The speaker was loud. But the bigger issue was that there was no one conscious left near the pink Beetle mech.
The poor Empire soldiers hadn’t even had time to climb into their mechs before the explosions knocked them out cold. Some unlucky ones had been caught by stray rounds.
Lin Xiaohe didn’t know any of that. She only knew that after she’d made her big, bold declaration, the base had done absolutely nothing.
Arrogant! Completely arrogant!
Was this something she could just let slide?
She steered Little Bug forward, advancing deeper into the base.
Gunfire stretched further as DouDou’s translucent pod spun so fast it looked like it might smoke.
“DouDou, can you keep going?”
[A real man never says no.]
Nearby patrol mechs, alerted by the rising plumes of black smoke from the base, finally rushed in.
At the same time, Lisa ordered Pili Ge and Hei Ge to guard the military press corps while she led the others toward the battlefield to assess the situation.
If they could take the fight, they’d fight—and maybe earn some credits.
If not, they’d grab the hostages and run.
Lin Xiaohe was surrounded.
A missile screamed toward her, striking the pink mech’s cockpit.
But instead of a breach, the jelly-like pale yellow shield swallowed the missile, then casually spat it out like a sunflower seed shell.
The Empire soldier who’d fired it was completely dumbfounded.
What the hell was this thing?! Was it even a mech? Or some kind of mutant creature?
If the soldier who fired the missile was stunned, the mech pilots closer to Lin Xiaohe were losing their minds.
“No way! It’s got an EMP weapon! It works, like, half the time!”
Sneaky! Shameless! An absolute mind game.
Cursing under their breaths, the Empire mechs pulled back.
Lin Xiaohe felt unfairly blamed. She wasn’t some rich girl. She had no money and not enough skill points. How could she afford to run a full-scale data storm 24/7?
Mech radar and weapon lock systems were jammed. Communication channels were flooded with Xinbao’s relentless spam of meaningless chatter.
[I’m a little bird, trying to fly so high~]
[Who’s the strongest in the Federation? Little Pink Bug takes the crown!]
[Boom-chika-boom-chika-boom! Groove to my rhythm! Yo yo!]
The Empire soldiers were going insane.
The second a commander or a teammate reported a position or issued an order, Xinbao would flush it down the feed.
This little demon even hacked into squad-to-squad channels and blasted [Run, Little Bug!] at full volume.
Fine—blast it. But whoever sang it? Did they dare reveal themselves? There were only a handful of notes in the whole song—how did they manage to hit none of them?!
The song was a form of psychological warfare.
The Empire defenders, reduced to scattered fragments, couldn’t coordinate. They fought alone.
Lin Xiaohe descended like a heavenly general, unstoppable.
No mech that stood before her walked away standing.
No weapon broke through that pale yellow shield.
She pushed all the way into the base’s core, grabbed her loudspeaker, and yelled:
“Hey! Baldie’s clueless rich boy! Er, wait—scratch that. Honorable military press delegation! Where are you? If you’re still alive, squeak once.”
Lisa had been watching the spectacle with amusement—until Lin Xiaohe’s words hit her ears. Her face went pale instantly.
Oh no. That demon was coming straight for them.
Pili Ge, tasked with guarding the press corps, rubbed his head in confusion. “Hei Ge… am I hallucinating? I could swear I just heard Xiaohe’s voice.”
Hei Ge’s face flickered with hesitation. “I thought I heard it too. But that’s impossible. How could Xiaohe be on Moro Star? And even if she were, fighting her way into a base—alone?”
The Xiaohe they knew came from a poor family. She’d never even touched a mech before. Genius or not, no one could be that much of a genius.
Pili Ge muttered, “It sounds exactly like her, though.”
The military press corps, under heavy guard, heard the voice too—and their eyes snapped open wide.
“That’s our rescue!”
“It must be Wan Tianming! He teaches at the Deep Space Command Academy. He’s commanded dozens of large-scale battles!”
“Exactly! All the mechs from their command school are custom-built. Only they could’ve found us this fast and launched a rescue!”
“The 5th Division’s special recon battalion is no joke either—Colonel Darcy’s got a ton of medals.”
One journalist whispered, “But… I don’t remember any female students in the command academy’s field training group. The only girl was that special admit from Federal Central Military Academy.”
His colleagues immediately shot him down. “Impossible! I heard that special admit is a weakling with zero stamina.”
“Tsk. So even the Federal Central Military Academy accepts backdoor admissions now?”
“Maybe she’s some general’s illegitimate daughter.”
While they speculated, Lin Xiaohe launched her next wave of assault.
The base director watched as the pink mech pushed toward his command center, his face twisted with rage. He slammed the nuclear launch button.
“Die! You Federation scum!”
The base’s secrets could not be exposed. If exposure was imminent, then bury the base—and its enemies—together under the Black Sea Desert!
[Alert! Alert!]
Inside Little Bug’s cockpit, red lights flashed wildly.
A jolt shot through Lin Xiaohe’s spine—electric, primal. Her survival instincts screamed.
“Sweetie! Binge & Purge!”
The nuke climbed into the air. Target locked. Fired.
The base director laughed, eyes gleaming with barely contained madness. “Die! All of you! Die!”
Lisa watched the scene unfold, her face deathly pale.
Bastard! That director never intended for anyone else to survive!
“Run! NOW!”
Pili Ge and Hei Ge bolted toward the exit, abandoning the press corps without a second thought.
The journalists trembled, paralyzed with despair. “Is he insane?! Why does he have to take everyone with him?!”
“Someone save me! I swear on my mother’s name—whoever saves me gets a promotion and a fortune!” the clueless rich boy wailed. He was never chasing love again.
Love could literally kill you.
Inside her mech, facing a nuclear strike head-on, Lin Xiaohe’s hands shook. Cold sweat dripped from her palms like rain, pattering onto her trousers.
Sweetie… can you hold it?
What was barely a minute felt to everyone like an entire lifetime.
“Holy crap! It held! It held!”
“Incredible! Little Bug!”
“Bug God! Please accept my worship!”
But it wasn’t just that the shield held. It was that the pink mech had swallowed the nuke.
The warhead was absorbed into that pale yellow, jelly-like barrier—visibly dissolved, digested, then reconstituted into a yellow cannon.
Lin Xiaohe, reborn from the jaws of death, snapped.
“You had a road to heaven and you refused to walk it. Now you’ve come knocking on hell’s door, uninvited. You bastards are going to face my fury!”
