Chapter 826: Changing Tactics

Heimu stood inside the control core of the Creation Engine, arms crossed, dark‑purple eyes gazing through the floating panoramic panel before them at the sea outside.

The panel was divided into several sections; the center displayed the main view, tracking in real time a 180‑degree field of vision ahead of the Creation Engine, the left side showed a data‑monitoring interface, densely scrolling numbers that Heimu was too lazy to read line by line, and a tiny screen in the right‑hand corner displayed the feed she had switched to from Ge Lei Xiu's side.

On the screen, Ge Lei Xiu was holding the blue Light Sword with both hands, one sword per child, the snake swarm before her was sliced into green data fragments that fell down in a flutter, her movements crisp and clean as if cutting a watermelon.

The jade feet wrapped in white silk stood steadily on the cube's surface, ankles subtly rotating to adjust balance as the sword was swung, the stockings drawing a few faint lines of pattern in the motion.

Heimu's mouth twitched.

How could Heimu not be surprised at all?

The original configuration of Ge Lei Xiu already included a Light Sword; that data still resided in Heimu's mind, leaving a deep impression.

Ge Lei Xiu is born with an instinct for weapons that no one can explain; a paintbrush can become a claw‑sword, and a Light Sword in her hands feels like returning home.

The only thing Heimu worries about now is whether this child might, halfway through the fight, look up suddenly and pull a meteor down from the sky.

With Ge Lei Xiu's talent, that is not impossible.

Heimu cleared that thought from her mind for the moment and shifted focus to the main panel before them.

The Creation Engine stood steadily on the milky‑white sea surface.

The hundreds‑meter‑tall steel giant, its body covered with undulating purple‑black patterns, had Light Bands in its sensing area slowly circulating through narrow fissures.

The surroundings were quiet; the sea surface lay as flat as a wax‑polished mirror, reflecting the sky's brush‑stroke‑like blue‑white patches and the massive steel silhouette of the Creation Engine.

The ice‑blue behemoth dived down again.

After being pounded solidly by the Creation Engine for several blows, it learned cleverness, sinking to a very deep spot beneath the sea surface, compressing its presence to almost undetectable levels, leaving only a faint shadow in the far‑away depths underwater.

From Heimu's bird‑eye view, that shadow was as large as a slowly drifting underwater reef.

It probably wanted to change tactics.

Heimu also changed tactics.

Heimu extended a finger and tapped the panel rapidly a few times.

The Creation Engine's body structure was dissected layer by layer on the holographic interface before Heimu, each joint's range of motion and the deformation gaps between armor displayed as Three‑Dimensional models floating around her.

Her finger moved across the panel at lightning speed, precisely adjusting every parameter.

The Creation Engine began to move.

First, the shoulder plates retracted backward; the originally layered, raised shoulder plates slid outward with an extremely smooth trajectory, revealing dense purple‑black patterns in the gaps of the back armor.

Next, the curved surface of the chest plate contracted inward by a few meters, the side armor plates flipped and reassembled, forming a tighter protective layer around the waist and abdomen.

The most noticeable change was in the lower limbs; its legs, originally upright, began to disassemble and reconfigure, the knee joints rotating a full 180 degrees, the lower‑leg armor splitting outward, and several flat propulsion plates extending from the interior.

The purple‑black patterns spread rapidly along the edges of the fin plates, their termini glowing with a deep dark‑purple Purple Aura, which diffused in the water into successive patches of violet light mist.

The mechanism keeping it afloat on the water surface was released, and the energy field beneath its steel body vanished in an instant!

The sea surface swallowed it.

The moment it entered the water was spectacular!

The Creation Engine's hundreds‑meter‑tall steel body slammed into the sea, the resulting water wall pushing outward in all directions, the wave height surpassing the surrounding white cubes.

The milky water at its sinking point formed a massive vortex, its center a profoundly deep dark‑purple glow; the Creation Engine's surrounding purple‑black patterns shone far brighter underwater than on the surface, and dark‑purple light spots rising from the depths tinted the entire sea surface with a deep violet hue.

Massive bubbles were squeezed out from its armor gaps, surging upward into a dense white froth.

Heimu's panel automatically switched to an underwater view.

The underwater visibility in this sea area was unexpectedly high; the milky water was opaque in shallower zones, but below several dozen meters it became clear, as if some suspended particles settled in the upper layer, leaving the lower layer filtered clean.

Light filtered down from above the sea surface, scattering through the milky layer into an extremely soft pale‑white glow that enveloped the entire underwater world in a hazy half‑light.

Countless white cubes extending downward from the sea surface formed an inverted, city‑like Wonderous Sight beneath the water.

The cubes that had seemed the size of small buildings in Heimu's perception only revealed their true scale underwater; each cube's downward extension was at least several hundred meters deep, the white material exhibiting a texture entirely different from its appearance in air, its surface densely etched with patterns of unknown age.

Some cubes had flat bases, others uneven, as if someone had snapped them apart at the middle.

In the distance stood several white structures spanning east‑west, not cubes but elongated formations linked together, extending underwater an unknown distance; their white outlines gradually blurred in the far distance, finally vanishing into the dim deep‑blue at the edge of sight.

The Creation Engine was descending.

It adjusted its posture, no longer standing upright but leaning slightly forward, its legs rhythmically swinging in the water, each propulsion fin sweep trailing two rows of extremely long dark‑purple light tails.

The steel giant moved underwater with uncanny agility; its hundreds‑meter‑tall body traced a smooth arc under the drive of the propulsion fins, bypassing the underwater portion of a cube.

In the corner of Heimu's panel, the sonar array began refreshing data.

The ice‑blue behemoth, about four hundred meters underwater, was circling the seabed at a slow speed.

It was charging; Heimu could see through the sonar echo that its internal energy density was rising exponentially, ice‑blue energy converging from tail to head, the whole body's temperature soaring on the sonar thermal map.

It was waiting for an opportunity!

But Heimu had no intention of giving it one.

Her finger clicked continuously on the panel, issuing a string of commands.

The Creation Engine's dual arms extended forward underwater, the armor flipping from the wrists, palms folding inward into the forearm armor, replaced by two sets of rotating gun muzzles.

The muzzles themselves were small, but the interiors of the barrels began to glow with purple‑black light particles, which spun wildly along the barrel's spiral grooves.

The Creation Engine braked sharply in the water, its legs thrust forward, the propulsion fins reversing direction simultaneously, the hundreds‑meter‑tall steel body executing an extremely crisp emergency stop underwater.

It aimed the rotating muzzle on its right arm toward the location of the ice‑blue leviathan.

Heimu's finger hovered over the fire button, dark‑purple eyes locking onto the slowly spiraling ice‑blue shadow through the murky underwater light, a faint curve lifting the corner of the mouth.

"Dive." she whispered.