Chapter 57 — Scorched-Earth Purge

On the slippery, muddy slopes of the Grand Canyon pass, the muddy red earth instantly transformed into a bone-chilling, bloody purgatory.

The three-kilometer insulating domain physically expanded like a tidal wave, forcibly stripping away the law divine light pouring down from deep within the void. Those Aries royal guards who had originally stood haughtily on the slope, amidst waves of panicked and astonished shouts, watched helplessly as the golden divine markings on their white armor successively extinguished. Having lost the weight reduction and assistance of higher-dimensional law circuits, the silver alloy armor weighing hundreds of pounds instantly transformed from a body-protecting divine artifact into heavy physical shackles, fastening their bodies tightly within the muddy gravel crevices.

"Kill——!"

Ear-piercing roars echoed throughout the entire valley.

Hundreds of blood-faced, raggedly dressed mortal vanguard soldiers, holding crude physical bayonets and rusty shovels, like angry beasts crawling out from the ruins of the wasteland, charged madly up the slope braving the sky full of freezing wind and cold rain. In this instant, the high-and-mighty divine soldiers of the heavenly realm and the lowest mortals of the surface were forcibly pulled onto the battleline of the same dimension by a cold and merciless physical law.

"Clang!"

Orion's massive body was like a rampaging heavy physical war chariot, instantly smashing through the barrier of wind and rain to charge at the very front of the entire assault formation.

He gripped that heavy broken knife, devoid of any divine light fluctuations, tightly in both hands. Every horizontal slash and swing brought up bone-chilling, howling gales in mid-air. A royal guard panicked and raised a now lightning-less alloy spear shaft trying to block, but Orion's heavy slash, carrying overwhelming physical torque, directly cleaved that high-strength shaft in two amidst an ear-piercing sound of snapping metal. The broken knife followed through and cut into the divine soldier's breastplate, tearing a deep, bone-exposing wound. Golden-red divine blood instantly spewed out, dyeing the surrounding red sand in a mottled pattern.

"Watchdogs under the Aries Lord, today let you taste the flavor of physical gravity!"

Orion laughed wildly, his messy dark brown hair dancing frantically in the rain of blood. Although the divine core within his body was in unbearable agony due to the Saturn-Pluto opposition, his imposing aura grew increasingly violent with the slaughter. Every swing of his knife sent a divine soldier flying viciously, forging a bloody physical path on the muddy slope.

Behind him, Elias's figure followed closely like a ghost in the rainy night. He had no extra roars; his figure nimbly dodged and weaved on the gravity-disordered slope. The heavy cutting knife in his hand brought up cold silver arcs, precisely slashing into the exposed gaps at the joints of the divine soldiers' combat armor.

A divine soldier whose retreat was cut off desperately drew a short blade and stabbed at Jonas's throat, but in mid-air, veteran Caleb's hydraulic mechanical right arm, carrying an ear-piercing shriek and roaring steam, struck a heavy punch squarely onto the divine soldier's golden visor from the flank.

"Crack!"

The entire visor caved in and shattered with a boom. The divine soldier's skull was instantly crushed under the hydraulic impact, the body spinning several times in the air before collapsing like mud into the muddy water.

"They die too! They bleed red blood too!" Jonas wiped a smear of warm divine blood that had splashed onto his face, roaring fanatically. Pressing his heavy rifle against the combat boot joint of a fallen divine soldier, he sprayed bullets wildly, the warm casings clinking as they fell all over the ground.

Across the entire slope, the tragic close-quarters combat instantly entered a meat grinder state. Although the royal guards who had lost their divine power shields possessed extremely high tactical literacy, after losing higher-dimensional fire control and gravitational levitation, when facing this group of mortal desperadoes who viewed death with equanimity and only engaged in close-quarters brawling using physical blades, the divine arrogance within their hearts instantly dissolved into the most primal fear, and their defensive lines began to collapse in droves.

Above the vault of heaven.

Inside the main command cabin of the flagship "Silver Ram's Horn", the atmosphere had tensed to the extreme.

"Commander! The first wave of descended royal guards... is being unilaterally massacred by mortals!" The Aries vanguard officer in charge of ground scanning was deathly pale, his hands operating the instruments trembling uncontrollably. "The insulating field forcibly severed their armor's law connections, and the weight has become a fatal burden! The divine soldiers cannot escape the gravity well! We must immediately dispatch transport shuttles to physically retrieve them!"

"Retrieve? Retrieve this bunch of trash being trampled to death by bugs in the mud?"

Divine Envoy Phalan stood before the higher-dimensional observation window, his face so gloomy it was almost dripping water. Looking at the silver figures wailing and fleeing under mortal blades on the lower realm slope, the fury and humiliation in his heart suppressed all reason in an instant.

To him, the death of the divine soldiers in battle was not just a loss of troops, but an immense humiliation to the majesty of Aries. If this matter were to be known by the heavenly cabinet or the civil officials of Asclepius, Director of the 6th House Inspectorate, the dark curtain of his embezzlement of star-marrow and this disastrous military defeat would be completely torn open. What awaited him would be the fate of having his divine core stripped and being exiled to the blind spot.

"Commander, in there are three elite squadrons of our Aries royal guard regiment, they are all citizens of the First House..."

"So what?"

Divine Envoy Phalan coldly cut off his subordinate's pleading. His knuckles were slightly white from gripping the stone table tightly, and those pale golden eyes flashed with a cold, bestial murderous intent:

"What Lord Aries needs is absolute silence and secrecy. Since they have become the disgrace of defeat, then let them, along with those lower-dimensional bugs, completely vaporize in this scorched earth."

He turned around and issued a merciless death sentence to the fire control console:

"Activate the conventional thermal cluster cannons and heavy high-pressure high-explosive secondary cannons on both sides of the battleship. No need for higher-dimensional law corrections; directly use the crudest physical charges and high-energy lasers to execute a carpet-style 'Scorched-Earth Purge' on the entire Grand Canyon pass and the engaged slope. Melt that slope completely into a lava lake for me!"

"Commander! Our divine soldiers are still in melee combat down there..."

"Fire!" Phalan bellowed hysterically, veins bulging on his forehead, his face contorted ferociously.

"Yes... yes! Commander!"

In the next second, the flagship "Silver Ram's Horn" and the sole surviving escort ship simultaneously mobilized the heavy cannon arrays on their flanks.

"Boom boom boom boom——!!"

A sky full of blinding, pure white laser beams and dense, heavy high-explosive physical shells poured down like a torrential rain. Those royal guards deemed as discarded pawns by Divine Envoy Phalan didn't even have time to utter a plea before they, along with the mortal soldiers, were instantly vaporized and dissipated in crude physical explosions and tens of thousands of degrees of high-energy lasers.

The high-energy laser beams and the physical bombardment of the heavy cannons wove into a web of death across both sides of the Grand Canyon. Hundreds of incandescent laser beams instantly vaporized the steep red stone cliffs, melting them into rolling, flowing red-hot lava rivers. The boiling magma rushed down the valley, colliding violently with the cold rain falling from the sky, instantly evaporating into a sky full of choking white steam and billowing black smoke. Violent shockwaves and mudslides swept through the entire engagement area, and the air was filled with countless sharp, flying lava cinders.

And in the shadows of the container bunker in the rear, Vespera quietly watched this tragic scene through the gaps in the iron plating. As the God of Darkness wielding the universe's laws of annihilation, she was accustomed to destruction and reconstruction on a macroscopic dimensional scale, yet she had never seen such real and chaotic bloodshed—a high-and-mighty divine envoy ruthlessly using main cannons to physically erase his own kin generals due to a corruption scandal, while mortals, once deemed as mud bugs, used the crudest blunt iron teeth to viciously tear the throats of gods. In this purgatory where scorched earth and a sea of light intertwined, her cold divine core clearly felt for the first time that the flawless causality algorithms of the LinBoo Star-network were suffering irreversible physical wear and tear due to the hysterical resistance of this group of mortals.

"Boom!"

A heavy high-explosive secondary shell exploded violently in front of the pass, the shockwave rolling up boiling lava cinders and instantly sweeping across the trench.

"Retreat! Everyone fall back into the underground Broken Horn tunnels!"

Elias roared hoarsely amidst the deafening explosion tempest. He grabbed the bloodshot-eyed Jonas, who had nearly been swallowed by lava, while simultaneously using his shoulder to firmly prop up veteran Caleb's body—Caleb's hydraulic mechanical right arm had been mostly sheared off in the overloading explosion, boiling hydraulic machine oil and muddy divine blood mixing together, emitting hissing white smoke from the damaged bearings. Orion growled low, bringing up the rear, using his broad and thick body to block the raining lava debris and high-temperature airwaves from the mortal soldiers behind him. The group tumbled miserably over collapsed covers, sliding frantically one after another into the bottomless depths of the volcanic rock mine shafts.