Chapter 184: Chapter 184

Chapter 184: Rumbling

Every year, the world-class organizations on the human side would build a batch of Level 0.5 Mobile Cities, selecting a group of people from the Wasteland to become Lords.

These Lords needed to collect resources in the Wasteland and gradually upgrade their Level 0.5 Cities into Level 1 Cities.

This brought two benefits.

First, building a Level 0.5 City required only a small amount of Crystal Coins and iron ore, yet it came with fairly complete configurations. As long as enough resources were gathered, it could be promoted to a Level 1 City.

Second, it effectively maintained the human Mobile City ecosystem in the Wasteland.

“Since that’s the case, why not just directly build Level 1 Mobile Cities and send them out?” Zhou Xing asked.

Albert shook his head after hearing that and explained the reason.

The cost of Level 1 Mobile Cities was higher than that of Level 0.5 Mobile Cities. Moreover, according to investigations, because Level 1 Cities were obtained too easily, many Lords became inattentive.

Rather than that, it was better to give them a Level 0.5 Mobile City and let them become self-reliant and upgrade on their own. That way, they would value their city more.

“You people really put in the thought,” Li Ye sincerely said.

Now, he finally understood why there were so many human Mobile Cities in the Wasteland.

After a moment of thought, Li Ye informed Albert of an intelligence.

“Bishop Albert, in the Old Civilization District there are multiple Old Era Human Shelters. With the capabilities of the Apocalypse Sect, you should be able to locate them, right?” he said hesitantly.

“Old Era Human Shelters?” Albert was puzzled. “How did you come by this intelligence?”

In response, Li Ye brought out a string of excuses he had prepared in advance, barely bluffing his way through.

Looking at the hesitantly nodding Albert, he quietly wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Although acquiring intelligence through the System was easy, sharing that intelligence and making others believe it was very difficult.

“Understood. I will report to the higher-ups of Southern Liuzhou and have them organize a search operation in the Old Civilization District,” Albert said.

Just then, an alarm suddenly rang out from the Great Wall.

A Combat Deacon rushed over and informed everyone of some news.

The Giants from the Old Civilization District had already crossed the mountains and arrived at the Junk Zone.

Based on their movement trajectory, it was estimated that they would ultimately reach the A9 Checkpoint and launch an attack.

This intelligence had been discovered by frontline reconnaissance aircraft.

The number of Giants in this batch was about fifty thousand.

Upon hearing that, everyone’s expressions grew heavy.

After all, they had fought Giants in the ruins of the city, and just a hundred Giants controlled by a Commander Giant had already been extremely troublesome.

And now, it was a group of Giants five hundred times that scale—all intelligent, and of various types.

“Even so, won’t the Giants need at least two to three days to cross the Junk Zone?” Zhou Xing scratched his head. “Before that, we can make adequate preparations.”

The Combat Deacon shook his head.

“I’m afraid we have less than eight hours left.”

The reason was simple: the Giants were moving at full sprint.

They themselves possessed near-godlike physical constitution, practically perpetual-motion machines, running day and night without rest.

Their massive bodies would cause wear on their muscles and knees, but their powerful regeneration would gradually repair them.

According to reconnaissance aircraft observations, the Giants’ speed was between 80 and 100 kilometers per hour.

By maintaining a constant running state, they could travel 1920 to 2400 kilometers in a day.

Even Albert felt the pressure.

“This time, we really have to go all out,” he sighed.

The horizon trembled.

At first, it was just a low hum in the wind.

Gradually, it became like a brewing thunderstorm in the distance.

Eventually, the sound turned into a roar. The ground began to crack. Heaps of trash mountains jumped from the tremors, then slammed back down.

Countless gigantic silhouettes emerged in the distance.

Over fifty thousand Giants crossed the mountains and surged through the area like an avalanche or a tsunami.

The Giants had only one goal.

Advance—and destroy everything.

Every step of theirs was like a meteor slamming into the earth. The filthy surface caved in underfoot, smoke and dust surged like tsunamis, covering half the sky. Their breath turned into scalding mist, condensing into clouds.

More than fifty thousand Giants needed no other action—just the momentum of their massed charge was enough to obliterate all in their path.

Everything in the Junk Zone turned to dust under their charge.

Rusty, abandoned vehicles were kicked into the air, twisting and breaking mid-flight.

Heaps of trash, large and small, were trampled flat.

The survivors’ shacks and towns were utterly destroyed.

As the Giant swarm passed through a Tower City district, under their relentless impacts, many Tower Cities cracked extensively and ultimately collapsed with a roar.

In the sky, several reconnaissance aircraft howled past.

Many running Giants looked up at them with wariness in their eyes.

Minutes later, dozens of silver streaks suddenly appeared on the distant skyline.

A formation of fighter jets pierced the clouds at Mach 1 speed, sweeping over the Giants’ heads.

The moment the bomb bays opened, countless bombs poured down like a torrential rainstorm.

As they hit the ground, waves of explosive rings bloomed among the Giant horde.

The shockwaves blasted many of the Giants into shattered flesh.

Many Giants had their heads blown clean off, and their headless bodies, driven by inertia and their running posture, tumbled forward and crashed to the ground.

The fighter jets then dove in, the autocannons under their wings spinning up and unleashing red chains of fire like crimson whips, lashing out at the Giants.

Heads, necks, arms, abdomens, thighs—bloody blossoms exploded across the bodies of countless Giants.

The jet formation continued its assault. Bomb bays opened once more. Dozens of air-to-ground missiles cruised at high speed across the battlefield, then ascended briefly before slamming into the ground and detonating.

Lastly, they dropped fuel-air bombs into the midst of the Giants.

For a brief instant, the entire world seemed to turn pure white.

The air was instantly heated to 2500 degrees Celsius. At the center of the blast, the moisture on the Giants’ skin instantly vaporized. Their flesh shriveled like suddenly dried parchment, peeling away. The exposed muscle tissue boiled and burned, emitting white smoke.

Countless Giants became twitching, living mountains of flesh in the heat, their bodies burning with surging flames.

Inside the cockpits of the fighter jets, the pilots wore grim expressions.

This saturation bombing run had clearly inflicted enormous damage on the Giants, with over a thousand estimated destroyed.

But the fighter jets’ ammunition was nearly depleted.

Some jets were now performing their final bombing runs.

Against fifty thousand Giants, this level of damage was insignificant.

Now, the Giants had begun to disperse their formation, moving in groups of thirty to forty.

“All units, return to the Great Wall immediately to resupply ammunition!” the captain ordered. “Before the Giants reach A9 Checkpoint, reduce their numbers as much as possible through bombing!”

At that moment, a terrified voice came through the Communication Channel.

“All units, ascend immediately! The enemy’s counterattack has begun!”

The next second, the Giants launched their counteroffensive.

Thousands of Giants crushed the rubble they carried and hurled it toward the fighter jet formation above!

Several pilots who were just about to dive and drop bombs suddenly found themselves engulfed in countless shadows.

They quickly began a series of evasive maneuvers.

The exhaust nozzles of the fighter jets emitted sharp screeches as the throttles were pushed into afterburner mode, sending the jets into steep vertical climbs.

On the screens in front of the pilots, dense red warnings flashed.

Tens of thousands of rubble fragments were flying toward them from all directions.

Each piece was marked by the fire control system as a fatal threat!

The first wave of rubble scraped past the fighter jet wings, and the turbulence they created caused the jets to shake violently. The pilots yanked the control sticks, managing to execute an almost impossible "Cobra Maneuver" just before losing control.

But soon, more rubble came hurtling in. Multiple parts of the jets sustained damage and eventually shattered like fragile sugar chips.

Alarm sirens blared through the cockpits.

"Hydraulic system failure. Flight control system about to malfunction."

The pilots immediately felt their control sticks turn as heavy as if they were filled with lead.

They shook their heads and pulled the ejection handles.

The rocket boosters on the ejection seats ignited with a roar, launching the pilots and their entire cockpit canopies into the sky.

As the seat separation charges detonated on cue, parachutes deployed at high altitude.

Meanwhile, their fighter jets were torn to shreds by the rubble storm, crashing toward the ground with residual momentum and speed, and exploding upon impact.

These pilots did not escape death, because the Giants once again pulled out broken city building pieces from their pouches, crushed them into rubble.

Watching the bodies of their comrades burst in the rubble storm one after another, turning into clouds of blood mist, the squad captain slammed the cockpit angrily.

Because he and the others had not dived for bombing runs, they were able to rapidly ascend and escape disaster.

Amid his anger, the captain suddenly sensed something amiss.

Amid strong winds, over a hundred massive figures swept past the cockpit overhead.

After a moment of stunned shock, the captain snapped back to his senses and shouted,

"Everyone scatter immediately! Begin evasive maneuvers!" Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on novel⦿fire.net

Those massive figures were none other than flying Winged Giants!

They had no arms, replaced instead by massive wings spanning an astonishing 80 meters. Their legs were just like birds', even bearing sharp talons.

When they spread their wings and soared through the skies, their shadows could plunge an entire town into darkness.

Most deadly of all, the Winged Giants possessed the ability to manipulate high-altitude air currents.

They were extremely fast, highly reactive, and began hunting the fighter jets in the sky.

Under the influence of the air currents, one fighter jet after another quickly lost control, only to be torn apart by the Winged Giants’ talons.

After receiving the frontline intelligence from the fighter jet squadron, the commanders at the Great Wall wore grim expressions.

It was clear now that the strategy of reducing the number of Giants through air strikes was gradually losing effectiveness.

Not just the A9 Checkpoint where Li Ye was located—many other checkpoints of the Great Wall were about to face assaults from tens of thousands of Giants.

Some would even face hundreds of thousands.

More than a dozen regions in the western part of Southern Liuzhou had already been invaded by the Giants.

The Monstrous Civilizations had already begun to battle the Giants.

Half of the continent had fallen into a state of extreme chaos.

Several hours later, A9 Checkpoint.

The checkpoint's defense forces had entered the highest level of combat readiness.

City landmines, steel barbed belts, rotating saw-toothed steel heaps, laid-out fuel-air bombs...

Thanks to the efforts of several Level 3 Engineering-type Cities, three composite defensive lines had been established.

And wandering within the lines were fifty to sixty Level 1 Mobile Cities.

All of them were equipped with Level 3 City Armor, Level 3 Cannons, Level 3 Autocannons and Heavy Machine Guns, as well as Level 3 Power Engines and Treaded Wheels.

The types were primarily Assault-type and Defensive-type.

The purpose of this group of Mobile Cities was to fire while moving on the battlefield, exterminating as many enemies as possible.

Not only that, the checkpoint defense forces had also deployed large Tank Battalions on the ground, along with slowly moving Mechanical Giant Sentinels.

In the skies, there was a vast formation of Fighter Jet and Bomber squadrons.

Everyone understood that in the face of over fifty thousand Giants, these ground forces were basically on a one-way mission.

Their role was to weaken the Giants’ charge momentum as much as possible—to safeguard the Great Wall.

Once this Continent-level Fortification fell, humanity would lose all footing in Southern Liuzhou.

Everyone’s expression was tense.

Time ticked away, second by second.

Gradually, the ground began to tremble slightly.

On the distant horizon, a slightly undulating black line appeared.

It looked like the silhouette of continuous mountain ranges, or like a depressed cloud layer before a storm.

As the black line approached, the trembling of the ground intensified.

Finally, everyone saw it clearly.

Over fifty thousand running Giants, like a moving mountain range, slowly rose from the edge of the horizon.

With every step they took, the ground cracked like thin ice, and clouds of dust were thrown up, blotting out the sky.

The air was filled with rolling white mist—the result of the body heat and sweat evaporating from the Giants after long-distance running.

The white breath exhaled by more than fifty thousand Giants even faintly obscured the sky.

Inside the A9 Checkpoint command center, the commanders from the Three Major Human Organizations were at their wits' end.

A few hours earlier, they had urgently contacted their superiors.

The message was simple: they were requesting permission to use the nuclear bombs deployed within the Great Wall to bombard the Giants.

But this time, whether it was the Apocalypse Sect, the Titan Throne, or the Iron Oath Brotherhood, they all issued the same command.

In response to the expansion of the Giant Civilization, the Silence Agreement would once again come into effect.

The human forces of Southern Liuzhou were restricted to using only weapons of Level 3 or below to combat the Giants.

“What are our superiors even thinking?”

A commander slammed his fist on the table, causing the map on it to jump.

“Without Level 4 Items, how are we supposed to hold the Great Wall? Don’t they want this Continent-level Fortification anymore?”

The others were equally outraged.

But none of them noticed...

In the nearby sea areas west of Southern Liuzhou, several Level 4 Nuclear-powered Submarines of the Monstrous Civilizations were slowly surfacing.

Their missiles were all armed and aimed at the Giant horde advancing toward the Monstrous Civilization-controlled region.

Minutes later, it seemed those nuclear submarines received orders from higher-ups, simultaneously abandoning their targeting and launch.

They returned quietly beneath the sea.

The surface of the sea returned to stillness, as if nothing had ever happened.