by <unknown>
Very soon, they got a taste of the iron fists of the reformists. Not only were they branded as traitors and their belongings confiscated, but their family members were all enlisted to the daring teams whose odds of survival were slim.
It remained to be seen if the four Kurfürst families could make a comeback, but even if they could, those families would have been razed to the ground without any dust left.
Under the crush of the merciless reformists, a lot of other nobles chose to flee together with the remaining troops of the four Kurfürst families.
The atmosphere had been tightly surrounded by the fleets of the reformists. The dozens of space fortresses that defended the capital had fallen to the hands of the reformists, too. Almost no starship could break out of the atmosphere by force.
Any starship that acted recklessly would be torn into shreds by the fierce firepower on the space fortresses soon after they broke out of the atmosphere.
Even though they were not torn into shreds, they could barely perform a space jump when their shell was broken, if they did not intend to be obliterated into nothingness after being involved in the storms in the four-dimensional space.
With that in mind, there was only one way to escape from the capital.
First of all, they would be teleported to the edge of the Empyreal Terminus Sector in a random jump through the super teleportation arrays on the surface of the planet, leaping over the fleets and the space fortresses that surrounded the planet, before they activated the space jump systems of the starships and ran away.
In terms of space jump, the Imperium of True Human Beings was a hundred years more advanced than the Star Glory Federation.
In the Heaven's Origin Sector, there was only one super teleportation array, "Heaven's Artillery", and the Blood Demon Sector only had "Eye of Blood Demon". But at the capital and the heart of the Imperium, more than ten super teleportation arrays with astonishing capacities had been established.
The ten or so super teleportation arrays were the most precious emergence exits and had helped countless nobles and troops to escape from the capital over the past month.
Of course, such locations were the primary targets of the reformists, too. After a month of fierce battles, they had mostly fallen into the hands of the reformists.
To this day, there was only one last super teleportation array that was still in the hands of the four Kurfürst families. It was known as the "Netherwind Channel".
It was a super teleportation array with a rather unique structure. Most of the framework was established inside a continuous, highly-rising mountain. A helical tunnel had been dug out inside the mountain, and when a starship entered the mountain from the bottom of it and got accelerated on the rail of the helical tunnel, it would eventually rush out from the enormous cave at the peak and rip the void, arriving at any random point at the vast space at the edge of the Empyreal Terminus Sector.
The highly-rising mountain was named the Netherwind Mountain. It was how the "Netherwind Channel" got its name.
It could be easily seen from the structure that was hidden deep inside the mountain that the super teleportation array had been designed as a military teleportation array of the highest defense when it was established.
Based on the entire Netherwind Mountain, too many fixed firing points, fortresses, underground arsenals, and anti-air cannons had been constructed. The mountain had also been strengthened by countless defense rune arrays. Even if the whole mountain was reduced to the ground by blanket bombardments, the super teleportation array inside might not be damaged at all.
After hundreds of years of development, a major city named "Netherwind City" had been established at the foot of the mountain, too. The inhabitants of the city were mostly the people of the four Kurfürst families who were sent to the capital. It was not hard to imagine their attitudes toward the so-called "Reform Committee of the Council of Elders".
When all the strongholds in the capital had fallen into the hands of Blackstar the Great, the Netherwind Channel became the only island of hope in the tsunami raised by the reformists.
All the nobles who craved to escape from the capital had been gathered here, putting up resistance while being desperate to board on starships, crawl into the channel, and flee.
The army of the reformists followed them closely. They had surrounded Netherwind City and the Netherwind Channel from the sky, on the ground and below the ground, determined to block the last way of escape of the nobles and remove their last banner in the capital.
However, the battle did not go as well as planned.
It was partly because of the special territory of the Netherwind Channel and the residents of Netherwind City. But more important, it was because too many nobles had been gathered here.
The fairly-small city was perhaps the place with the highest density of Immortal Cultivators in the entire capital, or even the entire Imperium.
The weapons of the traditional nobles were aiming at the sky like quills on the hedgehog, making the reformists rather hesitant about where to attack.
It was a common sense in military arts to leave some hope for the enemy. At this moment, even if the reformists were capable of blocking the Netherwind Channel, they would not dare to do it recklessly, fearing that the hopeless nobles would launch crazy counterattacks in their desperation, which might result in heavy casualties. If so, the losses would outweigh the gains.
For the reformists, they were also thinking about something else. The "Netherwind Channel" could only teleport a limited number of starships every day. Of a hundred nobles, few could successfully escape. The nobles left behind were all valuable talents, and it would be a shame to kill all of them. If the reformists could make them surrender, the comparison between the two parties would change quickly. That would certainly be for the best.
Therefore, the battle in the Netherwind Channel had been protracted to a whole month without being ended. By the time Li Yao and his companions finally reached the Netherwind Mountain, the whole mountain was still enshrouded in the smoke of war!
Chapter 2433: The City of Fire! |
"It's like… the end of the world!"
Hiding in a trench on the Netherwind Mountain, Li Yao looked at the bleeding, hellish battlefield far away and observed in amazement.
Come to think of it, it was the first time he had witnessed a ground siege of the highest intensity in the Imperium of True Human Beings.
The battles on the surface of a planet within the atmosphere were vastly different from the space battles in the vacuum.
Even though the scale and intensity of the space battles were a hundred times higher, since sounds could not be transmitted in the vacuum, and the distance between each other was too far apart, it was often the case that when a starship turned into an enormous fireball in silence, the fireball would perish very soon, bringing away the lives of thousands of people.
The deaths in the vacuum were greatly diluted by silence and distance. Lives were nothing but cold and hollow numbers. Those who were less imaginative could hardly understand how cruel the battles were.
But the ground battles before his eyes were entirely different.
The air was hot, the earth was shaking, and the moans and screams of human beings, accompanied by the explosions of cannons and collapses of fortresses, brushed everyone's eardrums and hearts like stinky tides.
The whole process where vigorous lives were shattered, decayed, and obliterated was displayed in front of everyone in the most vivid scene. The indescribable sensational stimulation was a hundred times more than that in space battles and could really drive people mad.
Netherwind City was surrounded by mountains on three sides. The mountains rose high into the sky and were very steep. It was very hard for the soldiers to be deployed.
In the meantime, tremendous anti-air bases had been established based on the mountains, where all the ammunitions and fuel of the four Kurfürst families that were still lingering in the capital were stored. Every
second, ten thousand fiery snakes were dancing in the sky crazily. It was impossible for the low-altitude warships of the reformists to break in at all.
In terms of remote firepower, the reformists had deployed a thousand giant cannons in the places on the mountains where it was relatively smooth, shooting tons of heavy crystal cannonballs at Netherwind City incessantly.
However, Netherwind City boasted a comprehensive, multilayer defense system. The whole city, as well as the border of the Netherwind Channel, was covered in translucent, hexagonal spiritual shields that were glowing.
Outside of the spiritual shields were the twisting force fields and the detonation force fields, which twisted the air into giant vortexes.
When the heavy crystal cannons of the reformists were shot over, they would be detonated in advance while they were flying. Then, all the shrapnel would be blocked or deviated by the twisting force fields. Even though some of the pieces or blasts managed to leak in, they would still be offset by the spiritual shields.
Despite the deafening explosions and the grand earthquakes, they would not deal too much damage to the city and the super teleportation array.
There were also dozens of secret bastions of heavy cannons at the heartland of the Netherwind Mountain. All the critical locations within five hundred kilometers had been calculated in advance, and the shooting parameters had been set, allowing them to lock onto the positions of the reformists easily and launch determined counterattacks.
The positions of the reformists were all established temporarily. Naturally, they did not have a solid, multilayer defense array as Netherwind City did, and they suffered heavy losses in the mutual barrages of heavy cannons. After quite a few positions were destroyed in a row, they did not dare to bombard on a large scale but hurried to move on to somewhere else.
The rugged mountain roads were unsuitable for the heavy crystal tanks to push forward. Therefore, the reformists could only send out the crystal suit legions and push forward inch by inch in head-on collisions.
The coalition army of nobles, which was having their dying struggle, had also deployed the troops on the long, treacherous defense lines. As far as one's eyes could reach, there was an ocean of armors and blades. The modern war of crystal suits was somewhat like a classical war of cold weapons in the ancient times.
However, no matter how sturdy the defense of Netherwind City and the Netherwind Channel was, it was a lone island in a vast ocean after all. Everybody knew that it could not be defended for long.
Therefore, all the nobles were fleeing in a hurry, stomping on each other while they tried to board on starships and jump out. They had even violated the operation regulations of the super teleportation arrays and significantly reduced the gap between two jumps. It was often the case that a second starship had already been launched out when the ripples of the first starship hadn't dispersed yet.
It was a highly dangerous and unprofessional approach.
Space ripples were like reefs on a sailing route that would cause critical damage to ships.
It was especially the case when the anti-fire network and the warships of the two parties had burnt the sky into an ocean of fire, and a lot of space-based magical equipment was bombarding the ground from beyond the atmosphere. The tiny space ripples had already become terrifying "icebergs".
When Li Yao and the rest of them observed the highest peak of the Netherwind Mountain, they happened to witness such an accident.
Only one minute after the first starship ripped apart the void, the second starship had rushed out without bothering anything and was almost torn into helical "noodles" by the ripples. But it narrowly escaped and disappeared into nothingness.
However, the third starship that closely followed behind was not as lucky. It waited too shortly and soared to the sky only half a minute after the second starship was launched. As a result, it hit the fuzzy, twisted void vortex precisely, which was the "mass trap" left by the abrupt disappearance of the second starship.
Water was fluid. When a huge mass of water was lost in an ocean and a giant hollow appeared, the water around would certainly flow in crazily to fill the hole.
In the process, surging currents would be raised, and highly-dangerous swirls might be formed. Whoever sailed near such swirls would probably not end well.
The same applied for space, which was also fluid and continuous.
When two starships disappeared from the stable, fluid, and continuous space in a row, they temporarily disrupted the stability, fluidity, and continuity of the space.
The ripples of the four-dimensional space continued dropping to the three-dimensional space to fill the gap. A lot of "turbulence" and "swirls" would be raised in the process, too.
The third starship, on the other hand, had accelerated to the highest speed and dashed into such "turbulences" and "swirls", hoping to rip a new crack in the unstable space so that they could crawl through in one piece.
How was it possible?
In the eyes of the observers including Li Yao, the starship that had just crawled out of the exit of the Netherwind Channel was longer and longer like a glittering, translucent noodle, gradually turning from a "noodle" into a "thread" while it tried to pass through a needle hole in the midair.
However, right when the "noodle" was stretched to the maximum, it suddenly collapsed because of the entanglement of space ripples!
Every block of the collapsed "noodles" had lost the previous "elasticity". When they were bounced back, they became blocks of the broken starship.
Many of the nobles on the debris had not died yet but were waving their hands and legs crazily in the buffer gel.
Part of the debris and passengers had been absorbed by the shining needle hole in the sky. Nobody was willing to imagine what they would encounter and become after that.
Another part of the debris exploded in the midair, and the raging fire consumed each and every passenger. Fortunately, most of the passengers had already been ripped and killed by the space ripples before that.
The gory destruction was displayed everywhere above the hellish battlefield below the sky of flames.
But nobody was interested in the destruction at all. The escape of the Netherwind Channel was only disrupted by the accident for twenty minutes before the fourth starship soared out against the overwhelming barrage and the space ripples that had not entirely dispersed.
"They are crazy."
His blood frozen, Li Yao mumbled, "Considering cooldown, buffer, maintenance, refill of the fuel, and all the other factors, such super teleportation arrays can be launched every five minutes at best. By the limits of the limits, it may be launched every two minutes. But in order to escape, those nobles are insane enough to launch them once every minute or even every half minute?"
That was not an escape but a suicide!
It was also a sign that the last stronghold of the four Kurfürst families in the capital was about to be lost.
Today was probably the day the city would be conquered. Otherwise, the nobles who cherished their lives more than anything else would never have escaped so hastily.
"The defense line of the coalition army of the nobles is still rather steady without major flaws, but I estimate that something must've happened in the city. They can't persist for another twenty-four hours."
Li Yao said to Long Yangjun and the rest of them, "In order to be safe, we will sneak into Netherwind City in twelve hours and board on a starship to get out of here.
"Xiaoming, Wenwen, have you made it?"
"Yes!"
The kids who were busy working on crystal suits clapped their hands and exclaimed at the same time.
Then, they shouted at each other, unwilling to give in, "I made it first!"
"No, it was me, it was me!"
What the two kids hacked just now were the few standard crystal suits of the Imperium that Li Yao and Long Yangjun stole just now. They had the latest emblem of the reformists engraved on the breastplate, which was the traditional light
ning trident with an additional furious fire below it.
"Renew the entire Imperium with iron, blood, and fire!"
It was the most determined roar of the troops of the reformists who believed that they were the rightful army of the Imperium.
Naturally, it was not challenging at all for Li Yao and Long Yangjun to steal a few standard crystal suits from the reformists' troops.
The troops that were attacking the Netherwind Channel together were also complicated and made of a lot of units. The Deep Sea Fleet, the Imperial Guards, the surrendering nobles, and even the special squads made of civilian experts—all kinds of people could be found there.
The army was organized in a haste, and they were not familiar with each other. After more than half a month of fierce battles, many troops had also been separated, which gave Li Yao and the rest of them a precious opportunity.
The only problem was the identification system based on the soldiers' personal information and the dynamic passwords that changed every day.
That problem was resolved after the kids hacked the control center of a certain troop of the reformists and cracked the database of personal information and the dynamic password generation system.
"Come on, let's go and break into the city!"
Li Yao put on a standard crystal suit of the Imperium and spoke to his partners behind him.
Chapter 2434: Psychological Attack |
The dull and explosive drumming that was full of self-contradiction echoed again. It was a sign that the reformists were about to launch another wave of attack.
Li Yao and the team snuck in through the intense smoke and blended into the army of the reformists.
After Li Yao's decoration, their crystal suits were now rusty, riddled with holes, and stained with blood and mud, as if they had been fighting on the battlefield for half a month.
The identification system had been compromised by the two kids, who fabricated new identities for them. Unless their crystal suits were taken off, it was absolutely impossible to tell who they were on the messy battlefield.