"Superconducting Lightning-Guiding Sword?"

"What is that?"

On the main bridge, the air pressure was razor-thin. Chen Sixuan and Qian Dele both turned to look at Lin Xian;it seemed everyone was hearing the name for the first time.

Lin Xian, seated in the captain's chair, knit his brows, pondered for a few seconds, then opened his eyes and shouted toward Ning Jing and Shu Qin's station, "Magnetic anchor array, prepare contingency plan three!"

Ning Jing and the others in charge of the armory exchanged glances. Without further hesitation, they immediately pulled up that countermeasure in the weapon system.

At the same time, Lin Xian ordered Viola, "Plot the flight paths for the array attack units."

[Okay—guide them toward the sea surface?]

"No, toward that!" Lin Xian pointed to the left-wing sky, at the ghostly, massive silhouette drifting within the clouds.

[Understood!]

With the flight paths set, Lin Xian shouted to everyone, "Everyone, suit up in power armor—just in case!"

"Director Ding!"

Ding Junyi, Xiao Yuan, and the others in the research module heard Lin Xian and instantly began donning their power armor.

Lin Xian also put on his starfield nano power armor. Fully armed, he sat in the captain's seat and explained to Chen Sixuan and the others, "The Sky Dome train is equipped with Silent City's superconducting levitation magnetic anchor array. Mochizuki Shinji synced many disaster plans with me before—these are contingencies they've encountered and handled. One method is: when facing extreme electrical storms or strong arc-type abnormal entities, use the magnetic anchor array to form a flight array and exploit superconducting potential differences to controllably guide lightning. This should work."

"So that's what they call the Superconducting Lightning-Guiding Sword?" Qian Dele picked up a small fan and waved it at himself, glancing back at the descending, skyful of spherical lightning. He muttered, "Seriously, this childishness spreads—there's already one on board."

Vrrrrr!

The sky tore open! The lightning storm poured down like a blue waterfall. Air was instantaneously ripped and ionized, emitting a ghastly, keening whistle. The acrid smell of ozone rushed into everyone’s nostrils. Countless ball lightning rolled and tangled;each collision burst into scarlet electric nets spanning hundreds of meters. Temperatures skyrocketed. The window anti-glare layer hissed under the plasma’s licking as if it were about to melt through;the main bridge flickered under jumping blue-purple arcs.

"Launch the array!" Lin Xian's voice was almost drowned by the fury of the storm.

Hey!! —!

Twenty-four cold, pale blue light tracks suddenly lit along the Sky Dome train’s flank. Twenty-four prismatic, pyramid-like magnetic anchor array units shot out like released star arrows, slicing through the rolling rain and scorching ion streams to stab accurately into that raging plasma inferno. There was no explosion—only shrill electric howls. The twenty-four array flyers arranged themselves in the air like a colossal sword. Superconducting field filaments snapped taut and linked! A pale blue film, like liquid glass, rapidly extended and shaped itself between the array units!

In a single heartbeat, a streamlined "giant sword" composed purely of energy fields—hundreds of meters long—thrust into the upper atmosphere of the sea region! It tore straight through the lightning storm from all directions, ravenously attracting and colliding with the arcs. Those arcs were then tamed, stretched, and twisted into blinding, high-frequency snapping guiding arcs that wrapped tightly along the sword's spine. Ten-thousand-pound thunder was forcibly restrained and domesticated, condensing into coiling scarlet electric serpents wound around the sword blade! It felt as if all the world's energy froze and concentrated at that point—an overwhelming planetary-scale sense of annihilation slammed down.

"Electrostatic field generator: full power!" Lin Xian's eyes narrowed at the sight of the superconducting missile array piercing the storm, and he issued the order.

Woooo!

Beneath the Sky Dome train, a blue film shimmered and vanished, but the downpour that struck the hull was vaporized by a powerful arc, raising a misty vapor shield.

At that instant, the superconducting giant sword, forged from the entire storm, pierced through the dense rainclouds! Its tip pointed at the faintly visible, writhing tentacle abnormal entity within the distant clouds! For a split second, a flash bright enough to blind made the world blanch;what followed was a roaring shockwave that reverberated across the sky!

Boom!!!! !!!!!

It was as if the heavens had been shattered!

Like a lightning rod's guiding line, the superconducting array's spearhead, upon penetrating the entity, released the unstoppable lightning storm it had been holding. Everyone watched as the electric waterfall in the sky vanished in a blink—space seemed violently pulled inward by an invisible colossal force! The scarlet electric serpents coiling beneath the giant sword burst forth like a river breaking its banks;red and white devastation light swelled and devoured. A gargantuan ring-shaped lightning canopy of indeterminable diameter—made of pure energy with jagged teeth at the edges—violently unfurled, tearing a savage void across half the sky.

The light was so intense it instantaneously vaporized even the lower cloud layers! The unknown abnormal entity—still unseen fully—didn't even manage a howl before its bulk disintegrated under the lightning impact, collapsing and evaporating inch by inch into a swirling torrent of ashen white dust!

Only a few severed translucent tentacle fragments remained, each wrapped in intermittent arcs and smoking at the broken, seared ends—like discarded limbs cast aside by a god. They tumbled and fell from the energy void's edge into the roaring, inky sea above.

The subsonic Sky Dome train shuddered violently!

The hull's electrostatic field generators overloaded in an instant, shrieking on the verge of failure. A violent electromagnetic aftershock swept through, plunging all lights and instruments into darkness. Emergency crimson illumination flickered wildly under residual currents like candles in a haunted house. The tingling from ionized air crawled up everyone's scalp;body hairs stood on end!

"Careful!"

"Don't move around."

[System integrity: undamaged. Rebooting.]

In that momentary darkness, Lin Xian and Chen Sixuan peered out into the dim sky where the giant atmospheric manta drifted through glowing filaments high above, then finally passed without colliding head-on.

"Whirr—"

As if only a breath had passed, a muffled sound of energy reconsolidation accompanied the bridge lights and instruments restarting. Everyone let out nervous breaths.

"Is everyone okay?"

"We're fine." Monica on the skybridge replied, "That roadblock is dealt with. That trick of sending trouble east worked well."

"We're fine." KIKI answered from below.

"Thank goodness for the Sky Dome train's full configuration—otherwise we'd have had to endure that lightning storm head-on."

"Will that big jellyfish catch up to us?" Shasha, who had taken the pilot's seat and was buzzing with excitement, asked quickly.

"That thing doesn't seem fast enough to catch us. What we should worry about is up ahead!" Luo Yang's face had gone grave.

Lin Xian's expression shifted. Wind howled and roared. Outside the windows, the brief respite was snuffed by an even more terrifying sight.

Ahead, an enormous, suffocating cyclonic sea flooded the horizon! A gray-black wind wall reached to the sky like the arm of an ancient god, violently rotating and churning. Ink-dark seawater was lifted, drawing curtain after curtain of water tornadoes between sea and sky. Gray and black braided together;hurricane and tidal surge fused into a world-devouring chaotic eye! You could not tell where sea ended and sky began—only a spinning, crushing, annihilating gray-black abyss closing in on the tiny Sky Dome train!

"The wind speed is intense. Our radar is heavily limited. KIKI, Monica, watch out for multiple sea tornadoes—beware enemies in the clouds!" Chen Sixuan's face registered disbelief;the catastrophic scene before her was like a planetary collision.

Clack.

Qian Dele's small fan fell to the deck with a click. He gaped, "My goodness, what kind of superstorm is this? It's an apocalyptic storm—can such a phenomenon even appear on Blue Star?"

"Does that matter? We just fly straight through it!" Shasha's face had gone stern.

In the deep living quarters, Mo Xiaotian was held tightly in Sun Yuzhen's arms, huddled with Xiao Yuan in a corner. The cabin walls vibrated violently. Outside was a chaos of white lightning that lit up Sun Yuzhen and Xiao Yuan's terrified faces.

Curious, Mo Xiaotian peeked through the small gap between a grown-up's arms and reached a tiny finger toward a tearing arc of lightning outside the window. "Snap!" A closer bolt split the clouds;the fierce arc seemed to strike the hull! The little one yelped, pulled his hand back, dove into Sun Yuzhen's embrace, and froze.

"Melonglong—!"

Violent jolts yanked everyone back to the skybridge! Wind and rain battered like knives. Shiori snapped her head up, her delicate face filled with disbelief. "Above… there are things—many of them—prepare to fight!" Her voice was thin in the storm but sharp.

Fire Bro and Monica immediately turned their gaze to the terrifying cloud wall that stirred lightning and rain. Where there had been indistinct gray-black, approaching the Sky Dome train revealed countless black dots hiding in the turbulent clouds—so tiny as flies, yet unnervingly stable in the maelstrom, and rapidly expanding in the view!

"Are those swarms or raindrops?" Fire Bro hesitated.

"Have you ever seen raindrops that turn?" Monica's face grew serious. Through the storm she could make out the 'raindrops' approaching: the black dots bore membrane wings many times wider than the winged demons, covered with bony spikes! Even worse—there were so many, like a giant hive agitated and stirred, diving down to surround the Sky Dome train!

"It's a demon tide. Die!"

Without hesitation, Lu Xingchen's gaze hardened. Rings of infinite speed ignited around his hands as he shot upward like a cannonball of flame!

"Divine: Great Blazing Sea!"

Lu Xingchen spewed roaring fire from both hands;clenching them, he cast a massive blaze that whipped across like a colossal scourge, instantly engulfing the fastest-diving wing-demon cluster!

Heat boiled, rain vaporized. A rolling scarlet inferno surged.

At the same time, Monica formed shape with her red lips and released a tangible sonic wave. Her pupils flashed;under tremendous psychic power, a shriek pierced human auditory limits, condensing into an almost visible, air-warping fan-shaped shockwave that sliced through another dive of wing demons. Countless demons smashed like into an invisible grinder—wings shredded, shrieking as they tumbled down!

"The sky is full of mutated wing demons—huge numbers! We need to speed up." Monica's cold voice crackled over the comms but was almost drowned by the terrifying roar of surf.

Boom! Crash—!

A heavy upheaval came from below decks! A Bai's voice, strangled then ripping out the next second, shouted, "Below! A big swarm—so fast! Too many!" Before he finished, his twin high-energy lasers ignited like two scarlet blades, stabbing into the boiling, black-oil sea beneath. Where the beams swept, seawater instantly boiled into scorching steam. Ten or so creatures breached in spearlike shapes—huge fish eyes and broad transparent membrane wings—and were pierced and vaporized!

"Telekinetic field—hold!" KIKI's cold voice rang out in the gale. She and Takahashi Ryunosuke appeared at the hull's belly edges, arms outstretched, faces white, veins bulging. Two invisible but supremely tough psychic fields were forced open like giant unseen nets to meet those flying spear-fish shot like high-pressure jets. The transparent spear-fish thudded against the fields with tight, muffled impacts, decelerating sharply. Bone spears and membrane wings hit with massive waves;the concentrated impact made both KIKI and Takahashi wince.

The numbers kept rising, like precision bullets from the sea floor, pelting the hull.

"Our signal mark is getting clearer—these are abnormal entities that can chase us at high speed. Push harder, there might be bigger things coming." KIKI managed the telekinetic field while speaking in the comm channel.

"Shasha, accelerate—ignore everything else, break the sound barrier!" Lin Xian decided instantly on the bridge.

The storm held danger at every turn;any hesitation could spell doom. There was no chance to be cautious—escape the storm center early and you might survive.

Shasha nodded and pushed the control lever, adjusting the parameters. The Sky Dome train surged ahead in the air again!

"Fire coverage!" Ning Jing's roar echoed through the bridge's weapons channel.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The triple-track railburst cannons unleashed thunderous roars. Massive solid rounds carved shockwaves through the storm and fish swarms, blowing them into bloody, fetid mist. The scorching plasma guns fired like molten spears, frenetically sweeping the sky-dive wing demons;each burst incinerated swaths of demonic silhouettes. Dense plasma beams wove a net of annihilation, surgically eliminating any who tried to tear through the telekinetic field. From the upper decks came ear-rending detonations—1130 close-in weapon systems ramped to maximum rate! A deluge of metal tore apart anything near the hull;shell casings rained into the churning sea below.

The world became a symphony of destruction—ceaseless artillery, laser arcs, wing-demon screams, flying-fish spikes, the telekinetic barrier groaning under pressure, hurricane howls like a god's roar! The Sky Dome train became a bloodied iron beast charging through hell. Every weapon spat fury, ripping apart deathly curtains from sky and sea.

The comm channels fell silent.

Each impact, each explosion made the massive hull shudder violently. The tortured creak of twisted metal mixed with deafening battle noise like the last roar of a dying beast. Everyone clenched their teeth.

Time blurred as if dragged through endless black mire. Gradually, the violent wind lessened into the hiss of shields rubbing.

Gunfire thinned, until only one or two grudging booms remained. The churning black waterwall outside slowly paled to a murky, sickly yellow, then to a comforting lead-gray that hinted at thin daylight. The colossal cyclonic wind wall that had ground sea and sky into chaos lay far astern of the Sky Dome train now.

Inside, blaring alarms stopped. The acrid smell of scorched material and hot ions lingered, but the overwhelming sense of annihilation had receded. The sizzling of overheated barrels and the occasional "zzzt" of a lamp were the only noises in the enormous, sudden silence.

Everyone remained taut as high-tension wire, as if surfacing from the deep, greedily breathing air that was no longer throat-burning.

"We're out of the cyclone."

"Current mark: level two!"

"That's fine." Lin Xian peeled off his power armor mask, sweat beading on his forehead. He ordered Viola, "Scatter the decoy flares, coordinate with weapons to move and pick targets. Once we exit the storm area, the big things shouldn't notice us."

[Viola acknowledged. Pre-setting the 'fishing' scheme now.]

"Phew—"

Shasha exhaled and slumped back in her seat. "That was intense. I saw so many monster silhouettes in that storm—luckily we didn't collide head-on."

On the skybridge, as the flames of battle faded, Monica looked back at the receding black sea. The sky was clearing. Only the deep, steady hum of the giant engines kept the train in stable cruise—like a heart beating powerfully and gently in the enormous silence after the ordeal.