Chapter 171 You call this an engine? This is clearly a planet-destroying cannon!

"Thump."

A human popsicle covered in white frost was thrown onto the floor of the dragon sparrow's command room.

Zeta, a patrol officer who was usually pampered, was curled up into a shrimp-like ball at this moment, his teeth chattering with a crisp sound that stood out in the silent room.

He had spent a full hour in Lin Yuan's system space; that place, piled high with scrap metal, had a temperature even lower than the deep space outside.

"Give... give me hot water..." Zeta tremblingly reached out a hand, which was purple like a rotten eggplant.

Lin Yuan sat in the command chair with his legs crossed, holding half a bottle of red wine he had pilfered from Black Shark Fortress; the label on the wine read "Special Supply," and the taste was indeed smoother than Erguotou.

"No hot water, only this bottle of wine, an '82 vintage." Lin Yuan shook the bottle. "Want a drink?"

Zeta nodded frantically, his eyes full of longing.

"Answer a few questions, and this bottle of wine is yours." Lin Yuan placed the bottle on the floor, only half a meter away from Zeta. "Otherwise, I'll stuff you back in. This time, I won't put you in solitary confinement; I'll throw you straight into the decomposition furnace."

Zeta shuddered; the fear of watching his own body decompose sobered him up instantly.

"What... what do you want to ask?"

"That 'Reaper,' and what kind of game you Order Bureau people are playing." Lin Yuan pointed to the terminal that was still broadcasting on the full-frequency band. "Don't give me that 'for justice' nonsense. If someone like Black Shark could live this long without your nod, he would have died eight hundred times over."

Zeta fell silent for a moment, but when Lin Yuan raised his hand in a gesture to "recycle" him again, his psychological defense collapsed completely.

"It's... it's a deal." Zeta said, trembling. "The Orion Civilization Order Bureau... has actually been rotten for a long time. The higher-ups signed a secret agreement with the 'Andromeda Trade Alliance' to designate this chaotic star region as a 'buffer zone.'"

"A buffer zone?" Lin Yuan raised an eyebrow.

"It's... a pig farm." Zeta gritted his teeth. To save his life, he spilled everything. "Pirates are responsible for beating those low-level civilizations to a pulp, then the Order Bureau steps in for 'humanitarian rescue,' and finally, we legally sell the populations and resources of those civilizations to the giants in Andromeda as laborers and raw materials. In return, we get a twenty percent profit share."

Chen Weiguo, listening from the side, clenched his fists so hard they cracked: "So in your eyes, we low-level civilizations are just walking cash?"

"No... not even as good as cash." Zeta gave a miserable laugh. "In the eyes of those true god-level civilizations, we are just slightly higher-level foremen."

Lin Yuan touched his chin thoughtfully.

"Very good, that makes sense."

He turned to look at gaia: "Did you record it all?"

"Crystal clear! Even the ice chunks in this kid's nostrils were captured perfectly!" gaia replied excitedly.

"Send it out." Lin Yuan kicked the bottle of wine to Zeta. "Broadcast it on all channels. Strip these hypocrites naked and hang them on the walls of the galaxy to dry."

This move was called killing the heart.

As long as this footage spread throughout the Orion Arm, those self-proclaimed "defenders of order" would fall into a massive quagmire of public opinion. Although this kind of public opinion was painless for the higher-ups, it would at least stop them from openly sending regular armies to suppress Earth—after all, they still needed to save face.

What remained were the "black hands" who could only act in the shadows.

Having settled the intelligence, Lin Yuan didn't have time to deal with the young master who was hugging the wine bottle and weeping, so he got up and walked to the hangar.

"Old Chen, how are things going with Old Man Wang? He said he had something new to show me."

"You should go take a look. That old madman is so excited now that I'm afraid he'll have a brain hemorrhage." Chen Weiguo sighed. "He welded all the shield generators and focusing lenses taken from the fortress onto the planetary engine."

...

Earth's equator, planetary engine Base No. 1.

This place, originally a propulsion nozzle for jet flames, had undergone a massive transformation.

Around the massive nozzle, a complex array of crystal lenses had been installed, with dense wiring connecting to the energy cores snatched from Black Shark Fortress like blood vessels.

The newly defected mechanic, A Ji, was standing on the scaffolding, staring blankly at the lenses, not even reacting when his wrench fell.

"This... this structure is wrong!" A Ji pulled at his hair, looking devastated. "Why install phase focusing lenses on a propulsion unit? This will convert the thrust into high-energy rays! Not only will this reduce propulsion efficiency, it will also cause the nozzle to overheat!"

"What the hell do you know!"

Academician Wang, wearing a white coat stained with machine oil, waved a blueprint in his hand like a general commanding thousands of troops. "So what if the efficiency is lower? As long as the thrust is high enough, even a fifty percent conversion rate is enough to push Earth forward! The key is that we need to be hard!"

"Hard?" A Ji was stunned.

"Lin said it, we are wandering now, not on vacation! There will definitely be blind dogs blocking the way." Academician Wang patted the house-sized crystal lens beside him. "This thing can compress fusion flames into a straight line, with a range of up to three hundred thousand kilometers!"

Just as he was speaking, Lin Yuan arrived.

"Old Man Wang, I heard you got me a new toy?" Lin Yuan looked at the unrecognizable engine nozzle, his eyes lighting up slightly.

"You're here? Good, let's test the waters!" Academician Wang waved his hand. "gaia, lock onto that asteroid we dragged back from the pirate den, the one about five hundred kilometers in diameter, and use it as a target for me!"

"Understood!"

As the alarm sounded, planetary engine No. 1 began to charge.

The originally crimson plasma flame, after being refracted and compressed by the ring of crystal lenses, began to change color drastically.

Red, white, blue, and finally, it turned into a blinding purple-black.

"Fire!"

Boom—!

There was no diffuse tail flame, only a beam of light condensed to the extreme.

The beam pierced the firmament straight, like a long spear aiming to poke a hole in the universe.

The abandoned asteroid with a diameter of five hundred kilometers, located three hundred thousand kilometers away, which had just been displaying its massive body on the radar screen, was pierced through the center by this beam of light in the next second.

There was no explosion.

Because the high temperature instantly vaporized the matter.

The asteroid looked as if a piece had been erased by an eraser, and then the entire planet rapidly disintegrated under high temperature and high pressure, turning into a brilliant cloud of particles.

"Gulp."

A Ji swallowed hard, his chin almost hitting the scaffolding.

"This... this is a thruster?"

He turned his stiff neck to look at the satisfied Lin Yuan and the fanatical Academician Wang, feeling his worldview shattered into pieces.

"You call this an engine? This fucking thing is clearly a planet-destroying cannon!"

A five-hundred-kilometer asteroid!

Even a main battleship of the regular army might not be able to vaporize it into this state with one shot.

These Earthlings actually named it "planetary engine"? And said it was for traveling?

"Tsk, quite a kick." Lin Yuan blocked the blinding light and commented. "It's just that the recoil is a bit fierce. Did Earth shake just now?"

"Just fine-tune it!" Academician Wang recorded data on his notebook excitedly. "With this thing, our twelve thousand planetary engines on Earth are twelve thousand heavy cannons! Whoever dares to block the way, I'll let them know what 'truth is only within the range' means!"

Lin Yuan patted A Ji on the shoulder, making the alien friend who hadn't recovered from his shock shudder.

"Don't make a fuss, it's a basic operation, don't be surprised." Lin Yuan said earnestly. "We Earthlings love peace; this is just to clear the garbage on the shipping route. After all, littering is uncivilized behavior."

A Ji looked at the particle cloud still spreading in the distance and silently swallowed back the words, "You are the biggest garbage producers."

With supplies and cannons, the Earthlings' spines straightened instantly.

In the following days, the originally dead-silent wandering journey turned into a carnival.

The synthetic meat and various strange ingredients snatched from the pirate den were distributed to every underground city.

To celebrate this narrow escape and the annihilation of the pirates, Lin Yuan made a big gesture and held the first "Starry Sky Barbecue Festival."

Even the few pirate shipwrecks that hadn't been dismantled were dragged into low Earth orbit to serve as temporary fireworks display points.

In the squares of the underground cities, long-lost laughter echoed one after another.

People drank the inferior rum found in the pirate warehouse, ate synthetic meat skewers sizzling with oil, and watched Zeta's bruised face playing on a loop on the big screen, as happy as if they were celebrating the New Year.

However, at this moment of universal celebration, at the very top of the Heavenly Court Fortress.

Lin Yuan sat alone on the cold observation deck, holding Zeta's cracked personal terminal.

He couldn't hear the cheers from the ground, only the hum of the stellar wind blowing over the shields.

"Boss, what are you looking at?" gaia's projection appeared beside him, even virtually conjuring a skewer of grilled kidneys.

"Looking at the road."

Lin Yuan's finger traced across the holographic star map.

The original planned route was to bypass the outer edge of the Orion Arm; while this was longer, it could avoid most of the civilization-dense areas.

But that wouldn't work now.

The "Tribunal" fleet would reach these coordinates in just twelve hours. Although Earth had run a distance away, in the face of true interstellar tracking technology, this was no different from streaking in the snow.

We must change the route.

Lin Yuan's gaze lingered on a corner of the star map.

There was a dark area without any star markers, marked with three blood-red skulls.

Zeta's notes read: 【Land Abandoned by Gods (Shortcut to the Chaotic Star Region)】.

This was a shortcut, leading straight to the center of the galaxy.

But it was also a dead end.

It was said that the place was filled with collapsed spatial turbulence and unknown ancient creatures, and even pirates dared not tread there easily.

"gaia." Lin Yuan suddenly spoke.

"Present."

"Inform Old Chen that the barbecue festival is over." Lin Yuan stood up and poured the half bottle of unfinished wine into the void, as if paying tribute to something.

"Have all combat units return to their positions, planetary engine... preheating."

His gaze was fixed on that dark star region, and a crazy smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

"Since the straight path won't work, we'll just have to break into this ghost gate."

"Compared to being hunted by those sanctimonious charlatans, I prefer risking my life with those unseen things."

At this moment, the countdown on the terminal hit zero.

In the depths of the distant starry sky, several spatial ripples finally calmed down, and a vast fleet as black as ink, carrying the pressure capable of crushing planets, slowly sailed out of the jump gate.

They had arrived.

But Lin Yuan had already turned the steering wheel, taking Earth and diving headlong into that darkness from which even light could not escape.