Chapter 1298: Chapter 1046: Inside Traitor?
Meanwhile, Isrile and Ruosha were also sweeping across the entire Plane. These dragon-shaped Giant Monsters appeared daily on various inhabited planets, carrying out the brutal orders to exterminate all life. As nearly the top combat force of this Plane, it was only natural for Isrile and Ruosha to take on the responsibility of protecting the people—after all, the fleets of the Azure Sky Empire and the Hong En Empire were already overwhelmed.
"We haven’t had a chance to tell Brother Long about the Star Devourers," Ruosha said to Isrile inside the Phantom Warship within Whitestar.
"Such things can be mentioned at any time, right?" Isrile said.
"I bet Brother Long gets a headache as soon as he sees that Tetrahedron," Ruosha said.
"Indeed, I really don’t know why that god favored this Tetrahedron so much," Isrile said, laughing.
"Oh right, Brother Long once said that this thing is called Eternal," Ruosha suddenly remembered.
"What it’s called isn’t important; what’s important is that it seems we’ve messed up our task," Isrile suddenly said, somewhat annoyed.
"We were supposed to rule the entire Plane, but before Brother Long could arrive, this bunch of jerks showed up," Ruosha was also very annoyed.
"Most importantly, these jerks are always teleported here, and we have no idea where they actually come from," Isrile continued.
"If I knew where they were hiding, I would dig them all out and grind them into dust!" Ruosha shouted, her eyes wide with anger.
"But for now, let’s just diligently complete our own task," Isrile said with a smile.
The next day, on this unfamiliar planet, the dragon-shaped Giant Monsters arrived as scheduled.
This time, Long Yi didn’t waste any words. He directly appeared, and under his immense divine might, the Giant Monster immediately froze. Suolin, who was on standby, swiftly delivered a Dragon Wing Slash, cutting out the Eternal from the Giant Monster’s chest and handing it to Long Yi. With a snap, the Tetrahedron shaped Eternal cracked open, a red light emerged and shot towards Long Yi, only to be trapped by a stroke of golden lightning.
"Ah! It is the great god! I am your loyal servant..."
"Cut the crap, open your consciousness!" Long Yi, feeling pressed for time, had no patience for dallying.
The Divine Worm also sensed Long Yi’s unquestionable resolve, and immediately opened its consciousness. Long Yi read information from it, nearly identical to what he had obtained from another Divine Worm earlier. Fortunately, Long Yi acquired some more detailed info—these Divine Worms all lurked within the Divine Souls, and upon being awakened, they were used as the core within these Giant Monsters. These Divine Worms all obeyed an even more powerful false god. This false god, also a Divine Worm, had established a secret factory on some planet and had even hollowed out the entire planet to construct this factory.
That was all the information they had.
Snap!
Without any chit-chat, the snake immediately shredded that Divine Worm.
"The information is a bit more detailed, but this way of gathering information is too slow; I need to change our approach," Long Yi said to Suolin.
"You’re planning to number the appearances of these Giant Monsters on each planet and then start sweeping across the entire Plane?" Suolin almost immediately understood Long Yi’s plan.
"Truly worthy of racing against time—you knew my plans as soon as I had them," Long Yi gave her a thumbs up.
"With your insatiable nature, it’s hard for me to imagine any other possibility," Suolin shook her head and laughed.
Long Yi returned to the Great Explorer and contacted Ruosha and Isrile to consult them about the timing.
"Yes, these are the times they appear. However, if these Giant Monsters are destroyed, their next appearance can’t be predicted," Ruosha confirmed. She had indeed recorded the timing since they appeared consistently, making it hard not to notice. It was only Long Yi, being new, who was unaware.
Having obtained this timetable, Long Yi did a quick sort and then placed the sorted results on the starmap. However, he noticed an interesting phenomenon. The Giant Monsters almost all centered around a certain star sector. The closer a planet was to this star sector, the earlier the Giant Monsters appeared there, and the farther from this star sector, the later they appeared. The difference in timing was minimal, almost like...
"It’s like a delay in space teleportation that scales with the square of the distance," Suolin said.
On the other end of the Array communication, Ruosha and Isrile smacked their foreheads—it was indeed the case! And over the past year, they had merely recorded the times without considering this possibility!
On the starmap, this star sector was marked with four large characters: Hong En Empire.
"These birdbrains, how dare they trick me!" Isrile’s eyes immediately reddened.
It was quite clear that these Giant Monsters, although appearing via teleportation, had a very predictable pattern, and it was almost certain they all originated from the Hong En Empire. If one were to claim the Emperor of the Hong En Empire wasn’t aware of this, nobody would believe it.
"Ah, I got this image from a worm, see if any of you recognize this city," Long Yi said as he turned the memory fragment into an image through Divine Power and transmitted it to Ruosha and Isrile via the communication array.
"This place, is it the Imperial City of the Hong En Empire? But how is that possible? The Imperial City of the Hong En Empire should be in ruins by now!" Isrile exclaimed.
"Either the memory is flawed, or you’ve been deceived," Ruosha said.
"Whatever it is, I will know soon," Isrile responded.
At that time, Isrile was in the star region of the Hong En Empire, once an ally of the Empire, and she naturally continued to help protect the entire vicinity of the Hong En Empire. The Empire had suffered grievous losses during this invasion of monsters. Including Imperial stars, most of the planets had been severely damaged, even more so than those of the Azure Sky Empire. If not for the evidence Long Yi presented being too convincing, Isrile would not have suspected the Hong En Empire.
However, if this was a ruse to inflict pain on oneself, then the Hong En Empire really took it to the extreme.
"Don’t be too rash, if this really is the main base of those monsters, we have no idea how many enemies are hidden here," Long Yi quickly stopped the impulsive Isrile.
"So, what are we going to do?" Isrile said, fuming.
"Be patient, let’s not alarm them. I’ll first round up the monsters across the entire plane to figure out what exactly is going on, and then we can talk," Long Yi said.
"Fine! I’ll listen to you!" Isrile was very trusting of Long Yi, even though she tended to believe more in her own strength. But as long as Long Yi spoke, she thought it made sense.
The Great Explorer swiftly traversed through the plane, the intelligent interface carefully calculated the paths of all the planets and its own speed, plotting a perfect route for Long Yi.
Long Yi spent an entire day exterminating over a hundred dragon-shaped Giant Monsters, also collecting over a hundred Divine Souls. The Divine Worms harbored on these Divine Souls had limited strength and provided limited information. Being used as cores ever since they were awakened, they couldn’t offer much. But through various side information, Long Yi still confirmed that the origins of those monsters were indeed the Hong En Empire.
"Maybe, we should plan a visit to the Hong En Empire, but before that, I think we should find some time to fill in the information of this plane," Long Yi said with a smile.
Indeed, ever since Long Yi had arrived here, he was hurrying into the incident with Giant Monsters, and even hadn’t had the chance to understand what exactly this plane was about, let alone understand what had happened to Ruosha and Isrile in this world.
"Then when do we start?" Isrile and Ruosha asked excitedly in unison, eager to begin.
"How about starting right now?" Long Yi said with a smile.
Meanwhile, in the interior bottom layer of the new Imperial City on the Imperial Capital Star of the Hong En Empire.
The Emperor of the Hong En Empire felt uneasy. It had been decades since he took up the secret mission assigned by a deity, and relying on the second most powerful strength in the Empire’s plane, he had discreetly developed this new world within the planet, all in fulfillment of the deity’s command.
The factories were running at full capacity, and huge metal parts were continuously assembled into dragon-shaped structures. Then, tetrahedrons were placed into the structures, which staggered off the assembly line and into the warehouse to await their deployment orders. Farther away, what was known as the Leviathan Worm, a huge assembly of worms, supplied enough worms every moment to serve as muscle for the skeletal frames of the dragon-shaped Giant Monsters.
This was a huge gamble.
The Hong En Emperor told himself. If he won, he would be the undisputed ruler of the entire plane. But if he lost, the plane along with himself would cease to exist.
But was that deity truly a deity?
The Hong En Emperor looked up to the sky where the deity hovered high above, its radiance illuminating and its divine presence faintly spreading around, just like the sun illuminating every corner around. The Hong En Emperor did not know the deity and his understanding of deities was limited to some rumors in books. But the deity before him was very different from what the rumors suggested. What she created was incredibly brutal and ruthless, and she herself was a cold and merciless being, treating all life in the middle planes as vermin, killing at whim without the slightest guilt.
In any case, this was far from the deities spoken of in legends.
But what could he do?
The Hong En Emperor thought helplessly, at least the divine might wasn’t fake, and his trembling in front of the deity wasn’t fake either. He had no choice but to follow the deity’s commands.
However, thinking about how his Empire was almost the most severely destroyed to remove any suspicion on himself, the Hong En Emperor still felt immense heartache. After all, those were his people, his wealth. Whether it was worth it or not, only time would tell.
The Emperor was wallowing in his melancholy when suddenly a message arrived; Isrile and Ruosha had come to the Hong En Empire and requested an audience with the Emperor. The Emperor’s heart skipped a beat, but he quickly laughed at himself, surely he was being too guilty. They were probably here just to discuss tactical strategies, he didn’t need to worry so much.
"Lead them to my study, tell them I’ll be right there," the Emperor instructed his guards through magic.
Then, as the Emperor raised his head to look again at the deity high above, he turned to leave, but suddenly felt an astonishing pressure magnify behind his back!
(To be continued. If you enjoyed this book, feel free to vote for it on Qidian with a recommendation or monthly ticket. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please visit m.qidian.com to read.)
