Chapter 522: The Fleet That Rode the Wind and Waves Died Before the Gates of Paradise!
At this moment, the Trisolarans finally realized just how desperate their situation was.
That mechanical disk, like a divine sacrificial artifact, radiated ominous foreboding. The central device, ceaselessly accumulating energy, had already begun to warp the surrounding space.
The strange, dreadful aura left the Trisolarans deeply unsettled. The Megacorp behemoth's wave strike had yet to truly activate, and already some Trisolarans convulsed with terror.
The Trisolaran fleet commander immediately gave the order: all ships to retreat at once—forget formations, forget discipline, just flee as fast as possible.
But it was already too late.
The instant the wave strike program activated, the disk released peculiar space-distorting pulses. To the eye, nothing seemed to happen, but in truth, the specter of death was already clawing toward the Trisolaran fleet.
A second later, the vanguard of the fleet was struck head-on.
Some crew members, surprised, found themselves apparently unharmed. The ominous disk hadn't fired any terrifying beams.
Just as a few began to think the Megacorp had misfired, weakness washed over their bodies. A wave of searing pain and suffocation followed.
Technicians who had been operating their consoles collapsed one by one. The warships at the front fell into dead silence.
No screams of agony, no cries for help—almost all Trisolarans lost motor function simultaneously. They couldn't even muster the strength to transmit brain-waves.
Only a handful managed to send weak signals to the commander before quickly succumbing.
Faced with such bizarre and unfathomable means of attack, the Trisolaran commander was dumbstruck.
First had come the gravitational beam strikes. Now it was wave strikes. The Megacorp's strength exceeded all expectations. In that moment, the commander fully understood the abyssal gap between the two sides.
When the wave strike program ceased, the forward Trisolaran flotilla had already become a fleet of drifting ghost ships.
Every crew member without exception had been reduced to puddles of liquid upon the decks. With little more than cartilage to support their flesh, the dissolution of their cells and tissue left no remains—more horrifying than simple dehydration.
Through data relayed back from the ships, the commander watched the entire process of the wave strike.
The grotesque sight of their own soldiers' deaths stirred memories of the Chaotic Eras of Trisolaris.
When the three suns rose together, their scorching rays rapidly desiccated the Trisolarans, leaving them shriveled husks. Soon after, coarse fibers combusted in the heat, and their bodies were burned to ashes in roaring flames.
That terror was etched into the very code of Trisolaran genes.
And the Megacorp's wave strikes were even more terrifying than the Three Suns in zenith.
Trisolarans did not contort their faces in fear. Instead, when threatened, they dehydrated—like ostriches burying their heads in the sand.
By entering dehydrated stasis, they had survived countless Chaotic Eras, enduring more than two hundred cycles of extinction and rebirth.
They had believed that reaching the Solar System would change their species' destiny. Instead, here they witnessed a catastrophe rivaling the Three Suns' scourge.
Now, their fleet's command system was in utter chaos.
Their brain-wave communication was prone to interference, and in such complex crises, tangled signals crippled the efficiency of relaying orders.
Brain-waves were their voice. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the signal. Intense feelings brought a flood of input.
Too many voices drowned out the chain of command. In any military, discipline and silence were essential—but here, chaos reigned.
The Renaissance within their civilization had birthed individuality, enabling breakthroughs like superluminal travel. But the blossoming of emotion also brought cowardice and fear.
No longer could they face death with cold detachment. When safety could not be guaranteed, all fell into despair and panic.
Even as captains strained to stabilize communications through technical means, it was useless.
Terror had already spread. Crews wanted only to escape the Solar System with whatever resources remained.
Here, the enemy was more cunning and lethal than venomous serpents. The Solar System was no Eden for Trisolaran civilization. Humanity and the Megacorp were no gentle angels—they were devils with poisonous tongues.
Once the thought of fleeing took root, the fleet's collapse surged like a broken dam, impossible to halt.
After the two to three hundred ships in the vanguard were turned into drifting ghost vessels by the wave strike, V gave the order to "kill the chicken to scare the monkeys." The fleet launched MD-500 "Little Doctor" missiles.
These molecular-rupture probability weapons were, to the Trisolarans, another killing art fit only for gods.
As the Little Doctor radiated outward, it created a zone of molecular disintegration. Trisolaran warships fractured and shredded, reduced to dust finer than powder.
Seeing this, the commander, in desperation, issued the order: all remaining ships to attack the Megacorp. If death was certain, then they would die fighting!
The commander knew victory was impossible. Yet as a hero of Trisolaris, he could not bear to die in humiliation.
At once, the flagship fired a colossal meteor cannon shell—a projectile a full kilometer in diameter, encased in strong-interaction material.
Such a shot could level a mountain on Earth.
But against the Megacorp's fleet shields, it was worthless.
Hardened by countless inter-universal campaigns, their fleets had long mastered both offense and defense. These crude methods could not harm an invincible armada.
As several strong-interaction rounds slammed into their shields without leaving a mark, despair consumed the Trisolaran commander.
Now he truly understood what the United Fleet had felt the first time they faced the Droplet.
That inexorable despair sapped all strength, leaving once-proud commanders hollow and weary, like men already at death's door.
Hundreds of AI drones swept forward, striking back at the Trisolaran fleet's flagship. Several micro-nuclear warheads, powerful though not fatal, detonated against the ship's hull.
The shattered hull and burning flames were displayed clearly before the Trisolaran commander. It now understood that the situation was hopeless—no one could save them.
All counterattacks were nothing but futile folly.
Only at this moment did the Universal Megacorp finally transmit a surrender signal to the Trisolaran fleet. V demanded that all Trisolarans remain where they were; any attempt to flee would mean instant execution.
"Commander, we've lost."
The Trisolaran captains tasked with escorting the flagship all chose surrender. They no longer cared whether the commander wished to capitulate or not. The instant the Corporation's message arrived, they immediately made the pragmatic choice.
Facing the brainwave signals of the other captains, the Trisolaran commander remained utterly silent. It neither supported surrender, nor opposed those seeking another way out.
Panic spread unchecked. Seeing that the flagship still refused to respond, V ordered the launch of a nova-class hydrogen bomb, which obliterated the warship that had withheld its stance.
This figure, hailed in the Trisolaran world as the heroic pioneer Columbus, perished in an unfamiliar starfield less than a hundred thousand kilometers from Earth.
With the flagship destroyed and large numbers of Trisolaran warships surrendering, the outcome of the battle in this sector of space was now plain.
Where once there had been more than a thousand Trisolaran warships, fewer than five hundred now remained. Disabled and broken, the silver vessels drifted silently across the pitch-black void.
Astartes warriors of the Iron Hand Chapter rode assault craft in rapid boarding actions, systematically taking custody of the surrendered Trisolarans.
Since many of the Trisolarans had already been exposed to aspects of human culture, their gestures of surrender were carried out with surprising formality—raising white flags, hands lifted high.
Some even knelt on the ground, waiting for Corporation troops to arrive.
At V's instruction, two ships equipped with lightspeed-grade communications systems, ample fuel, and supplies carried several hundred Trisolarans out of the Solar System, directly on course for their homeworld.
These were the defectors V had deliberately arranged to return as heralds.
Ever since the sophons had been destroyed by the Universal Megacorp, the Trisolaran world had been cut off from intelligence on the Solar System.
V resolved to send these terror-stricken Trisolarans back to their homeland, spreading panic as a stratagem of psychological warfare.
The two vessels, carrying their unwilling messengers, vanished swiftly from view, never wishing to return to the hell that had left them shattered in body and spirit.
As the fading exhaust flames disappeared from the Corporation fleet's sight, the infernal battlefield—scorched red by firelight—slowly sank into silence once more.
This fleet, which had braved the dark waves of space for two centuries, endured endless torment. The interstellar dust had battered them into fragments.
Half died along the way; the other half died at the gates of paradise.
The sophons and droplets had failed to extinguish humanity's will to survive. On the contrary, enraged humanity, nursing more than two hundred years of hatred, was desperate to vent it upon the Trisolaran world.
From this moment forward, the Universal Megacorp would lead humanity's forces toward Alpha Centauri, the Trisolarans' home system, beginning a campaign of vengeance.
The Trisolarans would not be annihilated as a species—but countless would perish. Their fate would be no different from how they themselves had once chosen to treat humanity.
On Earth, people gazed in speechless awe at the space battle unfolding so close at hand. The clash between the two civilizations far surpassed the apocalyptic wars of the past.
Gravitational beams, wave strikes, nova-class hydrogen bombs—attacks of every kind unleashed in dazzling sequence. And that colossal blood-red moon, looming like Mount Tai itself, advancing inexorably.
None of it seemed real. The scene was so fantastical it resembled a surreal dreamscape.
Everyone could see it clearly: the contest between the Universal Megacorp and the Trisolaran civilization was never one fought on equal terms.
If the Corporation had truly wished to end it quickly, the battle would never have lasted years. One minute would have been enough to annihilate the entire Trisolaran fleet.
But instead, the Corporation had deliberately lured the Trisolarans to their doom before Earth's very eyes—a cruel game of mental torment, killing not only the body but the spirit.
"The Trisolaran fleet is gone. We're safe now."
Jonathan, overcome with emotion, wiped the tears from his glasses. No matter what, for a long time to come, the Trisolarans would never again mount an effective invasion of Earth.
The dawn of hope for human civilization had truly arrived!
Yet Luo Ji frowned deeply. "The issue facing the Trisolaran world isn't whether they can continue invading the Solar System. It's whether they can even continue surviving at all."
For over two centuries, humanity and the Trisolarans had been locked in conflict. Their relationship had already transcended a simple struggle of life and death.
In a sense, this long war had become a process of integration between the two civilizations.
Neither humanity nor the Trisolarans could escape the other anymore.
Because the Dark Forest law applied to all civilizations.
When humanity had been on the losing side, they could threaten the Trisolarans with the Solar System's coordinates, dragging them into mutual destruction.
And conversely, if the Trisolarans were driven into desperation, they could do the same!
If humanity chose to exterminate them completely, both sides would be doomed—struck down by a far stronger third civilization.
Luo Ji did not know what form such a strike might take. But one thing he was certain of: if the Trisolarans were forced into a corner, that day would surely come.
And when it did, the cataclysm would fall swiftly. Humanity had little time left.
…
Beyond the Solar System.
Ever since the Doomsday Battle, when the United Fleet's 1,300 stellar-class warships were annihilated by the droplets, Zhang Beihai had only grown firmer in his conviction.
Through both the reality before their eyes and his heartfelt persuasion, Zhang Beihai succeeded in convincing the fleet that had been pursuing them. Together, they forged a new human starship civilization.
They were determined to journey into the vast deep of the cosmos, carrying the fire of humanity with them.
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