In the silence, the commanders exchanged blank stares, shaking their heads instinctively.
Some unconsciously wanted to refute it, but when they pulled out their phones to confirm, they found zero response from the hangar—complete radio silence.
The Law of Tianyuan swept through in fury, instantly tearing apart the illusion cloaking Hangar Zero. What lay revealed was complete devastation!
Tire skid marks remained on the runway.
And right at the center of the hangar, the Vengeance Bomber and its pilot had vanished without a trace!
Or rather, taken to the skies...
Passarella's eyes went instantly bloodshot. "Why did the radar department fail to report this?!" he demanded.
The officer in charge froze on the spot, drenched in cold sweat, hesitating to speak.
Radar?
The radar had to be able to detect it first, boss!
Even though the Vengeance Bomber had served as nothing more than a showpiece for all these years, everything from its design to its armaments to its exterior coating incorporated the Empire's most cutting-edge technology. It even housed numerous alchemical creations within, pushing its stealth capabilities to the absolute extreme. Forget ordinary radar—its very purpose was to remain undetectable by radar and untargetable by missiles. Otherwise, how could it ever be called a deterrent?
"What about the control tower?!" Passarella roared in fury. "Are they all dead too?!"
Yet after barking the curse, he knew that blaming the tower was unfair. To begin with, the deterrence mechanism operated completely outside standard flight-clearance procedures and was entirely exempt from the tower's control; it even had its own dedicated runway.
At the same time, Air Command was off the hook as well.
Because the deterrence mechanism did not fall under their jurisdiction. To execute the swiftest, most violent, and most direct retaliation, the Vengeance Bomber could take off immediately with nothing more than orders from the Marshal and Dadu. In fact, all combat sequences were self-contained; apart from IFF, the backend systems received no identification data at all.
"Satalik!"
Passarella looked back, his voice chillingly stern. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
The Transcendent Rank Tianyuan currently overseeing the base's Law of Tianyuan remained silent, having nothing to say—yet he also had plenty he could say: across the entire base, a reconnaissance plane or fighter jet took off every few seconds. Was he expected to intercept and authenticate each one individually?
Yet the problem was that they had been entirely oblivious to everything that transpired inside the hangar.
Blinded from the truth.
They had only even discovered it after the Federation's warning...
In under half a minute, visual feeds of the hangar's interior were transmitted before everyone.
Scarlet blood snaked across the hangar's ceiling, marking a sacrificial ritual dedicated to a Great Sin. Power drawn from the Tower and the Rainbow severed the inside from the outside, sealing away all alarms and anomalies.
Ground crew personnel lay sprawled in every direction, unconscious on the floor.
Not out of any mercy on the intruder's part, but because any base personnel registered under the Law of Tianyuan would trigger an immediate alarm the moment they died.
The infiltrator had even brought an ambulance, bandaging the injured ground crew and administering on-site first aid to ensure their vital signs remained stable.
Truly merciful!
Too bad nobody was buying it.
At this point, none of them could suppress the urge to gasp in horror.
Unbelievable, incomprehensible.
Someone had strolled openly into the very heart of the deterrence mechanism, broken into the hangar, and set off zero alarms. Right under the scrutiny of the Law of Tianyuan, they had set up a ritual to a Great Sin on the spot without triggering any anomaly reports, taking down every single obstacle in their path in a single encounter.
And in the end, bypassing every equipment lock installed by the Empire on the bomber, with neither authorization nor orders from Dadu and the Marshal, they had started up a launch-ready Vengeance Bomber and flown into the sky right beneath everyone's noses...
It was like a nightmare!
No, nightmares weren't nearly this fucking terrifying!
Most critically, the mere thought of what consequences this might provoke made everyone in the combat command center want to slit their own throats right then and there.
*We're doomed. I've become the spark that ignites the Third Mortal War.*
*Is it too late to kill myself now?*
*In the underworld, punishment doesn't extend to wives and children—will the Seven Stars Building spare my family?*
"Duke!"
The chief of staff finally snapped out of his daze. Casting hierarchy aside, he stood up abruptly and shouted, "Our top priority is to confirm the weapons payload on that Vengeance Bomber! You must use your clearance to access it! If..."
His voice hitched, not daring to finish the thought.
In the dead silence, everyone went as quiet as cicadas in winter.
If... if it was armed with fusion bombs, then everything was completely over!
Passarella followed the suggestion without a second thought. Reaching out, he completed triple verification to access the hangar's servers—only for a pop-up error message to greet his eyes.
He tried again. Another error...
Every server in the hangar that stored flight and crew data had been physically destroyed!
Finished.
The chief of staff collapsed limp into his chair.
It was completely over.
Who dared gamble on what that Vengeance Bomber was actually carrying?
If the culprit had gone to such lengths specifically to seize the deterrence mechanism, the sheer havoc a fully armed Vengeance Bomber could unleash was unthinkable.
"Notify the Secrecy Bureau! Maximum crisis state! Get those useless bastards moving!"
Passarella's face was quite literally pitch-black with fury, arcs of lightning crackling uncontrollably across his entire body. "Find the Vengeance for me! Every aerial combat unit, including the armored knights, deploy to intercept it! This is not an exercise! If anything goes wrong, every single one of you can go to a fucking court-martial! And the Ordnance Department—confirm the inventory and status of all weapons of mass destruction immediately! Stop staring at your bullshit screens, run there on foot, right now! You bunch of useless fools, can't you even use the process of elimination?! Within three minutes, I want to know where that dog-fucked Vengeance is and what the hell is loaded onto it! Within ten minutes, I want the corpses of those bastards laid out before my eyes, understand?!"
Amid the chorus of uniform responses, not a single person dared slack off or drag their feet.
At this turning point where their lives, a century of familial prestige, and the fates of their entire extended clans hung in the balance, every drop of potential was squeezed out.
It didn't even take three minutes.
In under a minute, the Empire had pinpointed the Vengeance's position.
Because... the craft hadn't flown far at all. It had been circling the perimeter of the base at low altitude all along. In fact, as if terrified they wouldn't notice, it had deliberately throttled down to make visual confirmation as easy as possible for observers.
Right beneath everyone's noses, it had slipped into a formation of reconnaissance planes on patrol. Every now and then, it would drift ahead of the squadron to pull off a ridiculously flashy tactical maneuver, ignoring all queries and demands on the radio frequency, wiggling its tail and flaunting its engine thrusters—*Bro, bro, don't I look badass?*
Damn it all, it was impossible *not* to see it!
The instant he received the report, Passarella's face turned green.
Never in his life had he suffered such humiliating disgrace... Having a deterrence-class bomber flown out right from under his nose, only for the thief to circle and taunt him right before his eyes.
That bastardly animal was barely human!
At that moment, amid the thunder of furious crackles, Passarella's roar echoed across the entire base:
"—Shoot it down! Now!"
And so, at that very second, as countless fire-control radars swept over and locked onto it, the Vengeance's engines shuddered violently, spewing trails of fire.
Accelerate!
The game was on!
The game had started long before.
Before anyone had realized, amid the base's brief chaos, a scream had rung out.
An ambulance with flashing lights and blaring sirens careened around a corner, slamming straight into a figure sprinting toward their combat post.
*Bam!*
Amid a hysterical shriek, the victim flipped five full rotations through the air before crashing to the ground, knocked nearly unconscious on impact and gasping for breath.
"You goddamn—"
The Grand Creation engineer coughed up a lungful of blood on the spot, cursing furiously.
The silver lining was that emergency aid arrived remarkably fast...
The crazed ambulance fishtailed to an abrupt halt. A frantic-looking doctor hopped down, shouting for military police to lend a hand.
Together, they loaded the howling engineer into the ambulance.
"Fuck you! I'm filing a complaint! I'm going to the military tribunal to report you! That dumbfuck driver of yours is finished, you hear me? Finished!"
Barely clinging to life, the engineer roared hysterically: "Do you have any idea what you've done?! You've ruined me! I have to—"
"—You have to respond to the deterrence mechanism emergency protocol, inspect the status of the Vengeance C-09 bomber, and ensure it's ready for immediate takeoff, right?"
Flicking the syringe, the doctor casually finished his sentence. Without a trace of anxiety or fear, he even turned around with a gentle smile. "Don't worry. I've got everything covered. Nothing will be delayed!"
"You..."
The engineer froze, his eyes widening in shock. The next instant, a full vial of sedative was jabbed into his artery and depressed to the hilt. He blacked out instantly.
Two minutes later, an ambulance sped frantically through the heavily guarded base. In the passenger seat, the engineer waved his badge and held up his credentials.
Clear sailing all the way.
"What happened, Watson?" The sentry in front of the hangar asked in confusion, having nearly raised his rifle to fire at the unusual sight.
Fortunately, he recognized the engineer's face.
"Don't ask. My leg got broken. Give me a hand."
Limping heavily, Watson hopped down from the vehicle, his face pale and drenched in sweat from pain. "Time... there's barely any time left!"
The sentry promptly reported the situation, handed off his post to another guard, and hoisted Watson onto his shoulder, sprinting toward the hangar.
The entire ground crew was already like ants on a hot skillet.
The officer in charge looked back, saw the limping engineer, and let out a sigh of relief before complaining crossly: "You're finally here! The authorization sequence just needs your key. I thought you died out there!"
"Pretty close to it."
Watson gripped a cart, limping forward. "Where's the pilot? Has the pilot arrived?"
"Right here, pal."
The pilot, who was eating an ice cream cone, crouched by the boarding ladder of the bomber. Seeing his condition, his expression turned bewildered. "You look terrible, man."
"Hanging in there. Not dead yet."
Watson lifted the toolbox in his hand and handed it to him. "Hold this for me, will you? I need to check the systems first..."
The pilot took it, immediately staggering under the weight and almost dropping it to the floor.
"What the hell is in this? It's so heavy!"
Beside him, Watson finally reached out and pressed a hand against the fuselage. Turning back to look at him, he suddenly grinned:
"Why, it's a handy-dandy magic tool we'll be needing next, of course."
*Boom!*
In an instant, before the bewildered pilot could react, the toolbox exploded.
A torrent of crimson blood surged out like a geyser, swallowing everything in a flash.
The meticulously prepared ritual unfolded abruptly along the flowing blood. Like a living creature guided by corruption alchemy, it coated the vaulted ceiling of the hangar.
The sacrifice began.
The Shadow of the Tower descended in an instant, and the illusory light of the Rainbow covered everything.
At the moment of detonation, the Celestial Chosen pilot sensed danger and instinctively tried to leap back. Unfortunately, it was already too late. A hand thrust out abruptly, clamping over his face.
The next instant, darkness fell.
The 'engineer' pulled a submachine gun from the pool of blood with his other hand and squeezed the trigger, emptying the entire magazine in the blink of an eye.
Twenty-five tranquilizer rounds—each potent enough to instantly knock out an elephant—swept across the room in what looked like random spray, yet struck every single person in the hangar with pinpoint accuracy.
They didn't even have time to react.
In the dead silence, the wolf looked up, eyeing the mission-ready bomber before him.
Stroking his chin, he grinned.
"The game is on, gentlemen."
Chapter 598