182: Chapter 186 You want to use me as a wild boss to farm? Then I'll treat you all like a buffet.

Li Cang cut off that extremely nauseating encrypted communication channel.

He didn't wait around for that so-called Federation Archon to throw a tantrum. On the holographic radar, the wreckage of those thousands of thoroughly crushed Royal Vanguard warships formed a high-density metal meteor sandstorm in the vacuum.

This was the best natural cover.

The extreme collision just now, which concentrated hundreds of billions of tons of mass, had caused an extremely severe short-term distortion in the space curvature of this star sector.

That death star no. 3, its surface glowing red-hot and covered with jagged, thick black iron spikes,

was like a rhino that had just gored someone to death, not even flashing its reverse lights. It made use of that exaggeratedly powerful recoil and collapsing gravitational flow.

During the initial fifteen seconds while the fires of the burning ruins completely blocked the view of the following Federation super-formation,

the massive celestial body abruptly retracted all its outward-venting orange core flames. Like a lifeless piece of rubble, it slid smoothly and silently along the spatial slope, sinking into the deep-space dark halo blind zone where light could not reach.

Hit and run; never linger.

The jolting inside the cockpit finally began to subside.

But before Li Cang could even catch his breath against his chair, the red funnel-shaped gauge above the main console, representing the death star fortress's Core Engine Reserve,

was diving crazily in a visible, scalp-numbing, steep downward curve.

“Warning! Maintaining the Nomad Star Fortress form requires a continuous supply of high-equivalent stellar core fission materials.”

“Current stocks of Special Nutrition Liquid and Old Waste have been overdrawn by eighty percent. It is estimated that in seven hours, the Star-Orbit Engine will completely stall. This planet will be downgraded to a common drifting asteroid.”

Driving doesn't cost much, but drag-racing a heavy-armored death star hundreds of kilometers in diameter through the universe resulted in Fuel consumption on a world-ending scale.

Li Cang’s entire accumulated savings had been almost completely drained by that 'dump truck ramming' and the initial escape.

The fortress had to eat immediately. And it needed the kind of massive 'fat meat' that could fill a giant pit.

At the same time, the public channel of the interstellar great map was like a boiling pot of oil, completely exploding.

That brief afterimage of Li Cang driving a flaming broken sphere and directly crushing the Federation's high-tier main fleet, though blurred by heavy magnetic interference, caused an earthquake in the region no less than the system going mad.

The main planet of the Eternal Star Crown Federation, the Star Crown Palace.

The Chess Player, sitting high upon his floating throne, watched the waterfall of data in his eyes without a single ripple, even though his vanguard army had been turned to ash.

He didn't even deploy the remaining tens of thousands of capital ships for a carpet search. He knew all too well how hard it was to find that kind of illogical mad dog once it slipped into the shadows.

He directly posted the spectral fragments of death star no. 3 on the system-wide Most Wanted list.

【Region Calamity Subjugation Order: No. 409X (Nomad System Form).】

【Regardless of strength or origin. Anyone who provides its precise jump coordinates will be rewarded with a hereditary fiefdom of equal area on a Federation core main planet; anyone who manages to shatter its main body, the Federation is willing to cede full extraction rights to three high-purity psionic mining systems.】

This wasn't a simple tantrum. This was an extremely ruthless open scheme.

He wanted to use the greed of the tens of thousands of small and medium civilizations in the Star Martial Epoch region to fill the blind spots in his fleet's search. He was turning Li Cang into a 'World Boss' that the entire server would go mad with envy for, carrying a top-tier guaranteed reward!

Only thirteen light-years away from where Li Cang was currently hiding in the dark abyss.

The Silver Union. A speculative merchant guild temporarily patched together from seventeen mid-tier technological civilizations.

On their prosperous main planet, which was used specifically for stockpiling bulk supplies and trade goods and whose defense system could only be considered second-rate,

hundreds of various armed merchant ships and mercenary assault ships were frantically massing outside the spaceport to refuel. The communication channels were filled with their greedy howls over this windfall.

“Such a super bounty! Even the Federation is reluctant to put in the effort to find it! That broken ball must be at its limit and heavily damaged after that collision!”

The Silver Union Leader excitedly pounded the table in the command tower.

“All search ships, cast a net across the entire sector! As long as any of our crappy radars can catch even a bit of its reflection to send back to the Federation, we’ll directly ascend to the super-tier class for the rest of our lives!”

Those medium-tier players, who had just finished painting their tactical markings and were many already thinking about the fortune they'd make after switching territories, were preparing to push the acceleration levers toward the dark zone.

But they never got the chance to push them.

Because above their vibrant resource main planet, which was packed with various high-tier energy rods and trade ores,

there was no advance jump glow. No ear-piercing alarms from the anti-air radar.

The light from the originally brilliant artificial star overhead

was like a zipper being pulled shut; without any transition, it was directly and rigidly filled and completely obscured by a boundless darkness countless times larger!

The Silver Union Leader looked up blankly.

Outside his command window, the sky had vanished.

Replacing it was the object featured on the system-wide bounty list, covered in blackened, freshly cooled anti-air iron spikes and seeping with abyssal green toxic gas vents.

The No. 3 Nomad Fortress Death Star—as massive and rugged as the face of a deep-space death god.

Not only was it not hiding in the shadows while heavily damaged, it had directly utilized the privileges of a Nomad System to perform a silent warp right over the headquarters of these would-be hounds!

Li Cang stood deep within that giant black sphere that brought a shadow of despair. He looked at the blue high-energy warehouse points on the holographic radar that were almost overflowing.

“You want to farm me like a World Boss? Did you bring the tickets to pay for your lives?”

With cold indifference, he pulled down a large lever on the heavy control console that carried an extremely malicious plundering attribute.

【All-System Harvest Magnetic Pulse and Gravity Suction Trap, physically activated.】

This wasn't a war at all.

Amidst the desperate screams on the surface of the Silver Union's main planet,

the thousands of thick Adamantine Magnetic Anchors beneath the death star elongated like the roots of a great tree, violently piercing into the gravity layer of their fragile planet and biting down hard to lock in place.

That black hole-like deep-space suction power was activated at full capacity!

The surface of the Silver Union's main planet instantly cracked on a massive scale. Buildings filled with high-tier energy rods and armed fleets sitting in the harbor, some even with engines running,

under the irresistible suction of the massive celestial body and the geomagnetic tearing,

were like plastic bags caught in a tornado, along with massive chunks of fertile land. In a tragic and silent space-bound disintegration,

they absurdly and helplessly flowed upward.

In a continuous stream, they were all sucked into the equatorial pits of death star no. 3, which gaped like giant stomachs!

A tragic buffet harvest of an entire city, even an entire civilization, played out as Li Cang’s Fuel gauge surged from red back to green with ultimate satisfaction.

Yet at the console, Li Cang did not completely relax just because he had filled his tank for free.

His dark, greedy eyes swept over the appended notice at the bottom of the bounty order. It was a red-label pursuit mark that bore no guild name, only a cold and twisted 'Capital I-shaped Skull Double-Headed Eagle' tattered emblem.

This mark did not belong to a player in the region.

Among those high-dimensional 'Red Names' who searched and plundered without restraint,

they were the most notorious internal system cleaning specialists.

—The Heresy Inquisition.