The Blood Locust Fleet adjusted its formation slightly, adopting a more oppressive conical array as it steadily and resolutely pressed toward the curved defensive line established by the Tiankui Star Fleet.
The muzzles of the main cannons began to flicker with the cold light of energy charging.
Facing the steadily advancing Blood Locust Fleet, the Tiankui Star Fleet, deployed in a fan-shaped defensive formation, fired first.
A full sixteen thick, heavy particle beams ignited like the sudden flash of a Reaper's Scythe.
They tore through the void, slashing toward the most active light ship groups at the forefront of the Imperial array!
The first beam swept across, accurately striking a destroyer maneuvering forward.
The moment the pale blue high-energy particle stream made contact with the destroyer's fragile shield...
The shield didn't even manage to produce a proper ripple before completely shattering like a punctured soap bubble, dispersing into scattered fragments of free energy debris.
The beam penetrated the midsection of the hull unimpeded.
The alloy armor at the point of impact instantly vaporized under hundreds of millions of degrees of heat, forming a terrifying, molten-edged gap that went straight through the ship.
The entire destroyer was severed at the waist as if by an invisible giant blade, splitting into two sections under inertia.
From the break, plumes of not-yet-fully-annihilated material vapor and sporadic flames erupted. The thrusters' tail flames flickered weakly a few times before extinguishing completely.
The two wreckage sections began tumbling and drifting irregularly.
Another beam, like a deadly nail, slammed squarely into the bow of a cruiser.
The instant the beam poured in, the cruiser's forward deck visibly collapsed inward. The main cannon turret base and its extended barrel melted into grotesquely twisted lumps of metal in the intense heat.
The shield generator located beneath the bow overloaded and exploded, bursting with a blinding orange light that illuminated the entire bow.
The immense kinetic energy violently jolted the cruiser's hull backward, causing sheets of its surface composite armor to peel and scatter like weathered plaster.
Seconds later, a fatal sympathetic detonation occurred internally.
The beam had damaged the energy transmission path, triggering a chain reaction in the core energy compartment.
The entire cruiser was completely engulfed by a suddenly expanding, incandescent fireball, disintegrating in a silent explosion.
High-temperature fragments shot out in all directions like deadly shrapnel, some impacting the shields of nearby friendly ships and splashing starlike energy ripples.
What surprised Vice Admiral Knight aboard the flagship in the rear was that this volley from the Federation Fleet...
Clearly avoided those heavily shielded, solidly armored T5-class battleships in his formation.
The firepower was almost entirely concentrated on the more maneuverable but relatively fragile cruisers and destroyers.
Knight was momentarily stunned, then his face broke into an undisguised, savage grin of contempt.
"Ha! Cowards!"
He sneered at the tactical screen.
"Scared at the sight of our main force battleships?
Only dare to pick on the soft targets?
Fine! That'll save us time delaying our advance!"
He seemed to have already seen through the opponent's weakness and fear, his confidence swelling further.
"Order the vanguard ship group to focus on evasion!
All T5-class capital ships, accelerate and press forward!
Once we enter our main cannons' optimal range..."
A flash of menace crossed his eyes.
"Concentrate firepower and tear open that fan-shaped sheet of iron first!"
"Then blast that strange ship hiding in the back into dust!"
In his view, the Federation Fleet's tactic of bullying the weak while fearing the strong was a clear sign of insufficient strength and an attempt to buy time.
He could already envision it: when the awe-inspiring main cannon arrays of their capital ships finished charging, the enemy's thin defensive line and that laughable, bizarre starship would be utterly annihilated under the torrent of Imperial firepower.
The Blood Locust Fleet's formation adjusted accordingly, with the light ship groups dispersing more flexibly.
Meanwhile, the T5-class capital battleships, like mobile fortresses, began accelerating collectively.
Their engines spewed even fiercer plumes of light, resembling a steel city wall radiating an aura of destruction.
With an overwhelming momentum, they rumbled forward toward the Tiankui Star Fleet's defensive line.
Under the glow of the Imperial battleships' charging main cannons, the distance rapidly shrank.
At the same time, aboard the Zhen Yue Battleship, in the core control room.
The entire ship operated like a precisely functioning independent world, with all energy and focus concentrated on the giant beast awakening within its hull.
Alarm sounds were minimized, replaced by the suppressed yet urgent reports from each station.
The chief engineer's voice came through the internal comms, carrying a metallic firmness.
"Report, Captain!
The main fusion reactor is operating at overload, output has reached 145% of design capacity!
The graviton generators are running at full power; graviton concentration is rising exponentially!"
Captain Lieutenant Commander Gu Yizhou stood before the main observation window, his gaze locked on the breathtaking scene outside the viewport.
At the bow, multiple layers of massive concentric ring structures had fully deployed.
Between the rings, layers of light purple energy films overlapped like living honeycombs.
At this moment, countless minute, purple-glowing gravitons were converging from the starry void, surging frantically toward the absolute focal point at the center of the rings.
Hum—!
A deep tremor, as if space itself were groaning, reverberated throughout the ship.
The concentric rings began rotating in sync—slowly at first, then accelerating, generating visible energy vortices.
The surrounding void seemed to collapse inward, starlight slightly distorted.
Invisible gravitons were violently captured and compressed, rushing toward that focal point.
The purple light at the core was deepening and thickening at an astonishing rate, as if about to condense into solid form.
The heavy armor plates at the bow emitted a high-frequency, strained hum under the extreme gravity convergence.
Even some non-critical external equipment showed fine cracks.
And directly ahead of all the rings, a light purple circular halo, its edges blurring as it gradually expanded to nearly a kilometer in diameter, had clearly taken shape.
The scenery around the halo was completely distorted; space rippled like water disturbed by a stone, spreading visible, dark space ripples in concentric circles.
Gravity, an invisible law, was being forcibly converged and condensed into a visible, terrifying weapon.
"Graviton convergence reaching critical point: 79%... 83%... continuing to climb!"
The weapons officer's voice trembled with barely suppressed tension and excitement.
However, the battlefield would not wait.
Almost simultaneously with the Zhen Yue's final preparations, ten spearheading T5-class battleships of the Blood Locust Fleet, leveraging their superior engine performance, had closed the distance to 1.8 million kilometers.
The standard effective range of Imperial heavy particle main cannons.
"Target Lock! Enemy Defense Array Core Fleet!"
"Charged!"
"Fire!"
Without hesitation, the Main Battery Arrays at the bows of ten Imperial Battleships simultaneously erupted with the blinding light of long-accumulated energy!
Twenty massive, suffocatingly thick Heavy Particle Beams tore through the void.
Traveling at light speed, they viciously slammed into the fan-shaped defensive formation of the Tiankui Star Fleet!
The beams' targets were not individual ships, but an Area-of-Effect Strike.
The intent was to tear apart and shatter this defensive line in one decisive blow.
Deadly blue-white light instantly flooded the Sensor Screens and Viewport views of every warship in the Tiankui Star Fleet.