When the tier four battleship was destroyed so effortlessly, not only was the Shura Tribe shocked, even Xiang Ning and the rest were stunned. Although it wasn’t surprising that the battleship would go down, the way it actually had was unbelievable—it was literally stepped on! 

Everyone saw very clearly that when the battleship landed, the external hull was distorted but the core was still fine. The fatal strike had come when it was squashed and exploded, which only took two seconds. The metal twisted and cried in agony. 

Was that the strength of a Beast Emperor? 

The Great Mountain Dragon’s gaze swept across the field, actually taking in every single individual. But they were then all regarded in contempt, its gaze only lingered on Helos a few moments longer. 

When Xiang Ning was ready to activate Eight Gates once again to escape with Hera, Rutgers coldly huffed, then flicked its tail to the left. A ray of light struck its tail and explosions ensued. 

The sea of flames roiled even taller this time. Rutgers didn’t roar, but this time the sound it made was even more frightening than before. 

Laughter. 

The dragon was laughing, rumbling like low thunder. It was unmistakably laughter, mocking the arrogance of its challengers and laughing at how useless their attacks were. 

Helos looked at the dragon that was a hundred times taller than itself, eyes filled with reverence. It was a spacefarer, yes, but based on their ages adjusted to the beasts’ lifespan, it was just a teenager. In the face of such power, it was respectfully afraid. 

Xiang Ning’s Keen Observation was sensitive enough to pick up on Helos’ mood change. Amused, he patted the beast’s back and said with a grin, “Stop looking, it’s time to run, didn’t you see how it looked at you?” 

Helos almost stomped its foot in embarrassment when Xiang Ning mocked it, but after thinking about the look Rutgers had given it, it ran off with its tail between his legs. The further they were from this dragon, the better. 

There were still thousands of battleships stuck halfway through the dimensional rift. Six seconds later, Rutgers pried the battleships out of the crack by force. On one of the tier five battleships, a cannon with a barrel diameter of more than a hundred meters pointed at the dimensional rift, which had expanded to three hundred meters wide. The energy accumulated and a shot of light was fired. 

Right after the destruction of the ship, the dimensional rift distorted and a sense of great danger made Rutgers’ pupils shrink. In a thousandth of a second, its skin changed as blood flow sped up and the energy stored in its body simmered in anticipation. 

In the next moment, a powerful attack burst out of the crack. 

At the same time, on the horizon, the Federation’s tier eight super battleship Chaos appeared. 

“Sir, we found a three-million-unit strength particle beam shot out of the crack!” 

“Three million units? Hehe, aren’t they afraid of destroying the crack?” Lu Zhenyu’s face didn’t even change. 

Lu Zhenyu was a Major from the Earth Federation’s navy. Fifty years ago, the Federation had already expanded out of the Milky Way. At the time, they had barely reached lightspeed, but after many years of research, they were much faster now. 

Then came the discovery of Azura, and development occurred at an even faster pace. Earth’s resources were almost depleted, and if it weren’t for the Great Disaster and the discovery of Azura, Earth would have been in deep trouble. 

The thirst for resources was what had driven humans into the vast universe. Twenty years prior, the Earth Federation and Azura had each received notification from a resource scouting spacecraft previously launched into space, which was currently more than fifty lightyears away. 

The highest leadership of mankind was as divided as ever. The resources found were enough to fulfill Earth’s needs for centuries, yet that was only the beginning of the nightmare. Why did Earth’s technological development, on the surface at least, seem to stop after that incident? It had all progressed so slowly, as if in anticipation of something.…

To Lu Zhenyu, who had witnessed many space battles, the scale of this attack was nothing new. 

“Sir, we found Gu Kun, Xiang Ning and the rest, and… the Hydrangea Clan of Azura.” 

“Dispatch the rescue choppers,” said Lu Zhenyu. 

“The Hydrangea Clan is getting restless. With data from this crack available for building models, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out dimensional travel,” mused Dong Qianyi, rubbing his chin. 

“Mr Dong… how’s that possible?” Lu Zhenyu’s brows were knitted. That piece of technology had taken great blood, sweat, and time from Dong Qianyi. 

“Three years. Three years at most. Then they’ll figure it out. I hope the old guys at the Federation can take this opportunity to progress before that happens.” 

While they were speaking, the Great Mountain Dragon was struck by the beam and its eyes turned red as it roared in pain. But it held on in the end, blocking the beam’s attack with great determination. The beam didn’t cause immediate explosions like the previous two had, but instead was continuously maintained, and slowly, the dragon started sliding backward. The sliding grew faster and faster until the gigantic body fell over from sliding too fast. The earth shook as the beast was pushed a kilometer’s distance, generating so much force that a small hill was flattened. 

The dimensional rift didn’t collapse from the attack but rather expanded, now five hundred meters long. The expansion didn’t take more than a minute, and now six tier four cruisers and three tier five battleships crossed over, along with one tier six frigate. 

The rift continued rippling while the other ships surrounded the frigate in formation while a beam fired from its top. That was a magnetic field; if they finished establishing it, that region would no longer belong to Earth but would become the Shura’s stronghold. 

But was that going to happen? 

The battle had just begun. Xiang Ning and the rest were already on the chopper, along with Helos and the people of the Hydrangea Clan. They weren’t dumb—what could the Federation do with them? The battle would just grow more destructive over time and it would be impossible to evacuate more than ten kilometers away within five minutes otherwise. 

Maybe even a ten-kilometer distance wouldn’t be enough. 

Everyone was surprised that the chopper was big enough to fit Helos, and Hera, too. 

It looked like the intel was true. Xiang Ning was no ordinary person because he was powerful enough to let a beast into the vehicle. It was scary that the person Xiang Ning spoke to agreed to it, weren’t they afraid of the beast suddenly going mad and killing the whole chopper-load of people? 

This is about to get real good.