Chapter 1796: Big Bai Is Coming!
The five Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium also discovered that Helian Lie was jumping at them in rage.
They could not help but come to a brief halt, puzzled at what exactly the insane major of the federal army was trying to do.
But the next second, the crystal cannons and honeycomb-type flying sword launchers all over their crystal suits were shining in the most dangerous colors.
The final storm was to arrive soon. Helian Lie did not care about anything. He only wanted to focus the last drop of his wisdom, courage, spirit, will, and emotions into his saber and slashed them out, not at the junk in front of him but at the infinite sea of stars. He meant to tell the whole universe...
I lived!
Helian Lie's ugly face was wearing a smile as brilliant as a young man's as he was prepared to be showered by mystic rays, bullets, radiation, waves, vibration sabers, and chainswords.
His only regret was that everything had happened too fast. He had only just found his proud heart again but did not come up with a quotation for his 'valiant sacrifice', although the quotation might only be recorded in the local textbooks of Floating Spear City.
On the other hand, nobody was around to note it down even if he came up with anything.
The next second, when the enemy's tiny flying swords and destructive mystic rays were all shot out, the five Exos of the Imperium as well as a large area around them were consumed by almost a hundred dazzling light balls!
The light balls expanded to almost a hundred square meters in only one tenth of a second, and they perished in another tenth of a second. In the brief moment that lasted less than half a second, most of the materials within the range of the light balls had been obliterated. The only thing left was scattered cosmic dust that was still emitting colorful brilliance!
White flashes were still lingering on Helian Lie's retina, but a tiny 'bubble' had appeared on the battlefield. The Exos inside the bubble suffered great casualties, like germs swallowed by leucocytes!
Helian Lie was utterly dumbfounded. Had his dragon-slaying saber not been directly attached to the armor on his palm, he would have thrown it out in shock.
"This is—"
Narrowing his eyes, he observed where the cannon fire had come from.
The remote scanning cameras on his crystal suit had been damaged. Because of the intense magnetic interference on the battlefield, he could not be connected to the battle network on his own side, which made it impossible for him to retrieve the pictures taken by the large probe cameras of the federal army.
He could only see a few broken light spots. They were like razor blades as thin as paper that were stabbing into the most vulnerable gap between the two attack groups of the Black Wind Fleet!
"It's our fleet!"
Helian Lie bulged his eyes. He grabbed the handle of his saber and bashed his helmet quickly, hoping to fix a few broken crystal cameras.
As it turned out, the maintenance technique that was quite popular among the veterans was indeed effective. The furiously burning image on his retina seemed clearer than before, allowing him to realize that it was a federal fleet that was not large in scale but amazingly fast. There was no telling where it had been hiding previously. It seemed to have directly crawled out from a hole in space.
Although his military rank was major, Helian Lie did not have any specialty in commanding or leadership. He was a pure battle-type Cultivator who always led the charge in dangerous battles, and he did not know the first thing about the competition of warships.
However, he was still a field-tested veteran in the federal army, and he could tell the situation of the battle based on his own observation and judgment.
His criterion was the unity of the exhaust flames of the starships. Regardless of the scale and capability of the two parties in the battle, it had almost always been the party whose exhaust flames were better organized that won in his experience.
Even if the two parties were mired in a mess and everybody was fighting on their own, the party that restored their exhaust flames' order would most likely recover from the chaos first and secure the final victory!
This time, the exhaust flames from the mysterious fleet on his own side were not just 'standardized'; they were almost immaculate!
Helian Le was not a man good at playing with words. Years of fighting and training had failed to grant him enough artistic cells. However, he still sensed astounding beauty from the rotation, flipping, and turning of those exhaust flames as well as the changes of their colors.
Wild bees were dancing wildly, razor blades were shaving, and a wolf pack was roaring. The charge, attack, and evasion of the mysterious fleet were so brilliant that even an outsider such as Helian Lie was able to locate the weakness of the Black Wind Fleet under their guidance that was as precise as scalpel. The whole battlefield seemed clearer than before just because of the arrival of the mysterious fleet!
Helian Lie noticed that the first and second attack groups of the Black Wind Fleet had a certain distance between each other because they had been teleported in two goes.
Before, the Heaven's Origin Sector had been completely crushed, and the Burning Prairie Fleet had been too far away to stop the two parts of the Black Wind Fleet merging and regrouping.
However, the mysterious fleet had crawled out at the most precarious moment for 'Black Swirl' and lunged at the rear of the Black Wind Fleet, which had not been stabilized yet and carried a lot of redundant objects.
Like the sharpest cleavers, they peeled the shell of the Black Wind Fleet layer after layer. Then, with their stormy bombardment, the vulnerable star beacons were all turned into fireballs!
They were far smaller than the Black Wind Fleet in terms of number. The firepower onboard did not seem as impressive, either. But when it came to the control of timing and the coordination of the starships...
They were definitely the most awesome fleet that Helian Lie had ever seen.
Helian Lie saw that the Black Wind Fleet's bottom was on fire, and its head, with 'Black Swirl' as the core, was taking a turn in fury. The enormous fleet extended six 'tentacles' made of hundreds of starships as if it were a universal octopus, trying to besiege the mysterious fleet from six directions.
The mysterious fleet, on the other hand, was like the most cunning fish that slipped out of the circle before the 'tentacles' arrived. Swimming among the interconnected pillars of light casually, it even seemed to be roaming through the courtyard of its house.
Then, it suddenly switched battle formation and began to hassle the Black Wind Fleet from the external side. Like mosquitoes that could drive people mad, the starships stood in the middle of the Black Wind Fleet's two sides and stopped them from joining each other.
The swift charge, the fierce firepower, and the effective dodging made it impossible to capture, kill, or drive away the mysterious fleet. It even did not seem to be made of enormous warships hundreds of meters long but single shuttles enveloped in bubbles!
Helian Lie did not know if the arrival of the mysterious fleet could change the whole situation. After all, their number and firepower paled in comparison to the Black Wind Fleet. The best they could do was probably stall the Black Wind Fleet for a moment through harassment.
However, the mysterious fleet did attract the enemy's full attention. The main battlefield became the joint between the two parts of the Black Wind Fleet. The Exos of the Imperium who had been cleaning the battlefield all returned crazily. The debris of the Heaven's Origin Fleet where he was at immediately cooled down.
Nobody paid any attention to him or the thousands of common soldiers who had already been killed or who were still floating quietly inside the iron cans.
If this was really a sign from the wretched heavens, it would be all the more reason why he should not idle by and wait for help.
Helian Lie searched the battlefield for a long time and found more medication drugs and high-energy food from the first-aid boxes on the crystal suits of a few comrades who had passed away. He poured the supplies into his own first-aid box. Then, luckily, he also found several jet plugins. If they were installed to his broken crystal suit, it might be slightly accelerated.
There were still intact and undamaged chainswords and vibration sabers on the battlefield, but Helian Lie could not bear to part with the dragon-slaying sword that had followed him for a long time but had already broken apart from the middle.
After all, the enormous saber had originally been almost four meters long. Even though half of the weapon was broken, even though it was full of dents and cracks and might completely fall apart at any second, it could still be dedicated to a battle!
Helian Lie turned around the handle of his saber and tapped his helmet hard. He bellowed to himself, "You are Helian Lie! You are Helian Lie! You are f*cking Helian Lie!
"Do something! Anything!"
Refreshing himself, Helian Lie activated the power rune arrays and the jet units and rushed toward the area where thousands of starships were engaged in a fierce fight.
Right now, he did not know what he could do.
But first, he needed to come up with a quote, a gallant and blood-boiling one.
...
Amateurs watched a game for fun, and insiders watched a game for observation. Unlike an outsider such as Helian Lie, the highest command center of the Defense Counsel of the Federation was experiencing a storm ten times more powerful because of the mysterious appearance of the Big Bai Fleet.
Under the arduous efforts of the specialists of crystal processors and the Spiritual Nexus, one communication route after another was repaired, and more and more probe cameras were reconnected. The previously fuzzy battlefield became clear again.
The Big Bai Fleet's trajectory of attack that was as fast as the wind and as rampant as fire was transformed into unbelievable data for all the leadership of the federation to review.
"They have directly pierced through the front part and the rear part of the Black Wind Fleet, causing large-scale chaos at the enemy's rear. Their own damage can't be higher than two percent!"
"Fifteen minutes! In only fifteen minutes, they have changed from the cone-shaped attack formation to the butterfly-shaped formation that highlights both attack and defense. Even the Burning Prairie Fleet has never achieved this in its drills! A fleet of such a scale needs at least twenty minutes to change the battle formation, not to mention one that is under the bombardment of such high-intensity firepower!"
"Is this really the Big Bai Fleet? Isn't the Big Bai Fleet a miscellaneous troop that was founded with carriers and space pirates? Despite years of training and education, their tactics were always guerilla warfare that the space pirates were best at before. How on earth can they place themselves into such an immaculate battle formation in a head-on clash between major fleets?"
"More than that. Far more than that! Look at the coordination of cannons and Exos of the Big Bai Fleet, and look at their prediction of the Black Wind Fleet's counterattack. With their shocking sense of pace, they are taking the full initiative in the battle. There's no need to mention the organization of hundreds of starships that are almost like one! Which commander even in the Burning Prairie Fleet can possibly have such amazing commanding skills?"
"Is it really Bai Xingjian that is commanding the Big Bai Fleet right now? The incompetent rogue who was kicked out by the Burning Prairie Fleet?"