Transformers: Survival of Defective Products

Chapter 43, the grand finale.

I wasn't paying attention to the vector diagram.

She was still gripping the railing tightly, her eyes fixed on the field, unaware that she had made a slight creaking sound as she squeezed the edge of the railing.

On the other side of the sound waves, the judgment, interference, laser bird connection, and rhythm switching are all ridiculously terrifying.

The same applies to Zhen Tianzun's side.

The fusion cannon's true firepower, close-range blades, shield bashes, and the sense of power that could shatter everything with brute force were all things that hadn't been shown in the previous matches.

They were truly fighting for their lives in this match.

The arena, with its grand finale hanging high, was filled with spectators, management, betting odds, and all eyes glued to the data, like a giant metal stomach excitedly devouring the match.

The flame in the vector's chest throbbed stronger and stronger.

Annoyance, frustration, and a sense of powerlessness.

She wanted to curse the machine, wanted to go down and do something, wanted to overturn all those slag heaps sitting high up, just waiting to see who would get hurt first.

Inside the court, the two sides were separated once again.

This time, no one is as complete as they were at the beginning.

The shield on Megatron's left arm was no longer as smooth as it had been at the beginning; it bore scratches and cracks, and a slight lag was visible in the angle at which it was raised. Meanwhile, Soundwave's side armor had obvious cracks, but its movements remained steadfast. Laserbeak rose to a higher position, readjusting its angle for the next dive.

Then the sound waves emitted channel noise again, and the rhythm became faster and more intense, with a touch of cold oppression, as if something had finally been confirmed.

Immediately following was a series of distorted explosions from Zhen Tianzun's side.

The massive, silver-gray aircraft retracted, shifted, and locked itself in an extremely short time. Its cold, sharp flight profile pressed close to the ground, with its nose low and wings spread wide, making the entire vehicle resemble a heavy metal blade.

The optical lens suddenly opened wide.

She had never seen or imagined using vehicle mode to break the deadlock in this situation before.

The next second, the thrusters suddenly lit up.

Megatron didn't give Soundwave and Laserbeak a chance to rebuild their dual-track rhythm, directly slicing through the center of the arena with a brutal low-altitude charge. It was a forceful ramming that carried the weight, speed, firepower, and overwhelming pressure of the attack.

Laserbird was forced to take off first, and Soundwave immediately cut laterally. However, the vehicle form of the Celestial was more ruthless than any of his previous transformations and advances. The entire machine plowed through the air of the arena, and the airflow from the fuselage brushing against the ground even stirred up a string of shattered armor fragments and liquid energy mist.

The Fusion Cannon fires in vehicle mode.

A beam of fire, sparking and crackling, tore through half the arena, forcing Soundwave to abandon its original, most favorable entry line and forcefully swerve to the other side. Laserbird attempted to descend again from its height, but because of the sudden angle pulled up by the previous attack from the Thunderlord, the Thunderlord's wingtip rushed close, as if it were about to crash into Laserbird as well.

"...He's completely turned the place upside down," Knockdown whispered.

With this, Zhen Tianzun directly severed the dual lines that the sound wave and the laser bird had painstakingly reconnected.

He disrupted the rhythm of the game in the most brutal and effective way.

However, the sound waves were not completely suppressed in this round.

After two consecutive changes of direction, he suddenly brought the entire machine to a standstill. In that extremely short gap, he made a quick judgment, and the dark-colored machine body also suddenly began a series of completely different deformation sounds.

Neat, quiet, thin and sharp.

The sonic wave rapidly contracted into a slender flying vehicle, its outline cold and straight, like a dark blade of light suddenly stretched into a line. The laser bird took off at the same time as it, the two flight paths, one large and one small, briefly intersecting at high altitude before abruptly separating.

The sound waves also revealed his trump card, instantly pulling the entire battlefield back into the space he was good at.

The next instant, the two flying vehicles passed each other at high speed in the field.

The audience was going crazy; the commentator's voice was almost distorted.

From a high vantage point in the background, the vector seemed to perceive the two trajectories in front of him as moving too fast.

The silver-gray line was heavier and more powerful, each rise and fall carrying a sense of oppressive force that smashed through the air; the dark line was thin, cold, and cunning, like a two-dimensional tangent that shouldn't exist in this head-on confrontation, changing direction several times quickly and quietly, calculating the angle at which the other side was about to stick to it and avoiding it.

The Zonda vehicle form dove down again, its nose making a terrifying low-altitude rush towards the path of the sonic wave, the edge of the fusion cannon glowing brightly for a moment, almost illuminating half the arena.

At the last second, the sound wave suddenly flipped, and the entire vehicle mode dodged the cannon line by hugging the edge. At the same time, the Laser Bird cut in from another high position, forcing the Thunder God to raise its trajectory.

"He's trying to elevate Zhen Tianzun," Ji Dao suddenly whispered.

The vector was taken aback for a moment, then immediately realized what was happening.

Sound waves are not the type of thing that can be directly and head-on resisted.

Using his own flight maneuvers and the coordination of Laserbird, he gradually dragged the heavy assault style of the Thunder God, which was best suited for low-altitude suppression, away from its most comfortable range.

This is how sound waves work: they drag you into a place where you're not comfortable, and then slowly grind you down.

However, it's clear that Zhen Tianzun isn't one to be easily dragged along.

Just as the next high-speed maneuver was about to pass, his vehicle form suddenly dropped low, grazing the edge of the arena with a sharp dive and turn, forcibly pulling his trajectory back to low altitude. The next second, he crashed directly into the path that Soundwave was preparing to cut in, forcing Soundwave and Laserbeak to separate at the same time.

In that instant, the misaligned vehicle suddenly transformed again, its structure unfolding with a roar, and the ground beneath its feet shook the entire arena.

The left arm shield returned to its original position, while the right arm fusion cannon and short blade locked in a deadly attack. The entire machine pressed down on the moment the sound wave forced it to switch back from vehicle mode.

He brought the situation back to close combat.

"Beautiful." A wave of admiration swept through the crowd.

The pilot was jumping so hard that he couldn't even think about returning.

That concludes the vehicle mode phase. Both sides have already revealed what they could use to break the deadlock once, and what follows is a direct, face-to-face confrontation.

Inside the arena, after both sides returned to their robot forms, the pace became even more intense, pushing each other to their limits.

The sound wave pressed down directly this time. After short-frequency interference, the entire machine cut into the left blind spot of the Zhen Tianzun. The cold light brought out by the arm flashed too fast in the field of vision, and even the vector could not immediately distinguish where it landed.

It wasn't until the entire machine shook noticeably that she realized that the impact had cut into the linkage area behind her right shoulder.

Zhen Tianzun didn't even intend to pause. He immediately launched a heavy cannon shot at close range.

The short-range, high-energy impact that exploded close to the face forced the sonic wave back half a step. Then, the shield on the left hand slammed into the sonic wave, causing the entire machine to slide backward.

The laser bird swooped down, and the sound waves were forcibly stabilized at the same instant.

But the Heavenly Venerable can be even faster.

He adopted a "no matter the cost, I'll crush you here" attitude, using shield bash to clear a path, followed by his right arm short blade, and the afterglow of the fusion cannon illuminated half the arena. The power and oppressive aura of the entire machine were piled up to a level that made the machine's scalp tingle.

The sound wave was truly suppressed and put at a disadvantage. His steady rhythm was finally broken open by Zhen Tianzun.

However, the cost was also obvious. Zhen Tianzun himself was severely injured, with energy fluid leaking from his left arm, right shoulder, side waist, and even the edges of his outer armor.

The reason he can still fight head-on like this is purely due to the terrifying strength of his own machine.

The audience was absolutely insane.

But for a very brief moment, the vector vision wavered.

She suddenly "felt" something very clearly.

The next attack will come from the top left.

The thought came quickly and abruptly; it wasn't something she deduced herself, but rather a sense of direction that crashed into her brain. She didn't even have time to think before she abruptly looked up at the arena.

Sure enough. The laser bird had already swooped down from that angle.

Almost simultaneously, the sound wave itself stood up again below, raised its hand to withstand the blow, and tried to repair the hole that had just been smashed open.

The next second, as if it had anticipated something, the entire machine suddenly veered off course, its shield raised high, and its right arm cannon fired a shot diagonally upwards. The Laserbeak was forced to turn sharply by that, but the Soundwave itself was already in front of it, delivering a clean and decisive blow to the side of the Thunder's chest and abdomen.

The vector saw that the entire machine of Zhen Tianzun shook.

Her spark almost sank to the bottom.

He knocked her down and cursed, "...That's ruthless."

Inside the arena, Zhen Tianzun was still standing.

He took the blow head-on, enduring the excruciating pain, and with a swift, vicious strike, grabbed Soundwave's shoulder and slammed the entire machine into the ground. The shield crashed down, the fusion cannon blasted at close range, and the laser bird swooped in again with a sharp cry, but it was already a step too late.

The entire stadium seemed to explode in that instant.

All the vector could see was the intense light that exploded in the center of the arena, the shattered metal, the energy liquid and outer armor plates that were shaken up, and two machines that were almost at their limits.

When the blinding light subsided a little, the outcome was finally decided.

Zhen Tianzun was still standing.

Standing was already a struggle.

His left hand hung limply, barely holding the shield. The linkage on his right shoulder was clearly malfunctioning, with multiple cracks in the outer armor and energy fluid dripping down the edges. If the machine were to come to a stop any longer, it might collapse.

Soundwave knelt not far away, his chest and side armor severely damaged, and his shoulder and back were smashed open. Laserbird also landed back beside him, with obvious burns and cracks on the edges of its wings.

The stadium fell silent for a moment.

Immediately afterwards, the audience went completely crazy.

The commentator was practically screaming his lungs out, surrounded by pounding on the railings, shouting names, screams, and waves of frenzied noise that grew louder and louder.

As Yin Xiang stood high up in the backstage area, it felt as if there was nothing around him.

She stared at the two machines in the room, both so badly damaged they were practically draining the last drop of energy, and a tightness gripped her throat.

The victory that Zhen Tianzun fought for with his life.

He knocked down beside her and remained silent for two seconds: "...He actually won."

The vector didn't speak; she kept staring at the field.