Chapter 164: Burn glass
Nan Ma had just been desperately flying towards the Six Towers Magician moments ago, but mere seconds later, he was bolting away as if his butt was on fire.
He did not need to know what Bai Zhongqi had dropped, all he needed to know was that anything Bai Zhongqi dropped was something even a seasoned Star Warrior like himself couldn't handle.
You Kang, who had been crazily steering the comet towards the ground, was now in an exceptionally good state. He was proud and brisk, feeling like a deity.
The myriad of Star Energy extracted from within the Mages was concentrated in his body and released by him; You Kang felt that with a wave of his hand, he could bring about disaster, and with the same ease, create miracles.
"What a pity, if I could use the power of the Magic Eye again, even destroying a planet would be a breeze. Hmph, let the people of Iridium Star be the starting point of our Six Towers' conquest of the universe," You Kang thought to himself, reveling in his power.
He had invoked the power of the Magic Eye a few hours ago, causing this miraculous entity to emit a terrifying scalar wave directly from the core of the planet. From activation to full explosion took some time, allowing him to comfortably arrive at the Cedar Ridge battlefield.
However, the Six Towers had tried to control this extraordinary entity for a thousand years without complete success, only able to manipulate a very small portion of its power through some cunning means and the use of Star Energy. After one such attempt, the Magic Eye would not respond to the Six Towers' calls for a long time.
After sensing the catastrophe on Infia, and feeling the disappearance of that force as terrible as the Magic Eye, concluding that the Chancellor of Iridium Star was dead, it had seemed an optimal time to unleash Judgment Day, the forbidden technique.
In the orbit above Emerald Sea Star, Bai Zhongqi reached out and grabbed the small shield that was still floating beside him, handing it to Xu Lanzhou.
He had learned from historical records what this object truly was and felt somewhat relieved that this Universe Artifact ultimately ended up in Xu Lanzhou's hands. Whether the First Universe was a game world or not, he couldn't be certain if the object could still come to the rescue in the First Universe on time.
"Thank you, Knight," Bai Zhongqi said to Xu Lanzhou with a slight smile.
Xu Lanzhou took the shield, her face slightly flushed with a cherry red. She said firmly, "Protecting you is my duty, Your Majesty."
The small shield reverted to a lapel pin, and Xu Lanzhou pinned it to her collar. Her emotions were turbulent, somewhat excited. This moment made her feel she truly was the Chancellor's Knight, her only regret not being at the Chancellor's side when the shield was activated.
Xu Lanzhou stole a glance at Bai Zhongqi's profile, feeling her heart rate quicken.
The moment the shield left Bai Zhongqi's body, You Kang's face on the ground drastically changed.
"This... it's impossible, why has that power reappeared?" This hesitation nearly caused You Kang to lose control of the complex forbidden technique of Judgment Day, and the comet fragments about to pass through the atmosphere became unstable.
Inside the Sacred Falcon, Bai Zhongqi looked down at his left arm. The instant the shield had left him, he seemed to have felt something but couldn't fully comprehend it.
You Kang's shock had not subsided when he suddenly sensed something even more terrifying. He jerked his head up, and a pitch-black object was plummeting straight down from the sky.
"No!" You Kang did not know what it was, but he had a premonition of its terror. He hastily stopped the Judgment Day technique and immediately unfolded a Star Energy Shield. Hundreds of Mages were hit by the abrupt shift in the spell, sending them tumbling in all directions, some even vomiting blood and dying on the spot.
He could not stop the object falling from the sky, and when it was about two hundred meters from the ground, it exploded violently, a blinding flash of light instantly covering the sky, and the shockwave spread outwards in a ring. Temperatures of thousands of degrees incinerated everything within several kilometers.
Even the Dragonfly Drones assigned to surveillance were vaporized in this cataclysmic explosion.
It was only through satellite imaging that Bai Zhongqi could see the full extent of what had happened there.
The Chancellor revealed a smile, murmuring to himself, "The simplest methods are often the most violent."
The device that exploded above the Mages' heads was not some intricately designed weapon, but a small tactical hydrogen bomb. The nuclear weapons of the Iridium Star folk were generations ahead of those from Earth; the environmental friendliness of this hydrogen bomb could even make environmentalists weep.
It used a plasma explosion to directly detonate the hydrogen bomb without the need for a fission trigger, carefully controlling the blast radius with no release of polluting neutrons. One could even farm the land above the explosion site without issue after the blast.
This type of Planetary Bombardment Weapon was designed for precise elimination of enemy civilizations' residential areas on the planets—simple and effective.
The remaining six planetary bombardment weapons were similar in nature; all six Mage Towers were simultaneously attacked by these hydrogen bombs. Any structure standing on the ground was engulfed, and even the ground itself was completely vitrified due to the intense heat from the hydrogen bomb explosions. The Mage Towers, built over millennia, were all wiped out today!
Your journey continues on empire
"Huh, not dead yet?" Bai Zhongqi's surprise was genuine this time.
After the bright light had faded, Bai Zhongqi saw an old man in tatters on the ground, struggling to support an energy shield but no longer able to float in the air.
There were no mages to be seen on the ground anymore; all the mages had not left any evidence of their existence in the world in that strike, not even a single molecule of their bodies remained intact.
You Kang could no longer hold on, his shield shattered, and he fell to the ground, barely alive.
"Why... why is this happening?" You Kang schemed to the end, using the power of the Magic Eye, even at the cost of destroying more than a thousand mages of the Six Towers to absorb their star energy and unleash forbidden techniques to annihilate the Iridium Star's troops—all for the sheer purpose of utterly defeating the people of the Iridium Star.
Yet the Iridium Star Chancellor did not die; he simply dropped a planetary bombardment weapon more powerful than his forbidden technique, interrupting it and destroying everything about the Six Towers.
The comet still entered the atmosphere of the Emerald Sea Star, but without protection, most of it vanished in the friction with the atmosphere, and the small amount that fell to the planet's surface was widely scattered, causing no harm to the Star Alliance military.
Nan Ma returned here again, and at this time, he seemed to have regained his former playful and smiling attitude. He had his hands in the pockets of his casual slacks, under his blazer he wore a pink T-shirt. His shiny bald head seemed less conspicuous now, due to almost the entire ground being covered in freshly burned glass.
As the command center, the aerospace destroyer also appeared in this airspace. Nan Ma looked up at the aerospace destroyer and then shifted his gaze back to You Kang.
"Old man, I have to say, you guys really do impress me a bit; you've managed to pull off some tricks that the Stellar Transmission Academy of the Empire couldn't. So, I have to thank you for serving as a live tutorial, allowing me to learn something new," said Nan Ma with a smile.
Nan Ma flipped his palm and star energy pervaded the area, rapidly being sucked into his palm, becoming a part of him. In this conservation-based universe, nothing appears or disappears out of thin air; star energy is no exception. Even though the mages had died, the high-energy explosion actually confined the star energy and prevented it from dissipating everywhere.
"The idea of absorbing someone else's star energy for one's own use is something we people of Iridium Star had never thought about. You guys are great, killing off more than a thousand Star Warriors directly, producing so much ownerless star energy. For you, absorbing these star energies is temporary, but for someone like me, a master Star Warrior, whatever I take becomes my own.
Thanks to you, I might even have the chance to reach the legendary level of Star Warrior Grandmaster in my lifetime," Nan Ma snickered.
The old man had completely lost the ability to resist, his face filled with horror.
Nan Ma reached out and grabbed his head, the remaining life force continuously flowing from the old man into Nan Ma's body, widening his smile even more.
"Ha-ha, sorry, I forgot you don't understand the Iridium Star language," he said.
He withdrew his hand, and the old man had become a corpse.
Nan Ma nodded in satisfaction and sighed, "It's a pity I couldn't absorb all the star energy here; some of it was lost. But still, this haul is quite nice."
He touched his bald head and mused, "The advantage I've gained is likely not to escape the Chancellor's eyes. To put his mind at ease, I'll need to offer up some real value. I've learned the means to absorb and transfer star energy from the folk of the Six Towers. Although those who do not possess star energy cannot accept it, it won't be a problem for Star Warriors.
"I can set up a procedure to capture the mages of the Northern Continent who do not submit to the United Empire, extract their star energy, and transfer it into the bodies of the more submissive prophets of the Southern Continent. After training them, we can still form the Star Warrior Corps that the Chancellor desires."
Nan Ma wasn't aware that his own ideas would eventually be put into practice by Bai Zhongqi, leading to decades long "Mage Hunt" on the Emerald Sea Star. This place produced an extremely high ratio of Star Warriors, but not everyone was willing to defect to Iridium Star.
When ordinary citizens learned that capturing an unregistered Star Warrior could bring them a hefty income, they crazily searched for Star Warriors, many of whom were surviving mages from the Six Towers after the war in the Northern Continent.
After these mages were captured, they were directly stripped of their star energy and couldn't even save their lives. Through this method, a group of Star Warriors with ordinary talent were infused with more star energy, thus gaining greater strength.
After the battle at Cedar Ridge, the Six Towers collapsed and alliance forces from the kingdoms collapsed. Subsequently, other countries like Belverin knew they couldn't stand against Iridium Star and chose to surrender. Group 20 of Country C's United Army completed their mission and returned to Earth. They had been on Emerald Sea Star for less than seventy days.
Bai Zhongqi deployed a force of two hundred thousand bionic human soldiers to garrison the South Coast Region of the Northern Continent. The city of Infia on Emerald Sea Star was also handed over to Governor Xiao Yu to start rebuilding from scratch.