The Siege Tortoise of the Heavenly Craft Sect was an atrocity of wood and flesh. It stood thirty meters tall, a fortress on legs, its carapace reinforced with ironwood and wet leather. But it wasn't the size that sickened Ye Bai; it was the fuel.
The Null-Qi Zone stripped the air of energy, so the Sect had brought their own. Along the flanks of the massive machine, hundreds of cages hung suspended. Inside, mortal slaves screamed as red tubes drained their life essence directly into the construct's engine. The gears turned not with the clean hum of electricity, but with the wet, grinding sound of blood magic.
"Barbarians," Ye Bai spat, leveling the alien Plasma Rifle. He didn't know how the internal mechanisms worked, but the balance was perfect. He applied the principles of the Sword—breath, focus, intent.
He squeezed the trigger.
PEW.
A bolt of superheated blue plasma crossed the desert floor in an instant. It slammed into the Tortoise's leg, vaporizing a chunk of ironwood.
"Hit!" Sergeant Zhou cheered from the hatch of the Sovereign Express. "Keep firing! Don't let them close the distance!"
But the Tortoise was massive. It absorbed the shots, its blood-fueled regeneration knitting the wood back together with writhing crimson tendrils. The beast roared—a sound amplified by the dying screams of the slaves—and plowed forward. Its massive beak slammed into the side of the Sovereign Express.
CRUNCH.
The Land Train groaned, tilting dangerously on its tracks. Sparks showered the interior as the hull plates buckled.
"They are boarding!" Zhou shouted, racking the slide of his shotgun. "Repel boarders!"
Disciples of the Heavenly Craft Sect leaped from the Tortoise onto the roof of the train. They wielded blood-stained saws and hammers, their eyes crazed from the side effects of the blood rituals. In the Null-Zone, they were physically weaker than usual, but the blood stims gave them a berserker strength.
Inside the Silo Control Room, the vibrations of the battle shook dust from the ceiling.
Jiang Chen didn't look up. He was typing.
His fingers flew across the ancient, tactile keyboard. The interface was sluggish, waking up from a ten-thousand-year nap, but the connection light finally turned green.
[Project Gungnir: Online.][Satellite Grid: 4/12 Active.][Targeting System: Locked.]
"Administrator!" Old Wu yelled over the radio. "They are cutting through the roof of the Engine Car! We can't hold them off forever!"
"We don't need forever," Jiang Chen said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "We just need gravity."
He looked at the tactical map. The red dot of the Siege Tortoise was pressed right against the blue dot of the Sovereign Express.
"Danger Close," Jiang Chen muttered. "Ye Bai. Get the men inside the armored cars. Brace for seismic impact."
"Seismic?" Ye Bai's voice crackled back. "Are you detonating the reactor?"
"No," Jiang Chen watched the countdown on the screen reach zero. "I'm dropping a rock."
High above the atmosphere, in the silent vacuum of space, a satellite woke up. It was a coffin-shaped construct of black metal, drifting among the stars. It rotated slowly, pointing its belly toward the planet below.
The bay doors opened.
Inside sat a cylinder of solid Tungsten. Twenty feet long. One foot wide. No explosives. No guidance chips. No Qi.
Just a dense, heavy rod.
Magnetic clamps released.
The rod fell.
It entered the atmosphere at Mach 10. The air in front of it didn't just heat up; it turned into plasma. It became a streak of fire, a meteor that obeyed only one master: Isaac Newton.
On the ground, Elder Geng of the Heavenly Craft Sect stood on the head of his Siege Tortoise, laughing maniacally. He held a blood-soaked whip.
"Break them!" Geng screamed at his disciples. "Tear open their metal shell! We shall feast on their blood! Their 'science' is weak! Only sacrifice brings power!"
He looked down at the Sovereign Express. It was just a train. It was trapped. He had won.
Then, the shadows changed.
The bright desert sun seemed to dim. A high-pitched whine, like the tearing of the sky itself, pierced the air. It was a sound so loud it bypassed the ears and vibrated the bones.
Elder Geng looked up.
He saw a line of fire descending from the zenith.
"A falling star?" Geng blinked. "Is this... a Heaven Tier spell?"
He tried to sense the Qi. There was none. It was just metal.
"It... it has no magic," Geng whispered, confusion replacing his bloodlust. "It's just... falling?"
The logic of the Cultivation World failed him. He expected a barrier. He expected a counter-spell. He didn't expect a telephone pole moving at 7,000 miles per hour.
"Move!" Geng screamed, realizing the sheer kinetic energy heading his way. "Turn the beast! MOVE!"
But you cannot dodge gravity.
The Rod from God struck.
It hit the center of the Siege Tortoise's shell.
There was no explosion in the traditional sense. The rod didn't detonate. It simply transferred its kinetic energy into the ground.
THOOM.
The impact turned the Siege Tortoise into mist. Wood, flesh, iron, and Elder Geng were instantly liquefied by the shockwave. The rod punched through the construct, through the sand, and buried itself a hundred meters into the bedrock.
The shockwave expanded outward in a perfect circle of dust and overpressure.
The Heavenly Craft disciples on the train roof were blown off like leaves in a hurricane. The Sovereign Express, heavy as it was, lifted off its tracks on one side before slamming back down with a bone-jarring crash.
Then, silence.
The dust cloud was massive, rising like a mushroom cloud, but made of sand.
Ye Bai slowly stood up in the command car, wiping blood from his nose. He looked out the reinforced viewport.
Where the Siege Tortoise had stood, there was nothing. No wreckage. No bodies. Just a perfectly circular crater, smoking in the heat.
"By the Sword..." Ye Bai whispered. "What technique was that?"
The Ronin Guards were picking themselves up, staring out the windows. They were soldiers. They were used to artillery. But this was different. This was precise, divine judgment.
"That wasn't a technique," Sergeant Zhou murmured, his eyes wide. "That was... absolute."
The back door of the Silo opened. Jiang Chen walked out into the blinding sunlight. He adjusted his coat, shielding his eyes to look at the crater.
He walked past the stunned survivors of the Heavenly Craft Sect—those who had been far enough away to only be knocked unconscious. They were waking up, looking at the crater where their invincible war machine used to be. They looked at Jiang Chen with the eyes of men seeing a deity.
Jiang Chen stopped at the edge of the crater. The sand at the bottom had turned to glass.
"Ye Bai," Jiang Chen called out.
The Sword Saint climbed out of the train, limping to his side.
"You asked about the Old Gods," Jiang Chen said, pointing to the sky. "They didn't use Qi. They used mass * velocity squared."
Ye Bai looked up at the empty blue sky. He realized then that the heavens were not empty. They were armed.
"The Heavenly Craft Sect..." Ye Bai looked at the glass pit. "They spent centuries studying mechanics. They sacrificed thousands of lives to power that machine. And you erased it with a rod of metal."
"Cruelty is inefficient," Jiang Chen turned back to the train. "Let's load the data. We have an appointment with the future."
As the Sovereign Express limped away, dragging its battered hull back toward the city, the surviving Heavenly Craft disciples didn't attack. They didn't run. They knelt in the sand, bowing toward the crater, their minds broken by the revelation that their blood magic was nothing compared to the cold, hard math of the stars.