136: Chapter 136 Space Pirates? No, those are "Road Test Data" Delivered to Our Doorstep
The outskirts of the Chaotic Star Domain, the Broken Meteorite Belt.
This is the edge of the Graveyard of the Gods and a famous "no-man's-land" zone on the Starry Sky Ancient Road. Countless enormous meteorites float silently, providing excellent cover for hunters. A massive fleet, painted in gaudy colors, hung with various biological skulls, and sprayed with skull logos, is lurking quietly in the shadows of the giant meteorites. This is the notorious "Black Shark Marauders," a tumor that runs rampant on the Starry Sky Ancient Road. They have no sense of martial ethics, leave no survivors, and specialize in robbing novice civilizations that have lost their way or lone interstellar merchant ships.
The flagship "Black Shark" is a heavily modified battlecruiser. On the bridge, the One-eyed Captain, who was blind in one eye and had a face full of scars, sat with his legs crossed, playing with a laser dagger and staring greedily at the radar screen.
In the center of the screen, a massive planet emitting a faint blue halo was moving slowly. Even through the screen, the majestic Spiritual Qi reaction caused the detector to emit an excited beep. "Boss! A fat sheep! A super big fat sheep!" The adjutant was so excited that he was drooling, his hand pointing at the screen trembling. "Look at this energy reaction! This is a complete, ecologically perfect life planet! And it hasn't registered any identification code with the Interstellar Alliance!" "This is a wild civilization! And it's undergoing a primitive 'planetary relocation'!" "Look at those hundred pink... uh... what are those things trailing behind it? They look like biological battleships from the Abyss? But the taste is too tacky!"
The One-eyed Captain's mechanical prosthetic eye swiveled, the red lens making a faint zooming sound as it emitted a gaze of extreme greed. "A wild civilization?" "Meaning they have no backers, no high-tech weapons, and are just natives who only play with mud?" "Natives from this kind of planet are usually delicious and have pure Souls. Whether sold to slave traders or to the Titan Race as batteries, they fetch a sky-high price!" "Furthermore, with a planet this large, we can completely drag it back to be our private backyard!"
The One-eyed Captain stood up abruptly and stabbed the laser dagger fiercely into the table. "Pass down the order! All forces, attack!" "Charge the main cannons and lock onto that planet's defense shield!" "Don't damage the planet; just kill everyone on it! Capture those hundred pink ships as well. Although they're a bit ugly, they are biological battleships and are worth a lot!"
Boom! Boom! Boom! As the order was given, the five hundred pirate warships lurking in the meteorite belt simultaneously ignited their piercing tail flames. Like a pack of sharks that had smelled blood, they tore through the silence of the Void Realm, carrying a ferocious murderous intent as they aggressively pounced toward the ship that appeared completely defenseless in their eyes.
...
The ship, Tianhe Command Room (formerly the Hall of Myriad Laws).
Li Mo looked at the densely packed red dots rushing over on the holographic screen, his expression as calm as if he were watching a low-quality game replay. "Five hundred ships? That's a bit few." "I originally wanted to try the thousand-shot mode of 'Ten Thousand Swords Return to Origin,' but it seems I can only cut it in half."
He turned to look at General Gu (the Corpse Soldier Commander) beside him. This old zombie, who had just changed into a [Titanium Alloy Exoskeleton Power Armor] and was holding a joystick connected to a neural data cable, was currently trembling with excitement. The ghost fire in its eye sockets burned as if it were physical, staring intently at the pirate fleet on the screen.
"Old Gu, do you know how to operate a cannon?" Li Mo asked casually.
General Gu moved his still somewhat stiff neck with a series of cracks, producing an ear-grating sound of metal friction. "Reporting to the Captain! Back then on the ship, I was the one in charge of the cannons!" "Back then, we were fighting Extraterrestrial Demons, and that scene was much bigger than this! These few hundred broken ships aren't even enough to fill the gaps between my teeth!" "Although this cannon looks a bit strange (modified from Tianhe Peak) and the principle is somewhat different (changing from spiritual power drive to anti-matter drive), as long as it can explode, I can fire it! A gunner's instinct is carved into the bones!"
"Good." Li Mo nodded, his finger tapping lightly in the air as he transferred the fire control Administrator Privilege of the main cannon to General Gu. "I'll give you a task." "I want you to use a single shell to annihilate the entire opposing side."
"One shot?" General Gu froze for a moment, a trace of doubt flashing in its ghost-fire eyes. It looked at the five hundred warships on the screen, scattered across a range of tens of thousands of kilometers and surrounding them in a fan shape. "Captain, this... this is a bit difficult." "Blowing up dozens in one shot is no problem, but these five hundred are too spread out. Unless they line up and obediently let me skewer them like candied haws, once one shot goes off, the rest will definitely flee."
"They don't need to line up." Li Mo pointed at the [Kunlun Lens] floating at the muzzle of the cannon, which was slowly rotating. "Besides amplifying power, this thing has a hidden function that was locked by your captain back then, called... 'Ten Thousand Swords Return to Origin: Scattering Mode'."
Li Mo once again activated his Administrator Privilege. He took up his pen in the air and wrote a large character for "Divide" that emitted a golden Dao Rhyme. Then, with a wave of his hand, he slapped this character directly into the fire control System code of the main cannon.
[Entry Loading: Multiple Shadow Clones (Beam Ballistics Version).] [Effect: The energy beam fired from the main cannon, after being refracted through the Kunlun Lens, will automatically undergo fission based on the number of enemy units. Each split child beam will inherit 100% of the parent beam's power and the 'Karma Locking' attribute.] [Note: This is not science, but it is very immortal cultivation.]
"Now, do you see?" Li Mo pointed at the enemy ships on the screen that were locked by red reticles. "Open fire, Old Gu." "Let this starry sky hear the roar of our Tianhe Academy."
Although General Gu couldn't understand these fancy and complicated code operations, it was greatly shocked. As a veteran, it instinctively felt the terrifying power that was about to erupt. It no longer hesitated, its hands tightly gripping that red firing joystick, as it let out a roar from the depths of its Soul toward the heavens:
"Go to hell for me—!!!"
Crack—Boom————!!!!
Tianhe Peak vibrated violently, as if the entire mountain range had awakened in this instant. The titan core buried deep underground instantly erupted with a heart-palpitating torrent of blue energy, which followed thick superconducting cables and was frantically injected into the main cannon coils. A deep blue pillar of light, a thousand-zhang in diameter and sufficient to instantly evaporate an ocean, rushed out of the cannon barrel accompanied by a world-destroying roar. This pillar of light did not shoot directly at the enemy but instead slammed fiercely into the [Kunlun Lens] in front of it.
A miracle occurred at this moment. The originally straight and thick pillar of light, the moment it passed through the lens, did not fly out straight but instead burst apart like fireworks. Swish, swish, swish, swish—! Under the effect of the power of the Law, a single pillar of light instantly split into five hundred golden lights, each only as thick as a bowl but condensed to the extreme. These golden lights seemed to have eyes as they traced countless eerie arcs in the Void Realm, like five hundred golden swimming Dragons pouncing on their respective prey.
...
Black Shark Marauders, Flagship.
The One-eyed Captain was about to order to fire, his finger already pressed on the launch button. Suddenly, his field of vision was filled with an overwhelming golden light. On the radar screen, the alarm sound merged into a single, long tone. "What is tha—"
Pfft! There was no violent explosion, only the light sound of a sharp blade cutting through tofu. A golden light ignored the deflector shields that the Black Shark was so proud of, ignored the thick composite armor, and pierced through the bridge like cutting through butter, finally accurately piercing the One-eyed Captain's head. His expression was still frozen between greed and shock, but his body had already turned to fly ash.
Simultaneously, in the Void Realm for tens of thousands of kilometers around, the same scene was playing out in synchronization. Five hundred warships. Five hundred beams of light. Five hundred precise "headshots."
Whether the pirate warships were performing evasive maneuvers, had activated stealth mode, or were even hiding behind meteorites, that golden light would curve, penetrate, and lock on. A Karma Law weapon does not listen to reason.
The pirate fleet, which had been aggressive and arrogant just a second ago, lost all power in this single second. The bridge of every warship was precisely pierced, leaving a hole with smooth edges that was still melting red-hot.
Dead silence. The entire starry sky fell into dead silence once more. Only those five hundred ghost ships that had lost control were still drifting slowly under the influence of inertia, like a floating steel graveyard.
"Ho... Holy crap..." General Gu still maintained the posture of pulling the lever, its jaw nearly falling to the floor (it actually did fall, and T-9 hurried over to help it put it back on). "This... this is a cannon?" "This is freaking King Yama's roll call book, isn't it?!" "Whoever is named dies! You don't even need to aim?" "If the ship had this thing back then, could we have still lost?"
Li Mo looked at the results on the screen and nodded with satisfaction. "This is the charm of 'Industrial Immortal Cultivation'." "Precise, efficient, and leaves no hidden dangers." "This is the true 'Divine Sense Sword Manipulation,' except we are manipulating light-speed Flying Swords."
He turned to look at Lei Wanjun and Butcher Xiao, who were already dumbstruck. "Two Directors, don't just stand there." "Do you see those floating warships?" "Although the bridges are destroyed, the engines, reactors, and materials in the warehouses behind should still be usable." "Take the Scrap Iron Clan, the Corpse Soldier Regiment, and the Tentacle Monster Battalion to... collect scrap." "Remember, strip them down until they only have their underwear left. Our journey is the sea of stars; we cannot waste a single needle or thread."
"Yes!!!" The teachers and students of the entire ship cheered joyfully, their voices deafening. This feeling of "clearing the field with one shot and then the whole family coming out to pick up equipment" was a hundred times more satisfying than leveling up in immortal cultivation. Thousands of small engineering ships and mechas swarmed out from the ship, pouncing toward the pirate wreckage.
And at this moment, in the deep reaches of the distant starry sky, several powerful civilizations (including the Titan Race and the Light Spirit Race) that were spying on this area with ultra-long-range radar watched the scene of the pirate fleet being instantly annihilated, breaking into a cold sweat. They silently upgraded the threat Rank of "pangu-003" from "ordinary native" directly to "Extremely Dangerous / Untouchable." Furthermore, they added a line of bright red warnings in the star map notes: [Do not approach! This civilization is extremely protective of its food and possesses large-scale Karma Law weapons! Suspected revival of an Ancient God!]
Li Mo did not know that he had become the newly ascended Great Devil King of the Starry Sky Ancient Road. He just looked at the new "resource list" in his little notebook and revealed a thrifty and hardworking smile. "Not bad, saved another sum on travel expenses." "At this rate, we should soon reach that so-called 'Place of Origin'."