Just as the male Lightning Cultivator on the battlefield below exhausted his last wisp of spiritual energy and was sent flying by a mecha's shoulder cannon, leaving a fatal gap in the defensive formation:
An abrupt change occurred!
A burst of electronically cheerful, almost distortingly upbeat music, completely incongruous with the bloody slaughter of the place, exploded throughout the basin without warning!
"De-de-de-de! Qiang-qiang-qiang-qiang-qiang-qiang-qiang-qiang..."
This sudden melody possessed a mind-piercing magic power.
All units on the battlefield, whether it was the mecha about to pull the trigger, the Abominations of Abundance roaring toward their prey, or even the five Cultivators who had already shown the resolve to die, froze for a momentary instant.
An inexplicable urge to pull out their phones and see who was calling welled up in everyone's hearts.
Immediately after, a virtual projection screen, so enormous it could obscure half the night sky, unfurled grandly above the battlefield!
It forcibly occupied the vision of everyone and all mecha detectors.
[Ring-ring-ring phone ringtone]!
The familiar chibi figure, the familiar explosive opening animation.
This extremely abstract scene instantly washed the minds of those several Cultivators blank with a flood of information.
"Wh... what is this thing?"
The female Cultivator responsible for healing completely forgot to form the healing spell with her hand, her mouth hanging open unconsciously.
"Illusion? No... there isn't a hint of spiritual energy fluctuation in this!"
The leading young Sword Cultivator forced his surging blood and qi to subside, his face full of vigilance. In all his years of cultivation, he had never seen such a bizarre scene.
While their enemies, those war machines driven by cold logic, reacted even more directly.
"Warning! Detected intrusion of unknown high-energy information stream!"
"Warning! Detected unidentifiable sonic pollution!"
"Locking on abnormal source! Executing... elimination!"
Almost at the same time, all the mechas' cannon muzzles and gun barrels pivoted, aiming at the figure that had quietly appeared just beneath the virtual screen as the light faded away.
A white shirt, a black short skirt, and an elegant outfit adorned with gold ornaments.
Her long pink hair was styled into cute cat ears on her head, and a faint, ethereal cat tail wagged playfully behind her.
Lin Qingyue, in the guise of the "Magician" Lynette, stood gracefully atop a giant rock, overlooking the entire battlefield from above.
Her unfairly perfect figure strained the girlish magician's outfit into a breathtaking curve.
Under the mechas' pale searchlights, that snowy valley even reflected a holy radiance.
"Welcome to my magic show."
She smiled and gave an elegant curtsey, lifting her skirt toward the rows of cold war machines below.
"Fire!"
The cold command shattered the eerie atmosphere.
A barrage of death, a firepower net ten times denser than the one used to besiege the Cultivators earlier, instantly poured down on Lin Qingyue!
"Be careful!"
The young Sword Cultivator's face changed drastically, and he instinctively moved to control his sword to save her, but he was pulled back by a companion.
"Senior Brother, it's too late!"
However, the expected scene of flesh and blood flying everywhere did not appear.
Facing the metallic storm capable of leveling a small mountain, Lin Qingyue simply took a slow, deliberate step forward.
[Enigmatic Shadow Step]!
Her figure instantly transformed into an ungraspable black phantom, weaving through the dense rain of bullets at high speed.
That was not evasion.
It was more like a pre-choreographed dance.
Every alchemical bullet, every high-explosive shell, became a stage prop interacting with her in perfect harmony, always grazing the afterimage where she had stood a second before by a mere millimeter.
She was like a night cat playing in a storm, elegant, composed, and even carrying a hint of playfulness.
Under the stunned gazes of the Cultivators below, whose Dao Hearts wavered from the shock, Lin Qingyue's figure flickered like a ghost and instantly broke into the mecha formation.
She appeared beside a mecha that was frantically spraying fire with its six-barrel rotary machine gun.
Extending her slender index finger clad in a white glove, she lightly tapped an unremarkable hexagonal nut on the ferocious turret covered in rivets and pipes.
"The first step of magic is 'Deconstruction'."
She whispered softly.
The next instant.
"Kacha... lalalalala!"
A symphony composed of countless metallic unlocking sounds thundered into life!
The killing machine, over ten meters tall, was like a precision toy with all its critical buckles instantly released. Starting from the turret, armor plates, pistons, pipes, gears...
Hundreds of steel components collectively lost their connections to each other in this instant!
Boom!
A dull, thunderous crash.
The mecha did not explode, but rather... fell apart.
It became a pile of metal parts of various sizes and shapes on the ground.
"This... what kind of technique is this?!"
The male Lightning Cultivator struggled to rise from the ground, staring at the heap of scrap metal with eyes full of incomprehensible horror.
Using a finger as a guide, a word spoken as a command, making steel creations disassemble themselves? What kind of ancient forbidden art was this? Never heard of it!
Before everyone could react.
Lin Qingyue's figure flickered again.
Against that brainwashing BGM that could trigger an obsessive-compulsive sufferer, she was like a black cat weaving through a steel graveyard, elegantly placing her "master stroke" on the other mechas caught in logical conflict due to their comrade's instantaneous disintegration.
"Next, it's your leg drive bearing."
Her fingertip tapped down.
"Clatter..." Another pile of parts collapsed with a crash.
"And you, the single-eyed spotlight base on your chest."
"Kacha..."
In just twenty short seconds.
Over a dozen Steam Magitech Mechas, which had driven the five Cultivators to desperation, had neatly turned into over a dozen piles of still-smoking scrap metal.
The gunfire ceased.
The artillery fire vanished.
The roar of engines also disappeared.
Within the basin, only that devilish, brainwashing BGM stubbornly echoed, along with those Abominations of Abundance, who now seemed somewhat lost without the mechas' firepower cover.
Lin Qingyue stood in the center of a pile of parts, elegantly dusting nonexistent grime from her gloves, then deactivated her transformation and reverted to her Pink-Haired Priest form.
She turned and looked at her petrified teammates and the five Cultivators, winking playfully.
"Act one, a perfect curtain call."
Lin Xiyue charged down the slope with her great shield on her shoulder, shouting excitedly: "Sis! Great job! Leave the rest of this rotting flesh to us!"
Su Wan and Xia Lian followed close behind.
With a wave of Su Wan's staff, a piercing Frost Storm swept through the monster swarm, instantly freezing and slowing their movements.
Xia Lian drew her bow and nocked an arrow. One after another, arrows imbued with the "Star-Concealment" effect silently shot out, precisely striking the Abominations' vital points.
With the three of them joining in, the battle's tide instantly turned.
Lin Xiyue, like a tiger unleashed from its cage, charged forward with her great shield, scattering the slow-moving Abominations to all sides.
The five Cultivators froze for a moment before immediately reacting.
"Thank you, Fellow Daoist, for your help!"
The young Sword Cultivator at their head cupped his fist toward Lin Qingyue from a distance, then flourished his sword and rejoined the battle, "Junior brothers and sisters, eliminate the remnants!"
With the arrival of powerful reinforcements and the mechas' firepower gone, the remaining battle became a slaughter without suspense.
A few minutes later, the last Abomination of Abundance shattered into pieces under Su Wan's ice spikes, and the battlefield finally fell completely still.
Lin Qingyue's four-person squad and the five still-shaken Cultivators stood facing each other on this bizarre battlefield, composed of scrap metal and shredded flesh.
The other five stared at Lin Qingyue. Their eyes held gratitude, awe, and even more so, a sense of bewilderment and confusion after their entire worldview of cultivation had been completely overturned.
Especially the young Sword Cultivator at their head, who sheathed his long sword and walked forward solemnly, performing a standard Taoist Jishou salute to Lin Qingyue.
"This humble Taoist is Yun Che of the 'Ena Immortal Alliance'. Thank you, Fellow Daoists, for saving my life. Might I ask... what is your sect's heritage? The unfathomable methods you displayed just now truly... opened my eyes."
He simply couldn't comprehend what kind of heritage could project such a strange virtual screen out of thin air, then turn an indestructible steel puppet into a pile of parts with a single tap of a finger.
This was neither cultivation nor science.
Lin Qingyue looked at this earnest "Fellow Daoist" before her, then at his companions behind him who were also casting curious glances. Her "troll" DNA began to throb violently.
She mimicked his gesture, returning the salute with feigned solemnity, then cleared her throat and spoke slowly in an unfathomable tone.
"It's nothing, it's nothing."
"I am Lin Qingyue, Captain of the 'Quantum Battleship', Chief Consultant of the 'Penacony Anti-Fraud Center', and Ordainer of the 'Lordly Trashcan'."
"As for the methods just now..."
She paused, a mysterious smile appearing on her face:
"This is an ancestral secret technique."