Chapter 878: Chapter 878
“What?” Li Xiaofei was shocked.
He had clearly sealed this entire area with his sword-wings, and completely locked down both time and space. Yet somehow, Wei Xiaotian still managed to escape?
No. It wasn’t an escape. Wei Xiaotian had left long ago. What remained had only been a projected clone, a mere illusion. It had simply been too late by the time Li Xiaofei realized.
Wei Xiaotian, once the God General Angrus, had long mastered a duplication technique that bordered on the divine. From the very beginning, not once had Li Xiaofei been able to distinguish the real Wei Xiaotian from his clones. This time was no exception.
“When?” Li Xiaofei asked himself, searching his memory.
Perhaps it had been when he was on the verge of exploding from the Blood-Drinking Sword’s overwhelming energy and had entered that trance-like state of epiphany and oblivion. Wei Xiaotian must have departed then.
Li Xiaofei fell into deep thought. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝✦𝘧𝙞𝙧𝙚✦𝕟𝕖𝕥
Gradually, pieces began to fall into place. Delta, the Death God’s Eye, had been manipulated by Wei Xiaotian. He had used Sikong Xue and her daughter to lure the Reaper giant into Stargate Base, and then exploited the Blood-Drinking Sword to eliminate him completely.
Recalling the scene where Wei Xiaotian had used that ancient secret art to break down and replicate Delta’s nine forms, only to finally devour him. Li Xiaofei came to a chilling realization, Wei Xiaotian’s true goal from the beginning had been to analyze and obtain the very essence of Delta, a being born of the Reapers. And he had succeeded.
That meant the intel the military received, about the top Eden figures meeting with Delta at Stargate Base, had likely been deliberately leaked by Wei Xiaotian himself. Furthermore, traces of figures like Zheng Daoyuan, the Thousand Ghosts, and Nie Yucheng, the Eternal Night, had also been intentionally exposed, orchestrated by Wei Xiaotian to mislead both Xiao Shi Battle Division and Li Xiaofei.
He had used Zheng Daoyuan to spread false intelligence and mislead the military’s operation. Though many Eden and Reaper spies had been captured, it had ultimately failed to prevent the meeting.
He had used Nie Yucheng to bait Li Xiaofei directly, buying just enough time for his grand plan to fall into place. From beginning to end, this entire cat-and-mouse game, this war at the top of the food chain in the Xiao Kuang Star Region, had unfolded exactly as Wei Xiaotian had calculated. Everyone, Li Xiaofei, the military, and even the Emperor's weapons themselves, had been mere pawns in his hand.
The more Li Xiaofei thought about it, the more horrifying it became.
A man ... is truly terrifying.
It now seemed clear that Wei Xiaotian’s infiltration of Chongque City back then had never been a simple matter. He had claimed Li Xiaofei to be humanity’s Sixth Emperor. He had said they couldn’t wait any longer.
The implications of those words, when Li Xiaofei carefully considered them, sent a chill down his spine. He even began to doubt whether Wei Xiaotian’s true identity was merely Zero, merely the Eden faction’s regional leader in the Xiao Kuang Star Region.
With such meticulous schemes and unfathomable means, it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was the true leader of Eden, the legendary Holy Garden Chief himself.
“He said, ‘I’ll be waiting for you over there.’ So that means...” Li Xiaofei muttered under his breath, eyes suddenly bursting with sharp light.
He looked up at the space anchor high above in the sky. It had to be that. Wei Xiaotian had gone to the world on the other side of the spatial anchor. He had gone to the Fallen Zones.
He had sent Sikong Xue and her daughter into the Fallen Zones, and had orchestrated the entire scheme to seize Delta’s essence, all because he needed to go there too. Only with that conclusion did all of Wei Xiaotian’s actions begin to make sense.
The clarity of this realization struck Li Xiaofei like lightning. His thoughts aligned, and the fog in his mind cleared. The Reaper army had been completely routed. There was no longer the slightest sign of resistance.
They had left behind billions of corpses drifting through the void, and the shattered remains of millions of warships. Defeated, the Reapers finally retreated back into the space anchor, vanishing into their own territory.
Li Xiaofei willed the countless swords of light to vanish. The golden and silver wings at his back folded neatly away and he summoned a robe to cover his body. His gaze settled on the now-stabilized spatial anchor ahead, but he did not rush forward. Instead, he chose to prepare.
From the depths of space, the cheers of humanity’s surviving warriors echoed forth.
Stargate Base, too, began to shift. Its battle form started to transform back, mechanical limbs folding inward, to its original, though battered, ring-shaped configuration. It now orbited quietly around the anchor.
“Thank you.” A clear and gentle voice called out from behind him.
Li Xiaofei turned around and replied calmly, “You're welcome.”
He had already sensed that the spherical barrier formed by his sword-wings, which had been suspended in the air, was now gradually unraveling. The several hundred people protected within were walking out slowly.
They were led by none other than Xiao Shi, the commander of the Xiao Shi Battle Division. The young, strikingly beautiful woman with long, shapely legs wore a curious smile as she approached.
She asked, “If not for your intervention, this entire Planet Nock region might’ve been reduced to rubble. May I ask, which military district are you from?”
Xiao Shi was well acquainted with all top-tier experts within the Xiao Kuang Military District. Yet she had never seen Li Xiaofei before. Nor had she witnessed anyone within her ranks who wielded the same combat techniques and mystical arts as he had just displayed.
So, she assumed he must be from another human military force outside the Xiao Kuang Star Region.
Li Xiaofei calmly sheathed the Blood-Drinking Sword and stood upright. Then, with a crisp salute, he announced loudly, “Li Xiaofei, Second Deputy Captain of the Meteor Special Response Unit, Canglan Mountain Defense Line, Planet Nock. Reporting to the Commander.”
“You’re with the Xiao Shi Battle Division?”
A chorus of disbelieving exclamations erupted, not just from Xiao Shi herself, but also from Mi Youyin and the dozens of command center officers standing behind her. They were all visibly stunned, gasping in disbelief.
This man, who had just displayed unmatched might and singlehandedly saved both the army and Planet Nock, was supposedly a mere mid-tier officer under their own division?
Li Xiaofei offered a faint, modest smile. “Truthfully, I’ve only been enlisted for just over half a year. I was dispatched on this mission as part of a special operation regarding Stargate Base.”
At that moment, Mi Youyin had already pulled up his records. Li Xiaofei’s file circulated swiftly among the stunned officers.
Xiao Shi read through it, her eyes widening in disbelief, unable to stop herself from exclaiming, “Unbelievable...”
“Don’t go back.” Xiao Shi stepped forward excitedly, her tone warm and full of enthusiasm. “Stay here at Stargate Base. I’ll personally report to Central Command and recommend a commendation for your service. With the merits you earned today, even if you replaced me as commander of the Battle Division, I’d have no complaints whatsoever.”
Standing to the side, Mi Youyin couldn’t help but cover her face with her hand. She knew this old habit of her superior and close friend had surfaced again.
A weakness for talent... and a bit of a hopeless romantic. This time, Li Xiaofei’s performance had been so overwhelmingly brilliant that Mi Youyin genuinely feared Xiao Shi might throw herself too far into this one.
Truth be told, even Mi Youyin herself felt a deep curiosity toward Li Xiaofei. Her usually unreliable intuition stirred strangely in his presence, creating a peculiar resonance she couldn’t explain.
It was their first meeting, yet she already felt a strange sense of familiarity and respect toward him, almost like the reverence she held for legendary veterans of old. No, perhaps even greater than that.
This man... is definitely more than just a genius.
Mi Youyin looked around. Though Xiao Shi had activated the Shelter of the Sword Sovereign to protect the command center during that terrifying explosion, the devastation had still been immense.
Countless lives had been lost. The surrounding buildings were in ruins, and Stargate Base itself had been nearly cleaved in two at the command sector. The reconstruction ahead would be long and difficult.
Still, there was one piece of good news. The Reapers had suffered catastrophic losses. The Death God’s Eye legion had been all but annihilated, its core forces destroyed or crippled. For a long time to come, they would be in no condition to launch another assault on Planet Nock’s space anchor.
The Xiao Shi Battle Division had earned at least several decades of precious peace and recovery.