Chapter 481

“Superconducting Lightning-Guiding Sword?”

“What’s that?”

Inside the main bridge, air pressure was crushing; Chen Sixuan and Qian Dele both turned to look at Lin Xian, as if everyone had heard the name for the first time.

Meanwhile, Lin Xian, seated in the captain’s chair, furrowed his brow, thought for several seconds, then opened his eyes and shouted toward Xiang Ningjing and Shu Qin: “Magnetic anchor array—prepare Protocol Three!”

At the same time, Ning Jing and her team responsible for the weapons ship exchanged glances, showed no hesitation, and immediately located this countermeasure protocol within the weapon system.

Simultaneously, Lin Xian ordered Viola: “Plan the flight paths for the array attack formation.”

【Understood. Guide it toward the sea surface?】

“No—toward that!” Lin Xian pointed toward the ghostly tentacle silhouette within the clouds to the left.

【Understood!】

After giving the orders, Lin Xian shouted to everyone: “Everyone, don your power armor—just in case!”

“Director Ding!”

Hearing Lin Xian’s command, Ding Junyi, Xiao Yuan, and the others in the research cabin immediately began donning their power armor.

Lin Xian himself also donned his Starlight Nanotech Power Armor, fully armed and seated in the captain’s chair, explaining to Chen Sixuan and the others: “The Skytrain is equipped with the Silent City’s superconducting magnetic anchor array. Before, Wang Yue Zhenji gave me synchronization files on many disaster protocols—all of them real scenarios they’d faced and handled. One of them was using the magnetic anchor array to form a flight formation, leveraging superconducting potential differences to controllably guide lightning during extreme thunderstorms or intense arc-based anomalies. This might work.”

“So that’s called the Superconducting Lightning-Guiding Sword?” Qian Dele fanned himself with a small fan, glancing back at the sky now descending with countless spherical lightning bolts, muttering: “Total midlife crisis energy transfer—there’s already one on this train.”

Hummm!

The sky ripped open! Lightning storms poured down like a blue waterfall from heaven; air was instantly torn and ionized, emitting ghostly shrieks. The acrid stench of ozone surged into every nostril. Countless spherical lightning bolts rolled and tangled, each collision exploding into crimson electric nets spanning a hundred meters. Temperature readings skyrocketed. The viewport’s glare shield hissed under the plasma’s lick, as if about to melt through. The entire main bridge flickered under jumping blue-purple arcs.

“Launch the array!” Lin Xian’s voice was nearly drowned in the thunder’s fury.

Hss! Hss! Hss—!

Suddenly, twenty-four cold, deep-blue light trails ignited along the Skytrain’s flanks. Twenty-four pyramid-shaped magnetic anchor units shot forth like arrows tipped with stars, piercing through the rolling rain and searing ion streams, striking precisely into the raging plasma sea. No explosions—only louder, piercing shrieks of current. The twenty-four array units formed a superconducting blade in midair, their force-field filaments snapping taut and linking together. A deep-blue, liquid-glass-like membrane rapidly spread and took shape between them.

In an instant, a sleek, hundreds-of-meters-long “giant sword,” entirely formed from energy fields, surged into the sky above the sea. It pierced straight through the violent lightning storm, violently drawing in and colliding with the lightning, which was then tamed, stretched, and twisted into blinding, high-frequency crackling arcs, tightly coiled along the sword’s spine! Myriad bolts of thunder were forcibly restrained and condensed into crimson electric serpents that swirled ceaselessly around the blade’s body. All energy in heaven and earth seemed to freeze and converge at this point—a planetary-scale sense of annihilation crashed down, making all things tremble.

“Full-power electrostatic field!” Lin Xian’s gaze sharpened the moment the superconducting missile array pierced the lightning storm—he barked the order.

Wu!

A blue membrane flickered briefly above the Skytrain, then vanished. But as raindrops struck the hull, they were instantly vaporized by faint arcs, leaving behind a misty film.

At that moment, the superconducting Lightning-Guiding Sword, forged from the entire storm, pierced straight through the torrential clouds. Its tip pointed directly at the elusive tentacle anomaly hidden in the distant clouds. The next instant—

A blinding flash of light erupted, bleaching everything white, followed by a colossal roar that shook the heavens.

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As if the sky itself had shattered!

The tip of the superconducting array-sword, like a lightning rod’s conductor, upon piercing the anomaly, instantly channeled and released the entire lightning storm composed of spherical bolts. Everyone saw the sky’s electric waterfall vanish in an instant—the space seemed violently pulled inward by an invisible force. The countless crimson electric serpents, coiled and condensed with the storm’s fury upon the giant sword, surged like a breached star-river. Red-and-white annihilation light expanded and devoured everything. A ring-shaped lightning umbrella, its edge jagged like razor teeth, violently unfurled, tearing a catastrophic, half-sky-wide void into the gloomy cloud sea.

The light was so intense, even low-hanging clouds instantly vaporized. The unknown anomaly, still unseen in full form, emitted no cry—its massive body disintegrated, shattered, and evaporated into countless fine, blackened ashes swirling wildly in the air.

Only a few severed, translucent tentacles, still crackling with scattered arcs, remained—like divine cast-off limbs—rolling helplessly from the edge of the massive energy void, their red-hot stumps smoking, plunging into the roaring black sea below.

The Skytrain, still flying at subsonic speed, jolted violently.

The ship’s electrostatic field generators overloaded instantly, emitting a screech at their limit. The violent electromagnetic shockwave swept across the hull—all lights extinguished. Emergency crimson lights flickered on, then were disrupted by residual currents into frantic, erratic flashes like candles in a haunted house. The tingling sensation of ionized air crawled over everyone’s scalp; every hair stood on end.

“Watch out!”

“Don’t move.”

【System undamaged. Rebooting.】

In that moment of darkness, Lin Xian, Chen Sixuan, and the others gazed upward through the dimness at the sky they had just passed—where vast atmospheric mica drifted, brushing luminous filament-like mists high above, then passed cleanly without collision.

“Uhh—”

As if only a breath had passed, a dull sound of energy retraction echoed—and all lights and instruments in the bridge reignited. Everyone exhaled, sweat-drenched with tension.

“Everyone—alright?”

“Fine,” came Mo Nika’s voice from the Skybridge: “That obstacle’s gone. Good use of the ‘divert-the-damage’ tactic.”

“We’re good,” Kiki replied from below.

“Thank the Skytrain’s full equipment—we’d have had to tank that lightning storm otherwise.”

“Will that giant jellyfish chase us?” Sha Sha, now at the helm, excitedly asked.

“It doesn’t look like it can keep up speed. We should worry about what’s ahead!” Luo Yang said grimly.

Lin Xian’s gaze darkened. The wind howled without pause. Outside the viewport, a brief respite was snuffed out by an even more terrifying sight.

Ahead, at the horizon, a colossal, suffocating vortex sea appeared—a towering wall of gray-black wind, like the arms of an ancient demon, spinning violently, churning the ink-black sea into towering water curtains that stretched from sky to ocean. Gray and black twisted in chaos; hurricane and tidal wave fused into one—a devouring, chaotic eye of destruction. No distinction between sea and sky—only a spinning, crushing, gray-black abyss, collapsing toward the tiny Skytrain with the force of a world-ending impact.

“Wind speed is extreme. Our radar is severely limited. Kiki, Mo Nika—avoid multiple sea spouts. Watch for enemies in the clouds!” Chen Sixuan’s face was pale with disbelief. The horror before them was like a planetary collision.