302: Chapter 302 The Northern Advance

Over the next thirteen days, Su Mingyuan spent his days on the command platform watching the formation training of the spirit armor troops, and returned to his office at night to sit in meditation and Cultivate.

The progress of the formation training was smoother than expected.

During training, Chen Rong pushed the number of remotely controlled units from sixty to sixty-three.

Lin Wan pushed it to sixty-five units.

Zhang Dabiao led the Second-Order Martial Artists of the second echelon to repeatedly practice remote formation coordination, going from each managing their own affairs at the beginning to later achieving synchronized movement in groups of ten.

The First-Order Martial Artists of the third echelon had it the hardest—they had to use Spiritual Qi for control inside the cockpit during long-distance marches and battles, and the consumption of physical strength and Spiritual Qi was far greater than remote control.

The logistics team specially equipped them with Spiritual Qi recovery Medicinal Pills and high-calorie compressed food.

On the night of the thirteenth day.

Su Mingyuan sat in his office, having meditated continuously for six hours.

The Spiritual Qi in his Dantian was nearly four times denser than thirteen days ago.

Over these thirteen days, his Meridians walls had been repeatedly flushed, widened, and strengthened by the medicinal power of the realm breaking pill, making them completely different from two weeks ago.

He could feel that the critical point was right before his eyes.

The Spiritual Qi spun faster and faster in his Dantian, compressed tighter and tighter, like a balloon being continuously inflated.

Then, the spiritual power seeped out from his palms.

Thin and faint, like a transparent thread of silk, it probed out from the Laogong acupoint in the palm of his right hand, hovering about two centimeters above his fingertips.

Spiritual power externalization.

Breakthrough to the third order.

Su Mingyuan looked at the wispy, indistinct Spiritual Qi on his fingertips, then withdrew his spiritual power, stood up, and walked to the window.

Outside the window was the night sky of the Yaowu World.

Unlike the Giant World, there were stars here.

Dense starlight covered the dark blue canopy of heaven, brighter and cleaner than the night sky of the Main World.

Setting off tomorrow.

Two thousand mechas, heading all the way north.

...

Day fourteen.

Five in the morning.

It was not yet dawn.

Dawn in the Yaowu World was about forty minutes later than in the Main World; at this time, there was only a sliver of grayish-white light on the horizon.

On the assembly ground outside the northern gate of the Forward Base, two thousand mechas had already completed their formation.

Looking down from above, the mecha phalanx resembled a huge chessboard.

The deep black S-series mechas lined up at the very front, forming a sharp wedge-shaped vanguard, followed by the gray-painted standard models spreading out densely.

The forty-four-meter-tall steel giants stood into a forest of steel under the gray morning light.

One hundred and twenty deep black sharp-knife formation units stood quietly at the very front of the queue.

On the command platform three hundred meters away, Chen Rong and Lin Wan stood side by side.

Chen Rong had his hands in the pockets of his training uniform, looking up at the distant black mecha phalanx, an indescribable look in his eyes.

It was not nervousness, but rather an eager-to-try calmness.

"Attention, everyone."

Su Mingyuan stood on the roof of the command vehicle, switching the communication channel to the army-wide broadcast.

In the cockpits of the two thousand mechas, one thousand eight hundred pilots heard his voice at the same time.

The eighty-seven Second-Order Martial Artists scattered throughout the base heard it as well.

"Today's mission is very simple: line up abreast, advance north, and clear out all Yao Beasts along the way."

His voice carried very far in the early morning air.

"There is no upper limit for the advance distance; fight until we can no longer fight."

"Set off."

Two thousand mechas moved at the same time.

The ground trembled.

Two thousand forty-four-meter-tall steel giants stepped forward simultaneously, and the resulting vibration caused fine cracks to appear on the gravel ground of the assembly area.

The sound of footsteps merged into a low, rhythmic roar.

This sound carried very far.

The Yao Beasts within a radius of more than ten kilometers must have heard it.

Su Mingyuan came down from the roof of the vehicle and climbed into the inner cabin of the command vehicle.

The command vehicle was a modified heavy armored vehicle, equipped with communication equipment, a holographic projection System, and a small Tianheng terminal.

Two layers of skyfall steel armor plates were welded to the outside of the vehicle body, which could withstand a full-strength attack from a Fourth-Order Monster Beast.

It followed behind the mecha phalanx, maintaining a distance of five kilometers.

Tao Zhe was already sitting in the command vehicle, with three monitors placed in front of him.

"The drone formation has taken off," he said. "The thermal map within a range of fifty kilometers ahead is being generated."

On the monitor, the terrain of the Yaowu World slowly unfolded under the perspective of the drones.

Heading north from the Forward Base, the first twenty kilometers were the area cleared last time—the remnant zone of Black Wind Ridge, where the density of Yao Beasts was very low.

Beyond twenty kilometers, the terrain began to change.

The flat hilly terrain disappeared, replaced by a continuous dense forest.

The trees were tall and dense, their canopies obscuring most of the ground, and the drone's thermal imaging could only capture blurred heat source signals.

"Dense forest area," Tao Zhe marked it on the map. "The width is about forty kilometers, and it extends more than two hundred kilometers in the east-west direction."

"What about the distribution of Yao Beasts?"

"The periphery of the dense forest is dominated by First-Order and Second-Order—Horned Wolves, Iron-backed Pigs, and Black-backed Leopards. The density is not high, about the same as before the clearing of Black Wind Ridge." Tao Zhe pointed to the dotted red light spots on the thermal map. "But the deeper we go, the denser the heat source signals become. The heat source density in the central area of the dense forest is eight to ten times that of the periphery."

"Are there any Fourth-Order signals?"

"None found for now. But the tree canopy in the center of the dense forest is too thick, and the penetration power of thermal imaging is limited, so it cannot be completely ruled out."

Su Mingyuan looked at the map and did not speak.

The first twenty kilometers ahead were a safe zone.

Then came forty kilometers of dense forest.

What lay beyond the dense forest?

The drones' flight range was not enough, so it could not be seen yet.

"Let's chew through the dense forest first and talk later," Su Mingyuan said.

——

The advance over the first twenty kilometers was without suspense.

The mecha formation passed through the cleared area at a marching speed of forty kilometers per hour, occasionally encountering a few stray First-Order Yao Beasts, which were casually crushed to death by the mechas in the front row of the third echelon before they even got close.

No one took it to heart.

The real test began from the edge of the dense forest.

The average height of the trees in the dense forest exceeded sixty meters—taller than the mechas.

When the forty-four-meter mechas walked in, overhead was a sky-blocking canopy, and underfoot were intertwined root Systems; their field of vision was severely compressed, and radar signals were interfered with by the trees.

The first order Su Mingyuan issued was—change formation.

The line-abreast formation was not suitable for dense forest combat.

The two thousand mechas switched from the line-abreast formation to a column formation—four units per row, with a twenty-meter interval front and back, stretching out into a long steel dragon.

Chen Rong's sixty sharp-knife formation units were divided into two groups, with thirty units blazing a trail at the very front and thirty units protecting the flanks.

Lin Wan's sixty units were all kept in the middle section of the team as reserve forces.

"Reduce the advance speed to fifteen kilometers per hour," Su Mingyuan said. "All mechas, turn on sonar mode to automatically capture and scan for Yao Beast signals."