I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

"Clang—Buzz!"

The troop transport ship's alloy bulkheads trembled violently, emitting a sickening metallic twisting sound.

Inside the cabin, red warning lights flashed wildly, casting flickering light on the faces of the 120 fully armed soldiers. No one spoke; only heavy breathing and the hissing of the hydraulic joints of the power armor as they jolted through the air could be heard.

"Altitude 12,000 meters! Barometric pressure warning!"

A pilot's booming voice, ripped apart by static noise, blared from the cockpit intercom: "Outside temperature -65 degrees Celsius! Check your cold-weather runes and life support systems! Open the cockpit in ten seconds!"

"ten!"

At the rear of the cabin, nineteen-year-old sword cultivator Lin Fan gripped the overhead anchor tightly. He wore a specially made light single-soldier armor set and stood on a broad-bladed star iron flying sword without a hilt. Due to excessive tension, his Qi Sea, which had been stuck at the peak of Qi Refining for more than half a year, was churning erratically.

"Nine!"

"Little brat, stop shaking your legs."

Beside him, a burly man nearly two meters tall spoke in a deep, booming voice. He was completely encased in an extremely heavy "Xuanwu-III" powered exoskeleton, with a ferocious wolf's head painted on the armor plate on his chest.

Veteran Wang Lei patted Lin Fan's shoulder with a mechanical arm, the force of which almost made Lin Fan kneel down.

"Brother Lei... I wasn't shaking, it was the spiritual energy resonance of the flying sword." Lin Fan swallowed, forcibly suppressing the tremor in his voice. "The stratosphere is so high, if we run out of true energy and fall down, there won't even be any ashes left, right?"

"What's there to be afraid of! If you fall, there's a great formation to catch you and refine you into a wisp of immortal energy to nourish your home planet. That's the highest honor."

Wang Lei grinned, revealing stubble standing on end beneath his mask. "Remember what the command said: the heavens are the richest in spiritual energy! Open your mouths wide and absorb it! If your cultivation doesn't improve, you'll die in the heavens!"

"three!"

"two!"

"One! Open the hatch! Jump! Jump! Jump!"

"boom--!"

The massive tailgate slammed down with a deafening roar.

In that instant, there was no need for anyone to jump down. The terrifying pressure difference between the inside and outside of the plane at an altitude of 15,000 meters acted like a super vacuum cleaner, violently pulling the people out of the cabin!

"ah--!"

The moment Lin Fan was thrown out of the cabin, his mind went blank. Everything around him was rushing away, and he didn't even have time to figure out where he was.

He bit his tongue hard, using the intense pain to force himself to stay awake, and his hands flew into hand seals.

"Sword rise!"

The Star Iron Flying Sword beneath his feet emitted a clear, resonant hum, its sword energy surging, managing to stabilize Lin Fan's figure amidst the turbulent high-altitude currents.

He looked up and, through his tactical goggles half-covered in frost, saw a scene he would never forget.

There are no blue skies and white clouds here, only a deep, dark void that is close to the vacuum of space.

Directly above, the bluish-gray barrier of the Nine Provinces was slowly rotating. At certain nodes of the barrier, hundreds of pitch-black spatial rifts stretched out.

From those cracks, large swathes of gray-black "willow catkins" are continuously spewing out.

Near the surface, they are spores barely visible to the naked eye; but in the stratosphere, these ephemeral parasites, having just crawled through cracks, take on an extremely disgusting, translucent jellyfish-like form. They have no fixed shape, only a dense mass of microscopic tentacles dancing wildly.

Beneath this deadly "catkin" lies a Great Wall built of human flesh and steel.

150,000 reserve monks and exoskeleton legions from all over the world hovered in this deadly airspace like an extremely dense swarm of bees.

"Defensive formation! Three people per group! Don't let those gray hairs get on you!"

On the communications channel, the commanders of each squad were roaring at the top of their lungs.

"Sizzle!"

Before Lin Fan could even join the formation, a fist-sized, grayish-black "jellyfish" was slammed into his spiritual energy shield by a gust of wind.

There was no sense of impact, but Lin Fan was horrified to discover that his protective true essence was being drained away at an alarming rate! The monster was actually devouring his protective sword energy!

"Get out of here!"

Lin Fan pointed his fingers like a sword, and a crescent-shaped sword beam instantly slashed out, cutting the monster in half.

But the monster that was cut open did not die; instead, it split into two smaller individuals and continued to crawl into the crack in the shield.

"Cutting won't work! Use high-frequency oscillation and extremely positive properties!"

Wang Lei's rough roar rang out from the side.

"boom!"

As soon as a slightly larger mutated spore got close, it was instantly burned to ashes by the heavy psionic flamethrower on Wang Lei's back.

"Stay close to me! Use your sword energy to finish off the enemy, I'll clear the obstacles!"

The six thrusters behind Wang Lei simultaneously unleashed a ghostly blue tail flame, and the heavy Xuanwu armor crashed into the densest spore cloud in mid-air, creating a shockwave.

"kill!"

Lin Fan gritted his teeth and followed closely behind on his sword.

At an altitude of 15,000 meters, it instantly transformed into an extremely cruel meat grinder.

The cold glint of flying swords, the roar of chainsaws, and the orange flames of flamethrowers intertwined in this desolate stratosphere, forming a massive network of firepower.

The battles here have no tactics whatsoever; it's purely a war of attrition.

They used their lives and true essence to fill the toxins leaking from the spatial rifts.

"Pfft!"

Not far away, a sword cultivator's shield was torn apart by the gale. A dozen spores instantly smeared his face, even burrowing into his nose and ears.

"Help me... Ah!"

He only had time to let out a short scream before his whole body twisted bizarrely in mid-air, his muscles swelling wildly, and he was about to mutate in mid-air.

"Bang!"

Without hesitation, an exoskeleton mech next to them turned its gun around and fired an armor-piercing explosive round, blasting the comrade who was about to mutate into an instant.

There was no time for grief. The soldiers inside the mechs, their eyes red, grabbed their chainsaw swords and charged towards the next cloud of black mist.

ten minutes.

After just ten minutes of intense fighting, Lin Fan's Qi Sea was depleted.

"Brother Lei... I'm out of true energy..."

Lin Fan's face was ashen, the flying sword beneath his feet dimmed and teetered on the verge of collapse. The stratospheric gale cut into his skin like knives, and his lungs felt like they were on fire from the lack of oxygen and extreme cold.

"Inhale! Open your mouth and inhale!"

Wang Lei smashed a cluster of nearby spores with a punch, and the surface of his mech was covered with corroded pits. He turned and roared at Lin Fan, "The source is right above us! The concentration of spiritual energy here is at least ten times that on the ground!"

Lin Fan raised his head, trembling.

As expected, the first wave of pure spiritual rain spewed out by the Nine Provinces Barrier after it was transformed by the great formation formed an extremely dense, almost misty white spiritual energy band in the stratosphere before it even fell.

He gritted his teeth, withdrew the last bit of his life-sustaining protective true energy, and frantically opened his mouth wide, taking a huge gulp into the spiritual mist.

"boom--!"

This isn't inhaling air, it's swallowing a knife!

Pure spiritual energy instantly rushed into his chest cavity through his trachea.

Lin Fan felt a loud "buzz" in his head, and his meridians, which had been dry and even somewhat shrunken, were forcibly and violently opened up in that instant!

"Ahhhhh!"

Lin Fan curled up in mid-air in pain, blood seeping from the corners of his eyes and nose.

"No destruction, no construction!"

Lin Fan bit his tongue hard, relying on his almost beast-like instincts to forcefully circulate the cultivation technique.

"Click!"

It felt as if some kind of constraint within my body had been violently broken.

The spiritual energy that nearly burst him apart, after circulating wildly for three major cycles, suddenly collapsed deep into his dantian. The originally misty true energy, under this frantic compression, actually condensed into the first drop of liquid true essence!

Foundation Building Stage!

"Zheng—!"

Lin Fan suddenly opened his eyes, and two dazzling beams of light shot out from his previously bloodshot eyes.

The star-iron flying sword beneath his feet, which had been teetering on the brink of collapse, suddenly emitted an extremely clear and resonant sword cry that shattered the heavens. The array patterns on the blade were instantly illuminated, and a terrifying sword aura phantom, several meters long, appeared out of thin air.

"die!"

Lin Fan pointed his fingers like a sword and slashed downwards.

The solidified sword energy, several meters long, sliced ​​through a large area of ​​spore cloud within a radius of several dozen meters in front of it as easily as cutting tofu, turning it into nothingness! Even the space itself seemed to ripple with a slight distortion.

"Good lad!"

Wang Lei laughed loudly into the communication channel, casually firing a grenade that shattered several plumes of black mist to the side. "I knew you wouldn't die!"

It's not just Lin Fan.

On this brutal battlefield covered in blood and frost, people fall every second, but just as every second, people break through.

Extreme life-or-death pressure, coupled with a surge of rich spiritual energy.

Among the defense forces and sect disciples, those low-level cultivators who were originally mediocre and stuck in a bottleneck period for a long time were forced to unleash their potential in this "meat grinder".

One after another, beams of light, representing breakthroughs, lit up the night sky in the stratosphere, as if igniting tiny but extremely tenacious stars on the edge of this desolate universe.

"First echelon! Retreat the defensive line 300 meters!"

On the public channel came the extremely cold voice of the frontline commander.

"Second wave, exoskeleton heavy armor regiment, advance! Cross cover!"

"Hospital ship, arrive!"

Wang Lei glanced at the rapidly flashing hydraulic gauges, grabbed Lin Fan's shoulder, and reversed the thruster's trajectory.

"Let's go! Our turn is over! Let's go back and replace the energy tanks. We'll take over after the second wave withdraws!"

Lin Fan, panting heavily, stepped on his flying sword and retreated from the combat zone with Wang Lei.

He turned around and glanced at the black fissure that was still frantically spewing out spores.

Along that near-Earth orbit defense line stretching over a hundred kilometers, another 150,000-strong army, fully equipped and ready to go, charged forward like a dark, steel torrent, fearlessly crashing into the spores and poisonous fog that filled the sky.