Chapter 1890: Red Star and Shortbread

"What do you mean?" Everyone was a bit dazed.

Ji Xuan stood up, stood under the light, and said solemnly:

"If it were a hard, dry meat pie, it would be hard to break, right?"

"But why can this shortbread crumble at a touch? It certainly isn't because my strength has increased, right?"

"In the end, it’s because..."

"Because the internal structure is different." Chu Changqing vaguely guessed what Ji Xuan wanted to express. "In the process of making shortbread, you need to shake every layer of oil-skin and filling loose, making the layers completely detach and creating fine, dense dark seams... The structure becomes loose, and external force naturally makes it crumble at a touch."

"Exactly!"

"Then how are we supposed to change the internal structure of the Red Star?" Qi Muyun’s brows furrowed.

"Mass!" Ji Xuan picked up a pen and began writing and drawing rapidly on the blackboard. "A steel plate and a biscuit joined together will break at the fault with a little force because their mass is not uniform. If... I’m saying if..."

"If we find a way to change the mass distribution inside the Red Star, making it uneven in thickness, just like layered shortbread..."

"In that case, wouldn't it be easier to destroy?"

“……I understand what you mean.” Su Zhiwei narrowed her eyes. “With our strength, it’s hard to cause damage to the Red Star, but if we leverage the Red Star’s own mass, it’s a different story… It’s like Tai Chi; the most important thing is ‘borrowing force to strike.’ What we need to do isn’t to forcibly erase its mass, but to use its own power to create a mass discrepancy, thereby destroying its structure and causing it to collapse from within.”

“Whether the Red Star will collapse on its own is hard to say… but I think this line of reasoning is sound.” Lu Xun nodded in agreement.

“I can manipulate Higgs bosons to change an object’s mass. If I can enter the core of the Red Star and rewrite its mass distribution on a large scale… it’s possible to turn the Red Star into a ‘shortbread cookie.’” Ji Xuan’s speech grew faster and faster.

“And mass and energy must follow the mass-energy equivalence formula. As long as there is an uneven distribution of mass, it means the Red Star’s energy will also be unevenly distributed… With that, as long as we provide a little guidance…”

“But there’s still that same problem: the Red Star is too massive. Even if you exert your power without regard for the consequences, how much of the Red Star’s energy can you actually affect?”

“I can tamper with the Lingxu Numbers to rewrite its mass-energy conversion efficiency.” Wu Tongyuan suddenly spoke up. “Moreover, we don’t need to completely change the Red Star’s mass distribution pattern; we just need to make its own energy go out of control…”

“It’s like a fuse. Once it’s lit, perhaps it will… burn fiercely on its own.”

……

The authority of mass was pushed to its absolute limit deep within the Red Star.

At this moment, everyone held their breath as they watched the Red Star… No one knew what kind of changes were happening inside, nor did anyone know how much of the mass distribution Ji Xuan had actually affected. But the moment the first crack pierced through the Red Star, appearing on the surface of the earth, everyone felt a surge of joy!

It worked!

The previously silent Red Star suddenly felt like a volcano about to erupt. The broken crust began to collide and grind frantically, and abyssal gullies spread wildly during the collisions, looking like cracks on the surface of an eggshell, becoming denser by the second.

The Red Star’s energy was falling into chaos at its very core!

Almost simultaneously,

Ji Xuan’s aura vanished from everyone’s perception.

……

The Lingxu Realm.

Among the ancient temples of Lingxu Mountain, a figure sat quietly on the steps.

He was dressed in black, wearing thin gloves made of an unknown material. On the ground before him lay seven lifelike puppets, arranged neatly.

He was one of the Dukes of the Chengtian Realm… the Demigod of the Puppet Path, Duke Jun.

Duke Jun looked up at the sky, which had been stained a deep red, from time to time. His brows were furrowed, as if he were nervously waiting for something.

Just then,

A voice echoed from the depths of his thoughts:

“Xuanyu-jun.”

Duke Jun’s gaze sharpened.

Without the slightest hesitation, he raised his hand and pointed at one of the puppets… The aura of the Puppet God Path activated, and in the next second, the puppet that looked exactly like Ji Xuan was instantly swapped!

A blood-soaked, mangled corpse replaced the original puppet, teleported to the front of the ancient Lingxu temple.

Duke Jun’s ability could ignore space, allowing him to swap any person he had established a connection with for a pre-prepared puppet… even if the target was deep within the Red Star, it was no exception.

He was the key figure designated by both Chen Ling and Ying Fu, and the “net” meant to recover the Seven Monarchs during the chaotic battle.

The moment the Red Star arrived, there was no longer a distinction between friend and foe among humanity… Who could have imagined that the enemies who were at each other’s throats with Chen Ling just a short while ago would now be the ones acting as their safety net?

“So the first casualty has appeared this quickly…” Duke Jun looked at the blood-drenched corpse, his eyes filled with nothing but deep admiration. He couldn’t imagine what kind of brutal war one had to endure to be torn apart like this.

Duke Jun looked up at the red sky and murmured sincerely to himself:

“I hope you all… succeed.”

……

“Ji Xuan did it.”

“Now, it’s our turn.”

Yang Xiao and Qi Muyun exchanged a glance, both seeing the determination in the other’s eyes.

Even though the internal energy had begun to churn in chaos, and even though those abyssal cracks covering the surface were surging with terrifying Red Star energy, it was still flying toward Earth at high speed, like an unstable bomb.

Yang Xiao was the first to raise his hand. Under the reinforcement of Wu Tongyuan’s Lingxu Numbers, the magnetic field inside the Red Star was instantly detonated. Electromagnetic induction intensified rapidly, and resistance heating began to climb at an astonishing rate!

At the same time, a mass of chaotic airflow began to swirl on the surface of the Red Star, forcibly disrupting the heat that was already radiating due to the chaotic Red Star energy and the soaring resistance heat, guiding it like vortices toward several specific locations…

And those locations were the most broken and vulnerable parts of the Red Star.

The power of Yang Xiao and Qi Muyun was being consumed at an alarming rate. They weren’t Ji Xuan; they couldn’t directly enter the Red Star to detonate everything from within, so they could only burn themselves out on the outside, attempting to expand the range of their influence as much as possible.

Not far away, Wu Tongyuan’s eyes were bloodshot, and he began to age at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Whether it was Ji Xuan, Yang Xiao, or Qi Muyun, none of them could exert enough power to threaten the Red Star on their own… Wu Tongyuan had to constantly provide them with Lingxu Numbers that could be called miraculous, allowing each of them to become a “god” in their respective fields.

Electromagnetism and chaotic heat spread and transmitted across the surface of the Red Star, as if someone were using a lock to seal all that violent energy inside the Red Star, bit by bit.

Like a scorching fireball stuffed into a pressure cooker.