time, we'll really have to take our whole families and jump into a black hole."
Lin Yuan walked to the star map, looking at the mining planets already marked with the Great Xia flag.
"This is what you call waiting for a rabbit to hit a tree; sooner or later, we'll be wiped out in one go," Lin Yuan curled his lip. "Old Chen, back when you were fighting guerrilla wars, what did you do if your home base was about to be taken?"
Chen Weiguo paused. "Is that even a question? You take the troops and find another mountain. You head wherever you can win."
"Exactly." Lin Yuan pointed to the heart of the star map—the wealthiest yet most chaotic central region of the galaxy. "We're not staying here to waste away with them. Earth is right here, a sitting duck. We need to move."
"Move? Are you joking?" Academician Wang jumped up. "That's Earth! A sphere weighing tens of billions of tons—you plan to put it in a sack?"
Lin Yuan gave a sly smile and pulled up a complex geometric structure diagram from the system panel.
"Old Wang, I recycled all the remaining scraps of the divine punishment. The core technology inside wasn't anything else; it was this engine that can push a planet across the universe." A hint of madness flashed in Lin Yuan's eyes. "Back when we were working on the 'South Heaven Gate Project' in Great Xia, didn't we always feel that Earth lacked resources? Let's just take the planet on an expedition."
"The Papacy wants to come and harvest us? Let them harvest nothing. We'll take our home to the galactic center. It's full of ruins and high-dimensional remnants everywhere. Over there, I'll be the protagonist of scavenging."
Dead silence filled the command room.
Wandering with the Earth? This idea wasn't just bold; it was like ripping off the ancestors' coffin lids to use as skateboards.
But on second thought, this was actually the only way out.
Great Xia wasn't used to being a stray dog. If they had to leave, they would take every inch of land, every mountain, and every scrap yard they hadn't dismantled yet.
"Let's do it!" Chen Weiguo slammed his palm on the table. "We're just waiting to die if we stay here anyway. Might as well try a new way of living. This starry sky is so vast—why can the Papacy go there, but our Great Xia can't?"
Three months later.
Solar System, Earth Orbit.
This was perhaps the most spectacular and tear-jerking scene in human history.
Tens of thousands of metallic towers, each over ten thousand meters tall, rose from every corner of the land. The Tibetan Plateau, the Sahara Desert, the Antarctic ice sheets... these engines were like pillars pinning down the sea, firmly rooted deep into the Earth's crust.
"Attention all of humanity, I am Lin Yuan."
Lin Yuan's voice broadcasted globally, reaching every bunker and every factory.
"Because some self-righteous zealots want to turn our home into a pig farm, we've decided to move. Our ancestors always spoke of being deeply attached to the land and reluctant to move, but this time, we're taking the land with us. Once we've established ourselves in the galactic center, we'll come back and turn the Solar System into Great Xia's back garden."
"Now, everyone, hold onto your handrails."
"Set sail!"
With Lin Yuan's command, the bottoms of tens of thousands of planetary engines erupted with pillars of ethereal blue fire over a thousand kilometers long.
At that moment, the once-silent Earth let out a muffled roar.
The massive thrust passed directly through the mantle, acting upon every rock. The watchers left at the lunar base saw the azure planet, after a period of violent trembling, slowly break away from the orbit it had maintained for billions of years.
The Moon was not to be outdone. As Earth's satellite, it had been fitted with even more powerful gravity-towing devices. These two celestial bodies, one large and one small, were like a pair of brothers depending on each other, carving two dazzling wakes in the pitch-black void.
Earth was accelerating.
The blue light generated by those planetary engines illuminated Earth's atmosphere like a giant auroral sphere.
Thanks to the gravity control technology Lin Yuan had recycled, the people on the surface didn't feel any overly violent tremors. They only noticed that the Moon seemed to have grown a bit larger, while the sun that had hung overhead for millions of years was shrinking bit by bit in their vision, eventually becoming an ordinary first-magnitude star.
Lin Yuan stood in the command room of the great xia dragon sparrow, watching the yellow dwarf star recede on the screen.
He raised his hand in a military salute that wasn't quite standard, yet was exceptionally powerful.
"Sun, thanks. You've looked after us for so long. When we get stronger, we'll come back for you."
gaia, now changed into a sharp naval commander's uniform, was hopping around the screen. "Boss, where's our first stop? Radar shows a bunch of 'ownerless' resource planets four light-years ahead. Should we collect them on the way?"
"Collect them! Why wouldn't we?" Lin Yuan grinned. "The Earth is now an armored RV. Wherever we pass, we dismantle. We're wandering, not begging for alms."
...
Meanwhile.
At the galactic center, beside the giant supermassive black hole known as the 'God's Horizon'.
A mechanical city composed of countless nested rings floated quietly in the void. There was no light here; all energy was derived from the violent accretion disk of the black hole.
In the deepest part of the city, a white statue slowly turned its head.
It was a half-human, half-machine face. Its originally closed eyes slightly opened, and what flowed inside were not eyeballs, but countless constantly jumping high-dimensional characters.
"Moria is dead... wrath has also disappeared."
A voice layered with countless echoes rang out in the empty hall.
"A Level 1 civilization actually mastered the laws of the titans? Interesting."
The statue extended a finger and tapped lightly in the void. An image of Earth escaping the Solar System appeared before him.
"Run then, run into my hunting grounds."
"I want to see just how much junk that variable named Lin Yuan can pick up before he dares to stand before me."
In the image, the Mechanical Pope's indifferent eyes were dead-locked on the blue light speeding through deep space.
And at that moment, several light-years away, Lin Yuan suddenly sneezed.
"gaia, is someone praising my handsomeness behind my back?"
Lin Yuan rubbed his nose and looked toward the deeper, more chaotic boulder field ahead.