Chapter 655 — The Crisis, Neatly Arranged
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
When he saw the footage transmitted from the Iron Throne—Unit Zero, Gao Heng could not help drawing a sharp breath.
Those madmen had actually built a counterfeit "Great Stag Amorn"...
The counterfeit had clearly run out of control—its ruptured flesh and malformed body were proof enough—but apart from that, the holy radiance that wreathed it and the horns that looked as though they had been forged from light were identical to those of the true "Great Stag Amorn." This was beyond question a staggering creation; enemy though it was, and wrongheaded though its makers' path might be, the biotechnological prowess in the hands of the Assembly of All Things' End still drew a gasp of admiration from Gao Yang's heart.
They had most likely harvested the genetic factors that humans carry from the God of Nature, then used some manner of reverse reconstruction to shape this monster. Technological power of this caliber...
Could they not have put it to some decent use for once?
That was all Gao Yang wanted to sigh over just now—but the upper echelons of the Assembly of All Things' End had in all likelihood been wiped out in a single sweep the moment this dreadful man-made god awakened and lost control, so all his sighs and accusations had nowhere to go. The only thing left for him to do was find a way to deal with this enormous mess.
He looked at the arcane-net terminal before him. On the holographic projection hovering in midair was the half-length image of Ma Qi; behind the commander lay the busy scene of the Iron Throne's tactical command center, where several holograms flickered in the background and many clerks clutching documents hurried through the carriage. Clearly, the appearance of that "Great Stag" had set everyone on edge.
"What is the situation now? Is this... monster still in place?"
"Yes," Ma Qi's voice came with a slight distortion, perhaps due to interference from the powerful energy field saturating the entire Holy Spirit Plains. "On first contact it displayed violent aggression, destroyed two of our war machines, and killed the soldiers aboard. But it soon ceased activity and began to wander the plains...
"I have dispatched several teams to maintain continuous surveillance of the monster from a distance. One thing is certain now: once our soldiers draw within a certain range of it, it activates and attacks—but after a time, or once it loses its target, it stops again...
"Its range of activity is gradually expanding. The observers report that it is growing more and more restless.
"We suspect it has not fully awakened. Perhaps it will take a few more days—perhaps only a day or two—before it 'wakes' completely..."
Gao Yang listened closely to Ma Qi's report, while on another holographic projection beside it, fragments of footage of the "man-made god" played.
The bizarre monster raced across the plains, sweeping the battlefield with something resembling a plasma jet, searing scorching furrows into the earth; it gave voice to frenzied sounds, a chaotic noise impossible to describe in human language that spread across the battlefield with its movements, and in that noise the swarms of Crystal Giants grew ever more frenzied; it roamed the land with radiance drifting about it, and wherever it passed, birds and beasts and even the Crystal Giants fell in whole swathes, and from their corpses countless flowers bloomed, countless vines...
In some footage shot from very far away, it wandered the plains in bewilderment, seeming utterly without purpose, yet now and then it would suddenly break into a mad sprint and attack every target indiscriminately.
Every one of these traits matched the standard of "frenzy" perfectly.
This was the "power of a god" that the Assembly of All Things' End had manufactured.