Chapter 118: Rain of Steel in Emeraldshade Forest

“Send word to the Heartland immediately. The Xuanming Dragons are rioting—almost a thousand of them!”

At the outskirts of the Emeraldshade Forest tribe’s territory.

Here, the border lies close to the Xuanming Domain. Sunlight fades fast, plunging the land into a dusk-like haze.

Evelyn watched as some of her squad mounted their elven deer and rode off. She turned back to face the other ten members of her team.

Determination was written all over her face.

“Sisters, are you scared?”

“Not at all!”

All ten elven warriors shouted in reply.

But the tremor in their voices betrayed them.

“No—you are afraid. So am I, honestly. But we don’t have a choice. Even afraid, we’ve got to stand our ground!”

“Eirindra is already on her way to the Heartland with our message. Even though the elven deer are quick, they’re still not as fast as the Xuanming Dragons. For every second we buy her, her chances of delivering the message before that horde arrives go up.”

“So get your arrows ready and draw your bows. No more tight squads today. We scatter, hide and fight alone.”

“Remember—only one person fires at a time. Everyone else stays hidden until she returns to the embrace of the Mother Tree.”

“Let me say it again: our goal isn’t to defeat them, only to hold them off as long as we can!”

Evelyn’s plan was simple.

One elf would hide in the woods.

When the Xuanming Dragons arrived, only one warrior would attack at a time.

Of course, the moment one of them revealed herself, she’d be spotted and—facing a thousand dragons—wouldn’t last long.

She’d be killed quickly, maybe even eaten before anyone could blink.

Then, as the dragons started to leave, the next elf would strike.

Repeating the very same act.

Whether driven by hatred for elves or simply hunger, the dragons would stop and rush every time a new attacker appeared.

Every single time, the swarm would turn on the revealed warrior.

This way, Evelyn’s squad of eleven would buy precious minutes with their lives, giving their companion a shot at getting the warning out.

It was—

A suicide mission.

And a gruesome one at that. Not even enough left behind for a grave.

Evelyn glanced back at the oncoming Xuanming Dragon horde, only two or three minutes from reaching them. She drew breath, about to order the attack—

But looking at her ten subordinates, she realized—

Why were they all staring in the direction of the dragons, frozen in shock?

She turned to look as well.

What she saw next burned itself into her memory forever.

One after another, dazzling blue beams lanced through the sky, each pinning a Xuanming Dragon with flawless precision.

With a single shot, the giant dragons fell from the air like kites with their strings cut, bodies crashing down.

Moments later, Bai Ze mechs—both close-quarters and general-purpose models—charged onto the scene, killing dragons far faster than the long-range units ever could.

The long-range types might have the reach, but their weapons could only fire one shot at a time and needed heavy recharging.

But the close-quarters and general-purpose mechs were a different story.

With railguns in hand, they mowed down dragons in rapid succession.

If a group of enemies huddled together, one marksman could pick them off from a kilometer away, while another waded in with a machine gun at a hundred meters, sweeping the line.

Who do you think racks up the higher kill count?

So, once the close-quarters mechs arrived, the real slaughter began.

No matter how many Xuanming Dragons there were, they couldn’t even get close.

Even if they’re still called railguns, these weren’t made for ordinary soldiers—they were custom-built for the mechs.

For a foot soldier, they’d be like full-on electromagnetic rapid-fire cannons.

They might be useless against Klein warships, but for Xuanming Dragons, it was quick and clean—almost effortless.

The result? Where the skies had been dark with dragons, now they were tumbling earthward like rain.

Not even ten minutes passed.

Nearly a thousand Xuanming Dragons wiped out, not a single one left standing.

Afterward, the mechs simply withdrew, not even pausing to greet Evelyn’s squad.

The sight left Evelyn and all ten of her warriors completely dumbfounded.

“Captain, the Xuanming Dragons…are all dead. What just happened?”

Evelyn didn’t answer.

Right then, she had no words at all.

At that exact moment—

On the bridge of the Zhulong.

Hiss—

More than twenty elf tribe leaders all sucked in a cold breath.

In mere moments, the thousand-strong dragon horde was obliterated—and humanity hadn’t even lost a single hair.

Just how powerful was this Federation we were about to join?

——

With satellites in orbit and countless recon devices on the ground, there was nowhere for the Xuanming Dragons to hide.

Some were intercepted and destroyed on their way toward the habitable strip by mech squads.

Others, not even out of their lairs yet, were wiped out by Federation heavy infantry storming in from above.

The elves couldn’t fight in these bitter cold lands, but Federation infantry had no such weakness.

Their sealed battlesuits worked fine in space, let alone a planet where it never dipped below minus one hundred degrees.

Others tried to slink away and hide once they realized something was wrong.

But it made no difference.

No trick—no matter how clever—could let them escape human technology’s tracking.

With the battlefield transparent on one side—and total weapon superiority—over thirty thousand Xuanming Dragons were wiped out within a single day, all except for a handful left alive on Lu Bo’s request for experimentation.

The rest were exterminated, not a single one left, all in just one day.

Meanwhile, the more than twenty elven tribal chiefs were each escorted back to their own clans.

One week later—

Violet led a hundred-member elven delegation, once again boarding the Zhulong.

This time, they would accompany Lin Yu back to the Solar System for talks, formally negotiating the elves’ joining of the Human Federation.

Before departure, Lin Yu left a warship stationed in orbit over Proxima Centauri V, just in case.

After all, you never knew if an alien civilization would invade the Proxima System right after he left.

Leaving a warship behind meant everyone could evacuate immediately if danger came.

With everything arranged, eighteen warships set off for home.

At this point, Lin Yu was more than ready to get back.

After all, in the Solar System, Mu Qingxue and his two children were waiting—and—

On this return, he would finally receive a Warstar of his own.

One with three Zero-Point Modules, a full arsenal of energy weapons, and the latest human technologies bundled together—

A next-generation Warstar.