Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 270: The Brutal Space War (4k)

"Sixth strike completed," the deputy station chief reported quickly. "Targets: Equatorial engine cluster units 37 to 45. Nine targets confirmed completely destroyed. Total destroyed... 54 equatorial engines." This number should have brought jubilation, but at this moment, only silence remained in the control station. Each strike was accompanied by a sharp depletion of energy reserves, and behind each success lay a step closer to destruction.

"The dinosaurs' counterattack coordinate correction speed is accelerating." The technician's voice was filled with anxiety. "After the last salvo, they completed the next aiming lock in just 23 minutes. The Wallfacer's array shield can only withstand a maximum of three more of these saturation attacks."

"Then let's make the seventh, eighth, and ninth strikes faster and more accurate!" the station chief roared. "Aim at the latest equatorial engine, and cripple this damned ring! We'll withdraw as soon as the ninth strike is complete!"

...

On September 15th, the Kuiper Belt War had entered a fierce stage. In the Kuiper Belt defense zone, humans and dinosaurs successively deployed 100,000 space warships to engage in a fierce battle, with dinosaur warships accounting for 70% of the total. This was almost the last remaining fleet force of the Empire.

Since suffering the blow from the expeditionary fleet a year ago, the Devouring Empire's fierce battle with humanity has cost it millions of years of fleet accumulation. Meanwhile, the Empire's enemy is merely a young civilization that has only entered the interstellar age less than three hundred years ago.

The Kuiper Belt became a 'muddy' battlefield, with hundreds, even thousands, of warships maneuvering at speeds of approximately 3000 kilometers per second through the meteorite-strewn Kuiper Belt. Interstellar nuclear missiles (space nuclear torpedoes), laser weapons, particle beam weapons, and kinetic energy projectiles became the backdrop of this war. Occasionally, warships on both sides would explode due to their destroyed propulsion systems. Even those that didn't explode would lose their ability to maneuver and drift out of the Kuiper Belt, forever adrift in deep space.

Both humans and dinosaurs gradually evolved from novices in space warfare to veterans of space warfare strategies. During this period, many exceptionally talented frontline commanders and captains emerged, playing a significant role in this war.

Apart from the sophon from Yun Tianming and the six-dimensional sophon on Earth, about 20 sophons are currently stationary outside the Kuiper Belt. Whenever they try to participate in the battle, they are immediately locked onto by a quark-level sword intent.

Three sophons have already been completely destroyed by sword intent while attempting to enter the Kuiper Belt.

Since the Trisolarans could not observe the enemy through optics, and were separated by dozens of astronomical units, they were completely unaware of the fierce war that had broken out in the Kuiper Belt.

Humanity has deployed a three-tiered conventional defense system in the Kuiper Belt: space-based nuclear mines, space-based nuclear torpedoes, and space-based electromagnetic railgun meteorite fortifications. The former consists of low-yield nuclear bombs disguised as meteorites, detonated via laser triggering. The space-based nuclear torpedoes are nuclear missile launch sites concealed on medium-sized meteorites (1km to 10km in diameter), equipped with approximately 10 to 100 vertical launch systems. The space-based electromagnetic railgun meteorite fortifications are typically situated on large meteorites with diameters exceeding 20km. They are oriented via rocket launchers and are controlled and analyzed independently by computer AI, making them typical automated interstellar "machine gun" bunkers.

The three-dimensional Kuiper Belt defense network greatly relieved the pressure on the human fleet. The numerically superior Devouring Fleet had to be distracted by dealing with the drifting meteorites—they had no way of knowing whether a meteorite had been modified by humans—human tactics were really too dirty.

As a result, the Devouring Fleet had to expend a great deal of firepower to attack those seemingly harmless meteor showers.

In this high-intensity battle involving nearly 100,000 space warships that lasted 24 hours, the meteorite clusters near the main battlefield were almost entirely destroyed by the Devouring Fleet. The meteorite belts, which were originally of varying sizes, gradually broke into a powdery area.

However, the Devouring Fleet also paid the price of nearly 10,000 large warships being destroyed.

With the two warships now close enough in the space battlefield, both the dinosaurs' Brachiosaurus-class motherships and the humans' starships unleashed hundreds of thousands of space fighters for close-range combat. The chaotic space fighters roamed the battlefield, constantly launching missile attacks on each other's space fighters. The human-controlled space fighters, entirely piloted by AI, far surpassed the dinosaur-piloted fighters in close-quarters combat. Whether in ship-to-ship bombardment or air combat, the dinosaurs were at a significant disadvantage.

However, the Devouring Fleet made up for these disadvantages with its relentless advance and fighting spirit, and maintained its offensive against the Solar System Fleet and the Kuiper Belt defense zone. These noble dinosaurs, as the rentier class of the Dinosaur Empire, actually had a fighting will that far surpassed that of the commoner dinosaurs.

They were truly fighting for this empire, from the commanders to the dinosaur pilots, all charging forward while shouting "Long live Devourer!"

The shock to the human fleet was considerable.

In an effort to deter these frenzied attacks, the total number of nuclear weapons used in this region in just one day has exceeded the total number of nuclear weapons used since the time of Einstein, and the nuclear arsenal is being rapidly depleted.

Both Fleet International and the Earth United Government eagerly awaited good news from the battlefield 100 astronomical units away. A flurry of battle reports flew towards Earth and Jupiter, carrying the hopes of 100 billion individuals in the depths of space. The loss of even a planetary-class warship would cause tension, but news of a stellar-class warship's destruction would momentarily freeze the entire human spirit.

Compared to the emotionally charged new generation, the older generation, who experienced two world wars, were quite calm and gleaned the essence of war from the casualty ratios of both sides published by the international community.

Humanity, which is backed by the solar system, has a much better chance of winning.

Human industrial capacity operated at breakneck speed, the global crime rate, as reported by MOSS, plummeted to near zero, sex rates also dropped to their lowest levels, and internet traffic in the virtual world reached an all-time low. Everyone returned from the virtual world to reality. Even the digital personalities of the Digital Republic had many directly loaded their self-awareness into temporary robots.

As Fleet International continued to release the battle casualty figures, which were delayed by more than 10 hours, tears welled up in the eyes of men, women, and children alike. They were fighting for whom? They were fighting for themselves.

Thomas Wade leaned against the Expeditionary War Memorial in People's Square, New York, smoking and staring at the seemingly tranquil world, a slight smile on his face.

A crucial battlefield information from 13 hours ago, after crossing 100 astronomical units, was suddenly updated in Fleet International's public network domain, instantly overshadowing all other battlefield information.

Eris has been destroyed!
Thirteen hours earlier, Eris, which had destroyed a total of 88 large ring equatorial engines, suffered a devastating blow from the swallowing rings, with a barrage of gamma laser beams piercing through the protective array set up by Luo Qing.

The 'Mercury' gamma-ray laser defense system was almost instantly penetrated and destroyed by a laser of the same level.

Eris's crust was pierced by a barrage of over ten rounds of 360 gamma laser beams. This small dwarf planet, retaliating in a furious attack on its engulfing rings, was finally penetrated through its core. Almost completely pierced, Eris's temperature skyrocketed due to the immense energy released. The internal thermal fusion caused this icy sphere, which had existed for hundreds of millions of years, to begin cracking. The fragments, under the influence of gravity, then reformed, ultimately deviating from its original orbit of hundreds of millions of years, becoming a deserted, desolate, and dead star. Fortunately, all personnel at the Eris control station had evacuated beforehand.

The four dwarf planets were the backbone of the Kuiper Belt defenses and the only forward armed force capable of bypassing the Devouring Fleet's cover and launching effective attacks directly against the rings. The complete destruction of Eris marked the beginning of a gradual imbalance in the power balance of this war.

Countless people who were following the wartime news exclaimed in alarm.

Unlike the intense emotional turmoil in the rear, rational decision-making continued on the main battlefield of the Kuiper Belt. The bridge of the European Fleet's planetary warship 02902 was filled with a pungent smell of ozone. The captain of 02902 stared at the constantly flashing red warning on the tactical screen and finally issued the order to evacuate the entire ship.

The planetary warship 02902 has had its propulsion system destroyed, and its weapon systems are also unusable due to the damage to the power source. Staying on this planetary warship, which is comparable in size to a space carrier in the early 21st century, will only make it a target for the enemy. Jumping ship to escape is the best option.

More than 300 space officers and soldiers disembarked in an orderly manner. They stopped and ran wildly on the 300-meter-long deck, and then suddenly leaped over the warship with its closed systems, so they jumped into deep space.

Just three minutes earlier, the fifth squadron of the Asian Fleet on the right flank of the battlefield was divided and surrounded by the diamond formation of the Devouring Fleet. Of the seventy planetary warships, only eleven survived the dense rain of gamma rays. Planetary warship 02902 was one of them. The behavior of planetary warship 02902 abandoning ship to escape was not an isolated case, but a widespread phenomenon.

According to the Solar System Fleet's wartime manual, after most of the warships were destroyed, the human space crew members voluntarily jumped off the warships and relied on their physical strength to stay in the vacuum of space at minus two hundred degrees Celsius, waiting for rescue by subsequent rescue ships and space shuttles.

The Devouring Fleet wouldn't deliberately attack these human insects that slowly 'wriggle' in deep space using only small thrusters.

Both humanity and the Devouring Empire understood that this war, like traditional naval warfare, was a war of attrition, a battle of existing resources. Both the Solar System Fleet and the Devouring Empire prioritized destroying the enemy's warships.

Once enough of the enemy's fleet is depleted, the enemy will no longer pose any threat. As for specific people and dinosaurs, they are not the core objective.

Therefore, neither humans nor dinosaurs paid attention to each other's 'lifeboats'. In addition to humans relying on their physical strength to stay in the vacuum of space and wait for rescue, a large number of dinosaurs also escaped the destroyed warships in lifeboats.

Unlike the confident humans, these dinosaurs hiding in the lifeboats did not believe they would be rescued by the Devouring Empire; they were simply trying to prolong their lives as much as possible.

But the dinosaurs soon discovered a problem: their enemies had also fled the destroyed warship, but... they hadn't boarded any of the lifeboats?
It all came down to holding your breath.

Humans, with their mortal bodies immersed in a vacuum, and dinosaurs, hiding in fully sealed lifeboats, stare at each other in disbelief.

These space officers and soldiers, immersed in a vacuum, didn't forget to give the dinosaurs the middle finger that were right next to them.

The surviving dinosaurs stared blankly at this bizarre scene.

Both being carbon-based life forms from Earth, why is this other being able to move freely in the vacuum of space? Not only is it not wearing a spacesuit, it's not even wearing a helmet, and it's even activating its thrusters... swimming towards the lifeboat?
A bizarre scene unfolded amidst the fierce battle: a large number of human space officers and soldiers who had abandoned their ships spontaneously swam toward the dinosaurs who had also entered the lifeboats. Then, these ferocious space officers and soldiers pried open the sealed compartments of the lifeboats with their bare hands and crawled inside on their own.

Of course, some of the Tyrannosaurus Rex realized something was wrong and began trying to regain control of the escape pods, but they soon discovered that with their dinosaur physical abilities, they were no match for these human insects. The insects could even swim naked through space and break the sealed compartments of the escape pods with their bare hands, knocking them to the ground.

The clever dinosaurs tried to pick up guns to stop these human intruders.

But humans charged straight through the firepower of firearms!

These human-like insects can even catch bullets with their bare hands and crush egg-sized bullets right in front of the dinosaurs.

It's important to know that the power of dinosaur firearms bullets was no less than that of human light machine guns.

After catching the intercepting bullets with his bare hands and enduring the explosion of a high-explosive grenade, the human, relying entirely on his physical prowess, knocked down all the Tyrannosaurus Rex inside the lifeboat with a single punch and kick, completely capturing these dinosaurs.

"Damn reptiles! Despicable invaders of the solar system! Earth belongs to humans! You bunch of stupid dragons who only know how to eat!"

The space officers roared and smashed the dinosaurs' skulls with their fists the size of sandbags until they were on the verge of death, lying on the deck, unable to get up again.

This battlefield featured not only warships exchanging fire and fighter jets engaging in close combat, but also humans and dinosaurs fighting each other at close range. It was a multi-dimensional war, ranging from large to small and from three-dimensional to single-dimensional.

Along the long battlefront, scenes reminiscent of humans humiliating dinosaurs are playing out everywhere.

(End of this chapter)