"This is truly … an apocalyptic scene!"
Li Yao was lurking in a valley in the Spiritwind Mountain Range. Gazing at the hellish battlefield where blood flowed like a river and corpses were everywhere, he clicked his tongue in amazement.
On second thought, it seemed to be the first time that he had witnessed the most intense siege battle on the ground in the Imperium of True Human Beings.
The battles on the surface of planets within the atmosphere were different from the space battles in the vacuum.
Even though the scale and intensity of the space battles were a hundred times higher, sound did not spread in the vacuum, and the distance between the battles was too long. Also, most of the deaths happened on the starships. It was often the case that a starship turned into an enormous fireball in silence, only to be perished in the blink of an eye, and thousands of people died.
Death in the vacuum was greatly diluted by silence and distance. Human lives were truly cold and hollow numbers. Those who lacked imagination might not understand how cruel it was.
But the battlefield on the ground was different.
The air was scorching, the earth was trembling, and the moans and screams of human beings, together with the explosions of the cannons and the collapse of the fortresses, brushed everybody's eardrums and heart like tides that were filled with the stink of blood.
The whole process of a life jumping and bouncing to the fragmentation, decay, and annihilation was displayed clearly in front of his eyes. The indescribable sensory stimulation was more than a hundred times more intense than the battle in the vacuum of space. It could really drive a person crazy.
Netherwind City was surrounded by mountains on three sides. The peaks rose into the clouds in a concave shape. The mountains were steep and did not have any slopes. It was barely possible to deploy troops.
Also, a lot of anti-air bases had been established in the mountains, where all the ammunition and fuel that the four Kurfürst families had left in the capital were stored. Thousands of fiery snakes were dancing crazily in the sky every second. It was impossible for the low-altitude warships of the reformists to break in at all.
In terms of remote firepower, the reformists had established almost a thousand siege cannons in the parts of the Netherwind Mountain that were slightly flatter, projecting tons of heavy cannonballs at Netherwind City incessantly.
However, Netherwind City boasted a very complete and multiple defense system. The whole city, including the periphery of the Netherwind Tunnel, was covered in translucent hexagonal spiritual shields that were emitting octagonal brilliance.
Outside of the spiritual shields, there were also twisting and detonating force fields, twisting the air into enormous swirls.
When the heavy cannonballs of the reformists were shot over, they would be detonated in advance while they were still in midair. All the pieces would be blown away or deviated by the twisting force fields. Even if some of the shrapnel or blast still leaked in, they would be offset by the spiritual shields.
Except for the deafening explosions and the earthshaking quakes, the city and the super teleportation arrays were not damaged at all.
In the heartland of the Netherwind Mountain, the reformists, too, had calculated all the critical locations in the five hundred square kilometers nearby and set. the cannonballs of the reformists had been set had been set in advance of the reformists, and they could lock onto the reformists' cannons any moment...
The cannonballs of the reformists were all temporarily established. Naturally, they did not boast such a solid defense array as Netherwind City did. They suffered a lot of losses in the bombardment of the heavy cannons. After a few cannonballs were destroyed in a row, they did not dare open fire on a large scale anymore and could only move in a hurry.
The rugged mountains were not conducive to the march of the heavy crystal tanks, either. Therefore, the reformists could only send the Crystal Suit Legions to push forward inch by inch from the only frontal frontline in infantry.
The coalition army of the nobles, which was struggling to survive, deployed a lot of soldiers in the continuous, deep defense line. As far as the eye could see, there was an ocean of armor and a forest of swords. It was obviously a war of modern Crystal Suit, but the two parties were fighting as if it were a classic war of cold weapons.
However, no matter how solid the defense of Netherwind City and the Netherwind Tunnel was, it was a lone island in the middle of a vast ocean after all. Everybody knew that the place could not be defended for long.
Therefore, all the nobles were running in a hurry, trampling on each other, trying to board the starships and jump out. They even violated the operation rules of the super teleportation arrays by significantly shortening the gap between two starships. It was often the case that the second starship had rushed out before the ripples from the first starship dispersed.
It was a very dangerous and unprofessional approach.
The space ripples were like reefs on a sailing route that could cause fatal damage to the ships.
It was especially so when the anti-air fire net and the assault warships of the two parties burnt the sky into an ocean of fire, and when a lot of space-based magical equipment bombarded the ground nonstop beyond the atmosphere that was even higher, the tiny space ripples turned into terrifying 'floating ice'.
Li Yao and the rest of them happened to witness such an accident when they looked at the highest peak of the Netherwind Mountain far away.
In less than one minute after the first starship tore apart the void, the second starship rushed out without bothering about anything. The "noodles" that were almost ripped into helical shapes by the ripples were lucky enough to escape and disappear into thin air.
But the third starship that followed it was not so lucky. It did not wait long enough and soared into the sky half a minute after the second starship, only to crash into a hazy, twisted swirl of the void. It was the "mass trap" left by the abrupt disappearance of the second starship.
Water was flowing. When the seawater in the ocean suddenly lost tremendous mass and an enormous hole appeared, the seawater from all directions would certainly flood in crazily and fill up the hole.
During this process, it would stir up turbulent currents, forming an extremely dangerous whirlpool. If anyone were to recklessly sail near such a whirlpool, there was a high chance that they would meet with misfortune.
It was the same with space. It was flowing and continuous.
The disappearance of the two starships from the stable, flowing, and continuous space in a very short amount of time temporarily disrupted the stability, flow, and continuity of the space.
The ripples of the four-dimensional space were "sliding" to the three-dimensional space to fill the gap of the three-dimensional space. In the process, tremendous "turbulences" and "swirls" would be raised, too.
The third starship accelerated to the highest speed and dashed into such "turbulence" and "swirl" head-on. It was even trying to tear a new gap in such an unstable space so that they could crawl out of it undamaged.
How was it possible?
In the eyes of Li Yao and the other bystanders, the starship that had just crawled out of the exit of the Netherwind Mountain Channel was like a glittering, translucent noodle that was being stretched longer and longer. It was about to turn from a "noodle" into a "cotton thread" before it crawled through a glittering needle hole in midair.
However, when the "noodle" was stretched to the maximum, it suddenly collapsed because of the entanglement of the space ripples!
Every broken "noodle" lost its previous "elasticity" and constricted brutally, turning into broken parts of the body of the starship.
The nobles on the debris were not dead yet, but they were waving their hands and feet inside the buffer gel.
Part of the debris and the passengers were absorbed by the glittering needle hole in midair. Nobody was willing to imagine what would happen to them later and what would become of them.
Part of the debris, on the other hand, simply exploded in midair. The raging fire swallowed all the passengers. Fortunately, before that, most of the passengers had been ripped apart by the space ripples and died an unnatural death.
The gory destruction was slowly unfolding on the hellish battlefield under the burning sky.
But nobody was willing to look at the destruction. The escape of the Netherwind Mountain Channel was only disrupted by the accident for twenty minutes before the fourth starship soared up again and rushed out against the overwhelming barrage and the space ripples that had not entirely dispersed.
"This is truly crazy."
Li Yao felt that his blood was freezing. He mumbled, "Considering the factors such as cooling, buffering, maintenance, and fuel injection, such a super teleportation array can only be launched once every five minutes at best. Even if the limits are reached, it can only be launched once every two minutes. But those nobles are insane enough to launch one every minute or even half a minute just to escape?"
It was not an escape but a suicide!
From another perspective, it also suggested that the last stronghold of the four Kurfürsten in the capital was about to be lost.
The day of the fall of the city would be today. Otherwise, the nobles, who cherished their lives most, would not have fled in such a hurry.
"Although the entire defense line of the coalition army of nobles is rather stable without any major loopholes, I estimate that something must've happened in the city. They can't persist for more than twenty-four hours."
Li Yao said to Long Yangjun and the rest of them, "For safety reasons, we must infiltrate Netherwind City in twelve hours, sneak into a starship, and leave this place.
"Xiaowen, Mingming, have you taken care of it?"
"Yes!"
The two little fellows who were busy fiddling with the Crystal Suit clapped their hands at the same time and cheered.
Then, they retorted, "I took care of it first!"
"No, it's me! It's me! It's me!"
What the two little fellows hacked just now were the few standard Crystal Suits of the Imperium that Li Yao and Long Yangjun stole. The breastplates were all engraved with the latest emblem of the reformists, which was a burning fire below the traditional pattern of the lightning trident.
"Revolutionize the Imperium with iron, blood, and fire!"
It was the most determined roar of the army of the reformists, who claimed to be the "rightful army of the Imperium".
Li Yao and Long Yangjun were two experts. Naturally, it was not difficult for them to steal a few standard Crystal Suits of the reformists.
The army that had besieged the Netherwind Channel, on the other hand, had a lot of members. There were the Deep Sea Fleet, the Imperial Guards, the surrendered troops of the nobles, and even the special operation teams made of the brutal civilians.
They were formed in a hurry and did not know each other well. After half a month of fierce battles, many troops had been dispersed, which gave Li Yao and the rest of them an opportunity.
The only problem was the identification system on the battlefield that was based on the personal information of the soldiers and the dynamic passwords that changed every day.
The problem was resolved after the two little fellows hacked the command center of a certain troop of the army of the reformists and cracked the database of personal information and the dynamic password generation system.
"Let's go and break into the city!"
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