Chapter 194 Mental Pollution

The flattened red giant star resembled a massive, glowing millstone, emitting destructive light under the confinement of the gravitational lens.

Before the great xia dragon sparrow could even draw near, the previously silent vacuum suddenly began to tremble.

This vibration did not propagate through the air; instead, it acted directly upon the receiving terminals of all electronic devices, and even the bio-electrical signals of the cerebral cortex.

A grand, oppressive chant, filled with the stench of decay, exploded without warning in the minds of every Earthling.

"Kneel... and accept the baptism..."

"Forsake your humble selves and merge into the eternal order..."

Accompanying this voice, the holographic projections in the command hall began to flicker wildly, and the previously clear star map was replaced by pale, mechanical faces.

These were the twisted faces of tens of thousands of believers in their final moments, their mouths agape, silently chanting scriptures praising the Machine God.

This mental assault was not merely directed at consciousness; it was a form of extremely malicious virus code.

"Warning! The main control system is under attack by a logic bomb!"

For the first time, gaia's voice carried a distinct sting, and her phantom form, composed of flowing light, twisted constantly: "The firewall has developed massive vulnerabilities, and some computing nodes are being rewritten into 'scripture' code... Damn it, these codes are self-replicating!"

Inside the command room, the officers and soldiers who had been at their operating consoles gradually became stiff.

Their pupils began to dilate, and their mouths opened and closed subconsciously, following that eerie rhythm as if trying to vomit their own souls out of their throats.

"Boss, I... I think I see my great-grandmother waving at me from inside the sun..."

A Ji pinched his thigh tightly, sweating profusely from the pain, and tiny sparks even emerged from his mechanical ears.

Academician Wang was no better off; he gripped the table, and the look behind his reading glasses was rapidly losing focus.

"That's all it takes to rattle you?"

Lin Yuan stood on the command platform, his posture motionless.

The void engine within him was like a dragon awakened from slumber; it let out a roar in his mental world, instantly tearing the golden scriptures attempting to invade his consciousness into shreds.

He looked at the Cardinal "Jealousy" on the screen, who was currently possessed by the spirit of a charlatan and wore a face of mercy, a look of disdain appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"gaia, don't butt heads with him on this lousy frequency."

Lin Yuan rubbed his ears and waved his hand, pointing at the communication channel that was frantically outputting mental corruption.

"Doesn't he love to sing? Let's add some national flavor for him."

"Take that most popular and festive great xia song, 'Good Luck Comes,' turn the volume to the max, cover all civil and military frequency bands, and play it on a full-channel loop!"

gaia paused for a fraction of a second, a strange light flashing in her virtual eyes.

"Received. Searching the great xia music library... 'Good Luck Comes' loaded, broadcasting at full power!"

The next instant.

The mechanical anthem, originally bleak, eerie, and enough to make one want to hang themselves on a tree on the spot, was suddenly struck by lightning.

"Clang—dong-clang! Dong-clang, dong-clang, dong-dong-clang!"

A highly piercing sound of gongs and drums, accompanied by that jubilant melody, cheerful to the bone, cut into the grim sacrificial ritual like a high-powered chainsaw, rude and unreasonable.

"Fold a paper crane, then tie a red ribbon..."

That high-pitched, resonant singing voice, carrying the atmosphere of the Lunar New Year, instantly rampaged through the great xia dragon sparrow, through all the underground cities, through tens of thousands of ghost warships, and even into the channel of that massive metal ring.

The Earth officers and soldiers, originally immersed in an atmosphere of "compassion" and "self-sacrifice," were jolted by the sudden sound of the suona, their scalps tingling.

A Ji's dull expression instantly broke; he woke up with a start, subconsciously clapping his hands to the rhythm.

"Holy crap! This flavor is spot on!"

Academician Wang, whose eyes had been dazed, nearly dropped his reading glasses; he listened to the room filled with "Good Luck Comes," completely bewildered, his whole person numbed.

This feeling was like attending a serious and solemn funeral, only for the person next to you to suddenly jump up and dance a Yangge dance.

It was a little embarrassing, but the depressive urge to commit suicide was indeed completely gone.

At this moment, inside the control core of the Blazing Sun Star.

Cardinal "Jealousy" was closing his eyes, feeling the "mental resonance" generated as millions of souls returned to the star.

That was the source of his power.

But suddenly, his logic processor froze for a moment.

A burst of noisy sound, filled with low-brow humor and the carbon-based lifeforms' infinite yearning for secular life, poured backwards along the faith force field into his control core.

"May good luck be brought to you, may joy be in your arms..."

"This... what kind of curse is this?"

Jealousy opened his single eye abruptly, his entire mechanical face twisted like a stepped-on soda can due to the frequency collision.

The solemn atmosphere he had painstakingly cultivated for thousands of years was smashed to pieces by this sound of the suona.

Those spaceships queuing up to jump into the sun actually experienced delays because of this cheerful rhythm.

Some believers were about to jump, but when this tune suddenly rang in their heads, their subconscious survival instinct exploded, and they actually performed a major drift right at the edge of the solar crater.

"Stop! Quickly stop this vulgar noise!"

Jealousy let out a shrill scream over the communicator; his voice was thrown off-key by the accompaniment of "Good Luck Comes," sounding as ridiculous as a duck with its neck being choked.

"Stop?"

Lin Yuan picked his ear, looking at the exasperated piece of scrap metal on the screen, and sneered:

"This is called the joy of the working people. A piece of scrap metal like you that doesn't even have a gender knows nothing about art."

"Since you like to hear noise, I'll let you hear enough of it. Brothers, keep the rhythm going! Whoever the hell dares to be sentimental over there, I'll make them listen to 'Tan Te' a hundred times when we get back!"

Under the protection of the great divine song, the mental fortress of the Earthlings became firmer than ever before.

Taking advantage of the chaos in the opponent's mental control frequency, Academician Wang's fingers tapped on the keyboard so fast they left afterimages.

"Found it! The resonance generated by the frequency collision has exposed their generator coordinates!"

Academician Wang roared excitedly: "On the left side of the metal ring, at the three o'clock position, inside the third energy node!"

"Received."

Lin Yuan's gaze instantly turned cold, the previous playful expression vanishing.

"Dauntless, stop watching the show. Aim at that node and clear out the entire inventory of your main cannons for me."

The Dauntless, a titan-class flagship that had been lurking in Subspace, emerged like a behemoth from the abyss.

Thousands of psionic cannon barrels lit up simultaneously with blinding white light; that was the fury accumulated over ten thousand years by the enraged undead legion.

"Those who profane my master... shall die!"

"Boom—!"

Tens of thousands of energy beams fired in unison during the climax of "Good Luck Comes," precisely hitting the seemingly indestructible gravitational lens.

A massive explosion bloomed in space, and the metal ring, which had been spinning wildly, was blasted with a huge gap.

The gravitational binding that had been weighing down on everyone's heads instantly lightened by half.

"You... you damned primitive creatures..."

On the screen, half of Jealousy's face had been shattered by the interference caused by the explosion, revealing the circuitry inside that was constantly sparking.

The mercy in his eyes had long since vanished, replaced by an almost insane resentment.

"Since you want to be scum so badly, then become cosmic dust along with this star!"

His remaining single eye instantly turned crimson, even outshining the light of the star behind him.

"Activate 'Holy Communion' mode! Launch the stellar orbital cannon!"

Following his roar, the damaged metal ring actually stopped rotating.

The disk-shaped stellar matter that had been confined within the ring began to converge frantically toward the center.

Countless pitch-black "sunspots," formed by high-intensity gravitational collapse, piled up rapidly at the gap in the ring.

It was not fire, nor was it light.

It was extreme mass, a destructive darkness after being forcibly compressed.

A terrifying beam of light with a diameter exceeding one thousand kilometers was slowly aiming at the tiny Earth.

That was the "stellar orbital cannon" capable of vaporizing a planet directly.

"Boss... our shields... might not be able to withstand this hit."

Alita watched the rapidly climbing energy readings, a clear tremor in her mechanical voice.

Lin Yuan looked up, staring at the increasingly bright, destructive muzzle, the void engine emitting a dull hum.

He did not retreat; instead, he maneuvered his mech one step forward, facing the stellar fury that was about to erupt.

"What are you afraid of?"

He whispered, a greed bordering on madness flashing in his eyes.

"With such a big tube of 'hot drink,' isn't it just perfect for giving our void engine a boost?"

The light fell.