Chapter 710: Star Collapse

"Hurry, hurry, we're running out of time! The next transport ship launches in exactly 20 minutes—this planet won't hold much longer!"

"Received comms from the orbital fleet. A 'Gigas'-class heavy transport ship will reach the surface in half an hour. They want us to be ready."

"Gigas-class? Good, I knew the guys up top had our backs. They're sending that thing down. Tell them to land at the C-22 high ground... Launch pad? We don't have any damn launch pad left! We blew it up ourselves! Tell the pilot to improvise—those hotshots are always bragging they can make a blind landing on Karosh, right?"

"Fissure opening to the northeast. It's still expanding, but it won't reach us here for a while."

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

The comm chatter in his earpiece was tense and hurried. Retinal projections flashed with orders just relayed from the command ship in orbit, along with constantly shifting coordinates and countdown parameters. Xu Jiali flipped open his power armor's faceplate, and the acrid smell of gunpowder from the battlefield instantly filled his nostrils.

The place where he stood was the ruins of a collapsed temple. Once splendid spires and high walls were now a heap of still-smoking debris. In front of the ruins stretched a sturdy alloy plaza, which had taken relatively light damage in earlier fighting and was now serving as a temporary rally point and launch site.

Ground troops retreating from adjacent combat zones were arriving in waves. They needed to board transport ships or shuttles here to leave this collapsing planet.

Thick clouds heavy with dust and ash pressed low overhead. The energy released during the planet's disintegration had already begun disturbing the atmosphere. Lightning flickered within the clouds, along with fleeting streaks of fire. In the distance, enormous gas columns occasionally erupted from surface fissures, looking from afar like the pillars that held up the sky in mythological tales.

But those sky-supporting pillars were actually omens of impending doom.

Farther away, several large transport ships were lifting off from the surface. Their engine arrays blazed brilliantly in the gloomy atmosphere, accelerating through the sky as if trying to ignite the clouds. The ground beneath those ships had already begun to collapse. Dimly visible through the mist, a range of mountains was sinking, with astonishing walls of fog rising at their edges.

Lingdang stood beside him. The Jiprolo girl had taken off her helmet, her cat eyes flashing with a mix of tension and excitement. She raised the data terminal on her arm armor, pointing it into the distance, while waving her other hand in front of the camera lens and shouting at the top of her lungs:

"Guys, I'm here on the evil home planet of the Covenant of the Hidden Ones! This planet is in the process of collapsing! Look at that smoke column ahead—the planet's internal gases are venting into space. Hit the follow button, meow, friends! Lingdang will use the drone to show you inside the big fissure later. Hit follow, meow, thanks, meow~"

As she filmed, Lingdang slowly sidestepped, then, not watching where she was going, bumped straight into Xu Jiali's arm armor.

Xu Jiali's eye twitched. "What are you doing?"

Lingdang's eyes sparkled with excitement. "Mermaid taught me—livestreaming can earn me cans of cat food, meow~"

Xu Jiali's face immediately spasmed. But before he could speak, the psychic attendant beside him rattled off a series of preemptive remarks: "I've already received the notice lifting information restrictions. The battlefield terminal data transmission limit is now level three, meow. Unit designations and specific mission data have been processed. The account has been filed with the Unified Army, meow. The data upload process has been automatically handled by the command post's AI, meow. Boss, what did you want to say, meow?"

Xu Jiali: "…"

He opened his mouth, choked for a long moment, veins practically bulging on his forehead, and finally managed to find something to say that wouldn't make him look too awkward: "How did you end up hanging out with a mermaid?"

"Mo Mo and I went fishing in the valley, and we happened to meet the mermaid practicing diving, meow~"

Xu Jiali took a light breath, turned his head as if nothing happened, and looked behind him.

At the center of the temple ruins, a thick crystalline branch had broken through the surface from between the rock and soil. A leaf shimmering with magnificent colors spread at its tip, with streams of light spilling from its edges.

Though he couldn't see the underground part of the branch, Xu Jiali had heard from the engineers that radar had scanned an even more astonishing underground structure beneath it—spreading crystalline roots interwoven across the strata, extending deep into the planet beyond radar's reach.

They said those roots were holding up the ground around the rally point, slowing the collapse of that area.

There were already over a hundred such support points across the planet—all of them had grown from underground in a short time after the emergency evacuation order.

The radiance and powerful energy fluctuations rising from their tips into the high atmosphere were clearly observable even in low orbit.

Heavy footsteps came from nearby, clearly not the sound of power armor.

Xu Jiali turned around and saw a whole squad of Brass Knights crossing the plaza, with two artificial saintesses walking alongside the knights.

But there were other figures behind the knights.

Xu Jiali saw many people wearing gray or black robes. They looked listless, their expressions numb, with strange metal devices hanging from their necks or heads. As they moved, the parts at the edges of those devices clattered against one another, as if they were some kind of manacle.

When they came closer, Xu Jiali was shocked to realize those devices were directly "installed" into these people—connecting terminals and alloy braces penetrating through flesh, nailed into their skulls or spines.

"What's going on?"

Xu Jiali grabbed a Marine walking past and asked quietly.

"Orders from above say we have to bring these artificial saintesses and knights along..."

"No, I mean these people in robes."

"Oh, they're temple servants—all captured by those cultists. When the fighting started, the cultists locked these people in cages as psychic batteries. When we opened the dungeon, it was full of drained corpses. Only these survived..."

The Marine paused, then continued, "They're wearing mental shackles. Those things make their thinking very sluggish, and apparently they can't be removed... But the artificial saintesses and knights want to bring them along."

Xu Jiali was momentarily stunned, his expression turning complicated. He looked at the artificial saintesses and knights. One knight turned his head toward him, the hollow helmet beneath dark and expressionless.

"...Many of them come from the same place," the Marine whispered again. "I saw a saintess kneeling beside a dead temple servant, calling him her brother..."

"Damn it... I shouldn't have killed all those priests in one go. I should have kept two, hung them on the engine nozzles when we launched," Xu Jiali cursed under his breath, but then asked, "Does the higher-ups know about this? Is there still room on the ship?"

"There's room on the ship. As for the higher-ups' opinion..." The Marine looked up at the crystalline "branch" piercing out of the temple ruins. "These saintesses and knights are now under the command of that Angel Hunter, and that Angel Hunter is currently at the planet's core helping us hold this world together—in principle, transport ships can't take unauthorized personnel, but the principle himself told us to bring them all."

Xu Jiali laughed.

"Alright, then bring them all."

Another heart-shaking rumble suddenly came from deep underground, interrupting their conversation.

Xu Jiali's heart jumped, and he instinctively looked into the distance.

He saw a hill directly facing the temple ruins collapse entirely. The energy released by the fracturing rock pulled hundreds of astonishing lightning arcs between the clouds and the ground. Then intense light spilled out from that newly formed gorge, briefly illuminating the entire previously dim sky.

The planet's collapse was accelerating. Even with those crystal branches growing from the core slowing the process, the overall structural stability of the crust had nearly reached its breaking point.

Everyone immediately sped up the boarding process.

Wave after wave of large transport ships shuttled through the atmosphere. Ground troops stranded on the Sacred Ground's surface and the rescued personnel raced against time to leave this dying planet.

A hollowed-out planet shouldn't have had such strong gravity, but the Eden Gate at its center was like a bottomless maw, still growing, continuously devouring the remaining matter and energy of this planet.

The last transport ship at Rally Point 22 in the northern hemisphere lifted off. As its engine arrays roared to life, the massive cargo vessel rumbled into the sky.

More than a dozen escort shuttles followed, breaking away from the constantly collapsing surface to ascend alongside the freighter.

"Jesus Christ..."

Xu Jiali, sitting in the shuttle's cockpit, craned his neck to look outside. Even someone who had been through countless battles of all sizes felt a little dizzy and stunned at this moment.

The rally point they had just left was now shrouded in vast clouds of dust, but beyond that, the sight of the planet's collapse was truly terrifying.

The whole planet was like a shattered lightbulb, breaking apart piece by piece and falling into the "black hole" at the center. The oceans and rivers had long since evaporated into nothing. Huge mixtures of icy clouds sprayed into space, only to be caught by the Eden Gate and fall back toward the planet's depths. As the fragmented crust collapsed, he could clearly see the empty, dark interior of the Sacred Ground—and within that darkness, astonishing crystalline structures spanned vast distances, supporting the inner layers of the remaining crust.

Those were the crystal branches spreading from the Soul Wilds. They had pierced through the spatial rifts opened by the Bridge, held against the empty shell of the Sacred Ground. The branches that had broken through the surface were now being exposed one after another to the vacuum of space, emitting a magnificent, dreamlike glow.

Even now, ships of all sizes were still lifting off from the Sacred Ground's surface—the small patches of ground supported by the crystal branches were like lone islands in a storm, with the surrounding crust already collapsed and falling, leaving only the branch tips standing like launch pads in space.

Only after all ships in a region had withdrawn would the crystalline branches supporting that area cut off their energy supply, and then those astonishing crystalline structures would silently dissipate into space. The crust fragments they had held up would then fall toward the Eden Gate.

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

Xu Jiali's face was tight, but he still reached over and rubbed the cat-eared girl's head. "What's up, kitten?"

"I'm gaining followers really fast, meow."

The big hand rubbing her head immediately turned into a sharp flick to the forehead.

"Mee-ow!"