185: Chapter 185 The Great Battle Suddenly Ceases, and the Golden Gate Descends

Diana's fingers holding the lightsaber tightened and loosened repeatedly on the hilt,

she hadn't considered that people from the Tech Faction might come to disrupt things tonight,

but she hadn't expected Joshua to arrive in person, and even less did she expect Zhang Long to arrive at the same time.

The last time these two officials met, a fleet of 200,000 opened fire directly above the Hoover Dam, and this time...

she didn't dare to think any further.

Edward and Musk didn't dare either.

Once the dispute between the two Deep State factions broke through the boundaries of language, it would never stop at the level of conventional weapon exchanges.

Zhang Long and Joshua raised their blue-gloved right hands almost simultaneously and pointed towards the ceiling.

Two extremely thin blue-white electric arcs ejected from their respective fingertips, penetrated the banquet hall's dome, and exploded in the night sky.

At the same time, the space above their heads was simultaneously torn open with two rifts.

The edges of the rifts were smooth and neat, and the inside glowed with a dark blue cold light, exactly the same as the spatial rift scene that had occurred over the ruins of the Hoover Dam last time.

Through that rift, one could vaguely see the outlines of a dense Space Fleet arranged in geometric arrays,

far more numerous, denser, and more colossal than the fleet assembled above the ruins of the Hoover Dam last time.

Diana pressed the blade of the lightsaber half an inch toward the ground and took a step back, her knuckles gripping the hilt tightening with force.

Edward slightly bent his already standing body again and retreated another half step toward the fireplace.

Musk's face was half-lit and half-shadowed by the dark blue cold light from the spatial rift,

he withdrew his hand from the inside of his suit, letting it hang by his side, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the old watch strap on his wrist.

He didn't even realize himself that this action had been repeated several times.

Last time over the ruins of the Hoover Dam, these two fleets had originally been ready to open fire fully, and midway, it was only because two thousand flying saucers from the Zeta Star suddenly poured out from the spatial rift that both sides were forced to temporarily put aside their old grudges and join forces against the outside world.

But tonight, there were no flying saucers from the Zeta Star in the sky,

and no one would cut in from mid-air to interrupt this imminent Deep State civil war.

Diana turned around, grabbed Biden's arm, her voice lowered to a minimum yet exceptionally urgent.

"Mr. President, we can't stay here any longer."

"Last time at the Hoover Dam, the two fleets only exchanged fire briefly, and they already bombed the entire wasteland into ruins."

"This time, the two of them directly opened a spatial rift here, and the fleet scale is even larger than last time—"

She didn't finish that sentence.

Biden's face, which had just been as cold and hard as iron, now possessed only a layer of rapid calculation characteristic of a veteran politician reactivated by crisis instinct.

He nodded, without saying another word, and followed Diana in a brisk retreat toward the side of the banquet hall, heading for the exit of the partition wall that had been smashed by the giants.

The personal grudge between him and Prant had no meaning at all in this very second when 200,000 Space Fleets were about to pour out from the spatial rift,

if he didn't retreat now, even the grudge itself would be evaporated together.

Even Diana, who possessed fluid armor and a lightsaber, was retreating, let alone Prant, Musk, and Edward.

Prant was supported on the left and right by two Men in Black bodyguards, quickly retreating toward the direction of the wine cellar.

On the way, he looked back at Zhang Long and Joshua, who were still standing in the center of the banquet hall, their blue-gloved electric arcs having already burned the air of the entire dome into distortion; his mouth twitched, but he didn't say a thing.

Edward closely followed behind Prant, lowering his body. When he briskly passed through the shattered French window frame, glass shards scratched a cut on his shoulder, but he didn't even look back once.

Musk was the last one to evacuate the banquet hall.

Before stepping across the threshold, he glanced back at the night sky above his head, which was constantly expanding with two dark blue rifts, and his lips moved slightly,

as if rapidly calculating the final formula between the fleet quantity and the firepower coverage radius in his heart.

Then, he turned and disappeared into the corridor leading to the underground garage.

Everyone was retreating outward.

In Mar-a-Lago at this moment, only two people, Zhang Long and Joshua, remained standing in the center of the banquet hall.

The electric arcs between their blue gloves had already burned a ring of visible distorted heat waves around the ceiling dome.

The two spatial rifts overhead were synchronously tearing and expanding outward at the same speed,

and the silver-gray fleets densely packed deep within the rifts were neatly arranged into standard assault arrays about to flood into the atmosphere.

The pulse beam launch ports of countless ship-borne attack aircraft had already unfolded one by one beneath the ship bellies.

The shield pre-charge indicator lights on the second deck of all motherships simultaneously turned dark red in the dark blue halo at the edges of the rifts.

The fleet was about to pour out, and a great battle was about to erupt.

Then, those two spatial rifts closed simultaneously.

They were not forcibly closed by external force, nor were they blocked from the outside by some counter-weapon; instead, they simultaneously shrank on their own from the inside,

like two automatic doors whose startup commands were simultaneously canceled by the same program,

silently aligning back together and disappearing without any warning.

Precise, synchronous, with no energy backlash, and no residual spatial shock ripples.

Diana was dragging Biden as she rushed through the first fire door of the banquet hall's side corridor. Her footsteps paused on the threshold as she looked back at the firmament above, which had returned to a silent night sky, freezing in place entirely.

The arm of Biden being dragged by her still maintained a posture of rushing forward, but he also stopped at the same time.

Following Diana's gaze, he looked toward the hole in the dome on the ceiling—there was nothing left.

Those silver-gray fleets that had just been assembled and ready to go in the spatial rifts, those two rows of shield indicator lights warming up synchronously, those pulse beam launch ports of attack aircraft densely arrayed in echelon in the darkness...

all vanished, even more cleanly and thoroughly than when they appeared.

Prant, Edward, and Musk had also retreated to the end of the ramp at the underground garage entrance. At this moment, all of them stopped, looking up and back simultaneously at the night sky above the banquet hall's dome that had returned to silence.

No one spoke.

Musk didn't stop rubbing his old watch strap even though it had become deformed.

Edward's hand, which had been supporting itself against the wall, dropped back to his side.

Prant even forgot to brush off the white ash on his shoulder that he had picked up while passing through the ruins just now.

In the center of the banquet hall,

Zhang Long and Joshua raised their heads simultaneously, looking at the night sky above the hole in the dome that had returned to silence.

The expressions on both men's faces underwent an extremely similar change at that instant:

a trace of extremely brief astonishment flashed across Zhang Long's cold eyes,

while Joshua slowly lowered his blue-gloved hands from his sides, his brow slightly furrowed.

The fleet-summoning signals they had respectively emitted just moments ago had been simultaneously canceled without any external interference.

Such a thing had never happened in the combat history of the Deep State.