Chapter 237: Runic Technology
Alliance Calendar Year 683, July 15. It had been exactly three years since the Giant Race had descended upon the Panlong Mountain Range.
From the initial life-and-death slaughter between the Alliance and the Foreign Races, the situation had gradually shifted into a standoff between the two sides.
As long as the Giant Race and the subordinate lower-tier Foreign Races under its command did not leave the Panlong Mountain Range, the Alliance military would no longer launch a full-scale offensive. Both sides seemed to have reached an unspoken understanding, confining their conflict within a limited scope.
However, the brief calm before them was merely a façade crafted by the Giant Race to avoid triggering the Alliance’s sensitive nerves.
At the core region of the Panlong Mountain Range, not only stood the Giant Race’s garrison, but the Dimensional Rift was also located there.
At this moment, beneath the Dimensional Rift suspended in midair, the uneven mountain ridges had already been leveled by the Giant Race. A vast plaza, one kilometer in both length and width, had appeared.
Across the surface of this enormous flattened plaza, all manner of mysterious and profound runes had been engraved.
Viewed from high above, it resembled an extremely complex circuit diagram, filled with a strange yet unique aesthetic beauty.
Without the Alliance military detecting anything, over a hundred relatively slender Giant Priests, clad in priest robes embroidered with various runes, each held a totem pillar more than ten meters tall, standing around the perimeter of the plaza.
At the very center of the plaza stood the Grand Priest of the Giant Race, positioned directly beneath the Dimensional Rift.
“卡瓦……”
As an extremely obscure yet mysteriously resonant incantation sounded, the runes carved upon the plaza began to emit radiant light.
The Energy Crystals placed at the rune nodes of the plaza started to have their internal energy extracted, while the totem pillars standing before the Giant Priests resonated in response.
At the core position, the Grand Priest had already taken out a crystal the size of a human head from within his robes.
Void Demon Crystal.
According to the grading standards established by the Blue Star Alliance, it belonged to the legendary seventh-tier spiritual materials.
In the Tamu World, the realm where the Foreign Races resided, the Void Demon Crystal was classified as a legendary-grade material—and among legendary materials, it was considered exceedingly rare.
Such an item was not something the Giant Race tribe before them was qualified to possess. Even the Giant King Court would find it difficult to obtain.
No one knew why it had appeared here.
As the mysterious ritual commenced, an extremely peculiar energy began to gather around the Grand Priest of the Giant Race.
To be precise, it gathered upon the Void Demon Crystal in his hand.
When the ritual reached its critical juncture, the Void Demon Crystal instantly transformed into a streak of meteoric light and shot directly into the Dimensional Rift above the plaza.
The next moment, the Dimensional Rift began to tremble violently, and a strange spatial fluctuation erupted.
At the exact same time, within the Alliance Academy of Sciences and the military command center at the Alliance Headquarters, the highest-level alarm suddenly blared.
“What happened?”
“Sky Eye detected fluctuations from a massive Dimensional Rift in the northern region of the Alliance.”
That brief exchange instantly plunged both the Academy of Sciences and the military command center into chaos. The information was immediately transmitted to the Alliance’s Supreme Council.
Sky Eye was a satellite launched by the Academy of Sciences half a year earlier.
Compared to ordinary satellites created through conventional technology, the Sky Eye satellite more closely resembled a transcendent artifact. It contained no electronic components; its core was built entirely from runes and Energy Crystals.
A thousand years ago, when the Dimensional Rifts first appeared, Blue Star’s volume had expanded several times over, and its electromagnetic environment had grown exceedingly complex. All satellites previously launched by Blue Star had been rendered inoperative.
After the Blue Star Alliance was established, new satellites were launched according to Blue Star’s altered conditions. However, they could only remain above Alliance-controlled territory.
The moment they appeared above the territories of the Foreign Races or Ferocious Beasts, they would be directly destroyed.
Upon reaching legendary rank, beings could escape planetary gravity and survive in outer space for short periods of time.
Yet even within Alliance territory, as the number of Dimensional Rifts increased and Energy Particles grew ever denser, the increasingly complex environment caused traditional satellites to become less and less effective. Thus, the Alliance began developing transcendent-oriented satellites.
However, due to issues with information transmission, the plan had never been fully successful—until the Academy of Sciences integrated Lei Yuan’s Energy Pulse Communication Technology into the Sky Eye satellite, completing the final missing piece.
With the successful launch of the Sky Eye satellite, it also signified that the Academy of Sciences had begun its transformation, preparing for the Tamu World’s eventual devouring of Blue Star.
After all, the laws of the Tamu World differed from those of Blue Star. Traditional electronic components would be entirely unusable. Only technology centered on Energy Crystals could serve as the development direction for Blue Star’s humanity after entering the Tamu World.
Energy Crystals as power sources, runes replacing electronic components—the technological civilization established by Blue Star was destined to undergo a great revolution within the next century.
Although the Panlong Mountain Range was shrouded in a No-Fly Domain, isolating it from external surveillance, and its complex electromagnetic environment rendered traditional electronic components ineffective, Sky Eye could still detect changes within the mountain range.
In less than half an hour, a directive from the Alliance’s Supreme Council was sent directly to the Qinghui Base council and the military.
Within an undisclosed underground command room, the Council Leader of the Qinghui Base council and the commander of the City Defense Army each took out a nuclear launch key.
In the northern region of the Alliance, only two large-scale bases possessed the authority to launch nuclear weapons: Qinghui and Yunhai.
To initiate a nuclear launch, authorization from the Alliance’s Supreme Council was required, along with the launch keys held by both the base’s Council Leader and the commander of the City Defense Army.
As a series of verifications succeeded, the launch button was pressed simultaneously by the two men.
Within a highly concealed underground missile silo at Qinghui Base, several missiles immediately ascended into the sky one after another.
These missiles, equipped with nuclear warheads, had long since been modified by the City Defense Army. All electronic components had been removed, driven by the most primitive mechanical systems. Even their flight trajectories had been pre-programmed for inertial guidance.
As for the detonation devices and other precision components, they were creations of runic technology provided by the Academy of Sciences.
While the Giant Race schemed in secret, the Alliance had also made preparations. Neither side had relaxed despite the standoff.
Meanwhile, at the military outposts along the outer perimeter of the Panlong Mountain Range, piercing alarms were already blaring.
This time, however, it was not to repel the Foreign Races, but to immediately retreat underground to avoid the impact of the nuclear explosion.
In the core region of the Panlong Mountain Range, as the ritual arranged by the Giant Race neared completion, the Dimensional Rift began to expand at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Just as delight surfaced on the faces of the Giant Race, the Transcendent-level elite giants and other Transcendent-level Foreign Races suddenly felt an intense surge of terror in their hearts.
This sudden premonition instantly made them realize something. The powerful Foreign Race beings immediately chose to flee.
“Nuclear weapon.”
The Foreign Races and the humans of Blue Star had fought for countless years. They had a very clear understanding of this kind of devastating strategic weapon.
For beings below legendary rank, facing a nuclear weapon left only one option—escape.