"Boss, your leopard seems to be in bad condition." Following Li Lanfeng's great battle with the two spectres, Little Four very quickly found their hiding place by tracking the other side's spectre power. However, in the meantime, after successive confrontations, Li Lanfeng who had been fighting on his own was gradually put at a disadvantage — the situation looked somewhat precarious.
"How much longer can he hold out for?" Ling Lan's brow creased. The opponent spectres were unexpectedly strong. She had not thought the purely defending Li Lanfeng would be worn down so quickly.
Little Four rolled his eyes dramatically at Ling Lan. How could a confrontation between spectres be as simple as his boss assumed? Although Li Lanfeng's spectre powers were strong, he did not have any true battle experience after all. His methods of resisting were extremely rudimentary, which was why he was being worn down so quickly. Otherwise, with Li Lanfeng's power, which was stronger than the opponents by a bracket, he could have easily held an undefeatable situation with his full focus on defence.
"The main reason is that he does not have enough experience, never having fought other spectres before. Plus, those two people are working together very well, which is why your leopard is being foiled at every turn. Still, your leopard is very smart, actually correcting his mistakes in battle and developing his own defensive manoeuvres. Although the situation is rather worrying, to defeat him, those two people will still have to put in quite a bit of effort," reported Little Four to Ling Lan.
Ling Lan frowned at those words. She was somewhat unsure whether to let Little Four help the leopard to handle those two spectres or to just continue waiting here patiently and let the leopard gain as much combat experience as he could against other spectres."Little Four, what is the situation in the base? Is the other side redirecting a large number of ground troops over?" Ling Lan asked Little Four. If a large number of ground forces was mobilised, she would need Little Four to help out then. After all, their numbers were too few — they had no way to compete with the entire Swift Dragon fleet. Time was of the essence, they could not afford to waste any bit of it.
"Ah, I was just about to tell Boss the news!" replied Little Four suddenly, "The Swift Dragon base has not been alarmed. Other than alerting those within the base command, there has been no other disturbance here. Moreover, the people alerted are not the highest commanding officers of the Swift Dragon base."
"Looks like there is indeed some problem with the Swift Dragon base. Who knows which faction these people are from ..." Ling Lan silently mused to herself. Trying to kill them right as soon as they arrived, the spectres here are very likely not actually from the Federation military. Perhaps they had been sent by a hostile nation, or perhaps they were from some of those terrorist organisations rebelling against the Federation.
They must definitely be afraid of exposing themselves, and so did not dare to cause too great of a ruckus. This was also why the Swift Dragon base had not been alerted — they were afraid that the mainframe would discover a problem (they must not yet know that the mainframe is already aware that there is a problem here).
And the purpose of this trip by Ling Lan's team was to find out what exactly had happened at the Swift Dragon base. To make sense of this, it was necessary to uncover the backgrounds of these mysterious hackers and spectres. Thinking about it, the true intention behind the mainframe's assignment of this mission was probably to figure this out ...
"Also, those military investigators sent secretly by the mainframe have already been lured to a trap and have already begun fighting. That's why there won't be any other spectres appearing here temporarily," Little Four suddenly interrupted Ling Lan's thoughts to say, "However, there's some bad news. Although there hasn't been much commotion outside, two of the three large mecha troops protecting this base is on their way here now. I estimate that they will be here in one minute."
With a 'thwack', Ling Lan, who was utterly infuriated at this news, instantly flicked a forceful finger onto Little Four's forehead. "You rotten Little Four, why didn't you tell me earlier?"Little Four cradled his aching head and whined, "Isn't it still in time, telling you now?"
Although what Little Four said was still rather reasonable, Ling Lan completely ignored the pouting Little Four in her mindspace. This Little Four ... treat him a little better and his skin would begin to itch with the urge to do off-key things. She must treat him a little harshly for him to be a bit more reliable — Ling Lan truly suspected that Little Four had some masochistic tendencies in his bones.
Ling Lan decisively cast thoughts about Little Four to the back of her mind as she commanded everyone in her team, "All members, enter your mecha and prepare for battle!"
Ling Lan's command was very abrupt, but Qi Long and the others of the old team were already used to this sort of behaviour from Ling Lan. They instantly unleashed their mecha. Li Shiyu and Chang Xinyuan had only joined the team recently after all, so they were stunned for a moment, slower than Qi Long and the others by a beat. However, their reaction was still pretty quick, releasing their mecha right after Qi Long's group of five.
Meanwhile, Li Lanfeng, who was tenaciously fighting against the two spectres, was the last one to let out his mecha. Defending with all his strength, only when he could ensure no disruption to his duty did he allow himself to let out his mecha.
They had just gotten into their mecha when the ground began to quake violently. Only then did they realise why their boss had asked them to get into their mecha. These intense vibrations proved that quite a number of mecha was rapidly approaching them from not too far away. Following the gradually intensifying quaking of the ground, everyone prepared themselves for battle. They each pulled out their cold weapons with their right hands, while their left hands raised their beam guns. The moment Ling Lan gave the command, they would fire.
After about 30 seconds, around 20 mecha appeared ahead of them in an arc formation. Ling Lan calmly observed the distance between the incoming enemy and her team, silently calculating the best time to attack.
Just when they were about 10 metres short of entering each other's shooting range, Ling Lan shouted loudly, "Fire!"
Following this command, everyone raised their beam guns, aimed at their respective targets, and pulled the trigger. Eight beams shot out from the guns at almost the same time in an attack towards the distant enemy.
"Activate beam shields!" Seeing the opposing mecha firing, the invading mecha from the base all activated their beam shields to block. Their numbers were obviously two or three times greater than their opponents. Even if the opponents were attacking them, there were not enough beams to hit all of them. And even if they were hit, the shot mecha might only be hit by just one beam. If any of them were hit twice in a row, then they could consider themselves terribly unlucky today.
Furthermore, their beam shields could withstand three beam attacks without sustaining any damage. Thus, none of these mecha chose to dodge, charging ahead fearlessly instead. They were prepared to overwhelm the opponent with their numbers and utterly destroy these terrorists who had invaded the heart of their base.
Then there was a loud 'boom!' and one of the mecha from the mecha horde from the base suddenly exploded. The tremendous explosion even caused collateral damage to the mecha of his comrades around him. Right after that, not too far off, yet another mecha exploded in a similar manner, just not as frightening as the explosion of the first mecha had been.
"What's going on?" This question emerged suddenly in the minds of all the other mecha operators of the base. However, time did not allow them to think any further on it. On the battlefield, death was extremely commonplace. Thus, they merely carried their doubts in silence and continued to charge forwards.
Ling Lan stared, somewhat dumbfounded, at Chang Xinyuan. The mecha Chang Xinyuan was operating now was not a standard Federation advanced mecha; he had chosen to operate his own intermediate mecha. Having been modified by Chang Xinyuan, although this mecha did not seem very different on the outside, its internal weapons system had already been changed significantly. Ling Lan had already witnessed this back when they had been trying to destroy the door of the transport ship's hold.
Ling Lan knew that Chang Xinyuan's innate talent in modifying mecha was very strong, which was why he had garnered the Thunder King's attention so much that the other had not hesitated to use threatening methods to try and force Chang Xinyuan to join him. Ling Lan had been under the impression that she already had a good grasp of Chang Xinyuan's abilities, but now, from the looks of it, she had still been underestimating his modification innate talent.
Ling Lan had never expected that Chang Xinyuan was not only good at modifying mecha, he was equally aberrant at modifying weapons. It was previously shown that he had modified the interference missiles in the mecha's head portion, transforming them from weak ' chicken ribs 1 ' into extremely powerful heavy-artillery laser cannon shots. Although Chang Xinyuan had categorised those projectiles as immature modifications due to the limited firing range, in Ling Lan's mind, those shots were absolutely a horrific trump card to pull out when circumstances called for it.
Just imagine, when a mecha draws into close-range to fight, no one would ever think to defend against those interference missiles from the head of that mecha. This was because even if they were struck by interference missiles, at most their mecha would be left with several faint and negligible scratches. The mecha would not be significantly damaged, let alone the mecha operator sitting inside it.
Therefore, no one would be on guard against interference missiles. Then, imagine if, at that time, a laser cannon shot were to be unleashed suddenly from the head of that mecha ... The power of a laser cannon is several tens or even hundreds of times stronger than that of an interference missile. Undoubtedly, even if the mecha on the receiving end of a laser shot head-on would not be completely destroyed in the blast, the concussive force from the resulting blast would be enough to give them a whole lot of trouble 2 — even if they did not die, they would still be half-dead. Thus, the range problem Chang Xinyuan was regretful about was not a problem at all in Ling Lan's eyes.
However, back then, the situation had been pressing, so Ling Lan had not had a chance to discuss this with Chang Xinyuan. Ling Lan had believed that that was already Chang Xinyuan's most outstanding design, but unexpectedly, Chang Xinyuan had given her a great surprise. The one behind the first explosion of the enemy mecha was precisely this Chang Xinyuan who looked like he had the poorest combat capacity.
They were all using beam guns, but Chang Xinyuan's beam gun was not shooting the standard white beams. Instead, the beam from his gun had a thread of strange purple light running through it. This beam instantly eliminated the energy powering the beam shield and caused the mecha it hit to explode violently. Even at the time of explosion, Ling Lan could see slight traces of purple light within the flames ...
Meanwhile, the explosion of the other mecha was the result of Ling Lan and her original team members working together. Qi Long and the other four had not chosen to shoot randomly, choosing instead to attack the one target Ling Lan had selected. Struck by six beams at the same time, that mecha's beam shield had no way of holding out. The natural outcome of this was the explosive destruction of that mecha.
Battlefields were constantly changing — it did not allow for any distraction among the participating fighters. No one else noticed the strange power of Chang Xinyuan's beam gun other than Ling Lan. Qi Long and the others were merely secretly glad that their first attack had been so lucky as to eliminate two mecha. This was extremely advantageous to them.
The fight had just begun and the other side was already down two mecha. Both the team leaders and the team members on the other side returned fire indignantly. Beams shot out simultaneously from both sides, but compared to the other sides' brute force approach, Qi Long's group nimbly evaded the beams heading for them with agile and intricate steps.
