Chapter 103 Leap

"Buzz—!"

No flames, no smoke.

The moment the "Kunpeng" engine's overload reached 120%, satellites across the globe captured a terrifying scene:

Outside the atmosphere, the silver-black giant ship that had just been arrogantly toying with the Combined Fleet suddenly saw the space around it crumple like a piece of paper gripped by an invisible giant hand. Light twisted into an eerie spiral, and hundreds of millions of tons of equivalent energy collapsed into a singularity in an instant.

The next second, the singularity exploded.

"luan bird one" vanished into thin air.

It was as if it had been directly erased from this three-dimensional universe by an eraser.

...

"Blegh—!"

At this moment, the bridge was not as stable as one might imagine from a sci-fi blockbuster.

Inside the warp channel, multicolored bands of light writhed outside the portholes like demonic pythons. The intense dizziness and high-frequency vibrations caused by the spatial tearing made everyone—except for the gene-enhanced Lin Yuan—feel as if they had been stuffed into a tumble dryer and then kicked off Mount Everest.

"Warning! Abnormal space curvature fluctuations!"

"Shield readings dropping! External gravitational turbulence intensity: ten thousand times that of a Category 12 typhoon!"

Li Na gripped the handrail tightly, her face as pale as paper. If it weren't for the specialized G-suit pressing down on her internal organs, she probably would have vomited up her bile.

"Is this... Subspace?"

This wasn't a road.

This was a meat grinder.

"Don't puke on the dashboard, I just replaced that screen!"

Lin Yuan sat in the captain's chair, his hands not touching the control stick but hovering in mid-air, his ten fingers dancing frantically across the holographic projection like he was playing a piano.

His eyes were closed.

In his perceived world, this bizarre Subspace was not unfathomable. Thanks to his SSS-grade talent [Void Affinity], the spatial turbulence capable of tearing a battleship apart turned into clearly visible lines in his mind.

Where there was a dead end, where there were hidden reefs, and where the only path to survival lay.

He "saw" it all clearly.

"Hard to port, thirty-five degrees! Dive!" Lin Yuan suddenly barked.

"But the radar shows a high-energy reaction zone over there..." The helmsman instinctively tried to argue.

"Listen to me! Charge in!"

The massive hull of "luan bird one" performed an extremely physics-defying slide in the void, slipping through a purple spatial rift like a slippery loach, narrowly avoiding disaster.

"Boom!"

The rift closed behind him, and the resulting energy aftershocks made the ship's hull emit a tooth-aching metallic groan, even through the shields.

The entire ship fell silent.

If they had been 0.1 seconds slower just now, this battleship carrying the hope of humanity would have been sliced in half, with nothing left.

"Old Wang! Is the signal still there?" Fine beads of sweat broke out on Lin Yuan's forehead; this high-intensity mental link was extremely taxing on his physical strength.

"It's there! Right ahead!"

Although Academician Wang was also feeling dizzy and disoriented, his eyes were frighteningly bright as he stared intently at the red dot on the screen, which was as faint as a candle in the wind. "That's the resonance signal of the 'nano-forging matrix'! It's our lighthouse!"

"Hold on tight!"

Lin Yuan snapped his eyes open, a faint blue light flashing deep within his pupils.

"The exit is right ahead!"

"Break... through!"

With his low growl, the main engines of "luan bird one" spewed out a blinding blue torrent, and the ram on the bow plunged into the chaotic darkness ahead like a red-hot iron into butter.

Rip—!

A sound like tearing cloth exploded directly in everyone's minds.

The multicolored bands of light vanished instantly.

The nauseating dizziness also receded.

In its place was a deathly silence and the eternal, bone-chilling starlight.

"Did we... make it out?" Li Na panted, looking at the porthole in a daze.

Immediately after, her pupils contracted sharply, her mouth hanging open to an exaggerated degree, and a "he-he" sound came from her throat, but she couldn't utter a complete sentence.

It wasn't just her.

On the entire bridge, except for Academician Wang and Lin Yuan who were mentally prepared, everyone's brains stalled the moment they saw the scene before them.

This was indeed a part of the universe.

But it was more like... a graveyard.

Massive ship wrecks floated in the void; even the smallest fragment was larger in volume than the "Ford" aircraft carrier they had just discarded.

Some wrecks had cuts as smooth as mirrors, clearly severed instantly by some high-energy weapon; others looked like they had been half-melted by high temperatures, solidifying into twisted metal lumps; still others were even more bizarre, covered in tumors resembling biological tissue that still crawled slowly in the vacuum.

What kind of tragic war must it have been to create ruins on such a scale?

Compared to these wrecks, the history of warfare that humanity took pride in was like kindergarten children playing in a sandbox.

"Stop daydreaming."

Lin Yuan's voice broke the silence. He slowly stood up, walked to the large floor-to-ceiling porthole, and looked past the sea of wreckage toward the very center of this graveyard.

"The real big guy is over there."

Everyone followed his gaze.

*Gasp*—!

This time, it felt as if even the air had been sucked dry.

In the center of that ocean of wreckage, a "planet" floated quietly.

No.

That wasn't a planet.

That was an artificial celestial body constructed entirely of steel, armor, giant cannons, and towers!

Its diameter was estimated to exceed five thousand kilometers!

What did that mean?

The diameter of the Moon is only about three thousand four hundred kilometers.

This thing was a whole size larger than the Moon!

Its entire body was a despairing grayish-black, covered in layers of composite armor several kilometers thick. Countless industrial towers as grand as mountain ranges stood on the surface, and dense batteries of cannons were as numerous as a forest.

Even though it had no lights at the moment and was deathly silent, like the corpse of a giant god floating in the universe...

The sheer pressure brought by its sheer volume still made everyone on "luan bird one" feel suffocated.

Megalophobia.

At this moment, it became everyone's instinctive reaction.

"luan bird one" was six hundred meters long, a sky-blotting behemoth on Earth.

But now, as it slowly approached that steel fortress, it was like a fly trying to land on the surface of a skyscraper.

Tiny.

Humble.

Insignificant.

"This... is the 'scrap' we're looking for?" Lao Zhang swallowed hard, his voice trembling. "If this is scrap, then what are we? Bacteria?"

Academician Wang looked at the fortress obsessively, tears flowing uncontrollably. "Titan Heavy Industry... this is the industrial crystallization of a god-level civilization! Just looking at it, I feel I can die without regrets!"

"Don't be so quick to die."

Lin Yuan narrowed his eyes. In that deathly silent steel jungle, he sensed a hint of danger.

As a veteran scavenger, he knew all too well.

The more advanced the tomb, the more lethal the traps.

"Even if it's asleep, the guard dogs might still be awake."

As if to confirm Lin Yuan's jinx...

The moment "luan bird one" was within three thousand kilometers of the fortress.

Buzz—

On the fortress's perimeter, thousands of crimson light dots suddenly lit up on the previously dead, grayish-black armor.

Those were... energy reactions!

"Warning! High-energy radar lock detected!"

"Warning! Unknown batteries ahead are charging! Energy level... immeasurable! Are those... fortress cannons?!"

Li Na screamed.

On the screen, the things on the fortress's surface that looked like "rusted steel pipes" were slowly but steadily turning.

As the distance closed, everyone saw clearly.

That was no steel pipe.

Every single one was a giant Interstellar Orbital Cannon with a caliber exceeding a hundred meters!

Even after millions of years of time's erosion, they faithfully carried out their final orders:

—Any unauthorized object approaching the "gate of hades."

—Eliminate!

Looking at those thousands of pitch-black muzzles, Lin Yuan's face showed no fear; instead, his lips curled into a manic grin.