"Hey—look over there!" Yellow Dog suddenly pointed toward the Sha River and shouted excitedly. "Am I seeing things, or did something fall off its leg?"
Chen Xuan turned to look and saw that the steel support was trembling violently—it seemed to be struggling not to be crushed, yet the shadow above continued descending steadily. Their confrontation was clearly placing immense stress on the structure itself. The frameworks on its legs, resembling high-voltage transmission towers, bent like bamboo strips, while steel beams thicker than an adult collapsed and warped beneath the pull of gravity.
The contraction of the structure also caused changes in volume. Some seemingly insignificant steel bars and iron plates were squeezed out of the deformed areas and fell from the sky. Only when they hit the ground with a thunderous crash did people realize just how heavy those negligible "components" truly were.
Chen Xuan finally understood where that sense of discord he had felt upon encountering the Sky Patroller had come from.
Its long legs were enormous, yet their structure was remarkably loose, like a grotesque megastructure casually assembled from all manner of steel components. At a glance, it did not seem sturdy at all, yet it was indestructible, easily slicing buildings in half without suffering the slightest damage itself. Even knowing that Nano-Lifeforms possessed structural rigidity, the sight still felt wrong.
But that feeling was gone now.
It was as though it had transformed from something unreal into a physical entity. Every steel beam and steel frame now possessed its own weight. They had to endure the burden of their own mass while resisting the planet's gravity.
Simply put, the Sky Patroller had gained a weakness from this moment onward.
"It stretched out so many legs... was it trying to support itself?" Lin Qing suddenly realized.
"That's