347: Chapter 347 Tearing apart the mother planet for fuel, this shot will send you back to your hometown!

That giant hand, large enough to cover the sky, came crashing down.

Lu Sheng charged straight up against the gesture, his black-gold Dragon Claw carving a pitch-black arc that sliced into the palm formed from stellar debris.

Crack.

The moment his claws touched the palm, it didn't feel like hitting flesh, but rather like striking into the Void Realm.

The force penetrated, diffused, and vanished.

Not a single trace was left behind.

The "Reaper" withdrew its hand. The gash in its palm closed within three breaths, and the black scales locked tight again. There was no further reaction, as if what had just been attacked wasn't it, but merely a single drop of seawater.

Lu Sheng hovered before it, his black dragon wings fanning out a gust of air to maintain his hovering posture.

For the first time, he furrowed his brows.

That claw strike just now was wrapped in four types of power: Eclipse Black Flame, Old God Remnant Core, Angelic Holy Light, and Abyssal Corruption. On Earth, that was a single-target output capable of leveling an entire mountain range.

Landing on this thing, it couldn't even be called an itch.

The immortal qin military codex flew out from his storage space, the ancient scroll flipping to the final few sections as golden seal script floated before his eyes:

[Reaper · Core Mechanism: The main body and the fleet's psionic network form a symbiotic closed loop. Individual damage will be compensated in real-time by the fleet's energy. Theoretical Lethality Threshold—At a single moment, 93% of the fleet's total psionic reserves must be destroyed instantly to cause irreversible death to the main body.]

Below that was a line of small text:

[Records of the Immortal Qin Thirteenth Legion's repeated engagements against the Reaper: Ineffective, ineffective, ineffective, ineffective. Final Conclusion: Total spirit source reserves are insufficient to reach the aforementioned threshold; it is recommended to abandon a frontal Breakthrough.]

Flipping further down, the handwriting changed to someone else's, scribbled as if scratched into the ground in their final moments:

[Final Solution: Guixu.]

[Loading Conditions: Use the complete life Origin of a mature planet as fuel to activate the Superstring Annihilation Cannon beneath the anchor point of the Immortal Qin's main flagship. Effective Coverage Radius: 17 Astronomical Units. Indiscriminate.]

Lu Sheng stared at the word "Indiscriminate" for a second.

The Solar System is approximately two astronomical units in diameter. If fired, Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and even himself would all be within range.

The fuel requirement was the life Origin of a complete planet.

There was only one answer.

He closed the book.

The "Reaper" hung in the distance, its massive compound eye staring at him quietly. There was no curiosity, no anxiety, only the coldness of someone examining a specimen. A bug had crawled into the glass jar; it just had to wait for it to finish its struggling.

Golden points of light condensed beside Lu Sheng.

The phantom of the Tricolor Cat was significantly thinner than before. The last sliver of obsession remaining after its Origin was exhausted flickered in the pitch-black vacuum.

"You have finished reading."

It wasn't a question.

"I've finished."

"Then you know what to do." Within the Tricolor Cat's pupils, which reflected the star map, something brightened for the last time before burning out. "Though my Origin is nearly spent, injecting my remaining will into Guixu can increase the conversion efficiency of life Origin by threefold. Combined with the spirit source of everyone on Dengxian Island as a supplement, it should barely reach the lower fuel limit."

"You're willing to die?" Lu Sheng turned his face toward it.

"This planet was destined for destruction anyway." The Tricolor Cat's phantom raised a paw, pointing toward the Blue Planet. "The Origin of billions of lives is always more sufficient than those few Immortal Qin remnants. This is the optimal solution."

Lu Sheng didn't speak.

He was silent for three seconds, then reached out and grabbed the phantom of the Tricolor Cat by the scruff of its neck.

The cat's body made a sizzling sound of dissipation in his palm.

Lu Sheng looked down at it. In those eyes that resembled black suns, there was no pity, only an extremely fierce possessiveness, as blunt as a blank sheet of paper.

"My ranch," his voice was very soft, so soft it almost couldn't travel in the vacuum, "can only be destroyed by my own hands."

"It's not your place to decide for me."

He let go.

The Tricolor Cat's phantom drifted back to its original spot. The last bit of light in its eyes extinguished, replaced by something heavier than silence.

Lu Sheng turned his head, his gaze passing over the "Reaper" to land further away.

The Star Gate fragment inside him—the one torn from the Old God's chest—stored all the expedition coordinates of the Immortal Qin Thirteenth Legion. This included an address marked as "Discarded":

The Reaper Home Planet.

Codex Annotation: Confirmed to be in the final stages of Abyss energy erosion; ecological collapse; remaining life Origin less than 3%; recommended to be treated as a discarded coordinate.

Almost exhausted.

But not completely exhausted.

Lu Sheng brushed aside the fabric over his chest and pressed down on the nebula-vortex-shaped Imperial Markings. The power of the Eclipse began to flow in reverse, converging from his limbs, bones, and every single Meridian toward the center of the Imperial Markings. The Star Gate fragment rotated rapidly inside him, grinding out a bone-scorching heat.

He forced all the high-dimensional energy he had accumulated from devouring the remnants of the Old God, the Angel, and the Ancient Emperor into it.

Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

Not enough.

He looked up at the Tricolor Cat's phantom.

"Lend me your remaining Origin for one second."

The phantom was silent for a moment.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm asking if it's enough."

"...Not enough to activate Guixu."

"I didn't say I was activating Guixu." Lu Sheng spat out the blood in his mouth. "It just needs to be enough for one second."

The Tricolor Cat spoke no more.

It completely dispersed.

Golden points of light flooded into Lu Sheng's body like an avalanche. The life Origin carried by the planet's will was purer than Lu Sheng had estimated—the moment it plunged into the Star Gate Imperial Markings, the Moon shuddered.

The Void Realm tore open.

It wasn't a small gash, but a wormhole as thick as a continent, spanning billions of kilometers, violently ripped open.

At the other end of the opening was a dark red planet.

No clouds, no atmosphere, and no traces left by any living thing. Its surface was densely covered in black pustules from Abyssal erosion, and every few seconds, an entire continent would crumble and fall into the depths of its own gravity.

It was self-destructing.

The Reaper's compound eye turned toward the wormhole opening for the first time.

Lu Sheng reached one hand into the wormhole, death-gripping the gravitational tide passing through the opening. His spinal dragon vibrated from his cervical vertebrae down to his tailbone.

"Come!"

That decaying, dark red planet was forcibly dragged through the wormhole from the other side by him, like pulling up a radish.

A colossus three times the diameter of Earth crossed billions of kilometers and appeared at the edge of the Solar System.

Gravity warped. The asteroid belt tilted entirely toward it, like iron filings rushing toward a magnet.

For the first time, a ripple appeared in the Reaper's compound eye.

That was its home planet.

Its already rotted home planet.

Lu Sheng ignored its reaction and plummeted toward the interior of the Moon. One hand gripped the gravitational anchor point of that planet, while the other plunged into the lunar strata, extending deeper.

The anchor point coordinates in the Codex: Lunar South Pole, eight thousand kilometers underground.

When he touched it, it was a three-meter diameter black diamond-shaped crystal compressed from regular energy.

Four seal script characters were engraved upon it.

Guixu.

Lu Sheng smashed the gravitational anchor point of that decaying planet directly onto the crystal.

The moment they touched, the crystal was like an ignited powder keg. The Moon began to melt from the inside out. Every rock, every metal pipe, and every remaining skeleton of a Terracotta Warrior turned into energy, feeding into the barrel of the Guixu cannon.

The Reaper's home planet, carrying its last less than 3% of life Origin and the billion-year resentment accumulated from Abyssal erosion, was compressed into a singularity the size of a basketball.

"Using trash to clean up trash."

Lu Sheng closed his eyes for a second.

Guixu, fire.

There was no sound in the vacuum.

But that light was real.

It wasn't light, but something that subverted light. Wherever it passed, space wasn't destroyed; it simply ceased to have ever existed.

The Reaper's ten-thousand-foot body, along with two-thirds of the Bronze Fleet behind it, was erased from the Universe's ledger the moment the ray touched them.

No explosion, no wreckage.

That region contained nothing anymore.

The light dissipated. The Solar System returned to pitch-black silence.

Lu Sheng floated up from the lunar ruins and landed on a floating fragment of rock.

The Moon was gone. The cannon barrel had shattered after firing, which was normal.

About one-third of the Bronze Fleet remained, stationary. Puppets that lost their master brain would act like this.

He pulled out a spirit source crystal core, tossed it into his mouth, and chewed it to replenish some of his exhausted Qi and blood.

A terrified tremor came through Dao Yi's mental connection.

"Island Master... the Moon..."

"Gone." Lu Sheng didn't bother to explain. "Have someone record the changes in tidal data. The waves will be abnormal for the next few months."

"...Yes."

The communication went silent.

Lu Sheng looked up toward the giant wormhole opening at the edge of the Solar System that had not yet fully closed.

It was shrinking. But after shrinking, it left behind an extremely clear spatial crease.

Any existence possessing high-dimensional perception could trace back along this crease to accurately locate the starting point—as well as the essence of the power controlling it.

He, a single person, had opened a wormhole spanning billions of kilometers and used Star Gate coordinates to accurately locate an alien planet.

Only two types of existences could achieve this:

A terminal left behind by the Immortal Qin.

Or, a controller at the level of a rancher or higher.

Seven astronomical units away, somewhere in deep space, a tiny flicker of perceptual vibration lit up, aimed at the Solar System.

It wasn't the remnants of the Reaper fleet.

Something much further away had turned around.

Lu Sheng glanced in that direction, withdrew his gaze, and looked down at the immortal qin military codex in his hand.

The last page was blank.

Except for a corner where a line of small characters had been scratched out in finger-blood:

[There is no path after this; walk it yourself.]

Lu Sheng closed the book.

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

"Don't worry," he said in an extremely low voice toward a certain direction where something had completely dissipated, "the path I walk has never been called a 'path'."