Chapter 56 — The First Cry of the Meteor

Fierce winds howled mournfully through the pass, and the mountain rocks continuously crumbled under the tremors deep beneath the earth.

The flagship "Silver Ram's Horn", thousands of meters long, was slowly pressing down with the unstoppable momentum of Mount Tai. The massive silvery-white hull was like a metal continent suspended at low altitude. The gravitational thrusters at the bottom of the battleship jetted out scorching, blinding golden divine light, shredding the surrounding toxic acid fog and radioactive cloud layers to pieces. The violent downdrafts swept up boiling hot red sand, kicking up a sky-blotting dust storm in front of the pass.

"Click-clack... click-clack..."

Dozens of hatch doors on the flagship's belly boomed open. Golden "law projection beams" shot vertically down onto the steep hillsides on both sides of the canyon, melting large swaths of the ground into boiling lava.

Within those beams, Aries royal guards wearing heavy silver armor and holding high-energy lightning spears stepped out in single file. Their faces were cold and haughty. The Aries battering ram emblems on their combat armor flowed with searing magma radiance under the illumination of the divine light. Like gods descending to the world, they looked down upon the battered mortal soldiers in the muddy trenches, the tips of their lightning spears already beginning to condense with jumping, blinding electrical arcs.

"They have entered firing range, Commander-in-Chief!" Jonas lay in the mud, his eyes red, panting heavily as he pressed down on the electric trigger wrench of the anti-aircraft auto-cannon, his knuckles white from excessive force.

"Conventional heavy weapons fire! Suppress their ground advance, we absolutely cannot let them occupy the high ground of the pass!"

Elias's roar instantly exploded across the comm channels.

In the next second, an extremely violent and savage counterattack erupted from the mortal vanguard army's positions. Hundreds of heavy projectile rifles and physical anti-aircraft auto-cannons, crudely modified using industrial machine tools and scrap iron, roared simultaneously. The dense steel-core armor-piercing rounds transformed into torrents of metal rain, trailing ear-piercing sonic booms as they swept toward the royal guards on the hillside.

"Clink, clank, ding, dang——!"

However, the law heavy armor on the royal guards flickered with faint polarized light shields. When the high-energy physical warheads struck them, they merely let out a series of crisp ricocheting sounds before physically deforming and plummeting into the muddy water. Stepping through the hail of bullets with contemptuous sneers on their faces, the lightning spears in their hands had already begun to condense lethal electrical arcs, preparing to execute a devastating reverse gravity sweep on the mortal trenches below.

Meanwhile, in the most concealed volcanic rock fissure of the pass, Nova was staring dead at the physical barometric depth gauge on her wrist.

"Three thousand two hundred meters... three thousand meters! They've entered the insulating ring!"

Nova's eyes lit up in this instant like a pair of burning wolf eyes. Her slender, grime-covered fingertips hovered rigidly above a heavy mechanical electrical switch painted bright red, her scream nearly cracking in the storm:

"Now! The escort ship on the entire Aries flank has completely entered the three-kilometer physical radius of the insulating field! Caleb! Pull the switch! Fire for me!"

"Go... down!"

Veteran Caleb let out an explosive shout, his mechanical right arm erupting with blinding sparks. Standing entirely on the iron frame, he used his entire body's physical weight to ruthlessly yank the overloaded electromagnetic hydraulic switch all the way down!

"Boom——!!"

The earth seemed to stop trembling in this instant, replaced by a muffled, low-frequency explosion that seemed to physically tear space apart.

On that electromagnetic catapult rail made of I-beams tens of meters long, the warheads of three "Orbit-breaking Meteor Shells"—crudely cast from scrap iron to look like iron barrels—were pushed out of the rail in an instant by a super-high-voltage current of tens of thousands of amperes. An ear-piercing shriek tore through the air as the shells violently rubbed against the atmosphere, generating strange, deep-blue insulating light arcs. With the terrifying kinetic energy of Mach 7, trailing a long white vacuum trajectory, they brazenly shot toward that Aries escort ship pressing down on the flank in the sky!

The Divine Court officers and soldiers on that escort ship didn't even have time to adjust their higher-dimensional causality protective barriers before that iron barrel shell, carrying millions of joules of physical kinetic energy, slammed heavily into their pristine white armor plating.

"Bang——!"

There was no magnificent law explosion, nor any blinding energy shockwave.

The "Orbit-breaking Meteor Shell" shattered with a roar at the moment of impact. The matter at its core—melted and cast from high-radiation star-marrow slag and an insulating core—instantly vaporized, transforming into an invisible "insulating domain" with a three-kilometer radius. This insulating storm forcibly disrupted and shielded the higher-dimensional law constants, physically severing the Star-network signals in the entire airspace.

Within the thousandth of a second that the insulating field unfolded, the originally dazzling golden polarized shields on the surface of that Aries escort ship suddenly flickered violently twice—like a light bulb whose power was cut off—and then expressionlessly died out completely. Inside the battleship's gravity control room, all higher-dimensional crystal consoles instantly dimmed, and the divine power circuits were completely paralyzed.

Immediately following that, the gravity law engine at the bottom of the battleship let out an extremely tragic physical rupture sound in an instant. Having lost the control of higher-dimensional divine power, this silver behemoth weighing tens of thousands of tons, under the lowest-level physical universal gravitation of the LinBoo universe, plummeted downward at a tilt like a massive meteor out of control.

Inside the battleship, those high-and-mighty divine soldiers, due to the sudden shift in gravity, were physically slammed around in the out-of-control cabin until their bones shattered, letting out despairing screams.

"My god! They crashed!" The mortal soldiers on the position let out cries of disbelief.

Watched by countless pairs of eyes aching from the golden light, that escort ship, devoid of its divine power shield, slammed sideways into the hundred-meter-tall cliff on one side of the pass. Its hard silver alloy armor instantly physically twisted, tore, and exploded into a sky full of blinding fireballs upon impact with the rough volcanic rock. The massive hull broke into two segments, billowing black smoke, and smashed with a roar into the canyon abyss, raising a pitch-black mushroom cloud hundreds of meters high.

A violent physical explosion shockwave mixed with steel shrapnel swept across the Grand Canyon. Even the flagship "Silver Ram's Horn's" protective shield was rocked violently by this blast wave, the golden light on its surface instantly dimming by nearly half.

What caused the royal guards on the hillside to feel even more panic was that, as the insulating domain physically expanded, the flowing law light on their armor completely extinguished in an instant. Their law armor, originally light as a feather, now turned into scrap iron weighing hundreds of pounds, becoming their steel coffins. The indestructible lightning spears in their hands also instantly regressed into ordinary physical iron rods, no longer able to release any law electrical arcs.

"Gods... can also fall!"

Elias abruptly drew the heavy industrial cutting knife plunged into the rock fissure, the blade reflecting a cold and rough silver glint in the cold rain of the wasteland. Standing at the very front of the trench, his lake-green eyes shone so brightly amidst the firelight filling the sky that it made one tremble, his voice carrying utter liberation and a frantic fighting spirit:

"They have no shields! We've used scrap iron to strip them of their divinity! Now... they are just ordinary mortals wearing tin cans! Vanguard army... charge! Smash them into mud!"

"Charge——!"

"Slay the gods——!"

The mortal fury, suppressed for countless cycle-days, completely erupted in this instant. Countless mortal soldiers let out almost beast-like roars, racked their bolts, raised their physical bayonets gleaming with cold light, and braved the light of the explosions. Like a tidal wave, they rushed out of the trenches, violently sweeping toward those Aries royal guards on the hillside who had fallen into panic and could hardly move an inch in their heavy armor!

Jonas, charging at the very front, roared and lunged, tackling a divine soldier to the ground. The law light on that divine soldier's armor was out; it was heavy and bloated, completely unable to dodge nimbly. The divine soldier panicked, swinging his spear shaft—devoid of lightning—trying to resist. But Jonas dodged sideways and, using the physical entrenching shovel in his hand, swung it crazily and viciously at the opponent's golden visor.

"Crack!"

The visor shattered, revealing a pale, terrified young face inscribed with mortal-like fear—they were not statues without a sense of pain; they were also flesh and bone! Jonas roared as he pressed the blade of the shovel down, and divine-red blood splattered along with the mud.

On the other side, veteran Caleb charged into the enemy formation laughing wildly. His hydraulic mechanical right arm roared at full speed, drawing an ear-piercing shriek in the air, and smashed a heavy punch squarely into a divine soldier's breastplate. Amidst a dull metallic crash, that divine soldier's breastplate caved in deeply. The whole person flew backward over a dozen meters like a cannonball, smashing a large web of cracks into the volcanic rock wall behind.

Elias's figure, meanwhile, turned into a cold ghost on the chaotic battlefield. He wasted no movements, using his nimble agility to weave in close quarters within the insulating field. The heavy cutting knife drew lethal silver arcs, precisely slashing into the weak gaps of the divine soldiers' armor joints. Golden-red blood splattered, wetting his khaki trench coat, but his lake-green eyes held only cold execution.

Within the Grand Canyon, the physical horn of counterattack was finally, mournfully sounded amidst the burning wreckage of the god's battleship.