The next morning, Gu Ya took leave from Dou Mei. As a substitute teacher and the head of Special Section Nine, she could easily arrange a few days off for Gu Ya.
In the early morning, the sun was still hidden behind the skyscrapers of Xianxia City.
Gu Ya had already packed her bags, brought some Xianxia specialties, and headed to the academy's hangar to depart for Wuhe City.
A tall, lanky boy with an outward-turning gait and a swaggering walk approached, looking like an overripe sorghum stalk, deliberately hunching his back to give himself a vaguely cool, roguish aura. In reality, he looked like a complete buffoon.
He was indeed quite handsome, with a youthful charm mixed with a hint of heroism, but his walk was truly dreadful.
Gu Ya recognized him; he was a classmate named Li Fang.
"Yo! Hello, Gu Ya!" Li Fang greeted with a loud laugh, "Bang!" He slapped Gu Ya's shoulder heavily and asked with a grin, "Where are you off to?"
This boy had a rather familiar personality.
However, this was only the second sentence they had exchanged since Gu Ya enrolled.
Normally, Li Fang was a figure who appeared and disappeared like a dragon, casual during training and casual in his life.
Gu Ya smiled amicably and replied, "Going home."
"Oh~ home... Wuhe City, right? You were at Dongyong Gu Zhi Lan Academy before, weren't you?" Li Fang's eyes were fixed on Gu Ya's large travel bag. He circled Gu Ya once and then stopped in front of him.
He was half a head taller than Gu Ya, but slender.
"You know Tao Na, right?" Li Fang said casually. "She's studying at Dongyong Gu Zhi Lan Academy."
Gu Ya nodded. He definitely knew that annoying woman who piloted the "Pink Tentacle Monster."
"Say hello to her for me! And could you also ask her about her arranged marriage?" Li Fang grinned, revealing a foolish, guileless expression.
Gu Ya felt a bit helpless and annoyed. Were they that familiar? Why was he immediately asking for favors?
"Can't you ask her yourself?" Gu Ya said coldly.
Li Fang gave an awkward chuckle. "Uh, she and I have some past grievances, hehe. Thanks a lot! I'll treat you to a meal when I get back." Li Fang waved his hand with a smile, not waiting for Gu Ya's agreement, and turned towards his own mecha.
Gu Ya found his slovenly walk utterly bothersome.
"Li Fang, the direction of ideals. Nice name, but the person is a bit of a dimwit."
They both climbed into their cockpits simultaneously, started their engines, and flew out of the hangar simultaneously.
Even after leaving Xianxia City, they flew out one after another, heading southeast.
This feeling of having said goodbye and then silently traveling together made Gu Ya extremely awkward.
It was supposed to be class time now. It seemed this Li Fang was also a frequent truant.
They flew towards Wuhe City, one after another, for more than half a day. When they had covered an estimated distance of over a thousand kilometers,
Li Fang sent a communication.
"Gu Ya, this is really goodbye for now, hahahaha! I'm going on a mission to take down some infiltrating Black Star Walkers. Coming with me?" Li Fang's voice also carried a cynical attitude. He spoke about going on a mission and fighting enemies so casually.
Gu Ya responded coldly, "No."
"Come on! I heard the God of War from Lükuo City is also participating. You two could exchange experiences," Li Fang said casually.
Having the God of War from Lükuo City sounded like a good proposition.
Uh, speaking of which, where was Lükuo City… Gu Ya racked his brain, but he couldn't recall any city named Lükuo in Xianxia.
However, Gu Ya had only met Wang Shangmeng, a God of War. According to him, among all the Gods of War in Xianxia, his strength ranked only in the lower to middle tier.
In that case, Gu Ya wanted to see the true strength of Gods of War from other cities.
"Alright," Gu Ya replied calmly.
With a God of War present, the battle should be smooth, and he wouldn't be delayed in returning.
Both mechas turned south simultaneously, accelerating to full power and heading towards their destination.
About half an hour later,
Gu Ya suddenly saw more than a dozen small mushroom clouds rising abruptly from the horizon of the vast, ochre earth.
Following closely, a distant and soul-stirring explosion sound and a fierce wind swept in.
The distance should be about 3 to 5 kilometers.
To cause such an explosion, it would require more than ten heavy-duty firepower mechas unleashing their munitions simultaneously.
Being able to deploy more than ten heavy firepower mechas meant this wasn't a small group of infiltrators. It must be at least two augmented mecha squadrons, nearly five hundred mechas.
If an enemy force of this scale appeared in Xianxia, it would be no different from an invasion.
"Oho!!! Awesome! Hahahaha—!" Li Fang laughed excitedly. "Time to play!"
Li Fang's mecha spewed out powerful and violent green flames, charging headlong into the war zone.
As Gu Ya got closer to the destination,
The brutal scene in the sky gradually became clearer.
Two mechas, painted in alternating black and red, weaved through the rising mushroom clouds, leaving trails of exploding fire in their wake.
The remaining nearly one hundred Black Star Walker mechas were scattered around the two black and red mechas, with constant attempts to attack.
However, they were all destroyed by those two mechas.
To be precise, only one mecha was fighting; the other was merely following closely behind.
The fighting mecha's physique was close to that of a super-heavy mecha, with incredibly thick limbs, like a severely obese person unable to bend, even taller and more robust than ancient mechas. Gu Ya estimated it to be fifty meters tall.
Its back was highly humped, carrying some kind of mecha payload, making its entire body shape like a hunchback, with a large black tumor growing on its back, giving it a terrifyingly ugly appearance.
Suddenly, the fighting black and red mecha braked sharply in mid-air, flexibly turning its body towards the Black Star enemy formation.
It spread its limbs into a "big" shape, and the humped payload on its back suddenly spewed out several streams of white steam, spraying outwards. Immediately after, the thick metal casing of the black payload suddenly opened, revealing a vast, dense, goosebump-inducing array of red cluster munitions.
Gu Ya finally understood where those rising mushroom clouds were coming from.
It wasn't from more than ten heavy-duty firepower coverage mechas,
But the explosive destructive effect was entirely caused by the munitions unleashed by that single mecha!
Suddenly, a massive plume of white smoke erupted from the unnerving "tumor" on its back. Countless red warheads shot out from the white smoke, trailing bright red flames as they hurtled towards the sky.
Those warheads curved in a large arc in the air, aimed at the enemy mechas, and shot towards them with a "hissing" sound.
A normal heavy-duty firepower mecha would have finished its ammunition after one volley.
But this mecha continued to fire for five minutes, with thousands upon thousands of warheads spewing from the tumor on its back.
From the sky, it looked like a giant peacock hovering in the air, with countless fiery munitions continuously shooting out from its back, beautiful and spectacular, yet deadly, like a peacock displaying its plumage.
The dense, terrifying barrages of munitions continuously bombarded the enemy mecha formation.
A series of small mushroom clouds suddenly rose from the ground,
The deafening roar seemed capable of shattering everything in existence.
Waves of explosion shockwaves continuously destroyed everything around, as if even space itself was being torn apart.
Gu Ya had to purchase and attach two sets of heavy defensive armor to his mecha from the system store just to stabilize himself in the area three kilometers away from the explosion's center.
Countless mushroom clouds stacked upon each other, forming larger, unprecedented dome-shaped mushroom clouds.
Black smoke surged straight from the ground into the sky.
"So breathtaking," Gu Ya murmured softly.
"Hahahaha..."
Suddenly, a young girl's voice, not yet fully matured, came through the communicator, filled with laughter.
"Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot for me—!" the little girl shouted, excited and manic.
"Resupply my ammo!!!"
As soon as she finished speaking,
The black and red mecha suddenly stopped firing missiles.
Another black and red mecha quickly flew behind it, pulled hard with its hands, and dislodged the humped payload on its back.
Immediately after, it detached one of its massive arms and firmly attached it to the back of the mecha in front.
Gu Ya frowned in confusion. What was this maneuver?!
The black and red mecha in front spewed out flames, soaring straight into the sky.
Behind it, the just-attached giant arm slowly moved to its shoulder.
The black and red mecha hugged the giant arm with both hands. By some unknown method, its two mechanical giant hands directly burrowed into the giant arm.
Soon, that giant arm began to straighten, deform, and finally transform into an incredibly thick black cannon barrel, mounted on its shoulder.
"It can do that too?" Gu Ya was slightly surprised again.
With a "Boom!", the cannon barrel spewed out a black beam energy cannon!
The beam cannon's shape was like a funnel, firing from a narrow muzzle and gradually widening into a beam thicker than the mecha itself!
It shot directly at the dome-shaped mushroom cloud on the ground.
The beam cannon continued firing for a full five seconds before ceasing.
The earth-shattering roar of the cannon created the only sound, completely drowning out any other noise.
It was unclear whether it was loud or silent.
Gu Ya covered his ears tightly; even the cockpit's ecological simulation system couldn't block out the immense sound of the beam cannon.
"It can't be that much..." Gu Ya thought to himself.
The incredibly thick beam cannon acted like a pillar supporting the sky, directly dispersing the dome-shaped mushroom cloud on the ground and blasting a circular crater a kilometer wide into the earth.
Inside the crater, there was only scorched earth; no enemy mecha wreckage was visible at all.
Gu Ya had never seen such a method of attack before.
It was truly a firepower monster!
But… but… it really didn't need to be this extreme! Gu Ya thought, feeling like he was using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.
He could have taken down those hundred-plus mechas with his 'You Yin' if he had tried hard enough.
But that black and red mecha had completely resolved the situation in a manner that was recently approaching madness and was utterly incomprehensible.
As the smoke gradually dissipated,
No enemy mechas were visible on the ground.
The two black and red mechas slowly descended from the sky and landed steadily at the edge of the crater.
A green and white painted mecha flew rapidly from a distance, landing beside them. The cockpit opened, and Li Fang emerged, shouting and jumping wildly.
Gu Ya flew his mecha up to them.