Chapter 1 The Saint Mountain Falls

Thanks to Hao Ren’s quick thinking—or perhaps his long years as an inspector had honed his sensitivity to the unimaginable—everyone had safely retreated into the corridor when the tens of thousands of tons of rock fragments rained down like a storm. This included the soldiers who had just appeared on the other platforms, who also retreated in time after his warning. The rocks fell like rain towards the bottom of the cave or rolled down the mountainside. These rocks from the summit of Saint Mountain had been brought to the ground by brave young werewolves over thousands of years, but today they collapsed in an unimaginable way. Uruk watched this scene, his eyes flashing with light, unsure of what he was thinking. Becky, thinking he was worried about his tribesmen living around Saint Mountain, comforted him, "Don't worry, werewolves are so alert and strong, they must have evacuated safely when they noticed something was wrong."

"I'm not worried about that," Uruk shook his head. "No tribes live permanently on the main peak of Saint Mountain. We all live on the two side peaks and the mountains west of Saint Mountain. I just can't believe the sacred Saint Mountain is destroyed like this… You probably can't understand what this mountain means to us."

Izhaks looked up at the corridor ceiling. As the mountain trembled, sand and soil continued to fall from the seams of the metal plates on the roof of the corridor, but the surrounding tremors were gradually subsiding. Obviously, the most powerful wave of rockfall had ended, and the mechanical devices inside Saint Mountain were also shutting down. He turned to look at Uruk, "It's starting to calm down, don't worry, this mountain won't be completely destroyed, it might just change shape."

Uruk could only accept this explanation now.

At this moment, the data terminal beside Hao Ren suddenly began to vibrate, and then a panicked voice came from the communication channel: "Hey, hey, hey—Iron Man? Iron Man, can you hear me? Is this how you talk? Anyone there?"

Hao Ren jolted awake and remembered that the Wolf King and other war wolves were still on the mountainside below Saint Mountain. He quickly asked about the situation: "Received, received. How are things on your side? Any wolf casualties?"

"Damn, that scared me to death," the Wolf King's voice sounded full of energy, but a little panicked. "What the hell was that just now... Suddenly things were going up and falling down... Luckily, we have good ears. When we heard something was wrong inside the mountain, we ran down quickly. We just hid in a valley. Oh, one unlucky bastard broke his leg after being hit by a rock, and he's howling over there. Someone come and help him later."

Hearing that the Wolf King was fine, Hao Ren and Uruk breathed a sigh of relief. The Wolf King still had something to say, "What was that thing that flew up just now? The back half of it is getting brighter and brighter. I feel itchy all over my body..."

"Getting brighter?" Hao Ren's heart tightened. He suddenly remembered some scenes he had seen in Iva's memory. Ignoring the scattered rocks still falling outside, he ran towards the corridor exit, holding up his shield. At this time, most of the platform where everyone had been standing had been smashed to pieces. Hao Ren could only stand sideways on a shaky steel beam. He looked up and saw the black warship hovering in the high sky, seemingly not planning to continue ascending into space. On the back half of the ship, the layers of black crystalline panels were gradually being covered by electric light. Half of the ship seemed to have turned into a bright luminous body, making it look like a strange and huge firefly.

But this "firefly" carried destructive power. As the light filled the sky, a strange energy began to permeate the entire Saint Mountain area, even the entire Beinz Diocese. Everyone felt a tingling sensation as if static electricity was brushing against their skin, and the crystal mines in the crystal mine resonated with a fluorescent glow that gradually spread. Lily forcefully pressed down the fluff that had exploded on her tail, and Roll kept grabbing his tail and smoothing it out. Nangong Wuyue and Aier Sha subconsciously exchanged glances. An inexplicable sense of fear, as if engraved deep in their genes, made them feel at a loss.

In that instant, Hao Ren also felt that sense of fear, but this fear was not his own, but left over from Iva's memory—ten thousand years ago, planet Aiou was destroyed by an emp-like energy shock released by the black warship. The last scene he saw in that memory was the black warship charging in this manner.

Obviously, the Brain Monster didn't plan to leave just like that. It wanted to destroy the planet's ecosystem. It had stayed here for so long, scheming for so long, and the ultimate goal remained unchanged: to reset all the creatures on the planet.

"Damn it, it's going to release an electromagnetic storm!" Hao Ren suddenly felt cold sweat pouring out. This situation was beyond his control. "Terminal, deploy the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace to orbit and prepare for a forced bombardment!"

"Are you sure? Even if we can destroy it with one shot, its explosion could destroy the entire western continent."

"It's better than a global wipe and reset!" The veins on Hao Ren's forehead popped out. "Aoufla, immediately notify everyone to evacuate. Don't be stingy with the cost of teleportation arrays. Run as far as you can, as fast as you can! This thing..."

Hao Ren's voice was suddenly interrupted by a series of explosions from high altitude.

He saw a series of fine rays of light suddenly erupting from the waist of the black warship. Then, a large number of colorful light bullets and insect-like small dots flew from the eastern sky and hit the black warship. The continuous explosions seemed to slow down the black warship's charging speed a little. Hao Ren didn't understand what was going on at first, but he soon realized the reason: Hordies was firing at this suddenly emerging behemoth.

The Holletta people in the floating fortress were startled at first. They had never seen such a thing, and didn't even know if it was a blasphemous creation of the evil god or a divine miracle that the goddess had sent down to destroy the evil god. But after receiving frontline reports from some soldiers, they realized that this was an evil weapon that was about to threaten the entire world, so they didn't hesitate to launch an attack on it.

The magisters of Hordies no longer had to worry about the possibility of having to fire on Saint Mountain—they began to turn all the magic cannons towards the black ship in the sky, which was unable to evade because it was charging. Thousands of magic cannons surrounded by magical light released colorful magic bullets, and the siege crossbows fixed on the city walls also released specially made crossbow bolts that had been prepared long ago. Those crossbow bolts were wrapped in wind magic, and their tips were tied with the most powerful explosives that the Holletta people could manufacture—although these explosives could only create small fireworks on the advanced alien spaceship, the natives of this planet ultimately had no choice but to sit and wait for death.

"Will it work?" Aoufla murmured, looking up at the light erupting from the black spaceship.

"It won't work, but it's brave," Hao Ren replied simply, then disappeared into a beam of white light along with the data terminal. All his tenants disappeared with him, leaving only one sentence echoing in the air, "We're going to solve this problem in space."

Uruk looked around, "Where did they go? Did they run away?"

"No, they went to solve the problem," Aoufla turned and walked in the direction of departure. "Everyone, assemble the team and evacuate, move faster!"

Hao Ren went to space to prepare his main gun and tried his best to lure the black spaceship into space. He tried to release some engineering drones to harass the enemy ship, and then provocatively used all the radar on the ship to illuminate the enemy ship—but it was hard to say whether these provocations and taunts would work. He himself might be a good MT who could hold the monster, but obviously his ship was not. The taunting effect of radar illumination didn't seem to be very good.

At the same time, Hordies' attack on the black spaceship continued unabated. The Holletta people had realized that there was a huge gap between their power and that of the monster, but under the impetus of some belief, or perhaps just pure fanaticism, not a single soldier retreated. Hordies' main magic array was opened to the maximum, and the entire aerial fortress was emitting a brilliant light. The roar of the magic cannons continued to ring out almost tearing the sky. The black spaceship seemed to finally notice the noisy stone city beside it. A light lit up on the upper deck, and a secondary gun fired. A flame of explosion lit up above Hordies, and the floating city's shield swayed in the blink of an eye.

"Continue firing!" A magister commanding the cannon shouted, "Our mission is to fire, don't worry about anything else!"

At this moment of explosion and roar, a beam of light suddenly rose from the center of Hordies.

Some monks seemed to feel something and looked at the light column in unison. They were surprised to see the Pope appearing in that light.

The Pope's body was slightly hunched, and he squinted at the black spaceship. The charging light of the latter seemed to make it difficult for him to open his eyes. He was surrounded by protective divine magic, and he held a holy book tightly in his hand. After whispering something, the old man made a move that surprised everyone.

He stepped forward—towards the black warship.