83: Streetlights are strange too? Wang Wei: They're solar-powered defense towers!

A sharp alarm sounded like a sharp sword, tearing through the brief tranquility of the Cloud Bridge.

That cold, grand, and emotionless electronic voice echoed deep within the Soul of every player.

"Intrusion alert! Level One 'Abyssal' pollution source detected!"

"Purification Protocol initiated!"

"First through tenth combat sequences, all units deploy! Target—Cloud Bridge!"

With this final proclamation, the distant skyline was instantly illuminated.

Thousands of points of light, like stars suddenly ignited in the dark night, rose into the high sky in dense clusters. Immediately after, massive wings of light composed of pure energy unfolded simultaneously, blotting out the sun and completely obscuring the warm sunlight of the celestial realm.

A pressure a hundred times more terrifying than the previous hundred Icon Guardss combined descended from the sky like an invisible mountain.

Inside Black Iron City, the surviving dwarves who had just been liberated from the nightmare of "Mechanical Ascension" felt their bodies go limp and knelt on the ground the moment they felt this pressure. It was an absolute fear of their "Master" engraved deep within their Bloodlines.

However, the players, who were the Origin of the pollution source, had a completely different vibe.

"Holy crap! Look at this production value! These special effects! It's bigger than those hundred tin cans from earlier combined!"

"Server-wide event! This is definitely a server-wide event! 'Purifying' us? Don't make me laugh, it's us 'purifying' them!"

"Brothers, you see that? Those dense clusters in the sky are all flying Contribution Points!"

Fear? Non-existent.

In the eyes of the fourth calamity, so-called "Divine Pressure" was nothing more than background music for a BOSS's entrance; the so-called "Purification Legion" was just walking humanoid treasure chests.

The bigger the scene, the more excited they became.

The more monsters there were, the greedier they got.

Li Qiang shouldered the freshly looted energy spear, which still carried some residual warmth. He squinted at the army of "birdmen" assembling in the sky for a moment and spat impatiently.

"So slow, taking forever just to set up a formation. By the time they fly down, the food will be cold."

He looked around at the players who were also waiting with expectant, excited faces. With a wave of his hand, he roared in his signature loud voice:

"Brothers! Don't wait! While they're not here yet, let's rush in and raid their base! Let them know what it means to have a 'fire in the backyard'!"

This proposal immediately received the unanimous support of all players.

"Brother Qiang is right! Why fight a frontal team battle? We're a demolition crew, not a regular army!"

"Raid the house! Raid the house! Rush in and empty their vault!"

The players' attention immediately shifted from the army in the sky to the silver gate in front of them, where the Icon Guards captain had been pinned.

Wang Wei controlled several mechanical spiders to quickly climb the gate and install miniature explosive devices at several key nodes. With a few muffled explosions, the hinges of the seemingly indestructible silver gate were precisely destroyed. It let out a groan of being overburdened and slowly collapsed inward.

"Charge!"

Li Qiang was the first to rush through the gate with his spear, followed by tens of thousands of players like floodwaters through an open sluice.

The sight behind the gate made everyone catch their breath.

It was an incredibly wide, endless white corridor. The floor was paved with a material never seen before, like mutton-fat white jade, smooth as a mirror and reflecting the radiance of the firmament. On both sides of the corridor, every ten meters, hung an elegantly styled streetlight that looked like a work of art. They emitted a soft, warm glow, lighting the entire corridor as bright as day without being at all dazzling.

A faint, sweet scent similar to high-end aromatherapy permeated the air, making one feel refreshed. In the distance, the melodious sound of hymns seemed to faintly drift over.

There were no guards, no traps, and not a single trace of murderous intent.

Sacred, quiet, and peaceful.

It was as if the bloody "disassembly work" outside the gate just now and the purification army gathering in the sky were all just an illusion.

"I... holy..." a player stared blankly at the scene, muttering to himself, "Is... is this heaven? It's too beautiful..."

"I love this decoration style! When I get rich, I'm going to decorate our guild hall like this!"

"Stop dreaming, you can't even afford a toilet. Quick, see if there's anything valuable! These floor tiles look good, maybe pry one up to use as a shield?"

The combat nerves that had been tense just a moment ago instantly relaxed. The players scattered in twos and threes, curiously looking around, seamlessly switching from bandit mode to tourist mode.

Only one person maintained her "professional ethics" throughout.

In the eyes of Lin Xiaowan (Rich Woman Hungry), there was no beautiful scenery, only data.

Under her [Eye of Greed] passive skill, the entire world was covered in a layer of dazzling light representing value. In her eyes, this corridor was no longer white and gold, but submerged in patches of purple and orange light representing "Epic" and "Legendary" grades.

She ignored the floor tiles and murals emitting purple light, her gaze dead-locked onto the seemingly ordinary streetlights on both sides of the corridor.

More accurately, it was the head-sized crystals at the top of the streetlights, emitting a soft halo.

In Lin Xiaowan's vision, every single one of those crystals emitted a pure orange light so brilliant it almost blinded her!

Her breathing instantly became rapid.

[Unknown Item Detected: Pure Holy Light Crystal (Legendary)]

[Type: Ultra-high Density Energy Core / Top-tier Alchemy Material]

[Description: A standardized energy unit used by the celestial realm to power Advanced defense facilities, containing enough pure energy to instantly vaporize a small city.]

Lin Xiaowan's head went "buzz," as if she had been hit by a hundred power hammers at once.

To activate that damn teleportation array, she had not only emptied her family savings but also owed the Su Mu System a mountain of debt. And now, an entire street of hundreds of "Legendary" treasures was laid out defenselessly before her!

"Everyone, stop wandering around!"

She let out a scream that was slightly out of tune due to excessive excitement, frantically spamming the guild channel.

"Do you see those streetlights?! Yes! Those lights! The crystals on top! They're Legendary-grade energy cores! They're worth more than everything we've dug up combined!"

"Everyone who can fly! Anyone with a jetpack! Anyone with a grappling hook gun! Get up there! Pry them all off!"

"One crystal! I'll pay ten thousand Contribution Points! No! Twenty thousand! Whoever gets the first one, I'll personally reward another fifty thousand! If it breaks, it's on me!"

Under heavy rewards, there will surely be brave men.

Lin Xiaowan's seductive offer was like pouring a ladle of cold water into boiling oil, instantly causing the entire tour group to boil over.

"Twenty thousand Contribution Points for one?!"

"Holy crap! Snatching just one is enough for me to trade for a new weapon!"

"Don't anyone compete with me! The first one is mine!"

In an instant, a dozen of the fastest-reacting players either activated jetpacks on their backs that were so crude they could fall apart at any moment, or skillfully fired grappling hook guns looted from the dwarves, rushing toward the nearest streetlights with strange cries.

They were like a group of naughty children scrambling to poke a hornet's nest, their faces filled with fanaticism and greed as they raced toward the sky.

A player using a grappling hook gun was the fastest. He precisely fixed the hook to the lamp post and swung up like a nimble monkey, seemingly about to become the lucky first person to touch a crystal.

He excitedly reached out, already able to feel the gentle energy radiating from the crystal.

However, at the very moment his fingertips were about to touch the crystal's shell.

"Buzz—"

A low but clearly audible hum suddenly echoed throughout the Silver Corridor.

The hundreds of elegant streetlights on both sides of the corridor, which had been emitting a soft glow, acted as if they had received some silent command. In a perfectly synchronized movement, they instantly turned their "lamp heads" in unison, locking onto the dozen or so reckless players in the air.

The crystals that had been emitting warm light retracted all their radiance in this instant, then exploded with a cold, lethal, pure white intense light capable of piercing the Soul!

A cold mechanical prompt sounded simultaneously in the ears of all targeted players.

[Warning: You have entered the attack range of the [Prism Defense Array].]

[Warning: Hostile behavior detected.]

[Warning: Purification program initiated.]

"Purification?"

The players in the air were stunned, not yet understanding what those words meant.

In the next second, hundreds of white lasers, thin as hair but condensed to the extreme, shot out from the crystals atop the streetlights, weaving into an inescapable net in the sky with no blind spots.

There was no world-shaking explosion, no heart-wrenching screams.

The dozen or so players in the air, along with their crude flying machines and grappling hooks, were silently vaporized, decomposed, and turned into basic photons the moment they touched the lasers, like ice cubes thrown into a furnace, dissipating into the air.

Their health points didn't even have a process of changing; they went from full health to zero instantly.

A few seconds later, several white lights lit up at the distant Cloud Bridge respawn point, but more people, because they had died so thoroughly, even had their Soul data instantly erased, entering a long respawn countdown.

In the corridor, the players who had been incredibly noisy just a moment ago were now all frozen in place, like a group of statues under a binding spell.

Those dozen or so fresh lives were right before their eyes, and in less than a second, they were gone.

A deathly silence enveloped the entire area.

A player swallowed hard and said in a dry voice, "Insta... insta-kill... Is it an instant-death check attack?"

"No..." Wang Wei's voice rang out in the communication channel, carrying a hint of gravity and lingering fear. "It's not an instant-death check. It's damage overflow. The instantaneous energy output of those lasers exceeded the System's upper limit check for our HP! Our digital bodies were completely erased at the physical level!"

This explanation was even more hair-raising than an instant-death check.

Just then, the hundreds of murderous streetlights softened their glow again and slowly rotated back to their original positions, as if the massacre just now was merely to clear out a few flies that had accidentally flown into the room.

"Don't move! Don't get near those streetlights! Everyone get back! Find cover!"

Wang Wei's roar finally brought everyone back to their senses. The players scrambled backward, hiding behind the ruins of the silver gate they had just pushed down, staring in shock at the corridor that had once again returned to its serene and holy state.

"Damn... there's too little data. We need more samples..." Wang Wei hid behind a massive door panel, his mechanical eye flashing wildly as he muttered to himself, "Attack patterns, trigger conditions, cooldown times, energy consumption... we don't know any of it..."

He looked up at the surrounding players and spoke in a negotiating tone, "Um... are there any... volunteers? To go test the attack range and targeting logic? The guild will reimburse the resurrection fee, and Miss Lin will add another twenty thousand Contribution Points..."

Responding to him was a uniform shaking of heads like rattle drums from the players.

You've got to be kidding, there's a limit to seeking death. That way of dying was too clean; they wouldn't even get a chance to wail on the World Channel, offering zero gaming experience.

Just as Wang Wei was at a loss, a few "lone wolf" players with hard heads, clutching onto a sense of luck, began their own death-seeking attempts.

A Gun Ranger hid a kilometer away, using his sniper rifle to aim at the crystal of a streetlight, carefully firing a shot.

Before the bullet could get within a hundred meters of the streetlight, it was blocked by a suddenly appearing energy shield. Immediately after, a laser a hundred times faster than the bullet instantly crossed the kilometer distance, accurately hitting the sniper and turning him and his cover into fly ash.

A Rogue player activated stealth, trying to slip past by hugging the wall. As a result, the moment he stepped into the corridor's range, he was locked onto by dozens of lasers simultaneously and shot into a sieve.

"Stop trying!" After paying the painful price of five lives, Wang Wei finally analyzed enough data. He slammed his fist onto the ruins in front of him and roared,

"I get it! Those damn things aren't streetlights at all!"

"They are the Celestial version of [prism towers]! And they're networked! The entire corridor is a 3D defense matrix made of hundreds of prism towers! Its targeting logic isn't visual; it's spatial perception! As long as any object judged as an 'unauthorized unit' enters the corridor's range, the entire matrix will initiate indiscriminate focused fire!"

"No blind spots, instantaneous attacks, and the energy level is judged as Legendary! The scrap metal we're wearing right now can't even withstand one shot!"

Wang Wei's analysis made all the players gasp.

"Holy crap! These birdmen are way too devious! Who would've thought even the streetlights were traps!"

"How are we supposed to get through? Rushing in is just lining up for execution!"

"Do we have to retreat and wait for the main force in the sky to come down?"

A feeling of helplessness and frustration began to spread through the crowd.

However, amidst this gloom, an ill-timed loud laugh suddenly rang out.

"Haha... Hahahaha!"

It was Li Qiang!

Far from being afraid, he stood with his hands on his hips and let out an extremely arrogant laugh.

Everyone looked at him as if he were a madman.

"Towers?" Li Qiang wiped away the tears from laughing, a bloodthirsty grin appearing on his face. "If it's towers, then that's easy!"

He looked around, his blood-red eyes flashing with a light known as "experience."

"Brothers, have you all forgotten how we made it out of the novice village? In the Wasteland, when we encountered those Federation auto-turrets we couldn't dismantle or damage, what did we do?"

Reminded by him, many veteran players who had been with him since the closed beta period had their eyes light up instantly.

An old player slapped his thigh and realized, "Dig! We don't attack the turrets; we just dig out the Foundation underneath them! Let it fall down on its own!"

"Bingo!"

Li Qiang slammed his energy spear into the ground with a sharp "clang."

"No matter how pretty those birdmen built these towers, they still need roots! Since we can't take off its head, we'll go for its rear!"

He pulled out the weathered [Standard Entrenching Tool] he had been using since the Wasteland world, shouldered it, and issued a new call to arms to all the players.

"Everyone, listen up! Engineers, miners, warriors! Get your shovels, hammers, and pickaxes out for me!"

"Our goal is—"

"Forced—Demolition—!"

"Ohhhhhhh!!!"

The atmosphere of despair that had just been lingering was instantly replaced by a fanatical flame full of the desire to destroy.

This was the rhythm they were familiar with!

Can't beat it? Then dismantle it!

Not being reasonable? Then be even more unreasonable than it!

In the next second, tens of thousands of players, like gophers on stimulants, swarmed out from behind cover. But this time, they didn't even look at those crystals emitting tempting light; they rushed straight to the bottom of the nearest floating streetlight.

"Clang!" "Cling!" "Clatter!"

Sharp, chaotic, and industrial-sounding clangs instantly broke the holiness and serenity of the Silver Corridor.

The scene before them was absurd to the extreme.

A group of "warriors" wearing various sets of armor stained with blood and oil were now all crouching on the ground with their butts in the air, using entrenching tools, power hammers, and pickaxes—some even using their hands enchanted with [Hardening]—to launch a massive excavation operation on the flawless white jade floor.

"Work hard, brothers! One, two, three! Heave-ho!"

"Over there! Yes! Dig a bit deeper to the left! I see its main power line!"

"Holy crap! These floor tiles are hard! As expected of Legendary-grade building Materials!"

The prism tower suspended in mid-air seemed to have fallen into complete logical confusion. Its programming had thousands of contingency plans for aerial assaults, ground charges, and long-range sniping, but it had absolutely nothing for "being undermined by a bunch of lunatics from below."

It could only watch helplessly as its Foundation was hollowed out and crushed bit by bit by the efforts of those tireless "worker ants."

Finally, accompanied by a groan of overburdened metal and a loud crack of splitting rock.

The base of the first prism tower was completely dug through!

The elegant streetlight shook violently in the air, the crystal at the top flashed wildly, and then it went out completely. Losing its energy support, the massive lamp post, like a felled giant tree, crashed toward the ground.

"BOOM—!!!"

With a loud bang, a large pit was smashed into the ground, and dust billowed everywhere.

As it fell, a visible, massive gap appeared in the invisible, deadly defense network of the entire corridor.

"It's down! It's down! Hahaha! The first one!"

"It works! This method really works!"

The players erupted in earth-shattering cheers.

Li Qiang stepped on the wreckage of the fallen streetlight, shouldered his entrenching tool, and was about to spiritedly shout "next," when his gaze passed over the cheering crowd and landed at the end of the corridor.

The cheering stopped abruptly.

Everyone followed his gaze.

At the end of the corridor, a giant gate even more magnificent and holy than the silver gate stood there quietly.

The gate seemed carved from a single piece of flawless crystal, its entire body emitting a soft and warm Holy Light. Just looking at it could make one feel a sense of peace and harmony.

However, when the players' eyes focused on the lintel and saw the three large characters written in elegant Ancient Celestial script, every single person's face showed an expression like they were constipated.

[Gate of Purity]

At the same time, a cold System prompt popped up on everyone's retinas.

[Warning: Detected that your Soul contains 'Greed', 'Tyranny', 'Cunning', 'Laziness', 'Lust'... and various other foul attributes. Your purity is negative. You may be unable to pass through this gate.]

A deathly silence descended once again.

Li Qiang looked down at his hands covered in oil and monster blood, then looked at the holy gate in the distance emitting "virginal radiance," his mouth twitching as he muttered to himself:

"Holy shit... is this gate specifically here to disgust us?"