Chapter 2488: Chapter 2488
"Not so fast—come back and rest for a while!" Ye Liuyun quickly intercepted, stashing it away into his spatial realm before the Devourer could even protest.
"..."
The creature barely had time to object before Ye Liuyun whisked it back to its own pocket dimension. He didn’t dare let the Devourer continue its rampage—unleashing all the alien forces at once might overwhelm the Sacred Dynasty’s army. This much was enough to keep them occupied for a while.
As he withdrew the Devourer, Ye Liuyun also snatched up a dwindling core of primal energy that had been pinned beneath it. Though nearly depleted, the residual power was still sufficient to fuel a massive 100,000-class warship. No way was he leaving that for the enemy.
"Attack!"
The moment the Devourer vanished, Liu Kui, the Sacred Dynasty’s high commander, barked the order. Tens of thousands of Swiftwings surged forward, raining destruction upon the alien forces.
Cheers erupted from the soldiers and martial cultivators alike.
Seeing the onslaught, the two remaining alien warships flung open their hatches, deploying their own Swiftwings to counter the assault while scrambling to evacuate their troops inside. Amid the chaos, Ye Liuyun—still cloaked—slipped in among the retreating aliens.
"Charge!"
Simultaneously, several Sacred Dynasty battalions stormed in from the ground. The alien commander could only rally those too slow to escape, ordering them to fight barehanded to buy time for the others. But a single volley from the dynasty’s archers mowed them down in droves. The battlefield dissolved into pandemonium, clashes raging both in the skies and on the ground.
Inside the warship, Ye Liuyun recoiled at the suffocating stench of malevolence and the reek of feral beasts. Gritting his teeth, he suppressed his breathing just to endure the foul air.
"Once we take over this battleship, we’ll need to air it out properly!" he thought to himself.
Every battleship had two critical areas: the cockpit and the energy chamber. Before entering, Ye Liuyun had noticed the alien elites all gathered in the cockpit, spectating some commotion. So he decided to seek out the energy chamber first.
Located at the very heart of the vessel—its most secure position—the energy chamber had surprisingly few guards. The soldiers on duty seemed lax, some even chatting idly among themselves. Various alien technicians bustled in and out, carrying repair tools and metal components, clearly the maintenance crew.
These alien mechanics weren’t particularly powerful. Ye Liuyun slipped in unnoticed, shadowing one of them through the entrance.
The moment he stepped inside, a surge of intense energy hit him like a wave.
The chamber was a vast space crisscrossed with pipes leading in all directions. At their convergence point hovered an enormous energy sphere, its base connected to humming machinery. Beside it sat an alien elite deep in cultivation.
The alien suddenly looked up in Ye Liuyun’s direction, as if sensing something amiss, though uncertainty flickered across his face.
Ye Liuyun froze, not daring to move a muscle. Only when the maintenance worker he’d followed had moved deeper into the chamber did the alien finally lower his gaze and resume meditating by the pulsating sphere.
This colossal energy sphere contained the core essence of an entire dimensional world—and judging by its size, a substantial one at that. Most of its energy remained untapped. The alien stationed here served dual purposes: guarding the sphere while absorbing its residual energy for cultivation.
Moving with painstaking slowness, Ye Liuyun inched closer to the alien elite. When he’d closed enough distance, he summoned his doppelganger—also cloaked in invisibility—and together they launched a synchronized soul attack.
The alien detected the spatial disturbance as the doppelganger materialized, but before he could react, both Ye Liuyun’s and his double’s spiritual forces had already invaded his consciousness, branding him with a slave seal.
Through soul extraction, Ye Liuyun gleaned a wealth of new intelligence.
The alien was named Nolin. Their army was led by a golden-armored alien called Wanteng, who had been dispatched from a place they referred to as Headquarters.
However, Wanteng was stationed on another battleship. Here, command fell to a silver-armored deputy leader named Lido, the most powerful alien aboard this vessel.
Through his mental probing, Ye Liuyun also learned that their so-called Headquarters was located on a planet called the Wumo Realm. It wasn’t their home base, and it was a staggering two years’ journey away—far too distant to be of immediate concern.
Even the aliens themselves recognized the impracticality of such a distance, as supplying troops would be a logistical nightmare. That was why they planned to seize the Sacred Planet, where they intended to set up an altar and establish a secondary stronghold. This would allow them to teleport soldiers and resources directly.
But when Ye Liuyun tried to locate their true home base, he discovered that it could only be accessed through these altars.
Equipment like their Swift Falcons and other gear were all transported from Headquarters via teleportation arrays. After conquering the Wumo Realm, they hadn’t drained its source energy and had even left behind many alchemists and weapon-forging martial cultivators.
Delving deeper into the alien’s consciousness, Ye Liuyun uncovered a wealth of information about the battleship’s structure, gaining a far clearer understanding of its design.
These colossal warships were actually replicas of vessels originally brought from their home base. It was evident that the inhabitants of the Wumo Realm possessed formidable crafting skills—yet the aliens’ homeworld likely surpassed even that level of technological prowess.
This particular alien had retained so much knowledge precisely because its sole duty was guarding the energy sphere, keeping it out of combat. Otherwise, the aliens routinely erased portions of their soldiers’ and elites’ memories to prevent humans from extracting intelligence through soul-searching techniques if they were captured.
Armed with this information, Ye Liuyun decided against hastily claiming the energy sphere, lest he alert the alien elites.
There were thirty such formidable warriors aboard this ship alone—individuals Ye Liuyun classified as those capable of battling the Nine-Headed Demon Dragon, undoubtedly all at the third level of the Heavenly Realm.
If he wanted to seize this battleship, he would have to wait until the fighting began and some of these elites were drawn away. Only then would he have a chance to strike.
As for the golden-armored commander Wanteng’s flagship, it housed over forty martial elites—making it an even harder target than this one.
With that in mind, Ye Liuyun left the energy chamber to assess the situation outside.
But when he emerged, he found the battle had already concluded—with the aliens suffering a crushing defeat. They had lost one colossal battleship, over twenty thousand Swift Falcons, numerous large and small warships, two to three hundred thousand soldiers, and more than a dozen elite warriors.
Meanwhile, the Holy Dynasty had only lost around five thousand Flying Swallows, a few elite warriors, and a small number of soldiers, which greatly boosted their morale.
The alien forces, having suffered a setback in their first battle, gathered their commanders and elite warriors to discuss their next move. Unable to understand their language and wary of being discovered, Ye Liuyun decided to explore other parts of the massive warship.
The interior of the vessel was divided into multiple levels, resembling the labyrinthine structure of a colossal building. The living and training quarters for the alien soldiers were vast chambers capable of housing thousands—chaotic and disorderly, much like a beast’s den.
Ye Liuyun took one glance at the squalid conditions and quickly moved on, eager to distance himself from the unsettling scene.
