Chapter 218 Offense and Defense Transform! From this day forward, everyone is like a dragon.

North of the capital, in the foothills of the Yanshan Mountains.

This place was originally a massive abandoned mine, but it had been flattened and converted into a super training ground capable of accommodating one hundred thousand people.

The air was distorting.

It wasn't due to the high temperature, but rather the one hundred thousand people standing on the field.

Each of them was like a nuclear reactor running at full capacity, and the biological thermal energy they radiated gathered together, actually causing visible refraction in the surrounding light.

The snow on the ground had melted completely half an hour ago, and even the soil had been baked dry, cracking into fissures.

"Hot... it's damn hot."

Zhao Gang, standing in the front row of the phalanx, pulled open his collar, revealing the blue-black veins on his neck.

The modified Vulcan cannon in his hand looked like a plastic toy to him now.

"Company commander, just bear with it. Our normal body temperature is now forty degrees. This is winter; if it were summer, a bunch of us gathered together could roast mosquitoes to death."

The young soldier beside him chuckled, but the lad's eyes no longer held their former immaturity and fear.

His pupils had contracted into pinpricks, staring at a fly several kilometers away, just like an eagle watching a rabbit.

On the high platform.

Lin Yuan wore a black coat, with only a simple tactical vest underneath.

He didn't sit on the bone throne but sat directly on a giant rock at the edge of the cliff, even chewing on a piece of foxtail grass he'd found somewhere.

Alita's massive holographic projection floated in mid-air, casting Lin Yuan's indifferent face onto the retinas of every soldier.

"Do you all think you're ready?"

Lin Yuan spat out the grass stalk, his voice amplified and echoing through the valley, causing loose stones to rattle down.

No one spoke.

But the one hundred thousand people took a step forward in perfect unison.

Boom!

The earth trembled.

This single step was comparable to a small earthquake.

The surging murderous aura shot straight up, blasting a huge hole in the clouds above.

"In the past, you would get weak-kneed when you saw bugs, and wet your pants when you saw a titan."

Lin Yuan stood up, brushed the dust off his backside, his tone full of mockery.

"Back then, you were just a bunch of rats hiding in holes, juicy rations in the eyes of the bugs."

Many veterans below flushed red, their fists clenching until they cracked.

"What, not convinced?"

Lin Yuan grinned, revealing a row of white teeth.

"It's good that you're not convinced. I went to all that trouble to drain that Zerg Queen, giving you new blood, new flesh, and new bones, not so you could become tougher punching bags."

He waved his hand sharply.

"Alita, release the hounds!"

With this order.

The massive gates around the training ground, welded shut with heavy steel plates, slowly rose amidst the screeching sound of metal friction.

Roar—!!!

A spine-chilling roar erupted instantly.

These were the wild Zerg Lin Yuan had specifically kept behind.

Thousands of Scythe Bugs, Acid Spitters, and even a few tank-sized Ultralisks, having been starved for three full days, were now completely crazed.

As the gates opened, the black tide of Zerg surged toward the crowd like a dam breaking, bringing with it a bloody stench.

If this had happened before, it would have been enough to cause any human army to collapse.

But now.

"That one is mine! The big one is mine! I'll fight anyone who tries to steal it!"

Zhao Gang let out a roar and charged out.

He even forgot to fire his gun, using the several-hundred-pound Vulcan cannon in his hands like a mace, swinging it round to smash the head of the nearest Acid Spitter.

Bang!

It was like a watermelon being smashed by a sledgehammer.

The five-meter-long, carapace-covered Acid Spitter had its head exploded into a pile of green paste.

"This is a bug? It just broke like that?!"

Zhao Gang looked at the slime-covered gunstock in his hand, feeling a bit stunned.

In the past, this thing would have taken armor-piercing rounds for ages, and now it was gone with one swing?

The battlefield instantly turned into a slaughterhouse.

No, it should be called a playground.

A seventeen-year-old rookie was pounced on by a Scythe Bug.

Just when everyone thought he was done for, the kid actually laughed wildly, reached out with both hands, and grabbed the two sharp forelimbs directly.

"Break for me!!"

Crack!

The bone blades that could slice through tanks were snapped by the rookie.

Then, the kid backhanded the broken blade into the bug's eye socket, his movements fluid and full of violent aesthetics.

Blood splattered, and severed limbs flew everywhere.

The once arrogant Zerg were now like ragdolls surrounded by a pack of mad dogs, being torn apart, trampled, and crushed.

No tactics, no coordination, pure physical crushing.

In just five minutes.

Thousands of Zerg were left without a single complete piece.

The ground was soaked with green Zerg blood, emitting a pungent, acidic stench.

But the human soldiers standing in the pool of blood were each as excited as if they had just been injected with stimulants, some even digging through the pile of corpses to see if there were any survivors left to kick.

"Boring."

Lin Yuan watched this scene and pursed his lips.

"Looks like I'll have to find you some tougher bones to chew on next time."

Although he complained, the smile in his eyes couldn't be hidden.

Fear stems from insufficient firepower.

When the prey becomes the hunter, the tide of battle has completely turned.

After the exercise, just as Lin Yuan returned to the command room of the Leviathan, Academician Wang drifted over like a ghost.

The old man was in shockingly high spirits, and a layer of black stubble had even grown on his sparse hair, and he walked with a spring in his step.

"Lin Yuan! Lin Yuan, come take a look at this!"

Academician Wang shoved a cyberpunk-style helmet into Lin Yuan's hands and pointed to a mech next to him that looked like it had just come off the assembly line.

This mech was completely different from the bulky exoskeletons of the past.

It had no complicated joysticks, no dense instrument panels, only a metal spine in the cockpit that looked a bit creepy.

"What is this? The latest torture device?" Lin Yuan raised an eyebrow.

"Uncultured!" Academician Wang rolled his eyes.

"This is the 'Neural Synchronization Link System'! Since our bodies have evolved, the old way of using hands to push levers is simply a waste of talent!"

"This spine is the interface." Academician Wang patted the metal column excitedly.

"Once you plug in, the mech is your skin, and the engine is your heart. Reaction delay? That's for primitive people! Now it's zero latency! Man and machine as one!"

"Sounds a bit painful."

"Pain is there to make you feel good!" Academician Wang said with fanatical enthusiasm.

"Think about it, you used to have to read a manual to pilot a Gundam, but now, you just have to think 'I want to fly,' and the thrusters ignite! This is a true war machine!"

Lin Yuan stroked his chin.

This old man, ever since he evolved, his methods have become increasingly wild.

"Fine, mass-produce it. Since mortal bodies can tear apart bugs by hand, with a layer of iron, we can go into space and go toe-to-toe with those aliens."

"There's more!"

Academician Wang pulled something out of his pocket... a potato?

It was as big as a basketball, with smooth skin, and it emitted a faint milky fragrance.

"What is this? A genetically modified biochemical grenade?" Lin Yuan took it; it was heavy, at least five or six jin.

"It's food! It's rations!" Academician Wang snatched it back, not even washing it, and took a bite, his mouth full of the fragrance of starch.

"This is the 'High-Energy Potato No. 1' improved using titan genetic technology. Plant it, and you can harvest a crop in three days. We used to have to worry about billions of mouths not having enough to eat, but now? Hmph, stuff them full!"

"One of these is worth a whole bag of rice from before, and the protein content is ten times that of beef." Academician Wang said incoherently while chewing.

"It's just a bit bland; it needs soy sauce."

Lin Yuan was amused.

Now it was good; they had guns, food, and people.

Earth, this broken stall that was about to go out of business, had been revived into a large chain enterprise.

Just as they were talking, a whistling sound suddenly came from the air.

Swoosh!

A figure stepped on a skateboard... no, it was a piece of cabin door steel plate he'd dismantled from somewhere, performing various high-difficulty stunts in the air, and finally hovered steadily in front of Lin Yuan.

"Boss! I'm back!"

A Ji jumped off the steel plate. The steel plate lost the support of his psychokinesis and clattered to the ground, leaving a dent.

The lad's temperament and style had changed.

The previous sleaziness was much reduced, and his eyes held a glimmer of sharpness.

"I sent you to scout, not to perform acrobatics." Lin Yuan threw the huge potato in his hand to him.

"Catch, a reward for you."

A Ji didn't even raise his hand; the potato was caught by an invisible force in mid-air and floated steadily to his mouth.

"Boss, this thing is edible? It looks like a bomb." A Ji took a bite, his eyes lighting up.

"Holy crap, it's delicious!"

"Don't just focus on eating, how's the situation?"

"Within a five-hundred-kilometer radius, it's so clean there isn't even a cockroach." A Ji swallowed the potato, his expression becoming slightly more serious.

"However, I felt some strange fluctuations at the edge of the atmosphere. It's like someone is peeping at us, but I can't find their location."

Lin Yuan narrowed his eyes.

Sure enough, they were still being watched.

Just then, a faint blue light screen that only he could see suddenly popped up in front of him.

【Ding!】

【host's forces detected to have undergone a qualitative change.】

【Civilization level promotion judgment in progress...】

【Judgment passed.】

【Earth civilization level: Promoted from 0.7 (Planetary · Endangered) to 1.5 (stellar-class · Initial).】

【Evaluation: You not only didn't die out, but you also evolved into a group of belligerent mad dogs. The Universal Covenant Protection Act is no longer effective for this civilization.】

【Congratulations to the host for completing the hidden achievement: Defying Heaven and Changing Fate.】

【Reward settling...】

Lin Yuan looked at the system panel, a curve forming at the corner of his mouth.

Level 1.5.

According to the universal classification of civilizations, this was already considered to have left the category of "primitive tribes" and barely qualified to sit at the interstellar table and have some soup.

Although the evaluation was a bit harsh, Lin Yuan didn't care. Mad dogs are good; no one dares to provoke mad dogs.

【Rewards distributed:】

【1. void engine · Phase 2 authority unlocked. (Can perform short-distance leaps, ignoring physical inertia)】

【2. Chaos Key (Fragment) clue x1.】

Lin Yuan's eyes were fixed on the second item.

Chaos Key.

The name didn't sound very proper.

But in his memories from his previous life, anything related to "Chaos" was never simple.

"Boss, look at this!"

Alita suddenly interrupted Lin Yuan's train of thought.

In the glass tank in the center of the hall, the pink Zerg Queen brain suddenly trembled violently, and countless neural fiber optics flashed crazily.

"What's wrong with Big White again? Does it need a water change?" A Ji curiously leaned over.

"It's not a water change, it's spitting something out."

Alita's hands flew over the virtual keyboard.

"It seems to have unlocked a piece of core memory that was heavily encrypted before. Now, because our civilization level has increased, this encryption lock has automatically unlocked!"

On the screen, countless garbled codes jumped wildly, finally converging into a complex star map.

The edge of the star map was the spiral arm of the Milky Way, and in the deepest part of the star map, a red light point was constantly flickering.

Around that light point, a line of strange titan text was marked.

Alita quickly translated it.

A few seconds later, the text turned into Chinese characters that everyone could understand.

【Mechanical Papacy · Third Sanctuary · Tomb of God】

【Coordinates: X-998, Y-234, Z-001】

The hall fell silent instantly.

Academician Wang pushed up his glasses, and the half potato in his hand dropped to the floor:

"Mechanical Papacy? That's the supreme civilization that supposedly holds the truth of the universe... Do they really exist?"

Lin Yuan looked at the coordinates, light swirling in his purple eyes.

Mechanical Papacy.

That crazy cult that regarded titans as heretics, viewed flesh and blood as filthy, and was determined to transform all living beings in the universe into cold, unfeeling machines.

In his previous life, Lin Yuan had only heard the name.

That was a true great terror, an existence that even the Zerg Queen didn't dare to provoke easily.

"It seems that the lock on our heads has something to do with these iron-loving cultists."

Lin Yuan stood up, walked to the massive star map, and pointed his finger lightly at the red light point.

"Boss, this place sounds very dangerous, are we really going?" A Ji shrunk his neck.

"Why don't we just grow potatoes on Earth? Anyway, no one dares to provoke us now."

"Grow potatoes?"

Lin Yuan sneered and looked back at everyone.

"They've already installed surveillance cameras in our brains, and you still want to grow potatoes peacefully?"

He clenched his fist, and the energy of the void engine gathered in his palm, emitting a heart-palpitating hum.

"Since they don't want us to live, we'll go tear down their temple and take their god..."

Lin Yuan grinned, revealing a chilling smile.

"Drag them off the altar and sell them as scrap metal."

"Alita, set the course. Target, Tomb of God."

"All personnel prepare! This trip, we aren't just leaving Earth."

"We're going to punch a hole through the sky!"