160: Chapter 164 While others sign contracts, I steal the blueprints.

The moment Kolosius knelt on both knees, the deduction screen cut off the ambient sound.

The roar of gears across all of Mars, the marching footsteps of Servitor queues, and even the storm at the edge of the atmosphere were all extracted by the system.

This absolute silence made the golden silhouette in the image appear increasingly heavy.

The Emperor stepped off the warship.

He did not look at the kneeling High Priest, nor did he utter any mortal political nonsense like "Rise" or "Let us sign the treaty."

He walked directly past Kolosius's head.

His dark gold combat boots stepped onto the main welcoming bridge on the outer side of Olympus Mons; it didn't produce a crisp metallic clang, but rather a sense of pressure that slammed directly onto everyone's retinas.

Mars's hawkish Fabricator-General, Ferion—that cyborg maniac who had been clamoring to fire the cannons—was currently prostrate to the left and rear of Kolosius.

As that golden figure walked past him, his mechanical right arm, which had just had its neural link repaired, began to spasm violently and uncontrollably once more under a pressure colder than a Star Beast.

No one dared to stop him.

Those Skitarii, equipped with Mars's most advanced ion-cutting weapons, parted like a tide pushed by an invisible force field, automatically opening an absolutely straight path in front of the Emperor.

At the end of the path lay the Adeptus Mechanicus's deepest forbidden arsenal—the [Hall of the Omnissiah's Truth].

The camera zoomed out.

It was a staggering underground hub buried thousands of kilometers beneath the Martian crust, large enough to fit half a moon.

Every load-bearing pillar here was as thick as a city, hung with semi-finished war behemoths sealed away by generations of Martian Archmagi.

Some were super tanks where only the chassis had been built, but the width of their treads would give anyone nightmares at a single glance.

Others were giant gene cultivation tanks connected to tens or even hundreds of thousands of IV tubes, with unidentified flesh and tissue churning inside.

This was the true foundation of Mars.

Not those mass-produced warships flying in the sky, but these Golden Age legacies that they couldn't build themselves or didn't dare to finish.

The Emperor's figure entering the arsenal was not even as thick as a single cable.

But when he stood still, the mechanical structures of the entire underground space seemed to tilt toward this speck of a golden point.

Kolosius, along with several high-ranking priests, followed him in, almost crawling on all fours.

The High Priest's electronic eyes flickered frantically, trying to organize words to introduce these prides of Mars, attempting to use these semi-finished products to gain even a shred of dignity in the upcoming treaty.

"This is... the prototype for the land combat platform codenamed 'Behemoth'," Kolosius's voice sounded thin and weak under the vast dome of the arsenal. "And over there... is the first version of the Biological Cultivation Array that we spent five thousand years parsing and piecing together."

The Emperor did not let him finish.

He raised his hand and pointed at the massive biological cultivation tank.

He wasn't pointing at its control panel, but at the wiring on its bottom layer, which the Martian priests considered a discarded design.

"Bring the scrap from Terra here."

This was the first sentence he spoke after entering Mars.

His voice did not travel through the air; instead, using a higher-dimensional vibration, it bypassed the low-level firewalls the Adeptus Mechanicus were so proud of and imprinted directly onto the brainstem of every priest.

"Regardless of the cost, within ten Terra Days, I want to see the mass production chain for this design covering the entirety of Olympus Mons."

It wasn't a discussion.

It wasn't a negotiation.

There was certainly no "if you're unwilling, I can exchange this technology" bickering.

Just one sentence: I want it, give it to me within ten days.

Kolosius opened his mouth.

Within that highly mechanized head, tens of thousands of microseconds of political gamesmanship and bargaining chips were calculated, only to freeze up at this moment.

He found that he didn't even dare to ask, "Why is this scrap wire valuable?"

Because the man standing before him had just shown a deeper understanding of the technology they had worshipped for thousands of years with a single evaluative tilt of his head.

It was like a creator looking at a pile of dusty old toys.

Bargaining with the creator over the ownership of the toys?

That was called transgression.

At this moment, the image froze with a powerful sense of epic scale: the supreme ruler of Mars bowing his head, and the golden-armored dictator pointing toward the abyss-like arsenal.

But Li Cang, watching the show from the cockpit, was currently in a state that had absolutely nothing to do with the word "epic."

He was half-squatting on his chair, his eyes wide like a fox in the middle of a robbery.

"What was this old geezer spacing out for just now?!"

Li Cang's fingers slid frantically across the console, not even caring about the harsh scratching sound his nails made on the screen.

The deduction screen was locked; he couldn't control the Emperor.

But he had privileges.

Just as Kolosius, in order to show the Emperor Mars's foundation, foolishly left the data core of the [Hall of the Omnissiah's Truth] in an "unprotected" standby state...

Li Cang keenly seized this system backdoor that could make him rich overnight.

"The seventh day's starvation period is only four hours away. Am I supposed to watch a bunch of starved Servitors here until the deduction ends?"

He pulled the holographic view of the tactical system to its limit.

He locked onto the Martian core terminal that was emitting a massive stream of data.

He couldn't follow the deduction's line to directly "take" the blueprints into reality. That would be breaking the law of historical causality and would result in immediate erasure by the system.

But he could.

How?

[Observer Privilege: Deep Imprint].

"If I can't afford to buy it, can't I just take a picture?!"

Li Cang immediately called up his few remaining spare points used to maintain the battle axe frigate's life support system.

He even activated the most disgusting high-interest loan agreement in the Cyber Epoch, forcibly exchanging it for a three-minute ultra-high bandwidth capture channel.

On the screen.

That layer of blue data stream representing Mars's deepest secrets was being frantically copied by Li Cang in an extremely wretched and highly parasitic manner.

The Emperor was in front, suppressing the entire upper echelon of Mars with absolute pressure.

Everyone's attention was on that indescribable deity.

No one cared about the data loss warnings flashing frantically at the system's low level.

The progress bar stretched into a red line in Li Cang's pupils.

[Obtained Sub-Blueprint Fragment: "Mass Production Logistics Coordination Array (Budget Replacement Version)"].

[Obtained Sub-Blueprint Fragment: "Secondary Deep Space Gravity Mining Barge (Scrap Version)"].

Li Cang didn't even look at those crude prefixes like "Budget Replacement Version" or "Scrap Version."

These rogue industrial blueprints, which didn't require high-precision materials and could churn out production supplies in a vacuum using a pile of scrap metal and slag, were the life-saving elixirs that could allow him to survive before starving to death.

"Faster... deeper..."

Li Cang's finger pressed down hard on the capture button.

Just as the three-minute loan channel was about to close, in the final second before the deduction screen began to show static due to his illegal interference...

The deep blue data stream was flipped to the very bottom.

A broken black data block, marked with heavy physical black locks—something even the Emperor hadn't pointed at earlier, or perhaps didn't want to touch at all—was hooked at one corner by Li Cang's capture net.

Click.

The system erupted with an extremely sharp error warning.

The deduction terminated abruptly in a flash of white light.

[Temporary settlement package has been sent.]

[High-risk observer interference detected. Subsequent deduction plot has been sealed, awaiting secondary verification.]

The light screen dissipated.

Li Cang was forcibly ejected back into the freezing reality of the cockpit.

He didn't care about that damn "deduction sealed" warning. As long as he didn't die, this haul was pure profit.

In reality.

There were only three hours left before the credit blockade and sanction order, which could turn his mining star base into a ghost town, took effect.

Li Cang suddenly pulled over the physical cards he had just "imprinted."

The first two grey blueprints were the [Deep Space Mining Barge] and [Logistics Coordination]. With these, even if not a single drop of fuel was transported from the outside, he could rely on sucking up dust in the vacuum to squeeze out resources, forcibly breaking through The Chess Player's blockade net.

But his gaze was completely glued to the final item that had dropped along with those two grey cards.

It was a tattered fragment with extremely eerie dark green flames burning around its edges.

It didn't have the gear-like style of the Martian cult, nor did it have the Emperor's rugged and overbearing golden texture.

The aura emanating from this thing...

Carried an extreme cold that made one feel their cells were undergoing mutation, even through the system card.

[Decryption Failed: Dark Technology Fragment].

[Trait: Violates basic mechanical common sense.]

Li Cang looked at that line of text.

He suddenly understood why the Emperor hadn't pointed at this area just now.

Even that golden tyrant felt that touching this thing would dirty his hands.