Rebirth of the Super Battleship

To Xiao Yu now, the loss of a Province-Class ship meant little. In fact, even the destruction of a Nation-Class ship was not a loss he couldn't bear. But Xiao Yu refused to accept meaningless losses. Any loss must bring a return of equal or far greater value. Now, by using the explosion of this Province-Class ship to deliver a final, lethal strike to the Level 4 Alien Beast, this trade was without a doubt more than worthwhile.

Xiao Yu clearly understood why, in its final moment, it didn't choose to go after a Nation-Class ship but instead targeted a Province-Class ship. The reason was simple, after enduring Xiao Yu's siege for two full months, it no longer had the ability to challenge a Nation-Class ship. It was fully aware of its current state. It knew it no longer had the strength to perish together with a Nation-Class ship.

In the face of despair, dragging one's enemy into mutual destruction seemed to be a universal tactic, be it on Earth or across the cosmos.

"You senseless creature. You brought this upon yourself," Xiao Yu thought coldly, showing not the slightest trace of sympathy.

Under Xiao Yu's indifferent gaze, hundreds of thousands of ships, alongside the firepower of three Nation-Class ships, blanketed the region in a barrage, launching a sweeping and indiscriminate assault on the intertwined Province-Class ship and the Level 4 Alien Beast.

Under such a ferocious bombardment, the Level 4 Alien Beast could still manage to hold on for a moment, but the Province-Class ship was a different matter. Not to mention a Province-Class ship, even a Nation-Class ship might not last thirty minutes under this level of concentrated firepower.

Superluminal communication technology transmitted real-time internal data from the Province-Class ship back to Xiao Yu. Coldly, Xiao Yu watched as the ship's Primary Engine One suffered severe damage, output power becoming unstable, some components even catching fire, triggering widespread energy shorts that filled the ship with crackling bursts of electric discharge. He watched indifferently as Primary Engine Ten exploded outright, obliterating every instrument and system within several hundred meters. Dozens of secondary engines overloaded and melted down, the liquefied metal rampaging like molten lava from a volcanic eruption. He watched impassively as the ship's interior shook like in an earthquake, the artificial gravity system destroyed, causing instruments to float erratically, crashing into each other, surrounded by fire and explosions…

It looked exactly like the end of the world.

The combined firepower from the Level 4 Alien Beast and over one million of Xiao Yu's ships was rapidly tearing this tiny world apart. The Province-Class ship lasted less than thirty seconds, and that was only because a significant portion of the incoming attacks had been intercepted by the beast.

This was exactly what happened now. The explosion of the Province-Class ship inflicted devastating damage on the Level 4 Alien Beast. Xiao Yu saw tens of thousands of tentacles and countless chunks of flesh blown apart, scattering into space. Accompanying the explosion was the creature's desolate and tragic howl.

Already covered in wounds and barely clinging to life, this final explosion was the fatal blow. The rest of the fleet's assault merely served to finish the job.

Xiao Yu watched as, under the blast, the creature's entire body was nearly torn in two. Only a few tendon-like strands, each just a few dozen meters thick, remained to hold the two halves together. But these feeble connections didn't last long. Under the unrelenting cannon fire, they were quickly severed. The Level 4 Alien Beast was finally split in two.

And still, it did not die. The extraordinary vitality of the Alien Beast Civilization was on full display. Its upper body, which contained the brain, continued to writhe. Its floating tentacles still tried to strike back, but now, even those blows couldn't destroy a single Town-Class ship. Its mobility had been completely lost. In space, it could only squirm feebly like a maggot, no longer capable of darting through the void at blinding speed as it once did.

The lower half of its body, having lost control from the brain, no longer moved its tentacles. However, this Level 4 Alien Beast seemed to possess a similar neural structure. Xiao Yu saw that this half of the body was still twitching slightly, it looked bizarre and eerie.

"Do you have any last words?" At this point, Xiao Yu had fully seized control of the situation and wasn't worried about any tricks it might pull. He figured he might as well have one final conversation, to see if this creature that had pestered him for centuries had anything left to say.

"Kill… kill me… hurry, kill me…" A broken, fragmented message reached Xiao Yu's mind.

It seemed to be in unbearable agony now. The intense pain had already destroyed its will, leaving it only longing for death, to be freed from such torment.

"Sigh." Xiao Yu let out a soft sigh and gave the order to fire again.

Endless firepower once again engulfed it. When the barrage finally ceased, Xiao Yu saw that the upper half of the Level 4 Alien Beast had been blasted to pieces, truly dead, beyond all doubt.

A mighty lifeform had thus been erased from the Milky Way.

Xiao Yu wasn't a soft-hearted person. Ever since escaping from the Solar System, the number of beings that had died by his hand was beyond count. He had even committed genocide before. But in all the killings of his past, he had never quite felt this way.

Xiao Yu recalled Intelligent Program One's second test for him.

"What is the meaning of life in the universe?"

It was a philosophical question with no easy answer, one that would yield a thousand different responses from a thousand people. Yet at this moment, Xiao Yu seemed to gain a new understanding of life. To gain insight through killing, he wondered if that was a bit too ironic.

"What was the meaning of your life? Was it just to follow me, cause me trouble, stir up chaos, and then be slain by me? …Such a life, is far too meaningless." Xiao Yu shook his head slightly, brushing aside the chaotic thoughts.

"This whole thing was just a senseless disaster…" Xiao Yu murmured with a sigh as he began tallying up his losses. "If you had just listened to my advice earlier and not provoked me, would you have ended up like this? Sigh… what was the point, really."

Over the course of the months-long encirclement campaign, Xiao Yu had lost a total of five Province-Class ships, over a hundred City-Class ships, and around one hundred thousand other vessels. The losses were surprisingly low, even to Xiao Yu himself. Originally, he had prepared to lose one or two Nation-Class ships if necessary.

Upon careful reflection, Xiao Yu came to a conclusion.

First, it was due to his excellent strategy. At the beginning, he had not engaged in a head-on clash with the Level 4 Alien Beast. Instead, he relied on overwhelming numbers to continuously harass it, never giving it a moment's rest, gradually whittling down its strength bit by bit. This gave the beast an illusion, that it might escape, that it didn't need to fight desperately. By the time it finally decided to go all out, its strength had already been significantly drained. It no longer had the ability to fight to the death.

Second was the Four-Dimensional Shield. The existence of the shield made it deeply wary. Every time it destroyed a medium or large vessel, the resulting explosion would harm it as well. Out of self-preservation, it dared not recklessly attack medium and large ships.

These two factors, combined with the natural trap that was this small universe, ultimately allowed Xiao Yu to take down this formidable creature at minimal cost.

"The total mass of this Level 4 Alien Beast… must exceed one trillion tons… what an enormous gain…" As Xiao Yu began calculating his haul, a simple estimation yielded an utterly staggering figure.

Over one trillion tons of Level 4 Alien Beast flesh! What did that mean? A single Nation-Class ship had a total mass of just over two billion tons. In other words, the corpse of this Level 4 Alien Beast could be used to build more than five hundred combat-type Nation-Class ships! And the flesh of a Level 4 Alien Beast was even more durable than the most advanced materials produced by Xiao Yu's own material science technology. This was a monumental harvest, compared to which, the loss of those hundred thousand or so ships was insignificant, hardly worth mentioning.

"What's more, this miniature universe contains an incredible amount of wreckage from Level-Six Civilization ships. Their total mass could easily reach into the hundreds of billions of tons. Even though I can't extract any actual Level-Six Civilization technology from them, just these fragments are enough! As long as I research them thoroughly, grasp their properties, reforge them and build ships, their performance will undoubtedly be extraordinary. This small universe is practically a treasure trove!"

Thinking of his gains, Xiao Yu couldn't help but become excited.

"What I need to consider now is how to take all of this out… how to deal with that damned Intelligent Program One. And then there's the spatial weapon of the Level-Six Civilization, Fractured Space. I must obtain the manufacturing technology for that weapon. With all these spoils, what do I have to fear from the Molian Civilization? With one million such warships, I have the confidence to wipe out the main body of the Molian Civilization completely! No matter how many Nation-Class ships they have, it won't make a difference!"

With this in mind, Xiao Yu's mood lifted, and he began energetically commanding his fleet to begin cleanup operations.