187: Chapter 191 Change the Fishpond, I'll Become the Great Demon King

Desolate Star Abyss.

This sector of space is a nameless blank on the standard navigators of the great map system. It lacks stable gravitational anchors and curvature lanes marked by advanced civilizations.

Only ancient and cold supernova remnants emit a faint afterglow in the vacuum.

The massive, mountain-like hull of the Exile Void Fortress glided silently through the darkness.

From the outside, it looked like a fragment of a deep-space tombstone, but the occasional flashes of dark red light deep within the hull revealed an unsettling, vibrant life inside.

Li Cang sat in the central seat of the command bridge. His fingers tapped on the console, his gaze darting between the dense streams of data on the screen.

The blind jump had successfully evaded "The Chess Player's" all-encompassing dragnet.

But the cost was equally high.

On the fortress's main control panel, the indicator bar representing energy reserves was stuck on the dangerous yellow warning line.

To support this million-ton behemoth through a cross-dimensional puncture, nearly sixty percent of the inventory just gathered through plunder had been drained.

"Being huge but unable to withstand hunger just won't do."

He pulled up the deep-space radar, pushed the power to its limit, and began a carpet scan of this dark realm.

The great map knows no forgiveness, only the law of the jungle. Now that he had escaped the hunting grounds of advanced civilizations, he was the fiercest hungry wolf wandering this wilderness.

A few minutes later, a faint green dot popped up on the edge of the radar.

The system magnified the green dot's spectrum and transmitted the coordinate analysis results back to the main screen.

[Discovered low-to-mid-tier carbon-based civilization habitat: Codenamed K-7 Primarch Star.]

[Civilization Level Assessment: Intra-planetary industrial stage. Conventional FTL travel not mastered.]

[Resource Reserve Scan: Large quantities of low-grade biological nutrient raw ore, primary fossil fuels, untapped psionic crystal veins.]

Li Cang's gaze lingered on those few lines of the assessment report.

This was a wild indigenous civilization not yet claimed by top guilds. Their crude, smoke-belching heavy industry and nascent genetic technology weren't even an appetizer for Warhammer's appetite.

But at this moment, before the Exile Fortress lacking basic supplies, this planet was a steaming buffet.

"Adjust course." Li Cang didn't broadcast any external messages; he simply drew a red assault route on the boundary wall. "Lock onto the planet's largest energy concentration zone."

The armor layers on the fortress's belly slowly split open, revealing bottomless orbital drop wells.

K-7 Primarch Star, Northern Hemisphere Core Industrial City-State.

The indigenous residents here were methodically operating tracked mechs in smoke-filled mines. A few old fuel-powered reconnaissance planes circled sluggishly in the sky.

The sky suddenly darkened.

It wasn't an eclipse. A metallic creation large enough to shroud the entire city-state's sky tore through the clouds. It didn't slow down, hovering in low orbit with an ear-shattering sonic boom.

The city-state's air raid sirens wailed shrilly, and the indigenous army's crude gunpowder anti-aircraft guns were hastily pointed toward the sky.

Boom!

Over a hundred drop pods trailing black exhaust fell like a meteor shower.

They didn't precisely avoid buildings. The heavy adamantium shells crashed directly through the city-state's anti-aircraft positions and the dome of the High Council building, kicking up clouds of dust.

The sound of airlocks bursting open formed a continuous line.

The first to emerge were three thousand fully armed mutant Astartes. On K-7, where gravity was far less than that of a Death Star, these black giants moved with startling speed. They didn't form ranks for some honorable positional warfare.

The roar of revving Chainswords drowned out the indigenous Commanders' hoarse shouts.

Braving the weak kinetic machine-gun fire of the indigenous army, the Astartes crashed directly into the crowd.

Ordinary gunpowder weapons couldn't even strike a spark on the power armor. Meanwhile, the thick barrels of the Bolters spat out armor-piercing explosive shells powerful enough to blast the front armor of a tracked tank into scrap metal.

They were in completely different technological eras.

Next, the door of the largest drop pod, which had crashed into the city center plaza, fell. Number Fourteen, the Toxic Holy Dreadnought, stepped onto this strange land with its tank-like body.

Its tracks crushed the exquisite granite slabs. It didn't even activate its eleven-barrel Macro-cannon to waste ammunition; it simply swung its Toxic Flame Armor-Piercing Pincer, covered in tumors and blood vessels. With a backhand sweep, it snapped several indigenous mechs trying to approach in half.

The indigenous soldiers inside the cockpits screamed as they were touched by the toxic flames, instantly turning into pools of foul-smelling black water.

Behind this chaos, the figures of Executioner Assassins quietly appeared under the cover of holographic camouflage. They didn't participate in the frontline push but used the shadows of buildings to slip into the city-state's energy control network. Poisoned blades sliced through the carotid arteries of bewildered operators, cutting off all self-destruct and distress signal lines.

Li Cang sat in the operation pod, watching the screen filled with green occupation progress bars, his fingers tapping quickly on the terminal.

He didn't care about the resistance of life on this planet; it was just a deduction item in the resource accounting sheet.

"Combat units, clear resistance zones on-site. Engineering Servitor arrays, prepare for drop."

He pressed the toggle switch with the plunder attribute.

Dozens of thick, ghostly blue tractor beams descended from the bottom of the fortress. These beams weren't gentle; they plunged into the city-state's underground mineral veins and biological nutrient stores like giant pumps.

Whether it was the wreckage of destroyed indigenous mechs or tons of primary biological raw pulp in the warehouses, everything was swept up by the domineering pull of the beams, swirling into the processing furnaces of the Exile Void Fortress.

"The big guilds occupy the central zone. We'll stay here in this dark gutter and first build a framework that can crush everything."

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, watching the resource lines refill, his eyes showing unmasked aggression.