Player Reload

Just like Wu Jiaowu being cut in half at the waist, Gray Rain felt no pain at all. His upper body, plummeting downward, stretched out a hand to grab a billboard and exclaimed in astonishment: "What a... gorgeous bug."

It had to be said: even judged by human aesthetics, Zongsi really was beautiful.

Its insect body was pure white as snow, covered in fine fuzz, with two filamentous antennae on its head,

and two pairs of triangular metallic wings on either side of its body, with trachea, nerves, and blood vessels running inside.

The scales on the surface were made of a three-dimensional photonic crystal material; a special web-like nano structure could reflect specific light bands, blooming into an insanely gorgeous radiance that absolutely nuked any OLED/HDR/16K/Dolby Vision, mesmerizing to the soul.

As fellow Divine Abomination Followers, compared to the Great Swarm, Zongsi’s looks

were like Diao Chan versus Lv Bu, Elf versus Beastman, flowers versus cow dung—

especially since the Great Swarm’s semi-mechanical modifications weren’t finished yet, its belly was topped with a chunk of bloated metal armor like Liangzi’s.

That wasn’t a stomach, wasn’t a gut bag, that was frontal armor.

Hiss!

The Mechanical Swarm’s dorsal vector nozzle spat out a supersonic Mach ring of blazing heat, incinerating the lunging Half-Insect People into charcoal while driving him into a rapid climb,

the Barbatos Organ clutched in his hands leveled downward, aiming at Zongsi from on high.

As shell after shell was fed by the electrically driven chain hoist into the rotary drum, then delivered up to the breech,

the hydraulic ram shoved the heavy armor-piercing shell into the barrel, the breech locked shut,

the Great Swarm’s forelimb finger joints squeezed the trigger, the mechanical firing pin struck the primer, ignited the propellant, and blasted the shell out with a roar.

The distance of several streets vanished in an instant; the projectile tore through floors and slammed hard into the wing Zongsi had lifted.

The wing that looked fragile suddenly hardened, its internal tubes turning into hydraulic lines that redistributed the violent kinetic energy evenly,

and the wing surface only dented slightly as it stopped and deflected the shell, turning it into a ricochet.

As for the airborne explosion of gunpowder and fragments, they couldn’t possibly penetrate the wings.

Boom boom!

The second and third shells followed right on their heels. The Great Swarm had already spent 1000 points of Physical Value to activate the Barbatos Organ’s [Doomsday Gun], switching from single-shot to triple burst.

Zongsi’s wings were still vibrating, and the Great Swarm’s firing angle was extremely tricky, precisely threading the gap between the two pairs of wings.

At the critical instant, Zongsi suddenly opened its mandible mouthparts and spewed out threads.

Nanometer-scale high-strength threads wove into a huge net, wrapping around the high-rise’s load-bearing columns,

the strands sharper than lathe cutting tools, slicing the two incoming 402mm naval shells in midair into countless pieces.

"Whose guzheng project is this."

Gray Rain, hanging under the billboard, shouted in shock. Chemical-energy artillery in the real world had a physical ceiling, constrained by barrel materials, flame erosion, gas thermodynamic expansion efficiency, and other factors; muzzle velocity was hard-capped at 1700–1800 m/s.

But Barbatos’s gun barrel had strength on par with killing field construction materials, able to withstand chamber pressures far beyond chromium-molybdenum-vanadium steel barrels, limited only by the stagnation sound speed of the gas inside the bore.

So the shell’s muzzle velocity reached the 2500 m/s level—about Mach 7.3.

A two-ton shell flying at Mach 7.3 actually getting sliced open in midair was enough to prove those threads had strength surpassing carbon nanotubes—

carbon nanotubes would melt from locally generated friction heat.

Before the Great Swarm could pull the trigger again, Zongsi had already beat its wings, flipping floor slabs, spiraling straight up into the clouds, then suddenly flaring those two dazzling pairs of wings at the peak.

Hollow wing veins channeled internal airflow to precisely control the orientation of the photonic crystal structures on the wing scales, making them display patterns of rapid strobing, shifting colors.

The overload of visual signals slammed straight into the brain, making Li Cheng’s vision blur; his Floating Engine almost cut out.

The Vast Sea Soul-locking Bell tied at his waist shook violently, desperately resisting the illusion,

allowing him—with the scraps of clear Divine Wisdom he had left—to cast [Summoning Skill·Shadow Falcon].

The Mechanical Swarm voluntarily shut down its Electronic Eye, dropped a full-coverage faceplate, sealed all body-surface pores, and entered a closed gas recirculation mode while

driving the dorsal vector nozzle, likewise soaring into the clouds, charging Zongsi head-on without dodging.

Bam bam bam!

Another triple naval-gun volley; Zongsi decisively spat out another nanometer-scale cutting web (larger this time, since there were no load-bearing columns as anchors),

but the Mechanical Swarm had already predicted its move; its dorsal vector nozzle cut out ahead of time, relying on the Floating Engine’s inertia to continue climbing,

while twisting its waist, that massive body spinning half a turn in midair to put its back to Zongsi.

Life-and-death exchanges happened in a single beat. The vector nozzle opened to its limit, but this time what it spewed wasn’t flame—it was... cold wind.

As a half-biological, half-mechanical lifeform, the Great Swarm generated huge amounts of waste heat every moment; besides relying on surface pores for air-cooling,

its body was riddled with countless biological or metallic flexible tubes for liquid cooling.

Now the Great Swarm rerouted its internal piping; the vector nozzle blasted -78°C cold wind violently at the nano web.

For the same volume of airflow, cold wind had higher density than hot wind, and thus stronger thrust.

Air molecules slammed into the nano web, driving it to blow back toward Zongsi.

The distance was too close; Zongsi, with no time to climb again, hastily raised its wings, using the backs of its same-material wings to block the cutting of the nano net,

but that brief interval was already enough for the Mechanical Swarm to use the inertia of the cold wind to spin back around again and unleash a massive flying kick into Zongsi’s body.

The sheer disparity in size and weight,

that kick nearly tore Zongsi’s wings off at the root,

and sent it brutally flying, slamming with a boom through an older Showa-era building and into a high-rise. Forced, it wrapped itself up in its wings.