Xyrin Empire
Chapter 590 Lilina, Look What You’ve Done

Chapter 590: Chapter 590 Lilina, Look What You’ve Done

The twenty-meter-tall combat robot gleamed with an icy metallic luster, its body covered in super alloy armor almost entirely composed of fearsome killing weapons. Missile slots in its legs, the auxiliary laser gun on its right shoulder, the missile arrays mounted on its arm shields, and the laser rifles in its hands that could serve as main cannons on tanks—all, coupled with other miscellaneous slots that could possibly hold weapons, formed a mobile firepower fortress. This was clearly an artillery-type battle robot, exceptionally skilled at long-range firepower suppression. The external missile guns and cannons may have affected the mecha’s agility in close combat, but the ability to cover an entire small ground unit with instant firepower output also made close combat unnecessary—moreover, in the great interstellar age where everyone had laser guns, large combat robots like these weren’t suitable for close combat.

It looked like it was even mightier than a Gundam. Although the Xyrin People had long abandoned the usage of mechas which weren’t adaptable to large-scale fleet battles, and instead shifted their focus to single soldier fighter jets and aerial Xyrin Apostles, it was undeniable that for "lower-level civilizations," this device still seemed quite imposing.

Visca just stood there, dumbfounded, under the mecha as it took steps towards him. After craning his neck at a ninety-degree angle with some effort, he gazed at the sharp, metallic head of the other as if he hadn’t quite reacted yet. After a long while, he finally opened his mouth and exclaimed, "Wow."

Everyone on our side taller than 1.2 meters trembled—a collective sifting through chaff—and then, impressively, hundreds of people uniformly retreated several dozen meters.

"Hah!"

Just as I had anticipated, a huge vein throbbed on Visca’s forehead, then he leaped from where he stood—just like an agile monkey—pattering up the humanoid robot’s body and standing on its shoulder in two seconds.

"Boss!" A panicky voice sounded immediately over the radio, "Boss! Something... something just hit my mecha!"

"Don’t be paranoid! It’s just an abandoned base!" Beck, who was also scared by the ghostly occurrence earlier, actually began lecturing his subordinates, "Interstellar ghosts are just nonsense made up by those pirate groups from killing too many and losing their sanity... Hey! Where are you pointing that laser gun!"

Beck frantically pointed towards the abnormal combat mecha, which although standing still, its shoulder-mounted laser gun eerily rotated on its own, now aiming directly at the center of the defense circle formed by the people; having one’s own laser gun pointed at one’s head was certainly not a pleasant affair. Just as everyone thought the mecha’s pilot was about to betray them, the rotating laser gun continued to move and then, accompanied by a burst of dazzling electric sparks, the meters-long barrel was bizarrely twisted off and smashed heavily to the ground.

"Waaah! Ghosts!!!"

Completely clueless about the situation, with his shoulder weapon twisted off by an enormous force, the pilot of the mecha screamed exaggeratedly.

"There’s something, there’s something on my back!" The unlucky pilot’s voice echoed over the radio, tearfully crying out for help as the twenty-meter-tall robot violently twisted its body, as if trying to shake some invisible enemy off, "It’s on my back..."

Before he could finish speaking, the possibly-ton-heavy jetpack attached to the mecha’s back was also torn off with massive force amid violent electric sparks, thrown into outer space after spinning twice in the air, and exploded into a brilliant fireball.

Following that, the missile launchers, shoulder armor, communication attachments, no matter how frantically the mecha’s pilot twisted his body, some invisible "demon" was still firmly clinging onto it. In a series of sparking showers, the entire mecha was gradually disassembled in mid-air. Visca, severely blackened, clung onto the twenty-meter-tall robot like an insignificant insect, yet with shocking efficiency, peeled one steel plate after another off the opponent’s body with his seemingly weak little hands. Meanwhile, other members of the Private Piracy Group were already terrified by the eerie scene; they were just a bunch of reckless war profiteers, bold enough to ambush a mining ship but cautious about escort fleets. These few combat mechas were their prized possessions and their sleek, battle-worn appearances testified to their frequent participation in real battles. Against such unorganized small-time thieves, a few who could shoot, including a pair of brothers named Beckham who seemed present only for comic relief, the chaotic situation unfolded. Pavers and engineering robots aimlessly roamed around the "mad" mecha, completely unable to prevent the towering war machines from being "possessed"; the four unpossessed mechas helplessly assumed combat stances, hoping to pin down the strange one with simple grappling tactics, but had no idea how to start, while the Beckham brothers and a group of gunmen were performing the Lingbo Micro-step all over the place—they had to be careful lest they be crushed under the large feet of the mechas.

"I can’t see! I can’t see!" wailed the unlucky mechanic, having made a positional error that got him into this mess. It turns out Visca had climbed onto the shoulders of his mecha, dismantled its weapon racks and external armor, and delivered a sidekick straight to the sharply angled metal head, severing it from the torso and making it disappear into the sea of stars. The impact alone must have reached thousands of tons. Little Loli, far from merely being angry, seemed to have found a fun new toy and avidly engaged in the new game of dismantling mechas bare-handed. The twenty-meter-tall combat robot twisted and turned under the continuous cries of the pilot, shedding parts like rain.

A sudden flash of blue and white light streaked by. The already panic-stricken mechanic nervously pulled the trigger of his laser rifle, inadvertently nearly hitting his allies. But the next moment, the giant rifle in his hands snapped in two, a clean cut glowing red-hot at the edges—the work of a hand-chop from Visca. With this, the unlucky mecha was completely disarmed.

Upon realizing he was disarmed, the blind pilot finally broke down and cried out loudly over the radio in a despairing tone that made me imagine a Tianjin accent: "It’s over, it’s over, boss. An Interstellar Ghost has clung onto me; everybody, run, it’s going to chew through the cockpit soon... Wuu wuu wuu, I knew I shouldn’t have touched such a fat piece of bait..."

As he spoke, the mecha’s arms, twisted by an invisible force, were flung three hundred and sixty degrees and thrown a kilometer away.

"...Damn, such a huge base flattened in an instant, not a single corpse left, what a deep grudge this must be— I always said there was something off about this place, but no one listened to me... Wuu wuu wuu, I have an elderly mother in her eighties and a young child of eight to take care of. My father only found a wife in his thirties, and I had a child at forty-two only to end up in this garbage-picking job for a (bleep) D-license, you think that was easy? Bribing examiners with cigarettes and liquor..."

The ground shook, and the legs of the mecha, invisibly kicked by Visca, broke off, smashing the tens of tons of steel into the ground. The massive impact barely registered to the inside pilot, who seemed not quite right and rather superstitious, he just paused, then continued bemoaning: "...A person’s life should never do morally wrong deeds, bro, this thieving-the-dead job is worse than killing people on the battlefield, I’m doomed now, boss, once you get back, please take care of that unfortunate kid and keep an eye out to stop him from doing something stupid. Anything but driving a (bleep) da in the future, if the Interstellar Ghost leaves my body intact, set me in a decent pose in the cockpit for photos. The kid has always thought since I was fourteen that I’ve been saving the world—just tell him his dad died heroically fighting aliens. Also, tell the Boss I’ve always liked her, our entire team sleeps looking at her photos... Ah, forget it, I’m afraid you’d get my wife to beat me to death with a rolling pin, I still have four brothers, maybe the Boss can throw them into the black mines so they’ll never get out..."

As he finished, the four mechas around him took a synchronized step forward, each looking ready to draw their weapons and silence him first before anything else.

We were utterly stupefied by now. What can I say, the Loli dismantling mechas by hand was Kapa, but even more bizarrely Kapa was this nonsensical unfolding—shouldn’t I be complaining about how getting a (bleep) license now requires exams?

And... this group I initially thought was a lawless and terrifying private piracy group, how come they now seemed so darn adorable?

"Are you ever going to stop whining?!" Bellowing from a distance, either Beck or Ham (can’t tell which), the Big Man, scolded the pitiful remains of a (bleep) da still intact in the cockpit on the ground, then cautiously scanned the surroundings, "That thing... might have left already, right?"

Yes, it had left. The "ghost" who had been dismantling the Gundam just now was now hanging around my neck, grinning like a fool, after dismantling every part of that big machine to lower than 1.2 meters and even horizontally laying the cockpit out on the ground. Visca finally snapped out of her blackened state, thankfully remembering the prohibition against indiscriminate killing—I initially thought she was going to flatten that poor sucker’s cockpit completely.

"Eh? It’s all over now?"

"The viciously dismembered Beck mechanic muttered incredulously, then the cockpit lying horizontally on the ground suddenly started shaking. Having torn the power cables to shreds, Visca struggled to pr open the cockpit hatch, then a pilot in a sealed combat suit staggered out—Wasn’t that shake quite strong?"

"Listen, this place definitely has interstellar ghosts. Whether you believe it or not," Ham’s voice trembled a bit, holding a pistol and preparing for anything, "Everyone, slowly go back to the spaceship, don’t move too quickly, keep facing the direction of the base center, walk backward to the unloading passage, forget about the engineering vehicle. I heard from the old madman that the interstellar ghosts in these abandoned space bases are soldiers killed in battles, they despise invaders, but if we walk backward, they won’t get mad... Combat Mechas go last! You’ve already caught the attention of the interstellar ghosts, being the first to retreat will shift their focus onto us!"

"Big Sister, these people are really funny," watching the comedic spectacle from a hundred meters away, all I felt was amusement. Originally I had no affection for these grave-robbing-like private piracy groups, but the group in front of us was clearly not the brutally evil sort. Even in this perilous mad universe, such a bunch could even be considered cute, "Should we follow them? We might find clues about Lilina at the human gathering spots or learn what happened in the attacks they mentioned. The ’Boss’ they talked about seems to be a local bigwig, maybe a dealer in information."

Big Sister nodded quietly at this suggestion, but just then, the private piracy group’s voices crackled through the monitoring channel again: "Ah! I... I got tangled up by an interstellar ghost!"

The piracy group had nearly all retreated to their damaged spaceship, with a few combat robots slowly retreating back, but now, one robot obviously malfunctioned, stiffly frozen in front of the unloading passage, unable to move while posed as if walking.

I looked around—didn’t they have fewer people?—What had ensnared them? Was it really those "interstellar ghosts" the pirates were superstitious about?

A few Beck, already tense and panic-stricken, now had their own "interstellar ghost" frightening them into collective shaking. The first one tried to calm himself, piloting his mecha to the front of the immovable brother, anxiously asked, "What’s going on?!"

"I don’t know either!" cried the voice coming through the monitoring channel, almost sobbing, "Just now something popped up like 0X? reference to some ’0x00000000’ memory, which can’t be ’read’ or ’written,’ then the screen just turned blue..."

Suddenly, the world was bewildered.

Damn, first time knowing Beck could blue screen too...

"Okay, it seems like my curse is working," Big Sister tapped her head lightly, "The base is plunging into disaster, they must leave quickly or they’ll definitely die here, it started with the mecha malfunctions, next might be their weapon systems."

"Listen, listen, we’ve already lost a mecha because of a ghost, now we have to carry you back or else we won’t succumb to the Dead Souls but be executed by the Boss," Beck—or Ham—regardless, a muscular Big Man who had already retreated inside the ship came back again, holding a strange green stick, "Damn, it seems not all pirates are superstitious, since ghosts exist, hopefully those gods are real too! Jisen, support your brother, I’m going to see if this exorcism ritual really works!"

"Boss, when did you become a priest?"

"Shut your mouth... oh my God!"

Due to the gradually spreading curse power, disaster indeed began to descend on the base. An asteroid passing by suddenly changed its orbit in a trajectory that completely defied the laws of physics, and slammed hard into the base of an alloy skeleton on the east side of the base. Instantly, the entire hundreds of kilometers long asteroid belt construction shook violently. The immobile mecha even nearly fell to the ground. The Big Man, holding a green stick but dressed in a spacesuit and claiming to exorcise ghosts, dramatically struck a praying pose and shouted, "Listen up! I believe! I believe it all! Evil spirits, be gone! In my hand is something received from... from what was it again... this is too hard to memorize... Well anyway, great Life Goddess! For the sake of the four sacred items: candy, doughnuts, Master, and strawberry jam, grant me the power of the moon! I am He-Man... Damn it, it’s because of this prayer I never joined the religion in the first place! But now, for the sake of the world tree or whatever, show yourself, old lady! And damn it, another meteorite is coming!"

"Wow! There are followers of Dingdang here?" Just when I was still dumbstruck, a curious call from Dingdang suddenly came from the pocket on my chest, and then, the second meteorite, drawn by the cursed aura, actually changed its course slightly in mid-air and flew past the edge of the landing platform!

Of course, it was the power of a Little Goddess.

Should I criticize this Lady Goddess who could be bribed with candy and doughnuts, willingly pushing the meteorite away for mortals?

"Holy Dad, Grand Master Chen above, from now on I’m going full-time as a Priest!" Beck or Ham, having successfully "exorcised" in the chaos, raised the green stick in his hand and shouted excitedly, then looked triumphantly at his two dumbstruck subordinates, emanating an aura of invincibility like being enveloped in Holy Light: "What are you looking at! Didn’t you know your boss is a devout believer? This thing really freaking works... ahem, anyway, the evil spirits on you have been dispelled, hurry back to the ship, I really don’t want to stay here another second... Hopefully, that tank-like thing can fetch some money in the black market... speaking of which, those prayer books distributed by the Temple Knights are really strange, what the hell is a Holy Dad anyway?"

After being scared enough at the "haunted" base, the desperadoes of the Private Piracy Group really didn’t want to stay a moment longer, and the whole crew returned to the ship and immediately set sail, leaving the place.

Ten minutes later, after confirming that the ship of the Private Piracy Group had entered the super-space pre-acceleration state, the invisible members of the Empire slowly revealed themselves.

"That just now, could it be considered a trace of activity left by Lilina?"

After hesitating a bit, Big Sister finally spoke out.

...Very characteristic of that mad Priest, from sacrificial rituals to the prayer, it all bore her hallmark... At least we can be sure now, the Private Piracy Group had contact with Lilina’s Holy Temple Army.

"Holy Dad, Grand Master Chen..." Cu Chulainn was concerned about another matter, "Who was that big guy talking about?"

Everyone: "...(He’s a dead man walking.)"

In any case, less than thirty minutes after the Private Piracy Group’s crappy ship left, the entire base was destroyed in an inhumane meteorite bombardment under the influence of the curse power. The ability of the gentle-smiling, seemingly harmless, and healing Big Sister to annihilate an entire space city with one move had made the Heroic Spirits recognize her anew. We decided to follow the Private Piracy Group’s spaceship, which had finally accelerated enough for super-space travel, intending to look for Lilina’s whereabouts, and meanwhile investigate the encounters of the Protos Vanguard who evacuated the base. During the flight, a new decoration was added aboard Void Wanderer: the Gunman Cu Chulainn, tied to the ship’s bow with Sister R’s chains, fluttering in the wind.

Holy Dad, Grand Master Chen, ah ha, Lilina oh Lilina, not managing you for two months, and you’ve completely gone mad...(To be continued. To find out what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com, with more Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)