Even many years later, the soldiers who had personally witnessed that scene still could not forget the breathtaking spectacle they had seen that day.
The roar of engines and the thunderous boom of beams vaporizing rock echoed between heaven and earth. The entire crater basin where the Giant Life Tree stood was already shrouded in hot wind and dense fog. The ground shook without pause, while mountains that had stood for thousands of years crumbled apart in the distortion. Countless boulders rolled down from the surrounding mountains, while the basin enclosed by those mountains slowly rose.
More than a dozen cylindrical aircraft floated above the Giant Life Tree. They cast down radiance that enveloped the land, directly pulling a 170-kilometer-long pillar of rock out of the ground. Within that pillar were the already-entangled Giant Life Tree and the Firstborn's true body.
As that horrifying mass slowly rose, numerous cruisers closed in again from the perimeter. Each cruiser extended a set of mechanical arms, whose ends gripped antigravity generators. The cruisers were piloted by highly skilled engineers. As the rock pillar rose, they continuously installed the gravity generators in their designated positions. Everything proceeded in perfect coordination—busy, but never chaotic.
As more and more antigravity generators activated, the entire composite structure's rising speed and stability improved further. The dozen or so cylindrical aircraft responsible for the initial lift soon stopped exerting themselves. Two-thirds of them quickly withdrew into the distance, while the rest maintained the structure's ascent with limited tractor beams.
Five minutes later, the bottom of the composite structure had still not completely broken free of the ground, but its upper half had already emerged from the region shrouded in dust and fog. Its grotesque and bizarre appearance was laid bare before the distant observers. Countless tangled roots had twisted