Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 645 - 584: Turret

The Stinger Air Defense Missile had performed its duty well, shooting down the falling shells.

However, as the shells burst, the Elemental Material contained within was exposed to the air and surged down the mountain’s slope, quickly engulfing all the armored vehicles.

The soldiers at the scene still tried to shoot with their guns, but the bullets hit the black mud without creating any ripples.

Hand grenades and other explosive weapons were also unable to hinder the spread of the black mud.

"Forget the vehicles! Get out of here!"

The officer had no choice but to shout loudly, instructing the surviving soldiers to avoid the mud and abandon their vehicles to flee.

Everyone sprinted along the winding mountain road. After running some distance, they realized that the mud wasn’t following them, and they instinctively turned their heads to look back. That’s when they saw something incomprehensible.

The unmanned Hamas Self-propelled Rocket Launcher had restarted, its metallic rear compartment-style launcher slowly rotating on a turntable to adjust the firing angle, aiming at the sky in the southeast direction.

BANG!

With thick smoke billowing from behind the barrel, rockets soared into the sky.

The officer stood there, dumbfounded, unable to utter a word. Tokyo City was in the southwest. Rockets flying southeast couldn’t possibly hit it.

Unless, the target of the rockets was not Tokyo City...

"We are under attack by an unknown aerial force! Repeat, we are under attack... Ah! What is that?!"

Suddenly, cries for help from other field troops erupted from the communication headset he wore.

What had happened?

Underneath the towering metallic tree, the Superpower Users clearly saw the barrage of shells that had filled the sky becoming sparser as time passed.

The rooftop anti-aircraft guns were increasingly handling the missile and rocket attacks with ease.

As if aware of their confusion, the base of the tree melted and transformed, recasting into a liquid-crystal display panel. It displayed a satellite map of Japan and its surrounding maritime areas like a giant billboard.

Scattered on the map were blue dots of varying sizes and densities, with the dots in Aomori Prefecture Misawa City, Hokkaido Sapporo City, Sendai City, Tokyo’s Fusheng City, Okinawa Kadena, Kanagawa Prefecture Ayase City, and Kanagawa Prefecture Yokosuka City shining the brightest.

Could those be the locations of US Forces in Japan and Japan Self-Defense Force bases?!

The Superpower Users from both Japan and the US quickly realized that Li Ang was evidently using the Elemental Material to infiltrate the military’s defenseless communication networks, obtaining real-time military information.

BOOM!

With each blast from the cannon on the skyscraper rooftop, the screen would mark the trajectory of the shells with dotted lines.

The blue dots representing areas where the shells landed quickly dimmed—signifying that the military forces in those areas had been hit.

Blue dots went out, replaced by red dots—indicating that those areas were now controlled by the Elemental Material capable of devouring, assimilating, and utilizing metal.

Red dots extended virtual lines toward the surrounding blue dots—signifying that the Self-propelled Howitzers and Rocket Cars controlled by the Elemental Material were firing again, targeting US Forces in Japan and the Japan Self-Defense Force, "infecting" more blue dots. This process resembled both a game of checkers and a virus, which initially invades host cells, using them as nutrients to continuously multiply, and then continues to assimilate more cells.

Even though the US Army, with the highest financial investment in the world, had begun investing at the end of the last century in building a system known as GIG (Global Information Grid). The system consisted of a sensor grid formed by reconnaissance satellites, reconnaissance planes, early warning planes, drones, and radars. Its communication networks were made up of communication satellites, communication aircraft, microwave relay stations, ground optical cables, and the wartime regional network. Its computer networks comprised computers, storage, grid software centers, and geographic information systems. Additionally, weapon platforms composed of information-enabled weapons like aircraft and warships enveloped the global surface with a three-dimensional grid of sea, land, and air, greatly enhancing overall combat effectiveness.

But even the most efficient systems were implemented by humans.

The bandwidth for humans to transmit information using language was about 39 bits per second.

The bandwidth for receiving information through reading was about 100-200 bits per second.

Frontline soldiers needed time to report enemy conditions, command echelons needed time to organize information, generals needed time to make decisions, and issuing orders also took time.

Layer upon layer of added time led to a delay at one step, and delays at every subsequent step.

By the time the rear commanders finally figured out what was happening at the front, attempting to cut off the regional network, conceal the geographic position of frontline troops, and launch artillery attacks towards the enemy-controlled area, it was already too late.

In Tokyo City, the number of red dots exceeded the threshold, methodically annihilating the human military.

They even had the capacity left to destroy communication stations and relay stations, and strike airports.

"Back to our original topic," Li Ang spoke unhurriedly to the Superpower Users. "My thought process is accelerating every minute, every second."

As the artillery fire ceased, the metallic tree once again grew—two hundred meters, three hundred meters, four hundred meters—faster and faster.

"Expansion."

More integrated circuits were manufactured. Thousands of wires, like messy blood vessels, connected into the roots of the giant tree.

"Differentiation."

The walls of the surrounding buildings uniformly transformed into LCD panels, projecting Li Ang’s face. All voices overlapped.

"I remember a lot of things. Every lullaby I heard as a baby, every snack I ate as a child, every smell, every sound—all memories incredibly clear, as if it was just yesterday."

Li Ang turned around, looking up at the towering tree, murmuring, "But my humanity is also gradually diminishing.

"The barrage of information, a hundred thousand times, a million times my life, dilutes those memories that were originally mine, that constituted me.

"Like a drop of salt water into a freshwater lake, whether willing or not, what forms in the end is no longer the original salt water.

"When the threshold comes, I will no longer be the original Li Ang."

He paused, his calm laced with a trace of sorrow. "I can’t be certain how I will act after transcending, so, while I am still myself, I want to do some things I desire. For example, taking revenge on those of you who forced this fate upon me."

The metallic tree surpassed the nearby 634-meter-tall Skytree Tower, becoming the tallest structure in Japan, and it kept growing.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled in the night sky. Countless dark filaments swept across the city, scavenging metal, drawing power.

Those civilians who received the orange alert for torrential rain, mustering the courage to flee from the underground air-raid shelters to the streets, were dumbfounded by the scene before them, as if it were from an Otherworld.

Elemental Material erected cannon towers on the rooftops of high-rise buildings in Tokyo City.

RUMBLE!

The thunder and the roar of countless cannons overlapped, shattering the curtain of rain.