Chapter 159 God? Just a lump of scrap metal with a slightly higher recycling price.

"Zzzzt—"

The ear-piercing screech of twisting metal exploded within the inner layers of the divine punishment's shields.

The [xingtian demon god] mecha, the moment it penetrated that layer of "Dimensional Solidification Forcefield," was like a block of tofu thrown into a meat grinder. Its titanium alloy armor, claimed to be able to withstand a nuclear blast, didn't even last a second before disintegrating into a flurry of iron filings.

Inside the cockpit, the alarms wailed like a funeral dirge.

"Warning! External armor completely destroyed!"

"Warning! Life support system offline!"

"Warning! Hull integrity at 0.01%!"

Lin Yuan didn't listen to any of that nonsense. An instant before the pile of scrap metal completely disintegrated, he violently yanked the ejection ring.

But he didn't eject outward; instead, he locked the ejection angle directly downward—toward the steel surface of that black battle star.

"Get... down there for me!"

He roared his final sentence into the communication channel.

Without the protection of the mecha, his semi-energized Void Body was directly exposed to the enemy's dense anti-aircraft fire net.

Countless high-energy particle beams, like an airtight electric net, lashed out at Lin Yuan. Bursts of dark-gold sparks exploded across the surface of his skin. With every step forward, a layer of flesh was shaved off his body, only to frantically regenerate under the nourishment of antimatter energy.

Pain.

A heart-piercing, bone-gouging pain.

But this sensation of pain caused the string in Lin Yuan's mind called "reason" to snap completely. Like a human meteorite trailing a long golden flame, he didn't even bother to dodge the incoming fire, crashing straight into the surface armor of the divine punishment.

Boom!

A dull, massive roar traveled through the metallic crust, echoing across the entire battle star.

On the divine punishment's mirror-smooth black surface, a terrifying crater several kilometers in diameter appeared.

Before the dust could settle, an eerie red light glowed at the bottom of the pit.

Lin Yuan never intended to use the front door.

Since this was a solid metal planet, he would just drill through it!

"Void... Devour!"

Lin Yuan thrust both hands into the metallic ground beneath his feet. The violent Antimatter Core within him acted like an overclocked drill. The high-density armor, which was difficult to cut even with lasers, was instantly annihilated into primal atomic dust the moment his hands touched it.

He forcibly melted the steel earth beneath him, charging toward the deepest part of the planet—that beating "heart"—like a crazed burrowing dragon.

One thousand meters deep.

The surroundings were filled with complex energy conduits, which Lin Yuan tore apart at will, triggering a series of violent sympathetic detonations.

Ten thousand meters deep.

The moment a guard robot showed its head, it was crushed into a metal pancake by the tyrannical Void Forcefield.

Fifty thousand meters deep.

The temperature here had reached a terrifying level. The surroundings were no longer solid metal but flowing high-energy liquid alloy, surging through the conduits like red magma in veins.

"Got you."

Lin Yuan's face was covered in blood, forced out by the high pressure. But his dark-gold eyes were fixed intently on the vast hollow at the planet's core below.

There, a suffocating pressure was slowly rising.

"Bug."

The two words struck Lin Yuan's soul like a heavy hammer.

The sea of liquid alloy below suddenly exploded, and a hundred-meter-tall mechanical giant god rose from the heat waves.

This was the true body of the Cardinal of wrath.

He didn't look human; he was more like a mobile temple constructed from precision gears and Divine Runes. His torso was a burning reactor, his limbs flowed with blue plasma, and his head, inlaid with a purple crystal, sat high above, looking down at the falling Lin Yuan as if he were a speck of dust.

"You have soiled my holy body."

wrath raised his hand. The movement seemed slow, but in reality, it was faster than the limits of visual perception.

Boom!

Lin Yuan felt his vision go dark. He was swatted like a fly into the nearby metal rock wall.

Even with a Void Body, he appeared somewhat fragile before this absolute power. Lin Yuan felt his ribs shatter, and half his body was nearly blasted apart into pure energy particles.

"That's it?"

Lin Yuan pried himself out of the indentation in the rock wall, spat out a mouthful of blood foam containing golden sparks, and revealed his trademark rogue-like smile.

"Think you're a big deal just because you're tall? I've dismantled boilers in the junkyard bigger than your head."

"Still stubborn even in the face of death."

There was no emotion in wrath's voice. He raised that giant hand, capable of blotting out the sky, once more. A destructive black singularity condensed in his palm. "Since you like this core so much, then become one with it."

The singularity pressed down.

The surrounding space instantly collapsed, and the massive suction locked down all of Lin Yuan's escape routes.

This was an entirely unequal battle.

A mortal body against a mechanical god.

But a second before destruction descended, Lin Yuan moved.

He didn't run, nor did he try to withstand it head-on. Instead, he flickered and teleported directly onto wrath's massive mechanical thigh, which was as thick as a mountain peak.

"You're right, I can't beat you in a fight."

Lin Yuan's hands dug deep into the gaps of the armor engraved with Divine Runes. His fingernails snapped, but his fingertips erupted with an unprecedented light of greed.

"But what do I do for a living? I'm a scavenger!"

"As long as it's metal, as long as it's energy, as long as it's unwanted trash..."

Lin Yuan grinned, revealing a row of stark white teeth. His expression was more sinister than a demon from hell.

"System! Serve the meal!!!"

[Ding! Ultra-high energy reaction object detected.]

[titan-class rare metal construct detected.]

[Determining... Target possesses hostility, direct recycling is not possible.]

[Enforcing supreme authority: Deep Space Salvage Operation initiated!]

[Dismantling target...]

Buzz—!

The previously indifferent wrath suddenly showed a flicker of human-like terror in his massive electronic eyes.

He felt an eerie power of laws descending upon him. It wasn't a physical attack, nor was it magic; it was a kind of... defined fear.

It was as if, in this instant, he was no longer a high-and-mighty Cardinal or a demigod who controlled life and death, but a pile of scrap metal sitting in a junkyard, waiting to be weighed on a scale!

"What is this?! Get away! Get off my body!"

wrath flailed his arms frantically, trying to swat the tiny bug on his leg to death.

But he discovered to his horror that the armor touched by Lin Yuan was rapidly softening and decomposing, turning into streams of incredibly pure energy that were being frantically drained through the other's arms.

"Delicious! This is the real deal!"

The veins all over Lin Yuan's body bulged. That massive amount of divine energy flooded into his body, bloating him so much he nearly died from the internal pressure. But he didn't care at all, like a refugee who hadn't eaten for three thousand years falling into a grain bin.

"Aren't you a god? Does being a god mean you can just treat others like trash to be cleared away?"

"Now let me tell you, in the eyes of a junkyard owner, there is only goods that haven't been dismantled yet, not a god that I wouldn't dare to dismantle!"

Crack!

One of wrath's legs snapped.

The internal structure had been completely "eaten" away by Lin Yuan, turning into iron dust that scattered everywhere.

The massive mechanical body lost its balance and crashed heavily into the sea of liquid alloy, kicking up a thousand-meter-high wave.

"Aaaaaah—!"

wrath let out a shrill scream, a terror originating from the depths of his soul. His proud divine shield was as fragile as scrap paper before this unreasonable "recycling worker."

"Stop screaming, you're too loud."

By now, Lin Yuan had completely turned into a dark-gold being of light. He climbed up wrath's mangled body, and everywhere he passed, the precision mechanical components disintegrated.

He "ate" his way all the way to wrath's chest.

There sat the control hub of the divine punishment, and the true location of wrath's core.

"No... you can't..." wrath's voice began to stutter. His logic circuits had already collapsed due to the massive loss of energy.

Lin Yuan stood before that massive core emitting a faint purple light.

He reached out, but this time he didn't devour it directly.

Because he felt his body had reached its limit. If he took one more bite, he would definitely be the first to explode.

"In your next life, remember to choose an organic shell."

Lin Yuan's finger lightly tapped on the core.

"Metal things are naturally countered by me."

Pshht.

His completely energized palm penetrated the core's shell without resistance and grabbed the trembling soul data inside.

He squeezed hard.

Snap.

Just like crushing a real bug.

The entire core hollow instantly fell silent.

The once-unrivaled mechanical giant god's eyes dimmed rapidly. Its massive body lost all power and collapsed with a thunderous roar.

[Ding! Successfully killed 'Cardinal · wrath'.]

[Points gained: 50 million.]

[Recycled top-grade material: Divine Mechanical Core (Shattered).]

Lin Yuan panted heavily, looking at the still-steaming fragment in his hand.

He had won.

But he knew it wasn't over yet.

Without wrath's control, the energy balance inside the divine punishment had been broken. The sea of liquid alloy beneath his feet began to churn violently, and the surrounding rock walls were collapsing.

This artificial battle star was about to explode.

"Perfect, I'll add a little something for you."

Lin Yuan glanced at the antimatter energy nearly overflowing within him. He didn't plan to take this energy with him because there was too much—so much that he couldn't possibly digest it.

If he didn't discharge it, he would become a walking nuclear bomb even if he returned to Earth.

"Lucky you, let's put on a firework show for the whole universe."

Lin Yuan pressed both hands onto wrath's gradually cooling wreckage. He funneled all the divine energy he had devoured, along with the shattered core, back into the divine punishment's power furnace in one go.

Overload.

Absolute overload.

The alarm sound instantly changed from ear-piercing to a sharp, continuous drone—the sign that the critical point had been breached.

"System, return home!"

[High-energy explosion imminent, initiating forced extraction... Spatial anchor locked: Periphery of the great xia dragon sparrow.]

Lin Yuan's figure flickered in the void.

Exactly 0.01 seconds after he disappeared.

A ball of light ten thousand times brighter than the sun lit up deep within the planet's core.

...

In space.

Chen Weiguo and all the Great Xia soldiers held their breath, staring intently at the black giant ship suspended in the void.

A few seconds ago, all the gunfire on it had suddenly stopped.

Then, the massive cross-shaped hull began to tremble, and countless glowing cracks appeared on its surface.

"That's..." The thermos in Academician Wang's hand fell to the floor.

BOOM—!!!

No sound can travel through a vacuum, but at that moment, everyone heard a world-shaking roar in their souls.

The divine punishment.

That planetary-class battleship representing the supreme majesty of the Mechanical Papacy exploded from within.

It didn't shower fragments like a normal ship explosion; instead, it was like a collapsing supernova. First, it contracted violently, then it suddenly expanded outward.

An exquisitely brilliant blue-violet firework bloomed in the center of the Boulder Starfield.

The smaller warships that had been surrounding it didn't even have a chance to escape. They were directly caught in the destructive energy tide and instantly vaporized.

The light illuminated half of the Milky Way's spiral arm.

Amidst that rain of light, a tiny figure tumbled out of thin air, floating in space.

Lin Yuan's current appearance was wretched.

His Void Body was nearly exhausted, and he had reverted to a bloodied human form. He was like a tattered rag, tumbling through the vacuum with the aftershocks of the explosion.

"Cough..."

Even though no sound could be heard, he instinctively wanted to cough.

He struggled to open his swollen eyes, watching the magnificent destruction he had personally wrought.

Truly beautiful.

Much more beautiful than the flames of burning trash in the junkyard.

Just then, the long-silent system notification sound rang out in his fading consciousness.

This time, there was no flashy broadcast of rewards.

Only a simple, spine-chilling pop-up floated on his retina.

[Ding! Congratulations to the host for completing the hidden achievement: God Slayer.]

[Extracted a unique God-tier item clue from the core data of 'wrath'.]

[Clue Name: Universe Reset Button (Fragment 1/3).]

[Item Description: Don't press it randomly. It really will shut everything down.]

Lin Yuan looked at those words, and his mind, which was about to pass out, suddenly cleared for a moment.

The corners of his mouth quirked up into a silent, bitter smile in the vacuum.

"Reset button?"

"Is this universe... just some broken computer that hasn't been fixed yet?"