85: Chapter 85 is also about motherships, except ours flies in the sky.

"What's wrong?"

Captain Long Ying felt Lin Yun's body suddenly tense, his eyes becoming unusually deep, as if he had transcended time and space, seeing something she couldn't.

Lin Yun took a deep breath, calming the torrent of technological data surging in his mind. He looked at the clear blue sky outside the window, a wild smile appearing on his face.

"Nothing, I just feel that the ocean is indeed too small."

He turned around and said to Captain Long Ying, "Captain Long, if I gave you an army that could reach any corner of the globe within thirty minutes without any aircraft carriers, refueling planes, or even runways, and could also conduct outer space strikes, would you want it?"

Captain Long Ying was stunned for a moment, then assumed Lin Yun was joking, and said with a wry smile, "Mr. Lin, this kind of technology, even in sci-fi movies, would probably take another two hundred years, wouldn't it?"

"Two hundred years?"

Lin Yun walked to the control panel, his fingers flying. "Nuwa, bring up the preliminary model of the 'Luan Bird'."

On the large screen in the command center, the air suddenly seemed to be filled with liquid light and shadow. A giant, silver-white, streamlined battleship model, full of violent aesthetics, slowly rotated into view.

It was five thousand meters long, its hull resembling the mythical Luan Bird, with wings spread wide enough to cover the entire sea surface. Its belly was covered with dense deep-space strike launch slots, and the outrageously thick particle main cannon at its bow seemed capable of instantly tearing apart a planet.

That was not a ship.

That was... a city of the sky floating in the clouds!

Captain Long Ying's pupils suddenly constricted, and she stood still as if frozen, staring intently at every structural detail on the model. As a top captain, she could tell at a glance how terrifying this thing was—this was no aircraft carrier, this was the prototype of a planet-destroying battleship!

"What... what exactly is this?" Her voice trembled.

"This is the 'Luan Bird'," Lin Yun walked to her side, his gaze burning. "It's also a carrier. Except, ours flies in the sky."

"Haven't you always worried that the ocean can't fulfill your ambitions?"

"From now on, this sky, and even the endless deep space, will be under your command."

Captain Long Ying looked at Lin Yun, an indescribable surge of emotion welling up in her heart. She knew that from this moment on, any armed force on Earth would become a joke in front of this 'Luan Bird'.

However, just then, Lin Yun's expression suddenly changed.

On his system panel, the blue light that originally represented the 'Luan Bird' design blueprint began to flicker violently, turning into a dazzling red warning.

[Warning! High-energy reaction detected! Target coordinates: depths of the Mariana Trench.]

[Mineral core area, energy readings abnormal!]

[That 'mineral deposit'... is awakening!]

Lin Yun suddenly looked up, staring intently at the underwater scan map on the screen, which had been shaken by the aftershocks of the previous battle.

The area originally thought to be a mineral deposit now slowly opened a pair of huge, metallic eyes! That was no mineral at all! It was an alien biological weapon buried deep near the Earth's core!

Moreover, it was sending some kind of encrypted signal to the Moon Gate in the sky.

"Captain Long, it seems we don't have time to build slowly."

Lin Yun looked coldly at the gradually awakening behemoth, a hint of ferocity flashing in his eyes.

"Notify the Dingyuan and turn its cannons!"

"Tell all of humanity, the real war has only just begun!"

Those massive metallic eyes, across tens of thousands of meters of deep sea, met Lin Yun's gaze in a cross-dimensional stare.

At this moment, Earth's fate once again hung by a thread.