Chapter 293: Solar Crisis — Houyi Plan Activated

"Li Team, your left leg joint is warning!" the wingman reminded.

"Got it!" Li Yang dodged sideways to avoid a purple beam, then backhandedly sliced through an incoming Harvester unit, "I can still hold for five strikes!"

"And after five strikes?"

"Switch to the right leg!"

A short laugh sounded over the channel, making the best of a bad situation—this is a skill these mech pilots have honed over three years.

The battle situation was dire, but not without a turning point.

Wang Hao discovered a pattern: the Harvesters' attack mode has intervals between version switches.

Each time they make a large-scale tactical adjustment, all units experience a synchronization delay of about 0.5 seconds.

"It's just, just like a game update patch!" he shouted over the comms, "Hit it while it's downloading the update!"

"How do we hit it?"

"With the most primitive method!" Wang Hao pulled up the weapon list, "Live ammunition artillery! Load it! These things surely won't even change the laws of physics, right?"

On the Penglai's starboard side, a hundred old-fashioned electromagnetic railguns extended their barrels.

These are technology from years ago, long overdue for retirement, but Zhao Gong insisted on keeping them: "Flashy gadgets may become obsolete, but hurling a lump of iron accelerated to one percent the speed of light at someone will always work."

Now, the time for the iron lumps has come.

"Fire!"

A hundred tungsten alloy pellets shot out at 0.01c.

The Harvesters obviously didn't expect humans to regress to using kinetic weapons; their shield frequency adjustment slowed by 0.3 seconds.

But it's just that 0.3 seconds.

The pellets shattered the shields, pierced the polyhedral structure, and tore a hundred gaps in the enemy formation.

"It really works!" Wang Hao excitedly slapped the console, "Keep loading! Fire all the iron lumps in the warehouse!"

The battle had reached the 36th hour.

Human defense line loss rate: 62%.

Heaven's Punishment Platforms remaining: 331.

Divine Needles remaining: 5.

Yinglong-Omega mechs remaining: 119.

The Penglai suffered heavy damage, its port side torn open by a 300-meter-long gash, emergency repairs underway.

But the Harvesters suffered greater losses: monitoring data showed their numbers dropped from 8,723 to 6,120, a loss rate of 29.8%.

"The exchange ratio is close to 2:1." Chen Guang reported, "Better than expected. But..."

"But their numbers are still dozens of times ours." Feng Yan took over, "And..."

He looked at the screen.

The remaining six thousand plus Harvester units suddenly ceased their attack.

They began to regroup, turning toward the sun.

"What are they trying to do?" Wang Hao asked.

Chen Guang pulled up the energy readings, and his face changed.

"They're surrounding the sun... constructing some kind of energy-absorbing net." He quickly calculated.

"At this rate, in twenty-four hours the sun's core energy will begin to drop. The consequences..."

"Blue Star will enter an ice age." Feng Yan said.

The bridge fell into sudden silence.

Li Yang's voice came from the battlefield, accompanied by the static of his damaged mech: "So they don't plan to just blow us up... but to cut off Blue Star's sunlight?"

"From a program's perspective, this is the most efficient approach." Chen Guang pushed up his glasses.

"They don't waste energy on battle; they directly deprive civilization of its survival base. Wait for us to freeze and starve to death, then come harvest the remains."

"Damn, that's truly eco-friendly." Wang Hao cursed.

Feng Yan stood up and walked to the observation window.

Outside the window, Blue Star slowly rotated below, blue and white intermingled, beautiful as a fragile dream.

And in Blue Star's orbit, the 331 Heaven's Punishment Platforms still held fast, like the final halo placed upon their homeland.

"We can't let them succeed." Feng Yan turned, "Activate the Houyi Plan."

"But only two Houyi Platforms remain, and they need 24 hours to charge—"

"Then let's start charging now." Feng Yan's voice was firm, "Tell everyone who can still move, we have 24 hours."

"What can we do in 24 hours?"

Feng Yan looked at the screen, where the Harvester units were swarming toward the sun like a colony of ants.

"Make an arrow." He said.

"Shoot the sun."

In the first hour of the sun's dimming, Blue Star's average temperature dropped by 0.5 degrees.

Ordinary people hadn't noticed yet, but weather monitoring stations everywhere had already sounded alarms.

Lao Wu sneezed in the underground city workshop, looked up at the vent, and said, "Is the AC set too high?"

"It's not the AC." The young engineer beside him stared at the data on his wristband, "It's the sun... it seems to have dimmed."

Moon Base, Houyi Platform control center.

Li Yang pointed at the solar model on the holographic star map; the surface of that scorching gaseous sphere was now enveloped by dense red dots.

Over six thousand Harvester units were like ants clinging to an orange, linked by purple energy tendrils into a net, drawing energy from the sun's surface.

"They're building a simplified version of a Dyson net." Chen Guang pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting the data stream on the screen.

It's not a complete Dyson sphere, but an energy absorption array. The energy absorbed per unit per second equals the output of a Dark Mystic fusion reactor running at full power for one year.

"Can the Sun still hold up?" Wang Hao asked.

"The Sun can hold up, but for Blue Star..." Chen Youbiao displayed the illumination curve.

For every 0.1% drop in brightness per hour, Blue Star's temperature will correspondingly fall by 0.5 degrees. After twenty-four hours, the global average temperature will drop below freezing. After seventy-two hours, most surface vegetation will freeze to death.

Feng Yan stared at the curve: "What's the current status of the Houyi Platform?"

"Only two are still usable." Li Yang pulled up the platform data.

"But after the last firing, the barrel of Platform One is 70% melted, and Platform Two's energy core has cracks. If we fire again, we need to run it in overload mode, and... we can only fire one shot."

"Where to shoot?"

Li Yang marked a point on the solar model: "We'll shoot here, the weakest spot in the Harvesters' encirclement. If we can finish charging within 24 hours, using Houyi to pierce a gap, the Sun's energy will jet out from the gap, like pricking a balloon with a needle."

"The power is enough to vaporize a thousand Harvesters units near the gap." Li Yang paused, "But it will also trigger a solar flare, and the released energy is likely to affect... Blue Star."

The control room fell silent.

"How extensive would the effect be?" Feng Yan asked.

Chen Guang began calculating, his fingers leaving afterimages on the virtual keyboard. Three minutes later, the result popped up:

【Success Rate: 43%】

【Failure Consequences: Houyi Platform explosion, possibly triggering abnormal solar activity, Blue Star facing a large-scale flare impact, probability of surface ecological destruction: 78%】

【Recommendation: Abandon this plan, fully evacuate the underground city, and shift into long-term hibernation survival mode】

"How long can long-term hibernation last?" Wang Hao asked.

"With the current underground city capacity, at most we can sustain basic survival for five hundred million people, and the time limit is only three years." Chen Guang said, "If after three years the Sun hasn't recovered, or the Harvesters come down to clean up..."