Chapter 53 — The Approaching Divine Light

The profound and twisted night sky of the blind spot was violently torn apart in an instant.

Above this wasteland shrouded in high-concentration radioactive dust and industrial acid fog, the void suddenly resembled tempered glass struck by a heavy hammer, displaying countless web-like spectral blue fissures. Immediately after, three dazzling golden spacetime rifts brazenly opened. The ear-piercing howl of a higher-dimensional jump instantly filled the entire Grand Canyon, like ten thousand steam whistles going off simultaneously deep in the mind.

Three behemoths slowly glided out from the subspace gravitational corridors.

The leading flagship, the "Silver Ram's Horn", stretched for thousands of meters, forged entirely from silver titanium-chromium alloy. Its massive, streamlined bow resembled a holy ram's horn diving downward, preparing to shatter everything in its path. Between the armor plating of the battleship's outer shell, golden divine power streamed like searing lava. The anti-polarization net operated at full capacity across the hull, radiating blinding and cold fluctuations of sacred laws. Two slightly smaller escort ships flanked it, forming a classic triangular defensive formation, with golden light rapidly flashing along their power spines.

"Buzz——!"

The physical mass and gravitational anchoring fields carried by the massive fleet pressed down brazenly, roughly blowing away the toxic clouds and fog that had accumulated in the blind spot canyon for hundreds of cycle-days in an instant.

The blinding golden divine light poured down like a breaching higher-dimensional flood, brutally illuminating this pitch-black, filthy red stone wilderness. In an instant, the muddy red ground, the abandoned mining cranes, and the vanguard army's first line of defense—cobbled together from various scrap copper and rotten iron—were all illuminated to a ghastly white. The air was filled with the pungent smell of ionizing ozone, carrying a rust-like sweetness when inhaled into the lungs.

But this was by no means the temperature of compassion; it was a cold, mechanical baptism of gravity.

The moment the divine light hit the ground, the local gravitational constant was instantly thrown into chaos. Stones on the ground, broken steel rebar, and even discarded heavy oil barrels outside the trenches bizarrely defied gravity, slowly floating upward into mid-air like bubbles suspended in water.

"Ugh... blegh..."

In the muddy trench at the very front of the pass, several young vanguard soldiers suddenly curled up in pain, vomiting profusely. The sensation of hypergravity and weightlessness alternating dozens of times in the blink of an eye frantically tortured the mortals' vestibular systems. The violent ringing in their ears made them nearly deaf to any sounds around them, and warm blood slowly seeped from their nasal cavities and ear canals.

"Don't look directly at the light! Keep your bodies pressed tight under cover!"

Elias's roar exploded amidst the roaring spatial tremors. Wearing that khaki canvas trench coat stained with machine oil and red sand, and bearing a gravitational wave as heavy as a mountain on his head, his posture remained as steady as an iron stake driven deep into volcanic rock. Reaching out with long, powerful hands, he pushed two soldiers—who nearly exposed themselves to the intense light due to floating—back down into the lead-plate air-raid shelter with extreme speed.

As an 'Anomaly', Elias had no causality coordinates in the higher-dimensional astrolabe's algorithms. This gravitational law constructed against the LinBoo order could not physically lock onto him. He was the only stable fulcrum in this gravitational hell, entirely undisturbed.

Not far from him, at the corner of the trench, Orion's massive body was pressed tightly against the mud wall.

The dead knot of the "Saturn-Pluto opposition" vibrated frantically under the pull of the battleship overhead. Deep within his chest, a dark red death-omen star spot faintly shone through, resembling a cracking lava core. Orion gritted his teeth, the muscles on his bronze face bulging, but he merely looked coldly at the massive fleet in the sky, completely ignoring the intense pain of his divine core cracking at his waist.

"These watchdogs of the Aries Lord always like to use this holy silver shell to decorate their brutality." Orion's voice was hoarse, carrying a metallic, frictional lowness. "Kid, back in the heavenly divine wars, I saw them use this gravity purification field to crush an entire rebellious mining planet into a solid iron ball in ten minutes. They have no intention of talking nonsense with us. Once the main cannons finish calibration, they will directly execute an energy sweep, physically erasing the entire canyon flat to the ground."

"I know." Elias's eyes were as cold as iron, staring fixedly at the silver flagship that was adjusting its altitude. "But we didn't come here to reason with them this time, either."

In the air-raid shelter below the trench, Lyra sat in front of a polarization radar modified from a scrapped heavy truck's fire control panel. The surrounding rock walls were shaking violently, and dust fell pattering onto her messy black hair. Her fingertips tapped rapidly on the greasy keyboard as she shouted urgently:

"Elias! The enemy flagship 'Silver Ram's Horn' has locked onto the gravitational well four thousand meters overhead, and the Star-network's sweep beams are scanning the metallic dielectric constant downward! Our shelter contains a massive amount of scrap heavy lead; this physical mass signature is too obvious! The moment the frequency sweep ends, the main cannon's causality algorithms will immediately execute a high-energy evaporation purge!"

"Nova! How is the launch rail charging going?!" Elias roared into the communicator.

In a concealed hollow on one side of the defensive line, Caleb and Nova were lying beside a massive electromagnetic catapult rail machine. The transformer was emitting a low roar like a wild beast, and azure electrical arcs flashed frantically across the surface of the capacitor matrix, melting the surrounding red sand into black crystals.

"The gravity field is too strong, the capacitors' charge is physically leaking into the surrounding rock!" Nova's face was covered in black machine oil, her eyes red with anxiety, her hands pressing desperately on the fire control box that was nearly ready to explode. "The capacitor pump is overloading! We need at least another one hundred and twenty seconds to complete the first physical excitation of the Orbit-breaking Meteor Shell! If we forcibly fire now, the rail will be instantly melted into scrap iron by high-energy arcs!"

One hundred and twenty seconds—to the silver flagship in the sky possessing devastating firepower—was no different than an endless century.

Inside a half-buried container bunker at the rear of the Grand Canyon.

Vespera sat alone in a dark corner. Those deep violet eyes, hidden beneath the shadow of her long hair, looked coldly and profoundly through the gaps in the bunker's ceiling, staring straight at the massive fleet in the void.

In her higher-dimensional divine perception, the law circuits on the three battleships formed a precise net woven from golden silk threads. She could clearly hear the Aries divine core ember, used to drive the higher-dimensional laws within the Aries vanguard army's gravity engine, roaring frantically, pouring down a massive amount of computing power.

But what caused Vespera the most tremor was that the dark red lifeline representing Orion was, at this moment, entwined with an extremely faint yet resilient milky-white pale golden halo.

Although that wisp of halo was as miniscule as a speck of dust, it stubbornly generated physical polarization within the cold gravity net of the "Saturn-Pluto opposition".

Astra...

Vespera's breath hitched slightly, an extremely complex, strange color flashing through her profound violet eyes.

You foolish sister, you actually tore your own divine core for this demigod...

Do you think this tiny halo can save his life in this cold gravity sweep? At most, this can only cause a physical delay of one thousandth of a cycle-day when the Silver Ram's Horn's main fire control cannon locks onto his causality parameters.

However, looking at that faint pale golden halo, Vespera's pale fingers hidden beneath her sleeve slowly clenched tight. She knew that this thousandth of a second physical deviation, within this Divine Court calculation system dominated by absolute precision, was an extremely lethal system error code.

"Rumble——!!"

Before anyone in the blind spot could react, the silver flagship in the vault of heaven finally completed the first phase of airspace sweeping and calibration, and mercilessly brought down the butcher's knife of purification.

A golden gravity beam hundreds of meters wide, like a golden spear of a giant god, carrying world-destroying physical kinetic energy and absolute law rules, ruthlessly stabbed straight down from four thousand meters high. Wherever the beam passed, the air was intensely compressed, generating a series of deafening gravitational sonic booms. Even the towering volcanic rock walls on both sides of the Grand Canyon let out overwhelmed moans of agony under the squeeze of this invisible mighty force, and large swaths of the mountain began to collapse and shatter with a roar.

"Boom——!"

This terrifying beam slammed heavily onto the metal insulating barrier at the outermost edge of the Grand Canyon pass, instantly inciting a tsunami-like, violent storm of golden law electrical arcs filling the sky. High-energy particle streams and dark matter interference nets collided fiercely in the air, blooming into an intense light a hundred times more blinding than the sun. The violent shockwave rolled up boiling sand and scorched ionizing gas, transforming into rings of visible white airwaves that frantically swept along the defensive line of the pass.

The lead plates and scrap steel in the trenches shuddered violently under this impact, emitting ear-piercing creaks; several support frames even snapped under the gravitational overload. Dirt and rock debris crashed down like a torrential rain onto the steel helmets of the vanguard soldiers, tearing their fragile physical defensive line full of holes.

"Hold on! Everyone, press your bodies flat against the rock walls, do not move!" Elias's furious roar echoed hoarsely amidst the sky full of dust and golden light. His knuckles oozed blood from gripping the edge of the trench so hard, but those lake-green eyes pierced through the frantic golden electrical arcs filling the sky, nailed fixedly to that massive behemoth slowly pressing down from the sky.