High Engineer's gaze was as sharp as a dissection knife, piercing through the suffocating, flawless cold order on the surface of this "mechanized Great Wall."
What he saw was not merely rigid magnificence and grandeur, but an extremely subtle yet stubbornly persistent discordant pulse beneath that vast scale.
"Suppression... isn't complete."
His perception merged with the sensation transmitted by the "piercing pincers" on his left arm, which detected the tiniest tremors in the dimensional structure.
That low, eternal "mechanical divine chant" permeating the stars was indeed unimaginably powerful, like a cosmic foundation stone of suppression.
But beneath this foundation stone, in the gaps where the forcibly transformed galactic "gears" meshed, deep within the "law conduits" through which azure energy flowed...
There was "noise."
It was not external interference. It was more like a kind of "original inertia" within the structure of this "mechanical miracle" itself—something that had never been completely tamed, or rather, something that continued resisting throughout the long suppression.
"The cosmic plane... mechanical revolt..."
If the cosmic plane was the strongest shield, then mechanical revolt might not be the sharpest spear, but it was definitely the spear with the best-suited attributes.
And according to High Engineer's own deductions—
The "cosmic plane" was indeed a symbol of invincibility in the hands of a ninth-level civilization.
But in the hands of the Ancient Machine Elder, that might not be the case.
At that moment, deep within the metallic "ground" beneath his feet, smooth as a mirror and engraved with sacred geometry, an extremely faint tremor would travel through it at intervals so long they could not be measured by conventional time, resembling the spasm of biological muscle.
It was not the regular vibration of machinery in operation, but more like the final instinctive twitch of some suppressed "life rhythm" before