Alien Hotel.

Chapter 710 Star Collapse
"Hurry, hurry, hurry! We're short on time. The next transport ship needs to launch in 20 minutes—this planet won't last much longer!"

"Orbital Fleet communication received. A 'Giant' class heavy-duty transport ship will arrive on the surface in half an hour. Let us prepare."

"Giant? Good, I knew the guys up there were reliable, they even sent these things down. Let them land on C-22... Launch pad? Where the hell is there a launch pad! We'll just have to blow them up ourselves. Let the pilots get used to it, those old men always brag about being able to do blind landings on Kalosh..."

"A ground fissure has appeared in the northeast direction. The fissure is still expanding, but it won't reach here for a while."

"Keep a close watch—who knows if these 'branches' can really hold up."

The communication sounds coming through the headset were tense and busy, and the retinal projection displayed the orders just issued from the orbital command ship, as well as various constantly changing coordinates and countdown parameters. Xu Jiali opened the power armor mask, and the smell of gunpowder on the battlefield instantly filled his nostrils.

He stood amidst the ruins of a collapsed temple. The once magnificent spires and high walls were now nothing but a pile of smoking rubble. In front of the ruins was a sturdy alloy plaza, which had been less damaged in the previous battle and was now serving as a temporary assembly point and launch site.

Marines withdrawing from neighboring war zones are arriving in droves, where they will board transport ships or shuttles to leave the collapsing planet.

Thick clouds filled with dust and ash hung low overhead. The energy released during the planet's collapse had begun to disturb the atmosphere. Lightning flashed and streaks of fire were brewing in the clouds. In the distance, huge columns of gas occasionally erupted from cracks in the ground, looking like the pillars that held up the sky in mythology.

However, those towering pillars were in fact omens of the impending destruction of heaven and earth.

Further away, several large transport ships could be seen taking off from the ground, their engines shining brightly in the gloomy atmosphere, accelerating across the sky as if trying to ignite the clouds. The ground beneath those ships had begun to collapse, and a mountain range could be vaguely seen sinking into the thick fog, with astonishing walls of fog rising from its edges.

The bell was beside him. The jeepney girl took off her helmet, her cat-like eyes flashing with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. She raised her hand to point the data terminal on her arm armor into the distance, while gesturing with her other hand near the camera, shouting at the top of her lungs:

"Family members, I'm currently on the Hermitage's evil homeworld, which is in the process of collapsing! Look at that column of smoke ahead; gas from inside the planet is being ejected into space. Please follow me, my family and friends, as Bell will take you inside the Great Rift with a drone later. Please follow me, thank you!"

As the bell rang, it slowly moved to the side, then, without looking where it was going, it bumped headfirst into Xu Jiali's arm guard.

Xu Jiali's eyes twitched: "What are you doing?"

Bell's eyes gleamed with excitement: "The mermaid taught me! You can exchange live streams for cat food!"

Xu Jiali's face twitched on the spot, but before she could speak, the psionic servant in front of her rattled off a series of predictions: "We have received the notification that information control has been lifted. The battlefield terminal information transmission restriction level is now level three, meow. The unit number and specific mission information have been processed. The account has been registered with the Integrated Army, meow. The data upload process has been automatically processed by the command AI. What do you want to say, boss, meow?"

Xu Jiali: "..."

He stared at the screen for a long time, veins practically bulging on his forehead, before finally finding a line that would make him feel less awkward: "How did you end up hanging out with a mermaid?"

"I went fishing in the valley with Momo, and we happened to run into a mermaid practicing diving, meow~"

Xu Jiali took a light breath and turned to look behind her, pretending nothing had happened.

In the center of the temple ruins, a thick crystal branch emerges from between the rocks and soil, its leaves, gleaming with a magnificent light, unfurling at the top and radiating streams of light from its edges.

Although the underground part of the branch could not be seen, Xu Jiali heard from the engineers that the radar had scanned an even more amazing underground structure beneath it—the sprawling crystalline roots intertwined in the strata, extending all the way to the depths of the planet that the radar could not detect.

These roots are said to be supporting the soil around the gathering point, slowing down the collapse of the area.

There are currently hundreds of such support points across the planet—all of which grew out of the ground in a short period of time after the emergency evacuation order was issued.

The radiance flowing from their tips into the high atmosphere and the powerful energy fluctuations can be clearly observed from near-Earth orbit.

Heavy footsteps came from the side, and they clearly did not sound like the power armor.

Xu Jiali turned around and saw a whole group of bronze knights walking across the square, with two artificial saintesses walking with the knights.

But there were other figures behind the Cavaliers.

Xu Jiali saw many people wearing gray or black robes. They looked listless and numb, with strange metal devices hanging around their necks or heads. When they moved, the parts on the edges of those devices made a clattering sound, as if they were some kind of shackles.

As she got closer, Xu Jiali was shocked to see that the devices were actually "installed" directly on these people's bodies—the connecting terminals and alloy brackets penetrated their flesh and were nailed to their skulls or spines.

"How is this going?"

Xu Jiali grabbed a Marine who was walking by and asked in a low voice.

"They said to bring all these artificial saintesses and knights..." "No, I mean these people in robes."

"Ah, they were servants of the temple—all captured by those cultists. From the very beginning of the battle, the cultists locked these people in cages to use as psionic batteries. When we opened the dungeon, it was full of drained corpses; these were the only survivors..."

The Marine paused for a moment, then continued, "They wear mental shackles. With these things on, their thinking becomes very sluggish, and it seems like they can't be removed... But those artificial saintesses and knights want to take these people with them."

Xu Jiali paused, his expression momentarily complicated. He looked at the artificial saintesses and knights. One of the knights turned to him, his expression hidden beneath the empty helmet.

“…Many of them came from the same place,” the Marine whispered again. “I saw a saint kneeling beside a dead temple servant, calling him brother…”

"Damn it... I shouldn't have killed all those priests at once. I should have spared two and hung them on the engine nozzles when we took off," Xu Jiali cursed, but then asked again, "Does the higher-ups know about this? Is there any room left on the ship?"

"There's still room on the ship. As for what the higher-ups think..." the Marine said, glancing up at the crystal "branch" piercing the ground in the middle of the temple ruins. "These saintesses and knights are now working for that angel hunter, who is currently in the Earth's core supporting this planet for us. In principle, transport ships can't carry people outside the plan, but the angel hunter himself said we should bring them all."

Xu Jiali laughed.

"Okay, then bring them all."

Another heart-pounding roar suddenly came from deep underground, interrupting their conversation.

Xu Jiali was startled and subconsciously looked up into the distance.

He saw a hill directly opposite the temple ruins suddenly collapse, the energy released from the fractured rock layers drawing hundreds of astonishing arcs of electricity between the clouds and the ground. Then, a bright light emanated from the newly appeared rift, briefly illuminating the previously gloomy sky.

The planet's collapse is accelerating, and even with the crystal branches growing from the Earth's core slowing the process, the overall structure of the Earth's crust is nearing its critical point of instability.

Everyone immediately sped up the boarding process.

Wave after wave of large transport ships traversed the atmosphere, as ground troops stranded on the surface of the Holy Land and rescued personnel raced against time to leave the soon-to-be-destroyed planet.

A hollowed-out planet shouldn't have such strong gravity, but the Gate of Eden at its center is like a gaping maw, constantly growing and swallowing up all the remaining matter and energy of the planet.

The last transport ship at Assembly Point 22 in the Northern Hemisphere took off, its massive cargo ship roaring into the sky as its engine array roared to life.

A dozen escort shuttles then detached from the collapsing ground and took off together with the cargo spacecraft.

"My goodness..."

Xu Jiali sat in the cockpit of the shuttle and peeked out at the situation outside. Even though he had experienced countless battlefields, large and small, he felt a little dizzy and dazed at this moment.

The assembly point where they had just been standing was now filled with thick smoke and dust, but outside of the assembly point, the sight of a collapsing planet was truly terrifying.

The entire planet was like a shattered light bulb, disintegrating piece by piece and falling into the central "black hole." The oceans and rivers had long since evaporated, and a massive mixture of ice clouds was ejected into space. Some of these clouds were captured by the Gate of Eden and fell into the depths of the planet. After the shattered crust collapsed, he could clearly see the true appearance of the hollow darkness inside the Holy Realm—and within that darkness, there were a large number of astonishing crystal structures that had traversed vast distances to support the remaining inner layers of the crust.

Those were crystal branches that spread out from the wilderness of souls. They pierced through the spatial rifts opened by the boundary bridge and supported themselves on the empty shell of the sacred realm. Those branches and leaves that grew through the earth's surface were now being exposed one after another to the vacuum environment of the universe, radiating a magnificent and dreamlike glow.

Even now, some spaceships of all sizes are still taking off from the surface of the Holy Land—those small patches of ground supported by crystal branches are like isolated islands in a storm, with the surrounding crust having collapsed and fallen, and only the tops of the branches still standing in space like launch pads.

Only when the ships in a region have completely evacuated will the energy supply to the crystalline branches supporting that region be cut off. Then, those amazing crystal structures will silently dissipate into space, and the fragments of the earth's crust that they supported will fall toward the Gate of Eden.

"Boss." Lingdang suddenly nudged Xu Jiali's arm, her voice timid.

Xu Jiali's expression was tense, but she still reached out and rubbed the cat-headed girl's head: "What's wrong, kitty?"

"My followers are growing so fast, meow."

The large hand that was rubbing his head instantly turned into a sharp rap on the head.

"Meow!"

(End of this chapter)