"......"
On the ground.
Lin Yi, who had already left the control room, stood beside the light ring, gripping his phone, staring unblinkingly at the distant sky.
The missile had obviously struck its target, but hampered by the flames and smoke, Lin Yi could not determine the condition of the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast.
Smoke without injury?
Or grievous wounds, dying?
Or already...
The answer came soon.
In less than a moment.
A shattered body nearly ten meters long, with a pair of already rigid enormous wings, fell soundlessly from the flames.
The carcass tore through several low-altitude remnant clouds, motionless throughout, and landed on the ground with a boom.
Seeing this.
Lin Yi's mind went blank.
Could it be...
But before he could react.
"ROAR!!!!"
Less than a hundred meters from where the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast's carcass had fallen—near the sect entrance—another beast roar filled with anger and alarm rang out.
A few seconds later.
Whoosh—
A Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast slightly smaller than the fallen one suddenly shot rapidly upward, unleashing a crimson breath at the drone broadcasting the Emperor's Jewel Voice.
Pop!
The drone was shattered on the spot.
But the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast that had smashed the drone had no thought of searching for remaining enemies; instead, it flicked its tail and, without looking back, headed toward the distance...
It fled!
After all, it was a demon beast cultivated to the late second-rank, far more intelligent than an ordinary wild beast, with some ability to analyze the current situation.
A companion stronger than itself couldn't withstand a single blow from the enemy—if it didn't run now, when would it?
Time to scram!
To be honest.
If the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast had chosen to hide in the mountains and forests on the ground, using dense rocks and trees as cover, combined with its own high speed, the H-11 system by Lin Yi's side really couldn't do much about it.
After all, it was merely a terminal air-defense system, not an air-to-ground missile; ground targets weren't within its remit.
Even surveying the entire combat history of Chinese and foreign armaments.
Only Russia had once used an older 5V55 to strike ground targets with an Iskander—and those were fixed, immobile units.
But the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast didn't know any of this.
Facing an unknown crisis that could threaten its life, its first reaction was to use flight, the most efficient means, to escape the scene.
And so...
It met tragedy too.
"Beep beep beep—"
The moment the second Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast took to the air.
The H-11 system's all-solid-state active phased-array radar instantly locked onto its position and even inferred its likely flight path.
Immediately after.
Another intense burst of steam, and a brand-new missile shot out, hurtling toward the second Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast.
The beast fleeing for its life soon noticed the new enemy appearing behind it.
"Wooooo—!"
Perhaps because the unlucky companion's example was right before it, the second Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast let out a shrill cry, raised its head, and spat out a massive breath of crimson energy.
Judging from the trajectory, this breath should strike the object behind at a distance of three or four hundred meters.
Then it would have another chance to turn and escape.
But just as the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast had this thought.
The missile originally flying toward the breath suddenly shuddered at the tail and made a strong lateral course correction.
Whoosh—
The breath grazed the missile and blasted through a patch of forest below.
Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast: "?"
Then it saw the warhead in its vision getting closer and closer, faster and faster...
A few seconds later.
BOOM!!!!
With a tremendous crash, another carcass plummeted from the sky.
"Comrade Lin Yi!"
Chen Zhengze had been monitoring the background audio on the microphone. Hearing the two tremendous explosions, he immediately asked Lin Yi, "How is the scene?"
Lin Yi looked up at the distance: "The search went smoothly. Both missiles hit and downed the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts, but for the specifics... I need to go check at the sect gate first."
After saying that.
He reached into his sleeve and produced a palm-sized jade disc.
He shot a strand of spiritual energy into it, and the jade disc transformed into a cluster of white clouds, drifting beneath Lin Yi's feet and lifting him toward the sect gate.
...
A moment later.
Lin Yi's figure landed inside the sect gate.
As soon as he landed.
He saw on the ground outside the grand array two mutilated lion-shaped demon beast carcasses.
The two carcasses were separated by several hundred meters, their appearance gruesome beyond measure—by the standards of the American TV dramas Lin Yi had watched before his transmigration, they were definitely banned footage.
The one nearer the sect gate was slightly larger, its wing bones shattered, everything above its mouth almost completely erased, flesh and blood everywhere.
The smaller one farther away had red scales peeling off in patches, a wound in its chest and abdomen piercing clean through its body, and the organs in its abdominal cavity were no longer formed.
Truly dead beyond any possibility of revival.
Seeing this, Lin Yi instinctively paused.
Then he carefully passed through the grand array, came beside the carcasses, and inspected them thoroughly several times before picking up his phone again: "Chief of Staff Chen, Academician Pan."
"I've just arrived at the grand array entrance of the sect. The two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts... only partial remains are left."
"Remains?"
Chen Zhengze quickly understood Lin Yi's meaning and confirmed, "You mean both Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts have been killed?"
"That's right, both dead," with the pressure suddenly relieved, Lin Yi was in the mood to crack a small joke, "Two direct hits—totally dead, with vital signs flatter than that king snake from the home world."
"..."
The communication interface fell into a brief silence.
But soon.
A cheer loud enough to slightly shake the machine burst from the microphone:
"Awesome!!"
"Academician Pan is the man!!"
"Yay!! Success!!"
"Hey, don't pull my wig..."
"Long live!!"
Listening to the commotion in the microphone, Lin Yi merely smiled faintly and didn't speak to disturb them.
Although he didn't have Pan Yongnian and the others' on-site view.
He could easily guess that the laboratory was probably reveling right now.
Throwing documents and smashing machines might be going too far, but jumping up and down was surely unavoidable.
Certain colleagues on especially good terms might even sneak in a "Thousand Years of Death"—don't ask Lin Yi how he knew such things would happen; ask, and he'd kill himself.
Then Lin Yi turned around and gazed at the two demon beast carcasses in the distance.
To be honest.
Even though he could smell the strong stench of blood just by twitching his nose, Lin Yi's heart still harbored a sense of unreality.
After all, according to the original course of events, the one lying here in inhuman form at this moment should have been him.
Even the thirty-plus people of the Guihua Sect, high and low, would most likely have all become the Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts' qi and blood fodder.
But right now Lin Yi was not only completely unscathed.
He had also relied on cross-border aid from the motherland to turn these two near-catastrophic, unsolvable enemies for the Guihua Sect into Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beast.ZIP in the blink of an eye.
From death to life, the time before and after was barely a few shichen.
Truly dreamlike and hard to believe...
Chapter 14