Chapter 195 Who's whispering? Get out!

Light.

No, that wasn't light.

It was pure darkness—the corpse of a star, forcibly crushed and compressed to the extreme by gravity.

When that black beam of light, with a diameter exceeding one thousand kilometers, erupted from the "gravitational lens," the entire star system seemed to tremble along with it.

There was no sound, because even the medium for sound had been instantly crushed into fundamental particles by this terrifying mass.

The alarm of the great xia dragon sparrow was as shrill as a cat with its tail stepped on.

"It's over... The shield threshold has exceeded the 9000% limit!" A Ji clutched his head and crouched under the console, his pair of mechanical ears spinning wildly. "This isn't a cannon; it's literally throwing half a sun at us!"

Academician Wang gripped the armrest tightly, his old face deathly pale, but he still stared stubbornly at the screen. "Don't panic! We have titanium alloy..."

"Old Wang, save it."

Lin Yuan's voice cut abruptly into the communication channel, carrying a hint of laziness, with absolutely no realization that he was about to be vaporized. "If that thing hits us directly, Earth will just be an oversized firework. It wouldn't even be as crisp as the double-bang firecrackers I set off back home."

Before the words faded, that pitch-black mecha moved.

No retreating, no evasion.

That tiny black figure, like a speck of dust going against the current, crashed straight into the black torrent capable of destroying a planet.

"Boss?!" Alita's data stream nearly went into chaos on the spot.

"Shut your mouth and watch the house."

Lin Yuan grinned, revealing a mouthful of stark white teeth.

The void engine inside him was like a beast that had been starving for three days and three nights. The moment it saw that beam of destruction, it let out a roar so greedy it made his very bones itch.

That was appetite. A naked, gluttonous desire for high-energy matter.

"Since it's already here, how can I not taste it?"

Lin Yuan suddenly spread his arms, and the armor plate on the mecha's chest instantly slid open, revealing the frantically spinning black core inside.

"Void Domain... Devour Mode, full power!"

Boom!!!

The two forces collided violently in space.

There was no earth-shattering explosion as imagined, nor any dazzling bright light.

The magnificent and boundless black beam of light, the moment it touched Lin Yuan, acted as if water had encountered a bottomless pit, beginning to collapse frantically into the tiny mecha's body!

"Ugh!"

Lin Yuan groaned, his entire body's skeleton emitting sounds of being unable to bear the load under this terrifying pressure.

Pain.

It was like swallowing a mouthful of molten iron, burning all the way down his throat and through his stomach.

The black paint on the mecha's surface peeled off instantly, revealing the dark golden titanium alloy skeleton underneath. Even the alloy itself began to glow with an eerie red light under the high-energy scouring, as if it would melt into a pool of molten steel at any moment.

"Warning! Mecha temperature overload!"

"Warning! Energy capacity reaching critical threshold!"

Red system pop-ups flooded his retina frantically, but the fanaticism in Lin Yuan's eyes only grew stronger.

"Overload my ass! You think this little bit of energy can stuff me to death?"

He took a sudden step forward, grabbed at the air with both hands, and actually tore a gap into the beam of light, then, like a whale inhaling water, sucked it into his body even more frantically.

"Swallow... it down!"

Zzzzt—

Lin Yuan's skin cracked, and dark golden patterns spread across his body like living creatures; that was the sign of Void Energy assimilating his physical body.

But what followed was a series of beautiful, melodious notification sounds.

[High-purity thermonuclear fusion energy detected... Converting...]

[void engine charging: 120%... 150%... 200%!]

[Congratulations host! void engine evolution progress +5%! Current stage: Primary Complete Form (35%)]

The pleasure of that power expanding, exploding, and reorganizing within his body made Lin Yuan unable to help but let out a roar of satisfaction.

"Burp—!"

A huge belch, transmitted through the public channel to the entire army, abruptly interrupted the heavy atmosphere on the battlefield.

That original earth-destroying black beam of light had now vanished completely.

Only Lin Yuan remained, floating in space, with heart-palpitating dark red arcs of electricity swirling around his mecha, looking even more like a villain than the actual villain.

Dead silence.

Whether it was the Earth fleet or the Mechanical Papacy troops in the distance, it was as if a pause button had been pressed on everyone at this moment.

Cardinal "Jealousy"'s single eye contracted frantically, and countless fatal errors popped up in its logic processor.

"Impossible... This is unscientific..."

Its voice became sharp and distorted due to extreme shock. "Carbon-based lifeform... how is it possible to swallow stellar energy raw? Your body structure... No, what kind of monster are you?!"

Even a titan warship would lose a layer of skin if it took that hit head-on.

This human actually... ate it?

Lin Yuan moved his neck, producing crisp cracking sounds. He casually patted his distended belly and looked at "Jealousy" in the distance with an expression of disgust.

"Is that it?"

He extended his little finger and picked his ear. "The heat was enough, but the taste was a bit bland. Remember to add some cumin and chili powder next time; this bit of firepower isn't even enough to get stuck between my teeth."

Humiliation.

Naked humiliation.

"Jealousy" was so angry that its whole body was smoking; that huge metal ring began to vibrate again, seemingly wanting to accumulate a second shot.

"Want to try again? Too late."

Lin Yuan's eyes turned cold, and the massive amount of energy he had just swallowed was instantly condensed in his right hand under his mental control.

Since I ate yours, I'll return something else to you.

"It is impolite not to reciprocate."

He raised his hand, held his palm like a blade, and slashed gently at the void in the distance.

"Void Slash."

Hum!

A pitch-black blade aura, a thousand meters long, instantly shot out from his hand.

It wasn't as grand as any of the previous attacks; it was silent, like a pair of scissors cutting open a canvas. Wherever it passed, the spatial structure fractured directly, revealing the chaotic Subspace turbulence behind it.

This slash was not aimed at the hard metal ring itself.

Lin Yuan was a very pragmatic "Director of the Demolition Office," and he saw the weakness of this so-called "gravitational lens" at a glance.

It was a giant support pillar located on the left side of the ring, used to maintain gravitational balance.

Puchi.

It was like a hot knife cutting through butter.

That super-alloy pillar, hundreds of meters in diameter, didn't even last a second and was directly cut off neatly by the Void Slash.

"No!!!"

"Jealousy" let out a desperate scream.

Having lost a main support pillar, the gravitational lens, which was already tottering from being tortured by overload operation, instantly lost its balance.

That huge metal ring began to shake violently, and the stellar gravity that had originally been restrained inside began to run wild, with countless fiery red magma erupting from the cracks in the ring like uncontrolled fire dragons.

Huge explosions occurred one after another on the surface of the metal ring, the firelight illuminating half the star system.

"Now!"

Lin Yuan didn't even look at the big guy that was about to collapse and directly connected to Alita's channel. "Little ones, strike while the iron is hot! Destroy that broken speaker with the terrible singing voice for me!"

"Received! 33rd Ghost Fighter Squadron, attack!"

The hundreds of ghost fighters that had long been lying in ambush on the flank, like a school of sharks that had smelled blood, took advantage of the shield gap created by the ring's explosion and dove right in.

They were not carrying heavy missiles, but were equipped with Alita's specially made "logic bombs."

This was a virus vector targeting mechanical consciousness; it didn't contain any profound code, but was full of the trashiest, most disorderly, and most brainwashing waste data from the Earth's internet.

Five seconds later.

A series of muffled sounds exploded around the command tower where "Jealousy" was located.

There were no soaring flames.

But that eerie and terrifying mechanical hymn, which had originally been echoing in everyone's minds, stopped abruptly, like a duck whose neck had been strangled.

It was even accompanied by a few piercing screeches of microphone feedback.

"Ahhh! What is this?! Quickly clear out this trash data! I don't want to watch ads! I don't want to slash prices on Pinduoduo! Damn it!!"

The panicked, broken scream of "Jealousy" came through the communication channel.

The entire battlefield instantly quieted down. The officers and soldiers on Earth only felt a buzzing in their heads, and then that drowsy urge to jump off a building receded like a tide.

"Phew..."

Academician Wang sat down on the ground, gasping for air, the "Soothing Necklace" in his hand already hot to the point of turning red.

"This battle... it's giving me a heart attack."

In space.

Lin Yuan looked at the smoking, chaotic metal ring, and a satisfied sneer curled up at the corner of his mouth.

Although he couldn't directly destroy that iron ring—after all, that thing had to be kept for Earth to use as a power bank later—at least he had beaten that annoying charlatan into silence.

"Work's done, prepare to board the ship; we're going to collect the rent."

Just as Lin Yuan wanted to turn back to the great xia dragon sparrow, his movements suddenly stiffened.

Not because of an enemy.

But because... just at that instant, in his mental world, which had just been extremely active due to swallowing energy, a voice sounded.

It was not the system's electronic voice.

Nor was it the synthetic voice like Alita's.

It was an extremely gentle, soft, yet terrifyingly hollow female voice.

It was not heard through the ears, but sounded directly deep within his brain marrow, as if something was whispering right against his cerebral cortex.

"Poor child..."

The voice sighed gently, carrying a kind of compassion that seemed to come from ancient times.

"You've eaten too much... aren't you afraid of a stomachache?"

Every hair on Lin Yuan's body stood on end in an instant.

He turned his head sharply, staring fixedly at the empty void; the void engine inside him was warning him frantically, but it couldn't find the location of any target.

"Who?!"

Lin Yuan shouted sharply, even pulling out the high-frequency combat blade at his waist.

The voice chuckled, like a feather brushing across his heart, but it made Lin Yuan feel an unprecedented sense of nausea.

"Don't be nervous, we are the same kind of people."

"That 'door' inside you... has finally begun to loosen."

"I have been waiting for you... behind that door..."

Door?

What door?

Lin Yuan's pupils contracted sharply; he suddenly remembered the system he had been carrying since he transmigrated, and that Earth, which was called the "Land Abandoned by Gods."

"Playing god and acting like a ghost!"

Lin Yuan gritted his teeth, condensed his mental power into a needle, and fiercely stabbed it toward the direction from which the voice came.

"Get out of my head!"

The voice didn't get angry, just gradually faded away, as if sinking into the deep sea.

"We will meet... very soon..."

The voice disappeared completely.

Only Lin Yuan remained, floating in the cold space, his combat suit already soaked with cold sweat on his back.

He gasped for breath, his heart pounding wildly.

That voice just now...

It was definitely not the Mechanical Papacy.

That feeling... it was more like something indescribable, something even older and more twisted.

"Boss? Who are you talking to?" A Ji's confused voice came from the communicator. "Radar shows no response in the surrounding area."

Lin Yuan took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the lingering gloom in his heart.

He glanced at the "gravitational lens" still burning in the distance, his eyes becoming unprecedentedly solemn.

This universe seemed to be even dirtier than he had imagined.

"It's nothing."

Lin Yuan sheathed his blade, his voice returning to its usual cold hardness, but beneath that cold hardness, there was a trace of imperceptible killing intent.

"Maybe I ate too much just now and had an auditory hallucination."

"Notify the whole army, prepare for boarding combat."

"Since someone is watching in the dark, we have to make a bigger scene to see which monsters and demons are acting tough!"