Ten thousand I am across the heavens

The Five Elements Master had originally intended to help, but now it seemed unnecessary. Using their reconnaissance abilities, it wasn't difficult to identify the high-speed underground target; within a vast network of sturdy underground pipes, mobile base vehicles were levitating and moving at high speed.

Although this would significantly reduce their output power, they effectively managed to evade enemy attacks.

"So that's how it is. These underground pipes were planned and built here long ago. When they sent troops to contain them, they probably already anticipated this. Among this group, there are probably quite powerful experts in the Path of Wisdom."

The Five Elements Mage's guess wasn't entirely wrong. These vacuum pipes were designed from the outset to potentially be used in future operations to hold the energy core and evade the eldest son's attacks. The only slightly off guess was that the underground base didn't contain any powerful Wisdom Dao experts.

Those with exceptional wisdom are not necessarily smarter than ordinary people. The Gu worms can only provide them with higher computational power and more powerful information acquisition and processing capabilities. However, they don't directly change their thought patterns; at most, they offer inspiration, allowing them to summarize various information they unintentionally acquire and arrive at answers directly through a kind of intuition.

To be able to do all that is indeed quite impressive. But relying on computers and the cooperation of numerous advisors to process information and formulate plans, they are absolutely no less capable than a single, highly skilled individual. The only area where they might fall short is information gathering; they can't directly obtain the information they want through methods like divination. However, all the intelligence gathered from the entire underground base is compiled and given to them. In that respect, they won't be far behind.

After a considerable period of construction, the underground vacuum pipeline is no longer the single ring that initially surrounded the eldest son. Instead, it consists of large rings containing smaller ones. These densely packed pipes underground have countless entrances and exits, as well as numerous intersections. At these intersections, lane changes can be made, requiring only a slight deceleration before the change of lane to create different arcs.

These underground vacuum tunnels have been constructed like underground overpasses. Even the First Son cannot predict where a high-speed moving target will appear next. It might change course at any moment. This means that once the First Son's target is predicted, most mobile base vehicles can evade it. Even if the real-time location of these mobile base vehicles could be detected, precise strikes would be extremely difficult. Moreover, with the 10th Legion present, if a mobile base vehicle is targeted for attack, targeted defenses can be implemented.

However, after discovering that the enemy had all burrowed underground, the eldest son had his own countermeasures. The ring had many intersecting points with numerous branches, these places acting as major thoroughfares. The eldest son's massive body slammed heavily into the ground. The earth itself twisted, and even the underground vacuum pipes, reinforced with extremely strong materials, began to twist and crack under this pressure that could alter the very landscape.

The eldest son, much like the Apostle Remiel, unleashed a colossal drill beneath his planet. In an instant, it breached the layer of defense beneath the surface, destroying a crucial transportation node. Furthermore, it released numerous clones. While the individual combat capabilities of these clones were perhaps equivalent to a fifth-level Gu Master—one or two wouldn't be of much use on a battlefield of this scale—they were able to penetrate vacuum pipes, infiltrating and sabotaging them. Along with the previously created breaches, they destroyed vacuum pipes in other areas, even directly damaging nearby base vehicles when they passed by.

The eldest son was forced into this situation; he had no other choice. His strength didn't lie in positional warfare; his true forte was overwhelming the enemy with his massive size and immense power. Ultimately, the eldest son was created by the Goddess of Creation as a tool to propagate life, not as a weapon of war.

This kind of all-out war for every inch of land is indeed a field that the eldest son is not very good at.

The vacuum pipes are located deep underground, so the temperature here isn't too low. While the vacuum restricts his clones to some extent, it doesn't weaken them due to the extreme cold, and their penetration underground is quite destructive.

But the war dragged into this area. And it was precisely dragged into the area that underground bases excelled at. In a total war, it's not just the army that's being tested, but the comprehensive strength of a civilization. Even an eighth-level immortal would find it difficult to do better than them, unless they are extremely skilled at creating clones, and each clone has a sufficiently high level of intelligence. Otherwise, even a highly intelligent master with extremely high computational power would find it difficult to handle so many troubles at the same time.

When the eldest son's drill broke through the strata, militia troops had already arrived at the scene in a specially made pipeline train.

Their primary objective was not to fight the invaders released by the eldest son, but to protect the engineering corps they were escorting.

The eldest son can destroy the vacuum pipes through impacts, explosions, and other means. Similarly, the underground factory forces can rely on their numerical superiority and strong production capacity to quickly repair and put the damaged vacuum pipes back into service shortly afterward.

However, it was clearly not the engineering corps that made the first move, but the militia escorting them. Even the militia had received basic military training and were even capable of using lethal tactics in war, so doing this was not too difficult.

All it takes is to integrate these militiamen into regular legions, train them together for a few days, let them experience the feeling of using common warfare tactics, and simultaneously assign one or two retired veterans as core members to each militia unit. This will enable ordinary militia units to unleash weakened forms of warfare tactics. As for the types of warfare tactics, they are diverse and come in all shapes and sizes.

Depending on the style of the different militia groups and their deepest desires, the carnage of war manifests in various forms. Some simply increase speed and strength; others can briefly enter a bullet-time-like state; still others can temporarily become intangible for defense. More outrageous examples include temporarily transforming extremely powerful enemies into harmless little animals. At this moment, millions of militia members have poured into the underground tunnels. Within these vacuum tunnels, they can traverse thousands of miles in an instant; wherever there is a problem, they appear like immune cells within a giant organism.

At that moment, the first breach appeared, and a large number of the eldest son's clones poured in. However, they were immediately surrounded by the militia. In terms of individual strength, even with genetic modifications, the militia was no match for the clones sent by the eldest son. But their deadly combat tactics made up for the difference between the two sides.

While the eldest son's clones, like the rest of the family, possess incredibly versatile abilities and top-tier physical functionality, they still lag behind in individual intelligence. Although the eldest son possesses great wisdom, it doesn't mean his randomly created clones are equally intelligent. These clones have a considerable level of intelligence, considered quite strong even among artificial intelligence, but compared to real humans, they are still somewhat rigid. They are also incapable of coordinating and developing their own unique war strategies like normal humans. Some things are simply beyond the eldest son's ability to learn at will.

They had just rushed in through the hole in the vacuum pipe. The eldest son's clone was immediately subjected to saturation fire. The vacuum pipe, along with the clone released by the factory, was shattered. There was absolutely no room to hide in the confined space. The militia also showed no mercy.

However, the eldest son's clones continued their invasion of other areas, their drills attacking key underground nodes. Having dealt with the enemy at one node, the others also needed rescue.

After defeating the enemy, the engineering corps took over the work of the militia. A tunnel boring machine-like device was deployed. With the aid of spatial transport, this device could be assembled and placed in the underground tunnel within minutes. The modular design allowed for the rapid installation of underground vacuum pipes. The rectangular walls of the pipes were prefabricated components, mass-produced and delivered from the rear, and quickly installed and bonded together. The engineering corps then employed various construction techniques to completely integrate these prefabricated components, while simultaneously strengthening the molecular structure, giving these newly laid pipes the same high pressure resistance as the previously constructed pipes.

As for the vacuum structure inside the newly repaired pipeline, it was also easily repaired. When the leak occurred due to the eldest son's surprise attack, the airtight valves at both ends of this section of the pipeline were already closed. After the pipeline was rebuilt, the inside was quickly evacuated to a vacuum, and then the airtight valves on both sides were opened. The pipeline could then function normally.

Such destruction and repair continued to occur throughout the various areas of the underground pipes. The eldest son was once again dragged into a war of attrition. The pipes were located deep underground. Furthermore, the ground was reinforced by the passive defenses of the various legions within the underground base, making the rock layer even more solid than normal rock. Even if the eldest son could breach this layer, he wouldn't be able to cause large-scale damage. This kind of point-to-point destruction, this kind of urban warfare-like combat within the underground pipes, was precisely what the people at the underground base excelled at.

Although a large number of underground pipelines were damaged, the rate of destruction kept pace with the rate of repair. While the Firstborn attempted to discern the operational patterns of the base vehicles within these pipelines, preparing to use precision strikes to destroy them, the various legions were also preparing their attacks. These weren't just area-of-effect attacks to reduce the Firstborn's size; they also included precise, powerful strikes that would penetrate the Firstborn's outer defenses and directly target its core.

With a deafening roar, the earth was ripped open, revealing a trench thousands of meters deep. An underground pipeline was completely destroyed in the terrifying energy release. The base vehicle speeding through the pipeline was also destroyed; the secondary explosion of the Dao Yuan reactor caused further damage. But at the same time, a precise attack, imbued with immense energy, pierced directly through the eldest son's body. Even with his strong defenses, he couldn't stop the attack, which accurately struck his brain core, destroying a crucial neural node in the explosion.

Both sides have weaknesses. And each side's weaknesses will be the primary targets of attack. The eldest son's flesh and blood wriggled rapidly. His metabolism was accelerated to its limit. The destroyed nerve nodes were rapidly repairing themselves, growing new ones.

Meanwhile, outside the barrier, in regions not as cold, factories were also working overtime to produce and assemble new Dao Yuan reactors. After dozens of base vehicles were destroyed, a new batch was sent into the barrier, into vacuum tubes, and continued to provide energy to the various legions at high speed.

Although the eldest son's self-awareness is chaotic, his instinctive wisdom has already made him realize that he is facing the same massive, constantly self-repairing system as himself. Facing this system is like facing the interstellar civilizations of the past. While the eldest son outwardly holds the advantage, these tenacious civilizations will forcefully halt his extinction process. In some extreme cases, the eldest son might even be annihilated.

Destroying the underground base materially was already extremely difficult. But the eldest son possessed another advantage: his spiritual power. Although corrupted and dominated by the desire for destruction, his soul remained powerful beyond human comprehension. Now, forced into this situation and dragged into a war of attrition, the eldest son had calculated that regardless of victory or defeat, he would be nearly exhausted by the end of the battle. Finally, he chose to wager his last trump card: his soul.

The terrifying soul power unleashed the instant it was released caused the two eighth-level immortals to tremble. Although they weren't dedicated soul cultivators, their souls had already reached the level of a Desolate Soul, equivalent to the strength of a billion souls—roughly the condensed essence of hundreds of millions of souls. Logically, only experts of the same level could possess souls as powerful as theirs. To overwhelm them in soul power, one would either need to be a soul cultivator of the same level or have reached the ninth level of cultivation.

But now, the strength of the soul power displayed by the eldest son has completely exceeded their comprehension. Even if it were just this single individual, the power of his soul would be enough to surpass the soul power of an entire civilization, even those races most adept at spiritual power.

[To be continued]

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