Chapter 91: Orbital Attack

Chapter 91: Chapter 91: Orbital Attack

After Master Chang left again, Xiang Yi returned his focus to the work he had been doing.

But the more he thought about what had just happened, the more he felt something wasn’t right.

’Why would a gang dare to cause trouble for a military veteran?’

’They resorted to dousing the house in gasoline and setting it on fire. Plus, the police who showed up later weren’t arranged by Master Chang—they might have even been the gang’s own men.’

’It seems the local police system has already been compromised. But why?’

Ever since the day he arrived, Xiang Yi had felt that the entire city, from top to bottom, was slowly spiraling toward the brink of collapse.

The locals he knew seemed to have only vaguely sensed that something was amiss, without knowing the truth. And the only one who might know the details, Master Chang, didn’t seem to want to say much about it either...

"Wait."

As Xiang Yi mulled it over, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

He felt a faint sense of danger, of being targeted by something, just like when he had been aimed at by that scavenger militia member with a gun outside the hospital.

’A sniper?’

Xiang Yi immediately lowered his stance, dropping into a half-crouch.

But the feeling of danger didn’t disappear. Instead, it grew stronger.

’Not a sniper. Then what is it?’

Xiang Yi couldn’t pinpoint the source of the danger, only that the feeling of peril was steadily closing in.

It was as if the source of the danger had already completely surrounded him.

Xiang Yi casually tossed the half-finished mechanical arm from his workbench to Shi Tie and headed for the factory gate.

But the moment he stepped out of the factory, the sense of danger reached its peak.

Xiang Yi subconsciously looked up at the sky.

He finally understood where the danger was coming from.

Three faint red dots in the sky were gradually growing brighter.

It was nearly noon, and in Xiang Yi’s experience, only one thing could emit light of that intensity in the daytime sky.

Orbital satellites.

Furthermore, from what he remembered from a Human Alliance high school textbook, a satellite weapon that produced visible light spots from the ground as a pre-attack warning was most likely an orbital laser beam.

’In wartime conditions, it could fire in just two seconds. But if it was starting up from zero, he had thirty seconds at most.’

「Meanwhile.」

「Prison Conference Room.」

The projection screen in the conference room displayed a ground-level image captured by an orbital laser defense satellite.

Xiang Yi had just walked out of the factory and was looking up at the sky.

Someone at the conference table said, "Has Xiang Yi already spotted our move?"

"Yes." The warden sounded almost wistful. "As expected of him... From his awakening to his prison break, it only took three days. From his arrival to being able to sense a threat from space, only five. If a talent like this is allowed to grow, I can’t even imagine how powerful he’ll become."

"But this is where it ends."

"We’ve taken control of three military-grade orbital defense satellites. The orbital laser strike is charging. Locked on by three beams, he can’t escape."

"The Company will definitely find out we used the satellites for a surface strike. Won’t that affect the Company’s plans?"

"It doesn’t matter."

The warden had long since given up any hope of getting out of this unscathed. He only prayed he could save his own skin after eliminating Xiang Yi.

And the key to his survival rested on whether or not he could kill Xiang Yi.

Xiang Yi was now back inside the factory.

His Spiritual Power converged in his brain, causing his thoughts to accelerate once again.

His first thought was to take the hoverbike he had confiscated from the gang that morning and head for the city. He could use the tall buildings for cover, and it would also make the satellite controllers hesitate to fire, fearing collateral damage.

But the junkyard was in the suburbs, and there was no way to cover the several kilometers to the city center in thirty seconds.

’Then what about heading in the opposite direction, toward the city wall at the edge of town? An orbital strike there would inevitably damage the wall.’

But that seemed too late as well. There was still a vast open space between the suburbs and the wall, and thirty seconds was not enough time to reach any kind of cover.

Xiang Yi had to find another way.

For now, he could be certain of one thing: at least three orbital laser beams would descend from the sky.

The factory and Master Chang’s residence, the two buildings here, obviously couldn’t withstand it.

’Could he hide in the factory’s basement?’

’The basement was only one story deep. Even with its half-meter concrete ceiling, it most likely wouldn’t hold up.’

’What about finding a way to split their targeting?’

As he thought this, his gaze fell upon the robots working on the assembly line.

’If he could disguise the robots to look like him, or disguise himself as one of the robots, and then have them all scatter... that might be a viable plan.’

Although his Spiritual Power was currently in a depleted state, he had to push through and make contact with the robots.

With each robot he touched, Xiang Yi felt his Spiritual Power drop another notch. Fortunately, his power reserves had grown significantly, allowing him to take control of all the robots in only twelve seconds.

Furthermore, he used the same shortcut he’d used on the police robots before: modifying their signal receivers so that all incoming signals were converted into a single command: "Move."

The robots that had been working on the assembly line suddenly swarmed out, and Xiang Yi tossed a cloak onto two of them.

He himself, however, remained standing inside the factory.

He didn’t know the satellite’s targeting resolution or if the attackers could distinguish between him and the robots. He couldn’t bet his life on their making a mistake.

He was formulating another plan.

Time flew by in an instant. Three red beams, radiating immense heat, shot down from the sky.

The three robots that had fled the farthest from the junkyard were instantly struck by the lasers.

One of them was the robot wearing Xiang Yi’s cloak, which he had deliberately directed to jump into the lake near the sewer.

Before it could even sink to the bottom, the laser flash-evaporated a huge patch of the lake, instantly vaporizing the robot.

The moment those three robots were destroyed, the lasers began sweeping toward the next closest ones, the searing beams leaving terrifying scorch marks on the ground.

Flames immediately spread from the points of impact, completely incinerating the sparse suburban vegetation.

Not a single robot could escape the laser’s lock.

In the blink of an eye, the three lasers spiraled inward to converge on the junkyard.

The factory and Master Chang’s residence were destroyed in an instant, vaporized and incinerated by the intense heat, turning to ash.

The concrete ground shattered, mixing with the factory’s molten metal structures to form a flowing river of liquid metal that covered the spot where the buildings had once stood.

But even so, the lasers did not stop; they continued to sear the earth.

Deeper beneath the surface, they began to melt through layer after layer of metal plates, stacked there at some unknown time.