Chapter 325 - Imposing Demonstration
There were three different kinds of beast puppets on the Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles.
One of them was the Mystic Wolf, which Li Yao had come across before back in the Refiners' Registration Examination.
It was a high-speed, scout-type beast puppet. Although it had a lot of drawbacks such as the weakness of the spine, limited attack range of the crystal cannons on two sides of the body, etc., it would still be a formidable enemy when the number was up to, say, a wolf pack of dozens of Mystic Wolves.
Another kind was the Electric Whip Teethed Viper.
This strangely-named beast puppet was about three meters long. It did not have any limbs. Like a serpent, it was best at searching caves and crevices.
Once they discovered an enemy, they would lash at the enemy like a whip. In the meantime, the needle-like teeth made of super alloy hiding inside their body would pierce into the enemy and bite them hard.
Then, electric current of ultra-high voltage would be unleashed, which would paralyze or even kill the enemy instantly.
As a whip full of sharp teeth and intense electricity, the Electric Whip Teethed Viper was the most suitable beast puppet for jungle combat.
The last kind was the Shrieking Bat.
This kind of beast puppet was very small in size. They could roam in narrow gaps and small caves like mice. They could also open their wings which were covered by membrane and glide for a short distance.
The most distinguished skill that it had was that it could utter a special kind of acoustic waves.
The acoustic waves were soul attacks, which could make whomever heard it irked or even dizzy.
On the other hand, the acoustic waves were a clever way of searching, too. Once they met an enemy who was releasing spiritual waves, they would bring special feedback signals to the Shrieking Bat. When the distance was short, they were much more useful than mystic lights.
Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles, Mystic Wolves, Electric Whip Teethed Vipers, and Shrieking Bats combined together made up an impenetrable dragnet which combed the forest time and time again.
"Zhi! Zhi!"
Several Shrieking Bats screamed, like iron nails scraping a metal board, as they jumped down from the trees that were more than ten meters tall and glided in the wind and rain skillfully.
"Hiss! Hiss!"
In the grass, Electric Whip Teethed Vipers were darting here and there. Their tongues protruded now and then, measuring the temperature of the air.
The tongues of the Electric Whip Teethed Vipers were refined out of special Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures with acute temperature-measuring rune arrays carved on them, which enabled them to detect creatures whose temperature was different from the surroundings. It was a piece of quite advanced probe magical equipment.
"Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!"
The Mystic Wolves were nodding their heads and wagging their tails. The crystal cannons on the two sides of their bodies were glittering, indicating that they'd been fully charged with spiritual energy and ready to be launched at any moment.
The encirclement was getting smaller and smaller.
Under the search of Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles, Mystic Wolves, Electric Whip Teethed Vipers, and Shrieking Bats, the smallest tree hollows and the most inconspicuous crevice had been dug open and scrutinized.
It was impossible that they would ignore the pond where Li Yao had been hiding in.
Li Yao remained absolutely still. He didn't even dare to blink his eyes. Staring at the Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles flying to and fro in the sky, he calculated their speed, angle, and trajectory crazily inside his brain.
He was waiting for something.
Just when the searchers were only a hundred meters away from him, the pond suddenly shivered.
Broken ripples appeared on the surface of the muddy water. Two dull noises came from far away, as if two crystal bombs had exploded deep under the sea, which were blunt and very unsettling.
Then, after a cracking sound, the hills tottered and the earth quaked, as if a lightning had struck inside one of the mountains over there.
"It has begun!"
Li Yao was refreshed.
Tide Berserker finally opened fire!
The first two dull noises were the sound of explosions of the Earthshaking Ordnance Penetrators deep under the ground.
The louder noise that followed must be the roars from the Heaven Splitters.
Despite their amazing attack ability which could be as good as a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, it required half an hour before the Heaven Splitters were fully charged with spiritual energy, which meant that they could only be fired twice an hour.
Now that the Heaven Splitters had been engaged, it was evident enough that the attacks were not reconnaissance by fire. Tide Berserker must've locked onto a target and had started the hunting game.
'It's my chance!
'The crystal warship has located at least one crystal suit and will be too occupied to bother with me before it captures or suppresses the crystal suit.'
Li Yao smiled and looked at the Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles in the sky coldly.
'Now it's the time to let you know who the hunter is and who the prey is!'
At the commanding center of the Fifth Fleet, military officials, including Shangguan Ce and Ren Xingbei, and representatives from the Cultivation world, including Yuan Manqiu and Jiang Sheng, were gazing at the giant light beam which had been segmented into hundreds of smaller parts.
Each part was displaying the real-time first-person images captured by the crystal cameras on the crystal warship, Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles, Mystic Wolves, Electric Whip Teethed Vipers, and Shrieking Bats.
All of the audience on the spot were high-level Cultivators who were capable enough to monitor the hundreds of pictures at the same time and sketch the overall situation on the battlefield inside their brain easily.
However, there were not first-person pictures from the four crystal suits.
It was because in order to transmit the real-time image signals, there would be feeble spiritual waves from the crystal suits, which were quite easy to be detected and thus would give the Exos away.
Therefore, the four crystal suits and the commanding center were not connected via the Spiritual Nexus.
All the data would be stored in the main crystal processor of the crystal suits and analyzed later after the battle.
That was to say, all the Cultivators inside the commanding center were only able to side with the crystal warship and see what Ning Feng was seeing.
They had no idea where the four crystal suits were hiding, or what they were doing at present, which added more suspense to the battle that was already intense and thrilling enough.
Hundreds of pictures were blinking nonstop, mountains, forests and rivers each replacing one another.
Suddenly, one of the pictures started flashing violently.
As if it were contagious, dozens of pictures nearby started glittering crazily, too.
After a short while, all the pictures were focused on the same crevice, where a blurred, but still very distinctive, figure had been outlined.
"The first crystal suit has been discovered!"
"The Sword Torrent Battlesuit!"
Right now, only 2 hours, 27 minutes and 36 seconds had passed after the arrival of the crystal warship.
Cultivators from the three sword-training sects sighed and buried their heads in their hands helplessly at the same time.
Cultivators from other organizations, on the other hand, looked at each other and were somewhat relieved.
Shangguan Ce's eyelids twitched. Although he did not say anything, his rolling Adam's apple was indicative enough of the uneasiness on his mind.
The corner of Ren Xingbei's mouth was twitching, too. His eyes were completely bloodshot immediately. The rapidly shivering lips seemed to be suggesting that he was cursing someone silently.
The Sword Torrent Battlesuit had been hiding in a cave which had been filled with rainwater because of the thunderstorm. It had decorated a thick layer of vines and weeds outside of the cave as camouflage, too.
But Sha Yucheng was not aware that the seemingly perfect disguise in fact had given himself away easily.
A large quantity of data regarding field vegetation had been stored in the control chip of the Electric Whip Teethed Vipers and Shrieking Bats, which allowed them to roughly analyze whether a certain environment was natural or man-made.
Although the result may not be very accurate, they could always perform more thorough searches on the suspicious areas.
In this case, the different temperatures between the Sword Torrent Battlesuit and its surroundings were detected immediately.
By their acoustic waves, the Shrieking Bats sensed that a giant metal object was using the waterlogged cave as a shelter, too.
Within the next 0.1 seconds, the information that the beast puppets had gathered was transmitted to the Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles.
After another 0.1 seconds, the information had been delivered to the cockpit of the crystal warship.
Ning Feng immediately issued a command. Twelve flying swords darted out from four Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles at the waterlogged cave.
The Taiyi Lightning Railguns, which had been long prepared, were activated, too. One lightning ball after another thrashed the cave magnificently.
"Swoosh! Swoosh!"
Two Earthshaking Ordnance Penetrators, driven by the power rune arrays, drilled into the cave at an amazingly high speed with colorful brightness behind them.
When Ning Feng was quiet, the world was peaceful. But when Ning Feng took action, the world seemed to be overturned.
It was not until this moment that Sha Yucheng realized he had made an unforgivable mistake. The cave that he'd been hiding in only had one entrance. It was a dead end inside!
So, he could do nothing but roar and rush out against the lightning balls and the Earthshaking Ordnance Penetrators!
"Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!"
Hundreds of flying swords were summoned out. They spun around his body and wove a tight sword net. Together with the spiritual shield, his defense ability was brought to maximum and shattered the twelve incoming, hostile flying swords into pieces. Then he charged at where the Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles and beast puppets were densest.
Sha Yucheng was hoping that he could march into the middle of enemies and use the enemies as his own cover, so that the crystal warship would hesitate to bombard its allies.
However, it was like quenching thirst with poison.
Once he was engaged with the Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles and the beast puppets, it would be hardly possible to run away from them anyway.
"BOOM! BOOM!"
Lightning balls exploded one after another behind him. The hot air almost pushed him over, who looked like a butterfly in a heavy storm.
"BOOM! BOOM!"
Two dull noises came from deep under the ground, as if the magma there was bursting out.
They were the results of the two Earthshaking Ordnance Penetrators that had exploded deep inside the mountains. Their blast had crushed all the caves and crevices inside the mountain!
"Zi… Zi…"
A weird clattering noise almost scared Sha Yucheng out of wits.
He knew that it was the sound when the Heaven Splitters were being launched.
A moment later, an ivory light beam illuminated the dark night and turned it into broad daylight briefly.
But the attack was not aiming at the Sword Torrent Battlesuit, but at the other side of the mountain.
Sha Yucheng was hardly back to himself when he realized something.
"A second crystal suit has been discovered!"
The second crystal suit to be discovered was the Mournful Mist Battlesuit.
The Sword Torrent Battlesuit was to blame for the Mournful Mist Battlesuit's misfortune.
As a high-speed stealth crystal suit that was best at disguises, the Mournful Mist Battlesuit had chosen an open cave which had five entrances in different directions as well as an underground river that was connected to the outside world.
The Mournful Mist Battlesuit hid deep inside the cave. The stealth ability that it entailed covered up all of the traces and cut off metal and spiritual reactions. Its temperature was lowered to exactly the same degree as the surroundings.
Even the Electric Whip Teethed Vipers and the Shrieking Bats came right front of the crystal suit, they might not be able to notice its existence.
However, it was unluckily hiding in the same mountain as the Sword Torrent Battlesuit was.
After the two Earthshaking Ordnance Penetrators drilled into the underground and boomed, most of the caves inside the mountain collapsed, including the one that the Mournful Mist Battlesuit had been hiding in.
Seeing that the stalactites over his head were falling upon him and the cave he'd been hiding in were shaking violently, Feng Kai, Exo of the Mournful Mist Battlesuit, had no choice but to open up his spiritual shield for defense.
A Shrieking Bat that happened to be flying outside the cave immediately discovered him.
Since there were not many Vicious Bee Armed Shuttles nearby, there was a good chance that the Mournful Mist Battlesuit could run away again.
Therefore, without any hesitation, Ning Feng had launched the Heaven Splitters.
At this moment, the crystal warship had been out for only 2 hours, 31 minutes and 59 seconds.