629: Battle of Demon Suppression City (2)

The City Lord hovered in mid-air, staring at the motionless starship, his eyes filled with bewilderment.

Although that Spirit Sword strike just now hadn't used his full strength, it was still a solid blow from his Mahayana Stage cultivation. Ordinarily, it could have ground mountains into powder, and Nascent Soul or Soul Transformation Cultivators would have perished upon contact. Yet, it was effortlessly blocked by this iron lump that emitted not a single ripple of Spiritual Qi, without even causing a tremor. This defense, which transcended his understanding, caused a strange feeling to arise in his heart for the first time.

"How peculiar."

He rubbed the residual Spiritual Qi between his fingertips, his brow furrowed deeply, his gaze heavy as it swept over that pale blue light shield.

"A flying boat like this, with no Spiritual Vein and no formation runes, yet its defense is this formidable... This seat wants to see just how many strikes you can withstand!"

As his voice fell, he violently swung his arm toward the Void Realm. The majestic Spiritual Qi around him surged out like a tide. No longer condensing a single giant Spirit Sword, it transformed into a sky full of spiritual light, instantly forming hundreds of Spirit Swords before him.

These Spirit Swords were ninety percent smaller than the previous one, only about a foot long, but their blades glinted with cold light and hummed as Spiritual Qi flowed through them. Hundreds of sword shadows intertwined, blotting out the sun and obscuring most of the daylight below.

"Go!"

With a low shout, the City Lord pointed his finger. Hundreds of Spirit Swords shot toward the starship like arrows from a bowstring, accompanied by sharp whistling sounds. The sword momentum was as dense as a swarm of locusts, even cutting fine cracks into space, and the surrounding Spiritual Qi was stirred into a frenzy by this force.

Inside the Command Center, He Dong watched the dense cluster of red dots rushing forward on the light screen, a cold arc curling at the corners of his lips. Having gathered preliminary data, he naturally wouldn't let the starships just stand there and take the hit.

"Evasive maneuvers. Space Jump. Circle to the target's flanks for encirclement."

The moment the command reached the starships, a layer of pale purple spatial ripples suddenly appeared around the targeted vessels. Their metal hulls distorted slightly within the ripples. In the next second, the massive starships vanished into thin air right before the onslaught of hundreds of Spirit Swords, leaving not even a faint afterimage behind!

The hundreds of Spirit Swords all missed their mark, crashing into the empty Void Realm and erupting in a continuous series of spiritual light explosions. The aftershocks sent the clouds churning, but the starships were nowhere to be found.

This scene left every Cultivator present dumbfounded.

In the ruins below, a few low-level Cultivators who had luckily survived—or those on the outskirts who had already surrendered out of fear—all looked up, their mouths wide enough to fit a fist, their faces full of disbelief.

"Gone? That big iron lump is just gone?"

"What kind of method is this? An escape technique? But how can something so large escape so cleanly, without even a hint of Spiritual Qi fluctuation!"

"Could it be they were scared off by the City Lord's sword momentum? But what escape technique could be so silent..."

Panic-stricken discussions rose one after another. Even those Integration Stage Cultivators froze in place, their eyes trembling. People of their cultivation level had seen countless escape techniques and concealment methods, but they had never seen such a means of ignoring space and vanishing instantly. This had already exceeded all their perceptions of 'techniques'.

The most shocked was none other than the Zhenmo City Lord. He hovered in mid-air, his extended hand still in the posture of swinging a sword. His pupils constricted, and the bewilderment on his face turned entirely into solemnity.

"Vanished?"

He swept his Mahayana Stage spiritual sense across a thousand-mile radius, but there wasn't a trace of Spiritual Qi fluctuation in the world. Those starships seemed as if they had never existed, evaporating into thin air.

Just as everyone was dazed and at a loss, the sky above suddenly darkened again. A familiar, cold, metallic pressure descended from all directions simultaneously!

Everyone snapped their heads up to see several pale purple spatial ripples appearing one after another in the previously empty sky. Those starships had actually appeared out of thin air in the sky around them.

Directly above, to the left, to the right, and behind—from several directions, these starships formed an encirclement, locking the City Lord and the several Integration Stage Cultivators firmly in the center.

"What!"

The City Lord let out a low, involuntary shout, his voice filled with disbelief. The Integration Stage Cultivators turned even paler, their entire bodies tensing up.

They simply could not understand how such massive objects could, like ghosts, jump to their surroundings in an instant without the slightest warning.

Such a method had already broken the natural laws of this world; it was a completely unreasonable suppression!

How could the Cultivators know that the sudden disappearance of the starships was merely the most basic short-range Space Jump in interstellar navigation?

The hull briefly entered space and then followed precise coordinates to return. In their eyes, it became a miracle of 'vanishing and reappearing out of thin air'.

This kind of method wasn't particularly rare on an interstellar battlefield. If they encountered an enemy fleet equipped with space-locking devices, space would be forcibly sealed, making jump techniques impossible to perform, eventually leading to a war of attrition with ship-to-ship cannon fire.

But in this world of immortal cultivation, this move became an unsolvable killing blow.

Cultivators might be able to tear through space or traverse the Void Realm based on their cultivation, but it was absolutely impossible for them to master space-locking technology. Naturally, they had no way to counter this ghost-like tactic.

"Lock-on mode activated. Storm Cluster Missiles loaded and ready. All missiles, fire!"

The side hatch doors of several starships slid open slowly, revealing dense, honeycomb-like missile launch ports. Eerie green guidance lights flickered in the ports, locking onto the figures within the circle.

In the next second, countless silver-white Storm Missiles with blue-green exhaust trails whistled out like a migrating swarm of bees. Carrying sharp whistling sounds, they shot toward the several Cultivators.

"Those strange objects again!"

An Integration Stage Cultivator snorted coldly, his body about to turn into an afterimage to dodge.

In their eyes, while these missiles were fast, they were far less swift than the previous energy beams. With their movement techniques, dodging should have been more than easy.

But to everyone's surprise, no matter how they maneuvered or changed positions, those Storm Missiles seemed to have eyes. The guidance modules at their tails locked onto their Spiritual Qi fluctuations, following them like shadows and refusing to let go.

Dodge to the left, and the missiles turned in sync; teleport through the air, and the missiles could actually follow the trail and keep up. Even the ultimate movement techniques of an Integration Stage Cultivator could not shake off this pursuit that was like maggots on a bone.

"Damn it! I can't shake these things!"

One Cultivator was exasperated. After several consecutive teleports, cold sweat had already broken out on his forehead.

The missile swarm drew closer and closer, and the violent energy contained within the missiles made his heart palpitate.

"If I can't dodge, then I won't! Explode!"

Another Integration Stage Cultivator's gaze turned fierce. He no longer wasted Spiritual Qi on dodging and violently waved his hand. Thousands of Yellow Talismans flew out of his Storage Pouch, spreading across the sky with runes flashing a piercing red light.