Chapter 654: Burning Island
Warmth flowed in Meng Chao’s body.
He was not an official investigator in the abnormal beast research department, so he had some degree of freedom when it came to joining other forces of power or allying with them.
Yet, Nie Chenglong still trusted him so much. With just one report, he was willing to endorse Meng Chao.
No one could compare to his courage.
It was no wonder why the abnormal beast research department was able to hire so many powerful people within just a few years since its conception and stand above the secret police.
With this great achievement registered under their names, Meng Chao and Lu Siya could choose from a wide range of missions.
Shattered Starlake to Raging Waves were the earliest developed new city areas in the northern area. After a few years of development, they had formed an impenetrable iron wall. Even if the monster horde was fierce, it was impossible for them to tear down the fortified Raging Waves.
The western front was covered in swamps, forests, and quicksand.
The humans’ steel army might have a hard time developing in the west, but the monster’s army, especially the large ones who weighed hundreds of or even more than one thousand tonnes also had a hard time breaking through the west.
Hence, the main directions the monster civilization attacked were the east and south.
Meng Chao and Lu Siya observed the map of the south and western lines for a full five minutes, observing the intersecting lines of the enemies and humans, and their gazes fell on the same coordinates simultaneously.
It was a place the humans coined Burning Island.
Burning Island was not a true island.
Instead, it was a large, huge rock.
It was 371m tall, 4,200m long, and 3,000m wide. The top was as flat as a table, and it was twice as large as Earth’s largest stone—Ayers Rock.
This rock stood in the wild like a lone island.
Since its top was hundreds of meters away from the ground, even when it was surrounded by fog in the wild, the top of the rock could be clearly seen. It could serve as a reference for humanity’s armored airships and the Heaven Realm superhumans wearing non-motorized gliders.
The entire rock contained a lot of substances filled with spirit energy. In fact, it could be said to be a large, natural crystal that was an absolute treasure trove.
When superhumans cultivated and fought on it, they could breathe in high-purity spirit gas at every second, and through the rock, they could form an indescribable, abstruse resonance with the planet’s magnetic field, and it provided great benefits for them when they tried to overcome the limits of their lives.
Besides, the top of the rock was wide and flat. If they set up an artillery base on it, they could maximize shooting distance from above to threaten all the monsters within a circular area of dozens of kilometers.
Hence, this rock became a tactical spot that was contested by strategists.
When the fog gradually dispersed and humans could finally stretch their hands into the wild, this rock would be completely controlled by humans, and they would form a tactical fort around it.
Since the rock was red, it looked like it was burning, which was why it was named Burning Island.
The monster horde was fierce, but they were not dumb. They knew just how important Burning Island was.
Burning Island was one of the main targets the monster horde kept attacking since the first twenty-four hours.
In just three days and three nights, Burning Island had switched owners multiple times.
Every time the offensive party reorganized their forces and finally reached the top of the rock, in at most five hours, they would be dragged down by the other party.
Countless mangled bodies were left on the rock and beneath it. Bodies were strewn all over the place, blood flowed in rivers, and it was an unbearable sight.
This time, humans used armored airships to gather together and launched an ambush to the rear of the monster horde before they could regain their footing. Once they chased the monsters down the rock again, they finally gained more than eight hours of breathing space.
Within those eight hours, the armored airships from the rear sent over a large amount of light and heavy artillery as well as construction machines to build three artillery bases and hundreds of overt and covert firing points, causing humans to be able to fortify Burning Island once more.
But the monster civilization would definitely not retreat so easily.
Based on the images sent back by the drones, a few monster squads were gathering together not far away from Burning Island.
Among them were countless flying-type monsters that could threaten armored airships. The monster horde was everywhere, and it was about to swarm toward Burning Island once more to shake the entire eastern battlefront.
To strengthen the defenses of Burning Island, the Red Dragon Army and the private squads belonging to the nine mega corporations had already slowed down attacks in the other directions.
They mobilized a large number of elites to rush to defend Burning Island.
Agricultural University, the University of Technology, the University of Science, and the military school also sent a youth army formed by the seniors and juniors. Under their tutors’ lead, they reached Burning Island.
However, the drones managed to film countless Hell Beasts and something that looked like an Apocalyptic Beast in the monster horde that was gathering in the forest ahead of Burning Island.
The firepower currently stationed in Burning Island was not enough.
All the manpower that they could use was thrown into the battlefield. After the tactical-level supercomputer anxiously carried out calculations, the battle network had to summon the superhumans who were currently getting treated at the hospitals in the rear after they were injured during the intense fighting over the past few days in hopes that more powerful fighters could head to Burning Island and fight against this unprecedented monster horde.
Meng Chao saw plenty of familiar names in the list of soldiers defending Burning Island.
They were all students from Agricultural University’s martial arts course, the monster controller course, and the alliance of the five universities.
In fact, his tutor, Blade Dancer Gu Jianbo, and his wife, Griffin Li Yingzi were there.
The defensive war of Burning Island was crucial to humanity, and he must go and help his tutor and friends.
Lu Siya also found the elite squad belonging to Sky Pillar Corporation in the list of defenders.
Burning Island was a large, purely natural crystal.
While it might contain a lot of impurities and was not of high quality, the large size meant an astonishing amount of spirit energy, and it was something Sky Pillar Corporation was determined to get.
Hence, both of them only used three seconds to come to a conclusion together.
‘We must save Burning Island and fight against the monster horde!’
…
War had yet to break out at Burning Island and the eastern battlefront at the borders of Dragon City, but this did not mean that both sides were going to let the other enjoy even a second of peace while they were preparing for war.
The flames of war burned the skies, and the blood-red sun shone on them. Countless mighty armored airships that looked like steel demons now looked weather-worn because of the smoke, they were also damaged because of the acid and fireballs from the monsters, making them look like torn ships that just traveled through tsunamis and storms. Even so, they gritted their metaphorical teeth to stop themselves from moaning and breaking down while they charged toward Burning Island.
Creak. Creak.
They brought with them a large number of spare parts for construction machines and artillery, along with ammunition. When they successfully landed on the rock, they instantly turned into scrap metal.
Immediately, combat engineers and university volunteers rushed into the burning and exploding scrap metal like they had a tornado chasing after them. At the risk of being burnt and squashed into pieces, they saved most of the parts and ammunition.
Some of the parts were used to make large construction machines, and these machines were like large monsters that ate up stones and monster carcasses to build intersecting trenches at the edges of Burning Island. They built covers and firing points and also buried a lot of anti-monster mines.
The other parts were used to build artillery with large muzzles. They were installed into the artillery bases and let out an endless wave of roars in the direction of the large monster horde gathering more than ten kilometers away.
The three artillery bases gave a rather major shock to the monster horde.
The monster horde was hidden in a primitive forest made of towering trees, under the stimulation of the Hell Beasts and Apocalyptic Beasts, the other monsters’ potential were all activated, and their physical defenses were increased by 200%.
Even so, when they faced the humans’ unreasonable carpet bombing, they could only run like rats or bury their heads deep in mud to deceive themselves that they were safe.
The monsters would definitely sit by the side and twiddle their thumbs while watching the monster horde be obliterated by artillery shells.
The ground forces were still gathering together, but the aerial forces were already moving.
More than one hundred large eyeballs dragged their nerve bundles behind them, with the dark clouds and smoke serving as their cover, these Demonic Air Ripping Eyes appeared right above Burning Island.
Their tentacles were entwined together. They let out piercing screeches while they scratched each other rapidly. These screeches turned into invisible mental lightning that interfered with the cerebral cortexes of the defenders on the ground. In fact, they turned into fake neuron signals that made the humans hear and see things, making them feel like they were in hell, and the entire world was already occupied by monsters.
The defenders were not superhumans. Quite a large portion of the Red Dragon Army was composed of normal people. Under the mental attacks of the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes, their mental strength indexes dropped swiftly to zero. Their eyes rolled back, and they looked like they had lost their minds. They flailed their arms around and started screaming.
The Mutant Demonic Air Ripping Eyes had the strength of their mental attacks weaken, but they gained longer and stronger tentacles. When they tensed up their muscles, they could release the compressed air from behind their bodies, thus allowing them to gain really great mobility.
These Demonic Air Ripping Eyes were like squids floating in clouds. They let out puffs of gas and tore through the clouds to ram into the armored airships transporting artillery, ammunition, and construction machines. Even if they did not manage to ram into them, as long as they were around fifty meters away from their targets, they could easily throw their really flexible tentacles over and bind the armored airships tightly.
In the end, they would either crush the armored airships, causing them to go out of control and fall, or thrust their tentacles into the engines of the armored airships so that the crystal fuel inside would explode. They in turn turned into dazzling fireballs with the armored airships. They were reduced to ashes in the form of brilliant fireworks.
This suicidal tactic severely impacted the humans’ continuous use of their artillery bases and interrupted them from building such bases as well.
This was especially so when an armored airship with a lot of bombs was bound and crushed by a Demonic Air Ripping Eye. The crystal fuel inside exploded, and the armored airship plunged near an artillery base, leading to a terrifying number of casualties.
Half of the artillery base went up in flames.
The artillery that was only formed after the soldiers did everything they could to salvage the parts from the rear were instantly reduced to scrap.
The shockwave gave these scraps really high speed and great mobility. They spread out in a wide arc like the God of Death’s scythe, and a large number of artillerymen’s lives.