The bridge hummed with a low, resonant drone.
It was the sound of the Main Cannon Capacitor Array charging, like the deep growl of a giant beast stirring from slumber.
Beyond the observation window, the massive Particle Acceleration Rings on either side of Kunlun Mountain's bow began to glow with a brilliant blue-white light, growing steadily brighter and more intense.
Energy readings on the control screens surged wildly: 30%...50%...70%...
Meanwhile.
Aboard the Fire Lizard, two million kilometers away.
The entire bridge was bathed in glaring red light.
Accompanied by the shrill blare of alarms.
"Beep, beep, beep... Multi-band Fire Control Scan detected... Target lock confirmed... Emergency evasion..."
"Beep, beep, beep... High energy warning..."
Fleet Commander Viktor of the Dragon Lizard Fleet shot up from his chair.
"Impossible! Since when do Federation Starships have main cannons with a range exceeding one and a half million kilometers?"
He couldn't afford to assume it was just a gunnery officer's blunder or an accidental trigger.
After all, a starship's main cannon could only be fired four or five times in a single battle.
No commander would be foolish enough to waste a shot so carelessly.
"Activate the Energy Shield!"
"Evade immediately!"
Viktor shouted.
Aboard the Kunlun Mountain.
"The enemy vessel has detected our charging sequence!"
The Sensor Supervisor reported.
"The Fire Lizard is attempting an emergency activation of its Shield Generator, but their systems are too outdated—it will take at least fifteen seconds—"
"Charging complete: 95%."
The Gunnery Chief's voice remained calm.
"Enemy shield activation progress: 40%...45%..."
"98%."
"Shield at 60%! They're accelerating the startup!"
"99%.
Targeting adjustments complete."
Qin Bei Wang called out.
"Fire!"
Through the observation window, he could see the distant silhouette of the Imperial Battleship.
A gray shadow struggling in the darkness, its hull just beginning to shimmer with the faint blue glow of an activating shield.
Too slow.
At his command.
In that instant, the entire bridge was engulfed in a blinding white light.
Not one beam, but two.
Kunlun Mountain's twin main cannons fired simultaneously, unleashing two Particle Streams over fifteen meters in diameter—like colossal swords from myth cleaving through primordial chaos—tearing across two million kilometers of void.
There was no sound—sound cannot travel in space.
Yet in that moment, everyone seemed to hear a roar that defied the laws of physics, an auditory hallucination born of energy pushed to its absolute limit.
The beams cut a ruler-straight path through the darkness, the space around them warping slightly from energy overload.
Interstellar dust drifting aimlessly into the beams' edges was instantly ionized, bursting into brief, dazzling halos of violet light.
Zero point three seconds later, the beams struck their target.
The Fire Lizard's shields had reached 72% activation at the moment of impact.
A strength that should have withstood several volleys from conventional main cannons.
But against the Sky-Opening class main cannons, the shield was as fragile as a soap bubble.
In the first millisecond of contact, the shields overloaded.
In the second millisecond, the beams pierced through the bow armor.
The third millisecond, energy surged into the hull's interior, flowing backward along the main power conduits, consuming everything in its path.
Alloy armor, weapon systems, reactor casings, and hundreds of Ferry Empire officers and soldiers—instantly vaporized in temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees.
Then, the reactor went critical.
The entire battlecruiser lit up from within, like a lantern being ignited.
Light first seeped through the cracks, then grew brighter and brighter until the hull could no longer contain the raging energy.
The explosion occurred.
Not an explosion in the conventional sense, but a carnival of matter transforming into pure energy.
The entire three-kilometer-long starship, in less than a second, turned into a blazing white sphere over fifty kilometers in diameter.
The core temperature of the sphere exceeded that of a star's surface, and the expanding shockwave at its edges swept away several nearby destroyers that had failed to evade in time, tossing them like fallen leaves.
The light persisted for three seconds before gradually fading.
When vision returned, in the position where the Fire Lizard had been—
Only an expanding cloud of metallic vapor remained, along with countless tiny, still-burning fragments.
On the bridge, a deathly silence fell.
Everyone stared at that graveyard of light, which had just been born and swiftly extinguished, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to blink.
Zhuang ZhiXuan slowly turned her head to look at Qin Bei Wang.
The young Commander calmly stepped away from the console as if he had just conducted a routine training exercise.
"Target destroyed."
He announced, his voice devoid of any emotion.
"All ships, continue advancing.
But do not pursue too deeply!"
The sphere of light from the Fire Lizard's explosion left a ten-second overexposed afterimage on the Ferry Empire fleet's sensor screens.
When the light finally faded, the bridge of the Imperial Glory was left with only the faint hum of instruments and the suppressed breaths of over twenty officers.
Remington Wells stood before the tactical screen, motionless.
His eyes were fixed on the expanding cloud of metallic vapor, the lingering afterglow reflected deep in his pupils.
Two million kilometers.
He remembered that number.
Sensor logs showed that when the Kunlun Mountain fired, the actual distance to the Fire Lizard was two million and three thousand kilometers.
At this range, the main cannons of the Imperial Glory battleship would have a hit rate of no more than 15%.
Even if they hit, the power would decay to less than one-third.
But those two particle beams, traversing two million kilometers of void, showed no attenuation in power.
They pierced through the Fire Lizard's 72% strength shield as if cutting through butter, then vaporized the entire three-kilometer-long battleship from bow to stern.
This was not the firepower a conventional star system fleet should possess.
Wells' fingers unconsciously tightened around the armrest of his command chair.
A cold conjecture, like a venomous snake, slithered into his mind.
"Star-Region-Class Core Fleet."
He whispered this word.
The officers on the bridge all turned to look at him simultaneously, their faces filled with confusion and fear.
"Commander?"
The adjutant's voice trembled.
"That is no ordinary T5-Class Battleship."
Wells' voice was as dry as sandpaper grating.
"An ordinary T5-Class would have a maximum effective main cannon range of no more than 1.8 million kilometers.
And its power... could never penetrate the full-power shield of a T3.5-Class Battleship with a single shot from two million kilometers away."
He pulled up the Federation Fleet's Organization Database and quickly navigated to the classified section.
Most entries labeled "Exclusive Equipment for Star-Region-Class Core Fleets" contained only names and vague descriptions without specific parameters.
But one piece of information remained vividly clear in his memory.
"Aperture-Heavens-Class Heavy Particle Beam Main Cannon."
Wells uttered the name, each syllable heavy as a mountain.
"Developed by the Federation Academy of Sciences three years ago, exclusively equipped for the flagship vessels of the core fleets in three major star regions: Galaxy Starfield, Ten Stone Starfield, and Newman Starfield.
Theoretical maximum range: 2.4 million kilometers.
Theoretical single-shot firepower: Equivalent to the directional energy release of a 500-kiloton tactical nuclear weapon."