Chapter 184 The highest level of a scavenger is turning trash into treasure.

What does it feel like to have tens of millions of tons of scrap metal pressing down on you?

Lin Yuan had originally thought he would be crushed into a meat patty, but the moment the system classified these scraps as "recyclable resources," the nature of all that pressure changed.

Every armor plate pressing against his spine, every broken main shaft poking into his ribs, no longer appeared as deadly weapons in his eyes, but as strings of pulsating value symbols.

【Detected titan-class destroyer wreckage, repair value: High.】

【Detected neutron-star-class alloy fragments, recovery points: Extremely High.】

【Detected damaged logic core, suggested operation: Forced restart.】

Lin Yuan lay at the very bottom of the dark ruins, those deep blue data streams scrolling across his pupils like a waterfall.

"Old Bones, did you enjoy crushing me just now?"

Lin Yuan's voice filtered through the gaps in the ruins, sounding exceptionally harsh in the thin-aired starry graveyard due to Void resonance.

The Rust Lord sitting on the high tower froze in its movements.

Its pair of scarlet electronic eyes stared fixedly at the mountain of metal beneath its feet. In its logic, this human should have been gnawed into ashes by nanobots three seconds ago, with not even a bone fragment remaining.

"You... didn't die?"

There was an imperceptible system frame skip in its synthesized voice; clearly, this exceeded its calculation range.

"Die? I haven't seen so many good things in my life, and I haven't cashed them in yet, so how could I bear to die?"

Lin Yuan let out a wild laugh, his hands slamming into the two cold titanium alloy plates beside him.

On the system panel, that purple star representing "Intermediate scavenger" erupted with unprecedented radiance.

【Core Skill: Mechanical Undead Resurrection—Activated!】

"Get lost!"

Lin Yuan pushed hard with both arms, and a ring of deep blue ripples centered on him swept out along the ground without warning.

This ring of light looked slow, but wherever it passed, the metal mountain that had been locked tightly together seemed to encounter its nemesis, emitting a teeth-grinding peeling sound.

The layer of thick, blackened dark red "rust" originally attached to the surface of the scrap metal, the moment it touched the blue ripples, peeled off in large chunks like grease washed away by strong alkali.

The red mist dissipated, revealing the titanium alloy that had been buried for tens of thousands of years beneath.

The originally dull and lusterless warship hull, after the blue light points entered, began to radiate a cold, metallic sheen once again.

That mountain of trash, several thousand meters high, actually began to disintegrate under this power, with countless parts dancing and reorganizing in the air.

"What are you doing?!"

The Rust Lord let out a shrill scream; it felt its control over these "slaves" being forcibly severed by an overbearing will.

Those metal blocks that were originally extensions of its body now became incomparably foreign.

It was akin to a person commanding their arm to slap someone, only to find halfway through that the arm suddenly had its own ideas and even snapped the owner's middle finger for good measure.

"What am I doing? Helping you clear out some illegal structures."

Lin Yuan stood up from the pile of ruins unhurriedly. The originally tattered xingtian mecha, under the repair of a large amount of nano-particles, was now not only brand new but also covered with a layer of blue patterns pulsating with electric arcs.

He casually patted a mechanical hound beside him that had originally been baring its fangs at him.

Half of the monster's skull had been corroded away by red rust, and it had been attacking Lin Yuan crazily. But when that blue ripple swept over its body, the red light in its eyes flickered violently before slowly turning into a soft, deep blue.

It hesitantly retracted its alloy fangs, tilted its head to look at Lin Yuan, then obediently walked to his leg and rubbed against it, emitting a fawning hum from its throat.

The next second, this mechanical dog turned its head abruptly and let out a violent electronic roar at the mechanical skull on top of the tower.

"Oh, you're quite obedient."

Lin Yuan patted its dog head, his gaze directed toward the high tower, a smile that could infuriate anyone to death hanging on the corner of his mouth.

"Old Bones, you said these were all yours just now? Sorry, they have now officially been taken over by my 'Demolition Office.' Your renovation style here is too oppressive; I'll help you rearrange it."

"You're courting death!"

The Rust Lord went completely mad. Its massive mechanical arm slammed onto the throne, and the entire "Anvil" high tower shook.

【All armies... attack!】

Following its nearly self-destructive command, the hundreds of red-eyed warships that had been besieging Earth seemed to receive a death order. They pushed their thruster power to the limit and rammed over like madmen.

They no longer cared about energy consumption, intending to even use their hulls to bury Lin Yuan and Earth together.

"A Ji, Academician Wang, and also Old General Chen."

Lin Yuan opened the all-channel communication, his voice terrifyingly calm.

"Everyone, watch closely. The highest realm of a scavenger is never picking up trash."

"It is—turning waste into treasure."

Lin Yuan took a deep breath, the star core furnace in his body completely overloaded. He no longer paid attention to the massive bone hand slamming down, but closed his eyes slightly, his mental power turning into thousands of fine threads, instantly connecting to every awakened titan wreckage within a hundred miles.

In his sea of consciousness, this dead, silent graveyard turned into a huge and precise chessboard.

Every ship, every cannon, every rusty rivet now possessed a "soul" once again.

"That is our 33rd Legion's formation..."

In the communicator, Alita's voice trembled uncontrollably. She watched the wreckage slowly rotating around Lin Yuan and beginning to arrange itself in an orderly fashion, her eyes filled with tears.

The originally chaotic pile of trash, in just a few seconds, vaguely displayed the prototype of an ancient and solemn war formation.

"Old comrades, I know you have been waiting for this moment for a long time."

Lin Yuan opened his eyes abruptly, the deep blue light almost bursting out of his eye sockets.

He clenched his fist at the void, his voice spreading across the entire star sector like rolling thunder:

"Forgotten 33rd Legion! Why are you still lying in the trash heap?"

"Everyone—stand up!"

Rumble!

A dull, extreme engine roar came from the deepest part of the graveyard.

That was not the sound of one ship.

That was the roar of thousands of Subspace engines that had been cold for tens of thousands of years, at this moment forcibly injected with high-purity Void Energy, all sounding at once!

The originally dead and silent space graveyard was instantly lit up.

Countless blue fireballs ignited in the darkness.

The half-broken giant ships that had been floating crookedly now seemed to be injected with new life, with blue electric arcs spewing from the broken parts, acting as temporary thrusters.

One ship, ten ships, one hundred ships...

Under the stunned gaze of everyone in the Earth Command Center, those scraps of iron that should have turned to dust, under the command of that purple figure, slowly turned their rusty muzzles like a group of awakened steel beasts.

The red rust on every cannon barrel was flaking off.

That was a murderous aura from an ancient civilization, so heavy it made people unable to breathe.

"Lin... Lin Yuan, did you kid call up the titan's eighteen generations of ancestors to help you fight?"

Chen Weiguo watched the friendly green dots instantly filling the radar screen, his eyelids twitching wildly.

"Something like that."

Lin Yuan looked up at the massive mechanical arm that had already swung to above his head, his eyes revealing an extreme madness.

"33rd Legion, take orders!"

"Dismantle this meddling little hand for me!"

Hum!

Thousands of deep blue plasma beams fired simultaneously from those broken warships.

They converged into a gorgeous galaxy, accurately striking the giant mechanical hand in the void.

Crack... crash!

Accompanied by the Rust Lord's earth-shattering scream, that mechanical arm, which was thicker than a mountain and claimed to be indestructible, was snapped into one hundred and eight pieces in the plasma fire under this round of concentrated fire, like a broken dead branch!

The sky full of wreckage fragments fell like a rainstorm.

Lin Yuan hovered in the center of all the ghost fleets, like an emperor patrolling a battlefield.

He did not look at the screaming Lord, but turned his head to look at the familiar blue planet behind him.

"Old Chen, is the fuel enough?"

Chen Weiguo was stunned: "What are you going to do?"

"I've got my eye on that tower; the materials on it are of good quality and can add a 'god-level' cheat to our Earth."

Lin Yuan pointed to the three-thousand-meter-high "Anvil" in the distance, his mouth curling into an extremely arrogant arc.

"Earth, full speed ahead!"

"This broken tower is blocking our way; tear it down!"

As soon as his voice fell, the entire star sector trembled again.

It was not because of the enemy's attack.

It was because those thousands of titan wrecks that had originally been floating now actively arranged themselves into two columns, like two seawalls built of steel, forcibly carving out a death corridor leading to the high tower for the wandering Earth in the chaotic star sea!

"Crazy... all crazy..."

Alita watched the response made by the wrecks of those comrades outside the window, covering her mouth and crying uncontrollably.

Just then, at the very top of the high tower, a burst of extremely unstable white light suddenly lit up in the Rust Lord's pair of scarlet eyes.

Inside its broken body, some kind of forbidden fluctuation that had been suppressed all along was rapidly taking shape.

【Warning! Detected stellar-class self-destruction signal!】

【System evaluation: If this thing explodes, there will be no living creatures within one astronomical unit!】

Lin Yuan's expression froze instantly.

This Old Bones sees it can't win, so it actually intends to flip the table and commit suicide?

"Playing at self-destruction in front of me?"

A ruthless look flashed in Lin Yuan's eyes.

"Did you get the approval of me, the 'Director of the Demolition Office'?"

His figure flickered, and he transformed into a stream of blue light, following that steel corridor and crashing straight toward the "Anvil" that was about to explode.

"Old Chen, take the ball and retreat! For this demolition, I have to 'manually extinguish the fire' for it!"

Before he finished speaking, Lin Yuan's figure had already submerged into that blinding white light.

Inside the high tower, a scalp-numbing countdown sound exploded crazily in everyone's mental channels.

Three... two...

Just at the moment the last second was about to fall, Lin Yuan's exasperated cursing suddenly came from within the white light.

"Hand it over!"

Boom!

A pitch-black crack split open out of thin air at the top of the high tower, like a giant mouth, intending to swallow the entire tower along with the Lord that was about to self-destruct in one gulp.

But just then, a sudden change occurred.

A blood-red single eye, a hundred times larger than the high tower, slowly opened at the end of the graveyard's mist.

That eye merely swept over, and the space crack that Lin Yuan had released instantly dissipated, as if ice and snow had encountered a scorching sun.

Lin Yuan's expression finally changed.

That was not some mechanical undead; that was...

"The real Lord, has it awakened?"