Soul Ray Absorption Device (Please Read On!!!)

As Mo Yuan spoke those somewhat "arrogant" words, the air suddenly froze.

Xu Rongzhi stood on the inner side of the iron gate, the calm on his face like a sheet of frozen ice. But after those words fell, the ice developed its first crack.

His pupils contracted slightly, and the professional smile at the corners of his mouth vanished completely, revealing a face devoid of warmth beneath it.

He was silent for a moment, then let out a very soft laugh—shorter than any of his previous smiles and devoid of even the slightest trace of courtesy.

"Mr. Mo Yuan, that was... a little excessive."

"Or should I take it as mockery?"

His voice remained steady, but its final note was half a pitch lower than before.

Then he raised his right hand and, without turning around, made a downward gesture toward the area behind him.

The movement was small, but its meaning was unmistakable.

The more than twenty silver mecha hovering above the manor adjusted their positions simultaneously.

The Soul Guidance Ray ports beneath their hulls shifted from a slight tilt to a locked-on position. The humming of their precharged energy merged into a deep, continuous tide of sound above the treetops.

Xu Rongzhi's hand remained suspended in midair for roughly half a second before dropping.

"Take him down. His life or death is irrelevant."

The two words left his mouth cleanly and decisively, without the slightest hesitation.

Mo Yuan did not even look at the mecha.

The instant Xu Rongzhi raised his hand, he had already sensed the change in the other party's Soul Power field. That subtle shift in the flow of energy was the precursor to any large group of Soul Tools entering an attack state.

His response was completed almost simultaneously.

A pale golden film of light sprang open from his waist.

A triggered Ninth-Level Soul Guide Shield unfolded in less than a millisecond, enveloping his entire body within a translucent spherical barrier.

A fine network of runes flowed across the shield's surface. Each ring of patterns constantly rotated and reassembled, like an endlessly weaving fabric of energy.

The first concentrated barrage came crashing down.

The beams fired simultaneously from the Soul Guidance Ray ports of more than twenty mecha varied in color. There were bluish high-energy penetrating rays, orange-red thermal-melting rays, and several nearly white, high-speed pulse beams.

They wove together in the air into a dense web of light before striking the shield around Mo Yuan head-on.

The instant the web of light touched the shield's surface, the golden barrier flashed violently, then stabilized.

The runes on the shield's surface suddenly began flowing faster, evenly dispersing the rays' energy across the entire barrier before gradually weakening it through the energy-buffering layers within its multilayered structure.

Mo Yuan stood at the center of the shield with both hands in his pockets. He did not even change his posture.

The first volley lasted about five seconds before briefly halting at Xu Rongzhi's signal.

Smoke drifted around the shield. The golden barrier remained intact, though a layer of light-gray marks left by the scorching energy now covered its surface.

Those marks rapidly faded as the runes circulated, like glass being rinsed clean with water.

Mo Yuan dusted off nonexistent dirt from his clothes and said calmly, "If you insist on taking it personally, I won't deny that my words were aimed at you."

Xu Rongzhi narrowed his eyes.

"Hmph! A Ninth-Level Soul Guide Shield," he said. "Not bad, but how many of those things could you possibly carry? And with your cultivation, how long can you keep using it?"

Without waiting for an answer, he raised his right hand again.

The second volley followed immediately. The beams were denser than before, and their angles were more treacherous. Several rays cut in from the side, attempting to bypass the areas where the shield's frontal defenses were strongest.

But Mo Yuan's shield had unfolded as a sphere. It had no front or sides, and the defensive strength of every inch of its surface was completely uniform.

The second round of firing produced almost exactly the same result as the first.

"Continue!" Xu Rongzhi ordered.

The third round, the fourth, and the fifth.

Beam after beam poured down in waves. The shield's surface gradually shifted from golden to incandescent white. Its energy-buffering layers were operating at high speed, yet there was still no sign of damage.

Mo Yuan stood at the center of the shield, but his gaze was not on the mecha.

His eyelids hung low, and an extremely faint blue light shimmered deep within his eyes.

He was analyzing.

From the moment the first concentrated barrage began, the [Analysis] authority had activated automatically.

The energy frequencies, wavelength distributions, modulation methods, and pulse intervals of those rays—every physical parameter was broken down in his consciousness into its most basic components, then compared against the Soul Guidance Ray parameter models he had already completed countless times during the laboratory stage.

The conclusion emerged faster than he had expected.

The Soul Guidance Ray systems used by these mecha had no fundamental difference in their core principles from the models he had studied before.

They had merely increased the power slightly and made minor optimizations to the firing arrays, while the underlying energy-excitation structure and frequency-modulation logic came from the same lineage.

He spent a short while completing the structural design of a simple absorption array in his mind.

The array's design was straightforward: channel energy of specific frequencies into a resonant circuit, use reverse interference to cancel out the rays' destructive power, and convert the remaining energy into Soul Power reserves he could use himself.

The entire process could be integrated into a sufficiently small carrier.

Then he began.

He remained standing where he was, but his right hand, which had been in his pocket, emerged.

The air above his palm began to twist slightly. Fine metallic particles drifted out of the Storage Soul Tool and gathered above his palm into a thin silver-gray stream.

The particles rapidly wove together, solidified, and took shape between his fingers. The entire process took less than a second.

A silver-gray bracelet covered in extremely fine rune patterns appeared in his palm.

Mo Yuan clasped the bracelet around his right wrist. The instant it touched his skin, the rune patterns on its surface lit up one after another, shifting from pale blue to deep blue before stabilizing as an almost transparent fluorescent glow.

The entire process was quiet and clean, like putting on an ordinary accessory.

Xu Rongzhi noticed the movement.

But before he could make any judgment, the sixth volley had already arrived.

The beams came straight at them.

Mo Yuan raised his right hand. Before the beams reached the shield's surface, the bracelet on his wrist had already activated.

A barrier shimmering with an eerie halo expanded from the bracelet, covering the outer layer of the Ninth-Level Soul Guide Shield.

The instant the beams struck the halo barrier, they changed in a way completely different from before. They did not explode or scatter across the barrier's surface. Instead, like streams of water flowing into a lake, they were silently drawn inside.

The entire web of light sank into the barrier without creating the slightest ripple.

The halo on the barrier's surface pulsed faintly once, then stabilized.

Xu Rongzhi stood at the manor gate. For the first time, his expression developed an obvious crack. His brows furrowed, his face filled with confusion.

"Continue!"

The beams continued pouring down.

Every ray that landed on the halo barrier was absorbed, gathered, and converted in the same manner.

The rune patterns on Mo Yuan's bracelet visibly grew brighter. After the absorbed energy passed through the resonant circuit's filtration, some of it was fed back into several enhancement Soul Tools on his body, forming an efficient self-sustaining cycle.

By the end of the twelfth volley, Xu Rongzhi finally understood. His people were attacking Mo Yuan, but those attacks were replenishing Mo Yuan's energy.

"Damn it! Cease fire immediately!" he shouted.

The beams stopped abruptly.

The air still carried the odors of ozone and metal vapor left behind by the scorching heat. More than twenty mecha hovered in midair, faint smoke still drifting from the firing ports beneath their hulls.

Dark-red patches from overheating had already appeared on the surfaces of their main cannons.

Mo Yuan stood where he was, the bracelet on his wrist still shining with a warm fluorescent glow.

The Soul Power converted from those volleys had roughly replenished all the reserves he had expended maintaining the Soul Guide Shield, with plenty left over to maintain his various enhancement Soul Tools.

"What? Do you still want to keep trying?"