stonecrandall Page 444
Page 444
"I...I can't hold on any longer!" A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of Ge Xiaolun's mouth. His gene engine was issuing an overload warning; the opponent's power was dismantling his defenses at the conceptual level!
As the shield was about to shatter completely, the three were about to be cut in half at the waist.
At this moment of despair.
The Ranger-class Honkai Beast, about to unleash its second strike, suddenly froze.
Its purple markings began to flash violently, as if the internal energy had lost control.
Then, to the astonishment of the three, the terrifying monster that had driven them to their doom began to disintegrate inch by inch, turning into countless harmless purple specks of light that vanished into the air like fireflies.
The suffocating, oppressive atmosphere also disappeared.
Ge Xiaolun could no longer hold on and collapsed to the ground, panting heavily. Zhao Xin and Qi Lin also looked terrified and bewildered.
what happened?
Why did it...disappear on its own?
And at the same time.
The command center of the Great Gorge, the throne room of the Angel Nebula, the dark temple of the Deathsong Academy...
On the main screen of all the top powers in the known universe, a line of simple yet supremely majestic text appeared out of thin air.
It uses a "meta-language" that all civilizations can instantly understand.
[Lesson One: The "divine power" you have inherited is nothing but a crutch. Now, try to walk on your own.]
Dukao's body trembled violently as he looked at the words.
He finally understood.
Fear, confusion, anger... all sorts of emotions eventually converged into an unprecedented realization.
This is not an invasion.
This is a "teaching session".
A forced teaching program led by that man, using the entire solar system as a classroom, and at the cost of life and death!
The ten-day deadline is not an expulsion order, but... a notice to start school.
And they, the Super Soldier Corps, the Super God Academy, these beings who call themselves "gods," are nothing more than elementary school students who have just enrolled and haven't even understood their textbooks yet...
Dead Song Academy.
Carl stared at the line of text on the screen, a near-manic, pilgrimage-like smile spreading across his face.
"A teacher...a true teacher!"
He paced back and forth in the temple excitedly, “It’s wonderful! He’s not trying to destroy us, he’s guiding us! Guiding us toward the true reality! He denied the Divine River Gene, he denied dark energy… He’s forcing us to explore the ultimate mysteries of the void!”
"I must... I must keep up with his lessons!"
……
On the terrace of a sea-view villa.
Zhou Ye put down his black tea. In the air in front of him, a "screen" made of light and shadow quietly disappeared, showing the battle scene in which Ge Xiaolun and others were in a sorry state.
Fengshayan stood to the side, her palms sweating with nervousness.
"Sir...they...almost..."
"The first lesson should always give students a little shock," Zhou Ye said calmly. "Let them understand that knowledge points that they used to get 100 points on might not even get them 1 point on the new exam. That way, they will study hard in advance."
He stood up, stretched, as if he had only watched a boring movie.
"However... scaring the students away on the first day is not my style."
He looked up at the night sky.
On an invisible track, more purple dots are constantly being generated. Chariot-class, Knight-class, and even larger and more bizarre new Honkai Beasts are joining that silent "examiner" legion.
"Alright, break time is over."
Zhou Ye turned his head and smiled at Feng Shayan, who was still in a daze.
"The next chapter should be sent out as well."
He walked over to Feng Shayan, tapped the table, and asked in a completely different, relaxed tone:
"What should we eat for dinner? I suddenly have a craving for hot pot, with a spicy broth."
Looking at the gentleman's face, which seemed as if nothing had happened, and then thinking about the "gods" trembling in the universe and the "super soldiers" on Earth who had just escaped death, Feng Shayan felt an extremely absurd feeling welling up in her heart.
Perhaps, in this gentleman's eyes, the fate of the entire universe is truly... less important than a hot pot meal.
Chapter 423 A Desperate Consensus
Super God Academy, Command Center.
Dead silence.
Ge Xiaolun collapsed to the ground, panting heavily. Sweat soaked through the lining of his combat uniform, as if he had just been pulled from the water. His once-proud "invincible body" now seemed like a joke. The overload warning from the gene engine was still buzzing in his mind, reminding him that he had just been one step away from "conceptual collapse."
Zhao Xin leaned against the wall, his face pale, constantly moving his hands and feet, trying to regain that lightning-fast sense of control, but a weakness, as if all his strength had been drained, lingered in his body. Qi Lin, on the other hand, repeatedly checked her sniper rifle; the probe that had turned to dust out of thin air had overturned all her understanding of ballistics and even physics.
"You saw everything?"
Dukao's voice was hoarse, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.
The text on the command center's large screen was like a divine oracle, imprinted on everyone's retina.
[Lesson One: The "divine power" you have inherited is nothing but a crutch. Now, try to walk on your own.]
Liu Chuang clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking.
"A crutch? Damn it, this crutch gave me my life! Now you're just going to throw it away?"
His angry roar echoed the sentiments of everyone, but after the roar, a deeper sense of powerlessness followed. The other side didn't care about their thoughts at all, just as humans wouldn't care about the protests of ants beneath their feet.
“He’s not consulting with us.” Lena’s voice was soft, yet it reached everyone’s ears clearly. She walked to the screen, reached out her hand, as if wanting to touch the cold words.
"I understand... I finally understand."
Everyone looked at her.
“My grandfather, Di Hongkun, ruled Lieyang for 30,000 years. What did he rely on? The Heavenly Dao Tower, absolute military force, and his absolute authority. He was the crutch of all the people of Lieyang. So, when this strongest crutch of his was broken, the entire Lieyang civilization collapsed instantly.”
A bitter smile appeared on Lena's face. "We... all the Divine River Civilizations have gone astray. We are obsessed with the power of genes, obsessed with the convenience of leveraging the power of the universe, but we have forgotten that the power of civilization itself should come from exploration and creation, not from inheritance and acquisition."
She turned around, her gaze sweeping over Ge Xiaolun, Liu Chuang, and Zhao Xin, before finally settling on Dukao.
"This test isn't for our Super Soldier Company, it's for all the gods in the known universe. And we're just the first batch of unlucky souls dragged into the exam room."
Lena's tone calmed down, a calm born of profound despair that ironically revealed a strange clarity.
"General Dukao, put away your war theories. We're not facing an enemy, but a... not-so-good-tempered teacher. Now, he's telling us to throw away our crutches and learn to walk. If we don't learn, or can't learn..."
She didn't continue, but everyone understood.
If you can't learn it, you'll be treated as a defective product and disposed of.
Dukao closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and felt as if all his strength had been drained away. He had spent his life on the battlefield, scheming his entire life, and regarding war as an art. But today, he found himself unable to even touch the edge of the chessboard.
"Lianfeng." He opened his eyes wearily.
"Yes, General."
"Encrypt and package all the combat data related to the Honkai, as well as that divine oracle, and broadcast it to all known forces in the known universe by every possible means."
Lianfeng was stunned.
"General, this...this is revealing our trump card!"
"We have no more cards to play."
Dukao chuckled self-deprecatingly.
"Now, the entire universe is a class of students, so why are we the only ones getting beaten? Hand out the test papers and let everyone see how difficult this first question is."
He paused, lowered his voice even further, and trembled slightly.
"And let them know, by the way, that the proctor... is right here on Earth."
----split line----
Demon wings, main bridge.
"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!"
Morgana's signature three-word curse echoed through the empty bridge. She kicked the holographic projection in front of her to pieces, but the damned words still stubbornly hovered in the air.
"A cane? Walking? This son of a bitch is trying to play philosophy with me?"
She paced back and forth irritably, her high heels clattering on the deck.
"Where's that perverted Karl? Isn't he the one who loves studying all this mystical stuff? Let him analyze this for me, what is this bastard up to!"
Atto, standing to the side, barely dared to breathe, and answered in a low voice:
"Your Majesty, Karl... has cut off all communication with us since those Honkai Beasts appeared. He seems... very excited."
"excited?!"
Morgana reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, instantly bristling with anger.
"The whole Earth has been fenced off and turned into a pig farm, and he's still excited? Is his brain full of shit?"
Despite her curses, Morgana knew better than anyone else that this trouble was far greater than if that bitch Keisha had been hunting her down for ten thousand years. Those Honkai Beasts were practically created to counter dark energy. Her demon army was like a pile of junk data waiting to be cleaned up by antivirus software in their presence.
run? Where to run?
That man's methods are so powerful that he could wipe out an entire fleet across a galaxy. Is the universe any bigger than the palm of his hand?
Fear, a long-forgotten fear, almost forgotten by her, crept up from the depths of her soul. The last time she felt this way was at the Super God Academy, facing that hypothetical ultimate fear.
But now, ultimate fears seem to live right on Earth, and we even think they're too noisy and want to give them a lesson.
Morgana stopped in her tracks, her chest heaving. She stared at the words, her eyes shifting between anger, fear, and resentment… ultimately coalescing into a resolute resolve.
"Ato."
"Yes, Your Majesty."