novelslam Chapter 224 The Severely Wounded Sirius King
Chapter 224 The Severely Wounded Sirius King
Song Chen curled up at the bottom of the cave, feeling the 500-meter-high permafrost above him being shattered layer by layer by the shock wave and collapsing downwards.
Ice shards and dirt pelted the shoulder armor and helmet of the Northern Darkness Armor, but he gritted his teeth and endured it.
My eardrums were throbbing with pain, and my mind was filled with a buzzing sound.
After a while, the shockwave stopped, and he exhaled a breath of stale air, opening his eyes under the mask.
"Twelve million tons of equivalent, that's impressive. I wonder if that old geezer is dead yet."
He waited for another five minutes at the bottom of the collapsed cave. The frozen soil above his head was shaken by the nuclear shockwave, making it look like a cake that had been stepped on by a giant. Ice shards and dirt poured down from above, hitting the Beiming Armor with a crackling sound.
As he listened to the aftershocks of the shockwave outside gradually subside, he stretched out his curled-up body, drew his Heavenly Blade, blade facing upwards, and began to dig upwards.
The original opening had completely collapsed, and the permafrost and ice shell were compressed into layers of hard shell by the shock wave.
The Heavenly Blade's blade energy cleaved through the frozen earth, the Heavenly Thunder from the Nine Heavens shattered the hard shell, and the swirling currents of Fuyou blew the debris upwards. He dug a new path through the collapsed earth.
After digging for about two minutes, the tip of the knife pierced the last layer of loose soil, and the grayish-white sunlight of the polar region leaked in through the hole.
He crawled out of the hole and stood on the edge of the nuclear explosion's epicenter. The sight before him silenced him for a moment.
The original logistics base no longer exists. The Ice Valley was blasted into a giant crater several kilometers in diameter. The ice at the bottom of the crater was vaporized, exposing the black permafrost and bedrock underneath.
The ice cliffs at the edge of the giant crater were shaved into bizarre arcs by the shockwave, their surfaces as smooth as mirrors.
In the sky, the mushroom cloud was still slowly rising, and the mushroom-shaped cloud at the top of the cloud column spread into a gray-black cloud cover that blotted out the sun. Occasionally, a few blue-white afterglows of psionic explosions would flash inside the cloud.
The air was filled with a scorching metallic smell, a unique odor resulting from the mixture of nuclear fission products and polar ice crystals.
The ground was still trembling slightly, and aftershocks spread in all directions from the bottom of the crater. Cracks on the ice surface stretched to the horizon.
At the edge of the giant crater, Qi Shanhe stood there, his coat torn to shreds by the shockwave, revealing the black armor underneath.
He had faint burn marks on his right side; the heat radiation from the nuclear explosion could burn even a sixth-level grandmaster.
Standing beside him were several sixth-tier grandmasters whom Song Chen knew, as well as representatives from the Eagle Country, the Bear Country, and the European Union. All of them were injured, their clothes were tattered, and their faces were covered with ash and ice fragments from the nuclear explosion.
But no one fell; they were at least three kilometers away when the nuclear explosion occurred.
A nuclear explosion at this distance would leave no trace, not even ashes, for an ordinary person. But for a sixth-tier grandmaster, as long as it's not at the exact center, surviving it wouldn't be a problem.
Qi Shanhe glanced at Song Chen and nodded, as if to say hello.
This top military leader of the Great Xia Dynasty, unusually, did not wear his perpetually unchanging stone-carved face; a slight smile appeared on his face.
Then he turned back and looked at the center of the giant pit.
Song Chen followed his gaze and saw the Sirius King.
Augsa was still alive. Its 500-meter-long, silvery-white body stood in the center of the giant pit, with three of its four legs still supporting it.
The right hind leg's knee joint was charred by the nuclear explosion's heat radiation, leaving all the fur gone and revealing the dark red muscles and charred bones underneath.
Most of the silvery-white fur was burned off, and the remaining fur was covered with charred burn marks and frostbite.
After the high temperature of the nuclear explosion vaporized the ice on the surface of the ice sheet, the shock wave brought back the extremely cold air from the polar region. The alternation between extreme heat and extreme cold was so intense that even the fur of the Sirius royal family could not withstand it.
The golden flames in its eyes were half as strong as before, but they were still burning.
Then Song Chen noticed that Augsa was not standing in the exact center of the nuclear explosion.
In the final moment before the nuclear bomb detonated, it broke free from Qi Shanhe's mental lock and lunged sideways for hundreds of meters.
It was those few hundred meters that saved its life. If the nuclear bomb had hit it squarely in the center, even if it was at the peak of the sixth rank, it would have been dead without a doubt.
However, it avoided the core kill zone, but at the cost of its body being charred by heat radiation, countless bones broken, and its combat effectiveness reduced by more than half.
A group of sixth-tier grandmasters surrounded Augsa in the middle. The Ice Demon King had also arrived at some point. Its fur was covered with the ash from the nuclear explosion and the blood of the Sky Wolf King. Its left shoulder had been torn open by the Sky Wolf King's claws, leaving a deep gash that exposed bone.
Gulbak followed behind the Ice Demon King, the enhancement runes on his spear still slowly flowing, the tip of the spear stained with the blood of the Sky Wolf King.
Zhou Wangyue's armor was torn apart by the nuclear shockwave, revealing his arm wrapped in bandages with blood seeping through them—the blood left by the Sirius King on the front lines.
Gu Qianzhi's round-framed glasses had a broken lens, so he simply took them off and squinted at the Sirius King.
Qin Zhen had a new scar on his face, but he was still smiling.
Matvey carried his warhammer on his shoulder, blood dripping from its head. A section of his white beard was singed, making him look even more ferocious.
There was also a representative from the United States, a tall, thin man.
The silver-haired woman in the European Union stood ramrod straight, a trace of blood at the corner of her mouth.
Everyone is wounded, but everyone is still here.
Qi Shanhe took a step forward.
"Sirius King, since the beginning of the psionic era, how many powerful figures of Great Xia have you killed? Thirty-seven years ago, during the Liangzhou beast tide, you personally led the team and slaughtered three base cities."
"Fifteen years ago, on the South China Sea defense line, your subordinates joined forces with the Giant Whale Clan to kill 300,000 troops of the Great Xia."
"The Great Xia keeps a record of every single one of these accounts."
"It's time to end this."
The Sirius King did not reply. It slowly swept its gaze over each of the sixth-tier Grandmasters surrounding it: Ice Demon King, Zhou Wangyue, Gulbak, Gu Qianzhi, Qin Zhen, Matvey...
Finally, it landed on the fifth-tier human who had just crawled out of the cave in the distance, and stared at Song Chen for a long time.
Qi Shanhe followed its gaze, then turned to Song Chen: "Councilor Song, you don't need to worry about this. Leave the Sirius King to us."
"This beast will surely launch a counterattack before it dies. The final counterattack of a peak sixth-tier beast is beyond your current level to withstand."
"Your mission in the Arctic is complete. We'll settle your reward when you return to Great Xia. Now, let's retreat."
Song Chen sheathed the Heavenly Blade: "Alright, this beast's last-ditch counterattack is indeed beyond my ability to withstand."
He glanced at the approaching Sirius reinforcements in the distance. On the horizon, he could already see seven sixth-tier auras rapidly approaching. Those were the remaining sixth-tier beast kings of the Sirius clan on the main battlefield.
The Sirius King is still alive, and they are determined to rush over to protect him.
At this moment, the Sirius King spoke. It turned its head and looked at the sixth-tier wolves that were rushing towards them, letting out a low and long howl.
This howl was different from the battle horns on the battlefield before; it lacked the fervor of an attack, and instead exuded an extremely calm aura.
The howls rolled across the wasteland after the nuclear explosion, each syllable carrying the unique spiritual power resonance of a sixth-tier peak beast king.
The six-tier wolves that were charging forward all stopped. They stopped less than three kilometers from the edge of the giant pit. The aura of the six-tier beast kings surged and churned, but none of them took another step forward.