"And who knows what it’s like on that island—whether it’s safe is another question. If it’s another Night Parade of Hundred Demons like Sea Rock Island, we won’t be able to land at all." Qian Deli turned to Luo Yang and called out, "Hey, can we go around this Storm Zone or not?"

Luo Yang immediately shook his head, took off his headset, and said, "Impossible. Strictly speaking, we’re already inside the Storm Zone’s perimeter. If we want to detour and still make it before dark, we’d have to accelerate to Mach 4 at least. At that speed, forget evasive maneuvers or point defense—we’d probably be in even more danger."

Lin Xian shook his head. "At supersonic speed we’ll just die faster. There’s no other way. We can only risk punching through the tropical storm!"

With that, he spoke into the comm, "No matter what we run into, our first priority is to cover the Sky Dome Unlimited’s retreat. Don’t worry about anything else. If we get tagged, we’ll deal with it after we reach the island!"

"Got it."

"Understood!"

"Ning Jing, Shu Qin, prep the decoys. Once we’re in the Storm Zone we’ll deploy them in batches for long-range release—let’s head off trouble before it starts!"

Thump thump thump thump!

Beneath the black dome of sky, the Sky Dome Unlimited, spewing blue exhaust flames, roared through the curtain of rain. The Arsenal Ship’s missile silos popped open in neat rows; eight small missiles launched simultaneously, fanning out to the left front and right front in a wing formation at high speed, then detonated in the clouds dozens of nautical miles away.

Rumble—!

Thunder boiled, the sea surged, and between the cloud-wrapped heaven and earth there seemed to come a sinister, hissing roar. No need to guess—it had to be the Monsters hiding in the sea and clouds, drawn out by the decoy flares.

On the top-side sky bridge of Ship No. 3, this open area for stargazing was sealed under a huge transparent fairing. Brother Huo, Monica, and Shi Zhi, all suited up in Power Armor, had come here. The fairing slowly opened, and in an instant, high-speed airflow and torrential rain poured over them. Brother Huo gathered fire in one hand; the Infinite Ring spun as his whole body lifted into the air, matching the Sky Dome’s relative speed as he looked out over sky and sea, face full of wild exhilaration.

Monica glanced at him and couldn’t help saying, "People say you’ve got claustrophobia—looks like it’s true. Don’t let your guard down. There’s more up there than thunder."

Lu Xingchen’s gaze sharpened slightly as he gazed proudly at the heavens and said coldly,

"Rest easy. With my true self here, no demon or fiend is getting close!"

Monica turned to Shi Zhi beside her. "In this kind of environment I might not hear clearly. We’ll have to rely on you. Anything that starts closing in on us, just give us the direction."

Shi Zhi nodded. "Okay."

On the other side, the underside of the hull offered no footholds. After exiting the hatch, KIKI and Ryuji immediately used Superpower assisted Flying to hang on to the ship. Thousands of VK Electric Knives controlled by KIKI skimmed just above the waves, making her look like some sword-riding girl from another world. Only Ah Bai’s Power Armor was fitted with an alloy mechanical arm, to help him search for targets and fire laser beams.

"There are Abnormal Bodies in the sea, but... we’re moving so fast that even if we spook them they can’t keep up." Ah Bai’s eyes kept sweeping the raging surface of the sea.

"It’s the ones that suddenly lunge out of the water I’m worried about."

KIKI folded her arms across her chest, flying inverted below the Starship, and said calmly, "Once we enter the Storm Zone, I’ll keep my Telekinesis Shield up continuously. Tokyo Monk will tag in for me. Otherwise the coverage area’s too big; we won’t be able to hold it for long."

Because Ryuji rarely spoke, KIKI had nicknamed him "Tokyo Monk." Hearing her now, Ryuji immediately flew to the underside of the forward weapons section. The two maintained their distance, ready to deploy Telekinesis Shields at any moment.

Lin Xian sat in the captain’s chair of the Sky Dome Train, feeling a wave of unease. This was his first time piloting a Starship—experience-wise, he had none.

If not for Viola, the dozen or so people of the Infinity’s crew would never be able to handle the whole system. Even so, many stations were still unmanned. Weapons systems, information systems—there wasn’t a single person on duty in the engine room or reactor bay. If any maintenance issue cropped up, all they could do was have Viola lead maintenance drones to perform basic fixes; even Lin Xian himself wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

Because there was no way he could, at a time like this, scan the entire Sky Dome Train through his mind and carry out repairs. With his current capabilities, he simply couldn’t pull that off.

From ten in the morning until 13:30 in the afternoon, the rain had grown heavier and the waves stronger. Over the three-plus hours of flight they had already been attacked dozens of times by Abnormal Bodies, most of them Winged Demons hidden in the black clouds. They had directly engaged a Sky Jellyfish once and narrowly dodged a Ghost Manta’s tentacle strike. But Lin Xian refused to get bogged down—once they evaded, he immediately pushed for all-out escape.

Bang bang bang!

The Plasma Gun batteries up front unleashed another full volley. Who knew what Monster they’d blasted out of the sky this time. The world grew darker and darker; now and then Fire Cloud Sound Roars burst over the train’s roof, and down over the sea below, thunderous Telekinesis detonations blasted the waves. Invisible walls of compressed air blocked and severed the eerie tentacles that burst out of the ocean, while thousands of electric knives whirled in silver arcs.

"The threat marker just dropped to Level 3!" Chen Sixuan, acting as information Science Officer, stared nervously at the data on her screen. "The wind barrier’s stronger. We’re about to enter the heart of the storm up ahead!"

"Stay sharp, all of you."

Lin Xian checked his watch, then looked ahead. The churning sea was as black as ink, whipped by the gale into towering waves. Overhead, the low, rolling storm clouds flashed with light as thunder roared inside them, like an immense lightning vortex ready to devour the planet. On the main bridge display, the real-time barometric curve plunged straight down; the numbers fell from 1020 hPa into the abyss so fast that the alarms couldn’t even keep up. An ocean surface that looked practically vertical appeared, bizarrely, in everyone’s field of view.

It was as if the continental shelf beneath the sea were collapsing, or some ancient sea god were arching its spine to heave up the whole ocean. Hundreds-of-meters-high walls of water rose one after another. As the water surged upward, its color changed—ink green fading to murky mud yellow, then rapidly staining to asphalt black.

The storm seemed about to cap over the sea upside down. As the thundercloud wall pressed downward, the light between heaven and earth was swallowed whole!

Rumble—!

The five-hundred-meter-high cloud wall had an edge sharp as a blade, its upper portion a corpse-like slate gray, its lower edge soaked in inky reddish-brown. The instant the Sky Dome Train rammed into the cloud layer, all portholes automatically coated themselves with anti-glare film, yet that still couldn’t block the purple-white thunder serpents that pierced through the cottony mass. Three forked bolts struck the Static Electric Field on the main ship at the same time; the scorched stench of overloaded superconducting capacitors instantly filled the air.

But what truly stole the breath from their lungs was the prisoner in the clouds, laid bare for an instant by the lightning!

In the split second when a tortoise-shell-shaped mass of cloud was cleaved open by a bolt, semi-transparent tendrils studded with suckers dangled from the rift. That structure extended and contracted in a tenth of a second, but the afterimage was enough to judge that the exposed tip alone was twice the train’s length—absolutely a Special Level Monster. Then a bucket-thick thunder pillar lanced through an adjacent cloud bank, and the blinding flash carved out an even more horrifying silhouette: the umbrella-shaped form of a gargantuan jellyfish, spanning the sky high above, its canopy trailing filaments that were capturing numerous ball lightning clusters, like a deep-sea anglerfish devouring a school of glowing prey.

Atmospheric Mica, S-Class!

"Brother Lin, it’s that sky fiend we saw over Yu Bei City!!!"

Lu Xingchen, standing in the roaring gale, stared at the enormous atmospheric organism overhead and shouted coldly.

"Ignore it. Punch through. That thing’s not fast!"

Lin Xian’s heart was pounding. He didn’t care whether the huge shadow on radar was the same Atmospheric Mica they’d encountered before or a new one. He had zero intention of engaging—he only wanted to blast his way out of the storm vortex!

Bzzzz—!!

The Atmospheric Mica had clearly noticed the human Flying Device streaking through the sky. Its cloud-tentacles were still far away, but now its canopy sagged, disgorging a mass of gigantic ball lightnings, each several meters to over ten meters across, pelting down as densely as hail. The violent static discharge triggered a chain reaction in the air; countless high-voltage arcs flashed and linked together. Lin Xian glanced up and his pupils involuntarily contracted. Those blazing lightning spheres, laced together by arcs, were plunging down like the collapsing sky itself. Even before they hit, he felt a strong ionizing tingle prickling across his skin.

If those hit, the single Static Electric Field in front of the Sky Dome Train’s hull would never hold. Nor could Lin Xian possibly throw an AT Force Field Shield around the entire Sky Dome Train. That dense storm of ball lightning would form a Lightning storm; the heat alone would be enough to burn through the hull’s outer skin!

"What do we do?" Chen Sixuan asked at once as she saw this.

Lin Xian’s pupils shrank; his mind raced.

At that moment, a voice came through his headset—the normally taciturn Ryuji.

"Use the Superconductive Thunder Sword!"