Qian Duoduo did not answer.
He was hanging off the rear handle of the tank, his neck craned back to its limit, his mouth agape in shock.
Three thousand meters above, the low-frequency resonance of the anti-gravity engines continued to press down, vibrating through every chest in the vicinity.
The shadow continued to expand.
The Northern Phalanx of the Imperial Guard was covered. Then the Eastern. Then the Western. The entire ruins of the Lin family estate, along with the three surrounding main roads, fell beneath the blackened silhouette of the ship. The sun was completely blotted out, and the temperature plummeted several degrees.
Han Chong's Golden Pegasus lasted less than ten seconds in the air.
As the resonance frequency of the anti-gravity engines deepened, it pierced through the Pegasus's skeletal frame. The creature struggled, flapping its wings twice before its legs suddenly curled inward. It plummeted from a height of fifty meters. Han Chong yanked the reins desperately; the Pegasus managed to spread its wings barely three meters from the ground, crashing awkwardly and collapsing onto its front knees.
Han Chong was thrown from the saddle, tumbling twice before his sword flew from his grip, embedding itself in a pile of rubble.
No one stepped forward to help him.
The Imperial Guard in the Northern Phalanx had come to a complete standstill. Shield-bearers holding enchanted tower shields two-men high found their arms trembling. The spearmen in the back rows lowered their tips, their faces all turned toward the sky.
To the east, hundreds of mages remained suspended in the air, their staves pointed at the tank battalion, yet not a single one was chanting. Two staves slipped from trembling hands, tumbling through the air. No one moved to retrieve them.
The west was even quieter. The once-orderly formations had collapsed into a disorganized huddle. Several Bronze-rank captains shrieked orders to regroup, their voices raspy and broken, but no one obeyed.
Fifty thousand men. Not one was looking at the ground.
Fifty thousand faces gazed at the sky, deathly pale and devoid of blood.
Han Chong scrambled up from the ground, his mouth full of dirt. The shoulder plate of his golden armor was crooked, and the left wing of the double-headed eagle insignia had been snapped off. He stared at the thing in the sky for five seconds. His Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. He couldn't make a sound.
Standing on the turret of the lead tank, Lin Yuan brushed the frost from the sleeve of his overcoat. As the Polar Ice Storm dissipated, the temperature began to rise, but the frost on the tank's armor had yet to melt.
He raised his left hand and tapped a panel.
[Teleportation Anchor Synchronized — Target: Floating Battleship, Main Bridge.]
[Confirm Teleportation?]
Confirm.
A membrane of white light surged up from his feet, covering his head within two seconds. The light contracted. The turret was empty.
Watching Lin Yuan vanish before him, Qian Duoduo's mouth worked, but no sound came out.
Three thousand meters high.
The interior of the main bridge was vast. A curved observation window stretched from port to starboard; through the thickened mana-crystal glass, the aerial view of St. Roland was spread out beneath his feet.
Lin Yuan's boot heels clicked against the metal deck.
At the center of the bridge was a captain's chair fixed to a hydraulic base. The backrest was high, and the armrests were embedded with control panels. A blue holographic screen floated in front of the chair, displaying the main cannon's targeting interface and fire-control data streams.
Lin Yuan walked over and sat down.
The backrest fitted the curve of his spine perfectly. The armrest panels lit up automatically, recognizing his authority.
He glanced down.
The observation window magnified the ground several times over. The formations of the fifty thousand Imperial Guards were crystal clear—he could even see the scratches on their armor. Han Chong, a tiny golden speck, was struggling to his feet, mouth smeared with mud, staring up at the sky.
Lin Yuan's hand rested on the fire-control panel on the right armrest.
The words Han Chong had uttered ten minutes ago still echoed in his ears: "Not a single soul of the Lin family shall remain."
"Charge the main cannon."
There was no one else on the bridge; he was addressing the system.
[Main Cannon Charging Initiated. Awaiting Command.]
"Targeting Imperial Guard Combined Magic Shield."
[Target Locked — Northern Phalanx Core. Charge Progress: 12%... 31%...]
Beneath the battleship, the massive mana-cannon—over eight meters in diameter located on the ventral midline—began to hum. The arrays lining the inner barrel lit up layer by layer, extending inward from the muzzle. Blue-white energy gathered and swirled within the tube.
From the ground, the view was even more terrifying.
The speck of light within the muzzle grew larger. From the size of a needlepoint to a fist, then to a carriage wheel. The color shifted from blue-white to pure white. Then, it intensified further into a brightness that was impossible to look at directly.
Han Chong finally stood upright.
His legs were shaking, but he was a peak Gold-rank warrior. Decades of battlefield intuition told him that the glowing thing above was more dangerous than any magic he had ever witnessed.
"All—All units! Inject Battle Qi! Maximize shields!"
His voice cracked, his words slurred, but the amplification arrays were still functional.
The Northern Phalanx finally moved. The front-row shield-bearers raised their enchanted shields over their heads, pouring Silver-rank Battle Qi through their arms. Blue runes flared back to life, and translucent energy membranes surged from the gaps between shields, layering over one another to form a combined magic shield over two hundred meters in diameter.
The Eastern and Western phalanxes followed suit. Mages gripped their staves, gritting their teeth as they poured mana into the barrier. Three shields took shape, encasing the fifty thousand men in three glowing shells.
Han Chong bent down to retrieve his sword, channeling the entirety of his Gold-rank Battle Qi into the core node of the northern shield.
The blue hue of the shield grew deeper and more profound. The runes tightened.
It can hold.
It must hold.
Han Chong's hands were slick with sweat against his hilt.
High in the bridge, three thousand meters up, the progress bar on the fire-control panel reached its end.
[Charging Complete. Main Cannon Ready.]
Lin Yuan leaned back in his chair.
His finger rose.
Then fell.
"Fire."
The main cannon discharged.
The massive barrel on the ship's belly recoiled half a meter, the force completely absorbed by the hydraulic systems. What erupted from the muzzle was not fire.
It was light.
A pillar of pure white light, over eight meters in diameter, fell straight down from three thousand meters. No arc, no deviation. By the time the pillar hit the ground, the air hadn't even had time to expand.
The Northern Phalanx's combined magic shield took the full force of the impact.
Half a second. The blue runes on the shield's surface were instantly bleached white. The Battle Qi within the enchanted shields was vaporized at the point of contact. The iron shields skipped the melting phase entirely, flashing from solid to gas.
One second. The shield shattered. It didn't crack or collapse; it simply vanished, inch by inch, from the point of contact outward. The blue fragments vaporized before they could even scatter.
The Gold-rank Battle Qi Han Chong had funneled in lasted exactly 0.3 seconds.
The pillar of light tore through the remains of the shield and plunged into the core of the phalanx.
There was no explosion. No shockwave. No debris.
Wherever the light touched, the people, the armor, the weapons, and the stone ground simply ceased to exist. They weren't blown away or crushed—they were erased. Polished silver armor, flesh, bone, and enchanted steel were all the same before that pillar of pure white; upon contact, they turned into high-temperature plasma, rising as an invisible mist of heat.
The beam cut through the center of the Northern Phalanx and swept southward along the ground.
Three seconds of illumination plowed a straight line through the earth.
The width was equal to the muzzle—eight meters.
The length exceeded two kilometers.
The depth—one hundred meters of bedrock beneath the surface was scorched through. The soil and rubble at the bottom melted under the heat, cooling into a layer of translucent, glass-like crystals.
The light vanished.
The main cannon entered its cooling cycle. The outer barrel glowed red-hot as the cooling fins deployed, hissing with white steam.
A canyon had appeared on the ground.
A vitrified gorge.
It stretched from the ruins of the Lin estate to the edge of the residential district two kilometers away, as if someone had carved a wound into the earth of St. Roland with a white-hot blade. The stone ground flanking the canyon was scorched charred black by the thermal radiation.
The area where the Northern Phalanx had stood was completely empty.
Where twelve thousand Imperial Guards had once stood, there was nothing but a circle of scorched earth at the canyon's edge and a few warped scraps of metal.
Han Chong was still alive. He had been standing at the outermost edge of the formation, only forty meters from the beam's path. The heatwave had shorn off half of his shoulder plate, and his golden armor was discolored with heat blooms.
He didn't fall. His legs were straight.
But his sword was gone.
His hands hung at his sides, all ten fingers trembling uncontrollably.
He looked down at the vitrified canyon at his feet for three seconds.
His knees buckled.
He fell to his knees.
The Eastern and Western phalanxes hadn't been hit, but they broke anyway.
To the east, three thousand men threw down their weapons and ran. After fifty meters, the front row's legs gave out, and those behind piled on top of them. Some simply knelt and began slamming their heads against the stone. The west was even more absolute; they didn't run, they simply knelt row by row. Shield-bearers hurled their shields aside, spearmen threw their spears far away, and mages lay flat on the ground, burying their heads in their arms, shivering uncontrollably.
Of the fifty thousand Imperial Guards, fewer than two thousand remained standing.
The rest were on the ground—kneeling, prone, or curled in fetal positions.
A deathly silence fell over the Imperial Capital.
In the direction of the Imperial Palace, the three-meter-high painted mana-crystal windows at the front of the Great Hall—all seventy-two panes—shattered simultaneously as the aftershock of the main cannon's blast reached them. The colored shards showered the floor, tinkling against the marble for several long seconds.
Emperor Charlie sat upon his Dragon Throne.
His hand rested on the armrest, his fingernails digging deep into the carved dragon, leaving marks.
He didn't stand up. Not because he didn't want to, but because his legs had lost all strength.
The officer of the guard stumbled into the hall, collapsing to one knee, his armor clattering.
"Your... Your Majesty! The Northern Phalanx—the entire center—it's gone—"
Emperor Charlie's lips trembled slightly. "What do you mean, 'gone'?"
"Vaporized! One shot—just one shot—"
The officer's words died in his throat.
A low-frequency hum resonated outside the hall, vibrating the floorboards.
Emperor Charlie braced himself against the armrest and turned his head, looking out through the empty window frames.
The floating battleship was turning.
The thousand-meter-long hull slowly adjusted its course three thousand meters in the air, the blue glow of its anti-gravity engines sweeping across half the sky.
The bow of the ship drifted degree by degree away from the ruins of the Lin estate, turning south.
It pointed toward the Imperial Palace.
The cooling steam from the main cannon was still venting, the red glow of the barrel fading inch by inch.
Then, the amplification arrays on the exterior of the bridge lit up.
Lin Yuan's voice pressed down from three thousand meters high, drowning out every street, every window, and every shivering soul in St. Roland.
"Charlie."
"Come out and sign the contract."