**Chapter 712: Boom Explosion**
In the dark, silent desert, the dazzling sun suddenly exploded in the night sky, its radiant light illuminating the vast desert like day, and then turning it into a fiery furnace.
In that blinding light capable of melting eyeballs, the intense heat transformed all life within it into gray smoke. After a few seconds, this brilliance gradually began to calm and dim, and the previous extreme heat in the space also started to dissipate.
Eventually, the light faded, the radiant sun vanished into nothingness, and the entire desert returned to its night form. However, its appearance had undergone a significant change.
Over several square kilometers, the sandy dunes had completely morphed into another shape—what was once fine quicksand had turned into transparent crystals. In the still-warm air, one could see a land of glass and crystal hills. Among those thick layers of crystals, many still-molten crimson substances flowed like bl**d vessels beneath human skin. This glassy ground, as if forged in a hellish furnace, reflected the starlight of the night sky, making the surroundings appear both bizarre and dreamy.
“What a wonderful yet terrifying sight! Is this the power of the Church’s advanced weaponry? Truly breathtaking…” Somewhere in the distance, Doro gazed down at the spectacular scene below through a high-altitude scouting zombie puppet, whispering in awe.
To deal with the chaos continually stirred up by the Rotten Sect regarding the Busairite issue, Doro had sent undercover forces from the Church’s Savior Faction to protect and monitor Vania during her promotion ceremony, coming into contact with the intelligent core of a battleship named Evi.
The Holy Steel Ship—it was a top-secret military weapon possessed by the Church, a powerful flying warship built largely with extraordinary power. Its combat capability and ranking vastly surpassed the main fleet of the Church’s navy.
It was said that the origin of the Holy Steel Ship was a contract from ancient times between the Church and the White Stone Craftsmen Guild, allowing the Church to spend vast resources for the Guild to forge weapons for them. The Holy Steel Ship was a product of this ancient contract. No one knew exactly how many Holy Steel Ships the Church currently possessed, nor the ranking system among them, but it was confirmed that all Holy Steel Ships obeyed the commands of the Cardinals and the Pope, with those of higher rank displaying combat power exceeding the Red Tier.
Doro had long suspected Evi was some sort of war weapon AI, but it wasn’t until arriving in Busairite that she could confirm her speculations. Doro had disguised herself as a food merchant delivering supplies to Vania’s camp; however, this ruse didn’t fool Evi, who swiftly approached after Doro finished selling her goods.
Evi had determined that the group of grain sellers was, in fact, the protectors of Vania from Kankdar and deemed them to be subordinates of the Judge of Heaven Church. Doro was aware of this and decided to engage Evi in preliminary contact, inviting her to join forces against the Eternal Life Cult’s Red Tier.
On the Busairite issue, Doro’s and Evi’s interests aligned quite naturally. Evi had her own task related to the Judge of Heaven Church, making their collaboration inevitable.
After confirming their partnership, Doro first successfully created a profile of Jawadin, then implanted a Puppet Mark on him, allowing his altered thoughts to communicate with Amayaba. Doro then used Jawadin as a springboard to release Spiritual Threads to distract Amayaba while Evi charged up for a wide-area attack from the sky.
After enduring nearly three thousand degrees of scorching heat, the top layer of sand in the vast desert beneath the Holy Steel Ship Evi was directly melted and re-solidified into a thick layer of crystal covering several square kilometers. Within Evi’s scorching range, no life could survive, whether it be mosquitoes, floating bacteria, or spores. The massive swarms of flying insects, transformed by Amayaba, and countless other invisible microorganisms were all incinerated at that moment.
At this moment, inside the gothic iron giant ship resembling a church, in a hall that felt like a chapel, Vania, dressed in a white nun’s outfit, knelt at the center, quietly maintaining a prayer pose. She had formed a ritual link with the entire ship; a Holy Steel Ship of Evi’s caliber was equivalent to a mobile temple. Evi was not only a powerful firepower platform but also a temple-level ritual space that could be directly deployed to the front lines. At this moment, with Vania inside the Extermination Nun, she could amplify her abilities leveraging the ritual space.
“Under the area bathed in pure light… there is no life left. Let’s proceed with further exploration…”
Vania murmured in the steel chapel’s ritual center, using the temple-level ritual’s amplification to expand her powerful life-sensing ability, reaching further into the underground.
Due to the peculiar nature of the Path of Plagues, her extraordinary offshoot manifested in very small forms. When reduced to a microscopic level, the Lamp’s ability to detect became less effective, resulting in situations where something could be seen with the Lamp but not perceived due to its minuscule size. It wasn’t that the Lamp couldn’t detect such small extraordinary offshoots; rather, the Lamp user’s consciousness found it hard to track and notice such tiny things.
For instance, things with different spiritual traces would emit different colors under the Lamp’s vision, but if something was merely the size of bacteria, it could glow yet remain undetected by the extraordinary being unless it was close enough.
At this moment, the power of the Path of the Holy Mother, capable of sensing life within range, proved even more valuable. Compared to other Lamp branches, the Holy Mother Path had a strong boost for life detection. Coupled with the temple-level ritual’s enhancement, Vania became a vast radar for living beings, where everything within several dozen kilometers—both macro and micro—could not escape her perception.
“A large amount of extraordinary life activity has been detected underground! Be careful; that cultist is not finished yet. Her offshoots are rapidly expanding and proliferating underground!”
After Vania’s sensing abilities spread underground, her brows furrowed slightly, and she visualized the information detected through the temple’s power, displaying it in the space before Evi’s phantom on the ship’s bridge. Suddenly, a clear three-dimensional map emerged.
It was a virtual three-dimensional representation showcasing a vast, intricate network of tunnels swirling with countless dense red dots—these were the plague insect offshoots of Amayaba.
Amayaba hadn’t completely transformed into the flying insect swarm; she had also converted part of herself into sandworms capable of burrowing through the earth, rapidly reproducing in a natural cave hundreds of meters deep. While the surface insect swarm was exterminated by the high temperature, her underground counterpart thrived in the thick sandstone layers.
“What a high-quality precision map… Better than what I could manage myself. Is this the result of the power of Enlightenment? Interesting…”
Watching the high-precision dynamic three-dimensional map unfold before her eyes, Evi couldn’t help but marvel silently. She then waved her hand, coordinating countless turrets aboard the iron giant ship, rotating the cannons toward the ground and opening fire.
“Boom boom boom!!!”
With a series of continuous explosions, Evi unleashed a golden torrent of cannon fire upon the glassy ground below. Countless explosions radiating golden brilliance detonated on the crystalline surface, and numerous crystal hills were instantly obliterated. Massive cracks spread across the ground, crystal shards scattering amidst the booming cannon fire.
Even the smallest caliber extraordinary secondary cannons mounted on Evi exceeded the might of the largest fixed fortifications in the mortal realm; a single shot could create a pit the size of half a football field. With so many secondary guns unleashing fire at once, the ground visible below vanished in flames, dust, and smoke. The earth trembled violently under this fierce bombardment, the vibrations and thundering noise reached as far as Bastis, where residents were left trembling with fear, kneeling and praying.
Under Evi’s relentless bombardment, the glass ground was completely shattered. Layers of the earth were lifted, exposing what was buried beneath to the destruction wrought by heavy artillery.
After a short while, the ground within a kilometer diameter had been stripped of several hundred meters in height. Just as the cannon fire was about to reach the labyrinthine network of tunnels, Vania suddenly shouted upon sensing something.
“Life forms in the tunnels are exhibiting concentrated spiritual responses! Be cautious!”
As Vania’s words rang out, several hundred spherical, insect-winged unidentified objects surged out from the fiery chaos below, hurtling toward Evi. Evi activated numerous defensive weapons mounted on both sides of the ship, multiple close-range cannons and machine guns opening fire, accurately destroying the solid-shelled round insectoids.
However, once those spherical entities were destroyed, they instantly exploded, releasing a dense cloud of mist that rapidly began to spread, forming a large green haze suspended between Evi and the raging fire below.
Evi continued to bombard downward, unleashing her fury, but an anomaly occurred as her cannonballs passed through the green mist. The metallic shells and internal structures of the projectiles were rapidly corroded, causing them to malfunction as they fell, riddled with holes as if devoured by countless insects, rendered completely ineffective.
This mist was a type of extraordinary bacteria capable of corroding metal at a very high efficiency, resistant to high temperatures. The solid projectiles fired from Evi’s cannons swiftly lost functionality after passing through the mist.
These bacteria were transported by round, plump flying insects. The larvae spawned in underground nests crawled quickly through tiny fissures in the rock to reach the surface, maturing into adults and flying toward Evi for suicidal attacks while releasing symbiotic bacteria. Upon being hit by Evi’s defensive machine g*n bullets or shrapnel from the close-range cannons, these organisms would explode and disperse, forming the bacteria mist. The rust-resistant bacteria could survive at nearly a thousand degrees for a period of time, infecting shell projectiles in flight.
Evi’s cannons had various types of ammunition tailored for different scenarios, from extraordinary solid projectiles to energy rounds spawned from the ship’s reserves. The energy rounds had singular effectiveness, while those forged by the White Stone Craftsmen Guild offered a range of capabilities such as breaching defense, personnel killing, penetrating deep underground, and explosive demolition among others… deploy them as needed.
For instance, she was mainly using explosive projectiles for her burrowing operations because typical drilling projectiles lacked the power required to obliterate such vast underground nests. So, Evi opted for explosive rounds to create a sufficiently large opening to unleash firepower.
But now, with the metal components of the explosive projectiles hindered by rust bacteria, Evi was forced to use energy rounds that were unaffected by the bacteria, albeit much slower in ground disruption.
Facing this situation, Evi moved the battleship to a clear area, free from any mist, and began artillery fire again. However, Amayaba continuously released more flying insects containing rust bacteria through underground fissures, heading toward Evi. Whenever Evi intercepted them, these creatures would explode, birthing new swarms of bacteria. At times, these clusters would even threaten Evi directly, forcing her to use close-range flamethrowers to fire back. Even then, it took considerable time to incinerate these persistent bacteria.
“Even after burning so many insects, the remaining ones can still assemble such a large underground nest… And they even dared to counterattack. This depraved Red Tier is proving to be stronger than expected… especially regarding spiritual metrics; where in the world did she get so much spirit?”
Watching the scene unfolding, Evi frowned, for she had originally thought that after decimating the vast insect swarm, the remnants of Amayaba would pose little threat. Now, however, the situation was clearly beyond her expectations. An underground nest this large and deep couldn’t have been recently constructed by a single weakened plague Red Tier.
Logically speaking, the massive insect swarm should have comprised Amayaba’s main body. If you combined the previously eliminated flying insects with those still underground, Amayaba’s spiritual capacity was somewhat terrifying.
As Evi furrowed her brow in thought, Vania—who was sensing the battlefield situation from the temple chapel—spoke up urgently.
“The innermost part of the enemy is burrowing into other regions! She’s attempting to split and escape!”
Upon hearing Vania’s words, Evi glanced at the three-dimensional battlefield map before her and could clearly see that below Amayaba’s underground nest, a deep vertical shaft had been formed, with eight insects now burrowing simultaneously in different directions. Each of these digging insects exhibited high levels of spirituality akin to the “main body” of the swarm. If even one of these managed to escape, it would count as a successful getaway.
Facing the Holy Steel Ship of the Church and the mysterious forces lurking nearby, Amayaba would definitely not be naïve enough to think she could win; while enhanced by some mysterious power, she wasn’t foolish enough to confront a Holy Steel Ship head-on. Thus, escaping became her primary goal, with the rust bacteria mist intended to buy her time.
Although Evi could cover the surface growth areas of these insects with artillery fire to eliminate them in their larval phase, this also distracted her strength, preventing her from focusing fire to remove the layers of earth.
Faced with the thick brume of rust bacteria below, Evi found herself momentarily stumped. The solid projectiles meant for ground excavation couldn’t be deployed; the energy rounds’ ground disruption efficiency was too low. If she solely relied on them to clear the last dozens of meters, Amayaba’s eight escape insects would be long gone by then. If she tried to stop one, she would probably let another slip away—trying to wipe them all out at once would need to happen while they were still digging tunnels and close to one another.
In such a dilemma, Evi could only use the configured Wind Sigil to blow away the ceaseless haze, though it was quite resilient. The bacteria mist gathered together, resembling sticky slime rather than mere fog. Even if Evi managed to scatter it a little with wind generated from the Sigils, the insects destroyed shortly after would quickly fill the fog back up.
The best course of action for Evi was to unleash the main weapon on the ship again to scorch the bacteria with three thousand degrees of heat all at once, or utilize other modes of the main weapon to penetrate the ground in one fell swoop, but both options required charging time. Once the charging was finished, Amayaba might have already made her getaway.
Just as Evi found herself in this challenging situation, several figures suddenly appeared on the horizon, drawing nearer. Squinting, it became apparent that they were a few mysterious individuals garbed in robes.
Upon their arrival on the battlefield, these mysterious figures swiftly positioned themselves on either side of Evi. She initially aimed to clear these unexpected visitors, but upon reviewing Vania’s battlefield intel, which marked them as allies, Evi held her fire.
The flying mysterious figures touched down beside Evi, extending their fingers toward the ground. Then, strings of red light extended rapidly from their fingertips, reaching down to connect with the large, round, flying insects laden with rust bacteria, pulling them away from the vicinity.
These mysterious individuals were Doro’s puppet minions. Doro released her Spiritual Threads through the puppets, directly controlling the carriers of those bacterial bombs, guiding them to fly away from the scene.
In a strange “horde” state, Amayaba was simultaneously managing thousands upon thousands of insects, dispersing her mental power across the whole swarm significantly weakened her ability to control any single insect. Almost effortlessly, Doro could seize the control of a few insects from Amayaba.
Previously, during a spiritual confrontation with Amayaba, Doro had deliberately feigned weakness to lure her in. Now, however, she was at full strength while controlling these insects, and since they bore rust bacteria and not infectious bacteria specifically targeting Spiritual Threads, they posed no threat to her control.
“So this is one of the methods of Enlightenment? Fascinating…”
Watching the scene unfold, Evi felt a wave of relief wash over her. With Doro controlling the bacteria-laden flying insects, they couldn’t explode anymore to generate new clouds of mist. Without reinforcements, the existing bacteria mist began to dissipate under the storm created by Evi’s artillery fire and explosions.
As the bacteria mist thinned, Evi immediately began loading her explosive projectiles again. In no time, the heavy cannons aboard Evi began to roar, plunging an array of heavy bombs into the misty depths below, penetrating the damaged earth and triggering intense vibrations and booms as they exploded inside the rock layers, resuming the destruction of the protective structure around the underground nest.
Ultimately, after the final explosive round detonated, the last protective layers around the hidden insect nest were blasted open, revealing vast clusters of the underground nest to the open air. Evi could see countless twisted, bloated worms below the smoke through the Lamp’s vision.
With the vast underground nest exposed, Evi wasted no time unleashing her formidable firepower upon it. Waves of flame and light flooded the entire nest, and countless insects perished in agonizing shrieks.
The nest, completely uprooted and exposed to the raw fury from above, offered no resistance against Evi’s overwhelming assault. Insects fell in droves, and Amayaba’s large form was decimated. Now, only eight escape insects remained burrowing toward different paths beneath the nest.
In light of the present situation, Evi detonated a bomb designed to penetrate deep into the vertical shaft created by one of those escape insects, releasing intense heat and pressure upon detonation. This luminescence affected the tunnels around the shaft, instantly extending forward to chase down several escaping insects, squeezing and incinerating them.
With that single bomb, Evi obliterated seven of Amayaba’s escape insects, leaving only one, which managed to dig the farthest, evading the flames and weakening blasts. Slightly wounded, it continued to burrow desperately forward, but at that moment, several red threads breached the lower layers of material and linked onto it.
