172: Chapter 176 I smashed your lock and went for a walk in your backyard.

The very second that [Secondary Stargate Route Physical Laying Remnant Map], mostly smeared with blood plasma, was input into the system by the holographic scanning eye, a series of extremely piercing lock-down alarms erupted in the cockpit.

It wasn't that the blueprints were damaged.

Rather, the space spanning hundreds of light-years around Mining Planet No. 3, where Li Cang stood, had long ago been placed under a physical blockade by that damned "Chess Player" of the Eternal Star Crown Federation using supreme authority.

On the large holographic screen, the magnificent three-dimensional framework of the circular stargate was densely entangled by tens of thousands of High-Dimensional Data Chains belonging to the Federation.

[Warning: The current star sector's no-fly protocol is in effect.]

[Any attempt to forcibly lay a conventional spatial Warp stargate will have its wave frequency captured by the Large Map Joint Outpost at the initial 0.1 seconds of base formation, triggering a direct disciplinary-grade strike from cross-sector main cannons.]

Li Cang glanced at the terms "conventional spatial Warp" and "captured wave frequency" within that long string of red text.

As long as this gate used conventional pulse signals to align with anchor points...

The moment it opened, his coordinates would be as conspicuous as a signal flare in the dead of night, and what would welcome him would be a true volley of ten thousand cannons.

It was like being in a room where the internet had been cut; any surreptitiously connected network cable would trigger an alarm on the main server.

But Li Cang wasn't here to connect an ordinary network cable.

"Sweep all that rotten meat into the pit," Li Cang said coldly as he switched on the broadcast channel.

In the lower deck, thousands of Servitors whose emotional modules had been completely erased...

...acted like porters moving cargo, mechanically and heartlessly taking the mangled corpses of the thousand-plus mercenaries killed moments ago, along with the wrecks of the hover landing vehicles that had been shot to pieces...

...and shoved them all at once with bulldozers into the bottom of the massive Mars Great Production Smelting Vat.

Li Cang completely ignored any precise alloy ratio requirements for stargate construction.

What he wanted was a layer of "mud wall" that provided absolute physical insulation.

Into this pile of foundation substrate—a mixture of human blood, severed limbs, and charred scrap iron...

...Li Cang pulled out the last remaining trump card in his hand from the high-end cold storage unit.

The remaining one-tenth of [High-Dimensional Crystal] powder residue he hadn't used up in the computing power cage, plus a segment of the [Original Cyber Virus] main program riddled with Trojans that he had pried out of a tactical core.

He threw it all into the boiling cauldron of the furnace.

"Old rules, add some seasoning to it."

He didn't attempt to use hacking techniques to crack those tens of thousands of Federation data locks.

He directly cast a thick physical shielding layer—a blend of high-dimensional flesh and non-logical viruses capable of instantly jamming any electronic detection microscope—onto the lowest-level transmitting antenna of this massive stargate.

A dark red light flashed wildly within the volcanic crater.

Four hours later.

A massive, ten-thousand-meter-tall gate frame that would cause absolute physiological discomfort at a single glance stood completed, slowly closing within the crater.

Its main body lacked the streamlined white purity and solemnity of high-tier civilizations. Instead, it was draped with twisted, dark green iron-skin sprouts that looked like blood vessels, not yet cooled or hardened from the recent casting.

At the signal transmission end of the stargate...

...those high-energy sensors that should have been emitting precise positioning bands were smothered by that wall-thick layer of high-dimensional rotten meat, mixed with corpses and viruses.

This wasn't a normal secondary stargate at all.

This was an abyssal maw lined with black teeth, meant only to bite through dimensional barriers in secret.

[Fusion Complete: Starfall Special Edition · Deep Space Blind-Jump Private Webway Gate.]

[Property Description: It does not emit signals. It uses extremely primitive and wild brute force to forcibly tear the spatial membrane of the reality dimension, plunging the vehicle into the depths of the indescribable purple Warp turbulence for a blind piercing jump.]

[Counter-Reconnaissance Rating: Excellent. High-tier radars will only determine that a minor and irregular local gravitational field collapse has occurred here. There is no traceable data overflow.]

If the great map system were alive, it would likely have been revolted to the point of vomiting by this operation, which was even more underhanded and filthy than a thief's.

But Li Cang was in no mood to feel sorry for the system.

He sat in the command chair of the battle axe heavy cruiser, which was now more than half-repaired, though its exterior had become even darker and more sinister.

His finger pressed down with extreme steadiness on the activation valve that connected to the private-server stargate.

"Open the gate. We're going to take a look behind these big capitalists."

Rumble!

A dull roar of physical compression, devoid of any flashy light effects, exploded above Mining Planet No. 3.

There was no soft, faint blue Warp tunnel typical of high-tier civilizations.

In the center of that ten-thousand-meter-tall hideous gate, the physical dimension of the real world was like human skin being forcibly sliced by a dull knife, rawly pulled open into a bottomless, massive rift emitting a pungent smell of sulfur and purple chaotic light.

No alarms lit up in the Federation's main monitoring network.

Once the light beams from those observers' high-precision probes swept over and touched the virus-ridden meat protection at the gate's edge, the feedback sent back was merely a set of meaningless "natural meteorite disintegration garbled code."

The battle axe heavy cruiser's awe-inspiring, four-kilometer-long black hull didn't even deploy any protective shields.

It plunged headfirst into that extremely turbulent purple abyssal crack. The instant its tail flame disappeared, the rift in the center of the gate, lacking a signal source to maintain it, suddenly snapped shut like a mangled face being pinched together.

The dead star system returned to tranquility.

But the nightmare had already been deployed.

...

One hundred and thirty light-years away.

At the far rear border of the Eternal Star Crown Federation, [Emerald Ring · Eighth Genetic Agricultural Planet].

This was a wealthy ecological planet used to provide special-supply psionic fruits and high-purity cloned bodies for the Federation's high-ranking nobles. Vast areas of emerald-green petri dishes and azure ocean currents traced an exquisite picture on the planet's surface.

Because it was located deep in the Federation's rear and far from the front-line encirclement zone where heavy forces were gathered because of that mad dog...

...the orbital defenses here consisted of only thirty or so symbolic light armed Light-Feather Patrol Boats.

It was too peaceful—so peaceful that the radar operators on the patrol boats were drinking afternoon tea at their posts, having even adjusted the scanning threshold to the most power-saving sleep mode.

But on the high-altitude vacuum membrane just thirty thousand kilometers away from this wealthy planet, invisible to their naked eyes...

...no high-level Federation alarms were raised.

The flat space was like a blister being suddenly squeezed to bursting.

Accompanied by an extremely faint physical sound of breaking air, a drop...

Yes, just like a single drop of extremely foul-smelling, bottomless black iron-blood slime emitting an intensely violent and aggressive tail flame, it forcibly seeped out from that void barrier.

It expanded in an instant.

It expanded into the battle axe heavy cruiser, its surface covered in scars, its bow lower deck loaded with the surface's most ferocious, full-rage dreadnought mechs and a host of Astartes Recruits!

Inside the cockpit.

Li Cang stood before the panoramic window, looking down at that exquisite emerald planet below, which was completely defenseless and hadn't even raised a single anti-aircraft shield.

In those eyes that usually only considered pros and cons...

...a cold light flared, the bloodiest and most greedy kind seen in the exploration of the great map.