Hao Chi's mouth hung open, unable to close for a long time.
The blood-soaked Pandaren Guards behind him also looked at each other in bewilderment.
Their eyes all asked the same question: What the hell is this pink-haired girl talking about?
"Just in time?"
Lin Xiyue's brows furrowed as her metal-gauntleted fingers tapped the edge of her shield, producing a dull thud.
"Sis, wake up."
"With this many enemies, phototaxis will only make things worse!"
"High-intensity energy attacks emit light, and large-area skills are practically mobile light-source bombs."
She tapped the ground with the end of her shield, analyzing the situation bluntly.
"Breaking through the Insect Tide was already hard enough. Now, every time we attack, the insects won't scatter. Instead, they'll swarm us like crazy. You call this 'just in time'?"
"One ultimate skill will blow up a thousand insects but draw ten thousand more."
"When the entire canyon's insects are all staring at us, what do you plan to use to block them? Transform into the Empress and tank it with a shield?"
Su Wan shared the same opinion, her gaze sweeping over the heavy metal gate.
"Phototaxis means that the more intense the light effect of a skill, the more dangerous it becomes on this battlefield. You should know that better than I do."
Xia Lian remained silent, but her fingertips unconsciously plucked at her bowstring. This subtle gesture already betrayed her nervousness.
Hao Chi nodded repeatedly after listening.
He had reached a similar, even more desperate, conclusion before.
Precisely because of phototaxis, the Allied Forces had to strictly limit the use of any large-scale spells during nighttime operations.
That would be no different from beating drums and gongs to tell all the insects: "The midnight snack is right here, come and get it!"
The reactions of her three teammates were completely within Lin Qingyue's expectations.
She didn't rush to retort, merely extending a fair finger to draw a circle in the air, pointing toward the giant gate that sealed off hell.
"Xiyue, your reasoning is correct, but you've overlooked the issue of the critical threshold."
"Critical threshold?"
"All the scenarios you mentioned are based on the premise that 'we are using conventional attacks.'"
"A small-scale light source will indeed only attract nearby insects, turning the battle into a war of attrition that will eventually drain us to death."
Lin Qingyue raised her index finger, slowly wagging it in front of everyone.
"But what if our light is bright enough?"
"How bright?" Su Wan immediately pressed.
Lin Qingyue's crimson lips parted, uttering an earth-shattering answer.
"Bright enough to cover the entire canyon in a single instant."
When these words fell, the armory fell silent for three seconds.
Hao Chi's mouth opened, closed, and then snapped open again, finally squeezing out an ambiguous sound from his throat: "Huh?"
"Cover... the entire canyon?"
Lin Xiyue's frown deepened even more, not because she found it absurd this time, but because she knew her sister too well.
When this woman said "what if," there was a ninety percent chance she wasn't making a hypothesis.
Lin Qingyue turned around, facing the giant gate, and traced the outline of a canyon in the air with her finger.
"As you saw just now, there is a clearly narrowing bottleneck in the middle section of the canyon."
"If the Allied Forces can advance the defensive line to that position, the defensive pressure will be reduced by at least half, leveraging the terrain's advantage."
Su Wan's pupils constricted slightly as she grasped the key information.
"You mean... using a single, super-large-scale attack to instantly clear all the Insect Tides from the first half of the canyon?"
"Not just clear them out."
The corners of Lin Qingyue's mouth curved upward, the angle resting perfectly on the dividing line between "confident" and "asking to be punched."
"Phototaxis isn't a weakness here; it's an amplifier."
She reached out and pushed open a side observation window of the armory.
The deafening sounds of slaughter and the stench of blood instantly flooded in like a broken dam.
In the canyon, the densely packed, dark green wave churned wildly under the light of fire and crossbow bolts. The visual pressure was far more direct than the cold numbers on the battle reports.
"Imagine it."
Lin Qingyue's voice remained exceptionally clear amidst the clamor.
"A powerful light covering the entire canyon appears all at once. What will be the instinctive reaction of all the insects?"
"...Converging on the light source," Xia Lian said unconsciously.
"Exactly. They won't run away; instead, they'll actively swarm toward it."
Lin Qingyue spread her hands, then brought them together in a closing gesture.
"Every scattered individual hidden in corners and rock crevices will be dragged from their hiding spots by this light, squeezed into the center of the canyon."
"The higher the density, the higher the killing efficiency."
"This isn't called aggroing the mobs—"
She paused, her tone carrying an infuriatingly certain sense of glee.
"This is called clearing the field."
The entire armory fell back into an eerie silence.
Two seconds later, Lin Xiyue was the first to break it.
"...Sis, did you professionally exterminate a few Insectoid Civilizations in your past life? How did you come up with such a ruthless and despicable tactic?"
Su Wan didn't offer any complaints; her mind was already racing through tactical deductions.
"Theoretically feasible, but there are two prerequisites."
She raised two fingers, listing them calmly.
"First, the attack must cover a sufficiently large area in an extremely short time, giving the swarm no time to react and regroup."
"Second, the burst energy density must reach a threshold capable of causing devastating casualties. Otherwise, it won't be a field clear, but just inviting them over for a bonfire party."
Lin Qingyue added another comment herself: "Actually, it's fine, I only need to clear the first half of the canyon. As long as the Allied Forces can hold that narrowest point in the middle, the frontal contact area will shrink to less than one sixth of what it is now."
Hao Chi's expression was extremely complex.
It was like a rigorous STEM student suddenly hearing someone declare, "I'm going to blow up the moon with a single grenade," filled with the confusion of a scientific faith about to collapse.
"In other words..."
He pushed up the dusty goggles on the bridge of his nose, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible.
"You need to unleash... a devastating strike in an instant, sufficient to cleanse the entire first half of the canyon."
"Correct." Lin Qingyue nodded.
"Wipe out all the Mantisfolk at once?"
"The ones in the first half," Lin Qingyue corrected his wording.
Hao Chi fell silent for three seconds, as if saying a final farewell to his worldview.
"Um... Captain Lin."
He chose his words carefully, his tone strained.
"I'm a technician, I'm quite sensitive to data. Do you know roughly how long the first half of the canyon is?"
"How long?"
"The straight-line distance exceeds three kilometers. The narrowest cross-section is over one hundred meters, and the widest is nearly five hundred meters."
He gestured in the air,
"Based on the current swarm density, the number of Mantisfolk in this area is estimated to be..."
He swallowed hard.
"Between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand."
When this number was thrown out, even Lin Xiyue, who had always been fearless, felt her pupils tremble.
Three hundred thousand.
Even if each one were only the size of a wild dog, stuffing three hundred thousand living creatures into a single canyon would make the density simply mind-blowing.
"You want to... eliminate three hundred thousand targets in one strike."
Hao Chi straightened his goggles, his speaking speed becoming extremely fast due to his agitation.
"I'm not questioning your strength. I witnessed your combat power with my own eyes just now, and it's ridiculously strong. But this isn't a matter of strength; it's a matter of the laws of physics!"
"Even Lord Celestial God needs to fight continuously to suppress the Insect Tide! You, a level 35 Priest..."
"Mm." Lin Qingyue nodded, acknowledging her level and class.
"This is im—"
"That's why I didn't say 'one strike'."
Hao Chi's words got stuck in his throat.
Lin Qingyue used the tip of her staff, [Beloved], to casually draw two intersecting lines on the cold metal floor.
"I said 'an instant'."
"A flash of light in an instant, covering the entire canyon."
"As for what this light is, where it comes from, and how long it can last..."
She raised her head, her pink eyes shimmering with a light that Hao Chi could not possibly comprehend, a half-smile playing on her lips.
"Even if I told you the details, you might not be able to understand them."
"No, no, no, tell me, my comprehension skills are excellent!"
Hao Chi immediately interrupted, feeling as if he were standing before the gates to a new world.
Lin Qingyue chuckled softly and shook her head.
"You won't be able to understand."
"..."