201: Chapter 205 Customs is not a door, it's a throat.

Fog Ring Nine was still operational.

At least on the surface.

The lights of Low-Value Freight Lane No. 3 flickered on one by one. The outer ring berths were packed with cargo ships and bounty boats waiting for inspection. The Central Ring Certification Hall remained noisy, with calling numbers, price quotes, and arguments blending together like a pot of thick soup boiling over a fire.

No one expected that the first crack would begin in the most inconspicuous of places.

The first thing to go wrong was a secondary turret.

The turret was originally locked onto a supply boat in the outer ring. The identification frame had already turned green, set to release in three seconds. But just as the cursor jumped to the last bar, the main control panel suddenly shuddered. The target frame switched from green to yellow, then yellow to red, and finally cut directly into hostile lock-on mode.

The gunner on duty cursed and scrambled to pull the safety.

Too late.

The secondary turret fired prematurely.

A high-energy beam swept past the supply boat's broadside, shearing off half the hull. Before the crowd in the port could react, a second turret also veered its angle, snapping toward another tax boat that had just entered the dock.

The entire outer ring fell silent for a brief moment.

Immediately afterward, the alarm finally sounded.

It wasn't the station-wide red alert.

It was just a yellow light.

This made people even more anxious.

Because a yellow light meant the system believed it could still fix itself.

But anyone could see that it had already begun to fall into chaos.

In the Central Ring Certification Hall, Seal-Bearer Hexiu looked up abruptly.

He was getting on in years, the tips of his ears were gray, and the cuffs of his dharma robes were frayed. Today, he had already verified nearly six hundred bounty certifications, and he was currently sustaining his spirit with a cup of cold medicinal tea.

When the secondary screen flashed red, his first reaction wasn't shock, but annoyance.

"Which line is clogged now?"

The duty officer rushed in, covered in cold sweat, his voice cracking.

"The buffer for Freight Lane No. 3 has exploded! The account code re-sequencing at the west recycling port hasn't stopped, and the outer ring secondary turrets misidentified targets and have already damaged two local supply boats!"

Hexiu's face darkened.

"What about the main database?"

"The main database is still running, but the speed has dropped."

"Who's on maintenance?"

"Maintenance Group 27 has already been dispatched."

Hexiu stood up, took one step, and then stopped.

He suddenly felt something was wrong.

A misjudgment by an outer ring turret could be explained.

A backlog in the low-value freight lanes could also be explained.

But the account code re-sequencing at the recycling port shouldn't be following suit in the chaos.

This wasn't a single point of failure.

Something was crawling through the system.

He turned and headed straight for the main control hall.

Simultaneously, in the deep space shadows outside Fog Ring Nine, the Exile Fortress quietly shed its final layer of camouflage.

No lights came on.

No main cannons charged.

It was simply a process of a silhouette slowly becoming visible.

Like a black whale that had been lying prone in the deep sea for too long, slowly revealing its spine above the water's surface.

The fortress was too massive.

It didn't need fanfare.

It only needed to appear.

The detection mirror array on the outermost perimeter of Fog Ring Nine discovered it first, but before the detection data could be fully uploaded, the buffer displacement from the central ring pushed back. The two systems collided, and the main control screen instantly went white for a moment.

As Hexiu rushed into the main control hall, he saw the duty mages standing in rows, their faces pale.

In the center of the hall, on the 3D star map covering the entire customs office, a massive pitch-black shadow had appeared where the empty space background should be. The shadow was so large it covered half of the outer ring.

No identification.

No ship name.

No registration number.

Only volume and silhouette.

Hexiu stared at the thing for two seconds, his throat suddenly tightening.

"It's not a cargo ship."

No one responded.

Because saying such nonsense felt redundant even to him.

That was no cargo ship.

That was a black fortress.

At the same time, inside the main control room of the Exile Fortress.

Li Cang sat in the command seat, elbows on the armrests, fingers resting on the main deployment lever. The wide main screen in front of him was divided into six windows, showing the outer ring turret positions, the central ring crowd flow, the main tower's internal network, the distribution of bounty boats, the deployment status of the Cannon Fodder Army, and the standby zones for the Astartes and Knights.

It wasn't time for them to take the stage yet.

In the bottom-left corner of the screen, lines of yellow lights were climbing upward.

[Lane No. 3 Identification Delay: 17%]

[West Sector Shield Node Feedback Distortion: 9%]

[Recycling Mainline Logic Displacement: Continuously Expanding]

[Friend-or-Foe Conflict in Two Outer Ring Turrets]

[Local Access Code Re-sequencing in Central Ring]

Li Cang watched for a while, his fingers tapping the table.

Not enough.

It would be better if it were a bit more chaotic.

He didn't like half-opened gaps.

If he was going to act, he had to make the door completely crooked.

"Number One."

The communication connected.

The low sound of collisions on the deck came from the other side, and Number One's voice was very steady.

"Present."

"Prepare for deployment. First batch: five hundred thousand. Spread them across the connection zone between the outer and central rings. Block the paths first, then draw the fire."

"Understood."

"Knights on standby. Hold the Astartes back, do not move."

"Understood."

Having issued the commands, Li Cang withdrew his hand and continued to watch.

This battle wouldn't be won by the first strike.

It would be won by the first strike throwing the enemy into chaos.

Only in chaos would there be cracks.

Only with cracks could the blade enter.

—

Fog Ring Nine, Main Control Hall.

Hexiu had already ordered the closure of Freight Lane No. 3 and cut off all external access permissions for the low-value recycling ports. But when the orders were sent out, the execution feedback was a beat late.

That beat was very short.

So short that normally no one would care.

But today, it was fatal.

Because in that single beat, the ceiling of the main control hall suddenly darkened.

It wasn't a power outage.

The light was being blocked.

Several duty mages instinctively looked up.

Outside the thick transparent dome, a whole expanse of black metal ventral armor had pressed down above them. Complex deployment structures unfolded layer by layer, like a mechanical stomach opening up.

Hexiu's expression finally changed.

"Station-wide red alert! Activate the main shields! Get me the—"

He didn't finish the sentence.

Because the bottom of the Exile Fortress had already opened its doors.

It wasn't just one door.

Hundreds of deployment hatches flipped open simultaneously.

There were no magnificent exhaust flames.

No precise landing points.

There were only batch after batch of dark, dense drop pods, smashing down like iron rain.

Five hundred thousand.

This number was just a value on a screen.

But falling into a busy customs office, it was a disaster.

The first batch of drop pods smashed through the outer ring berths. Bridges, tax warehouses, hangars, and supply pipes fractured and collapsed all the way. The second batch landed directly in the peripheral corridors of the central ring, crushing the bounty groups and tax guards who were still running outward into a mess of rolling minced meat. The third batch was the most ruthless, nailing themselves along the main tower's outer maintenance spine like a ring of spikes, wedging the entire central axis corridor tight.

The pod doors popped open.

The things crawling out were not regular soldiers in neat uniforms.

They were a group of mutated auxiliary soldiers with deformed heights, eyes filled only with red light, crude iron armor strapped to their chests, and heavy live-ammo guns in their hands.

Many of them had broken legs upon landing.

But they didn't stop.

With bones crooked, they dragged themselves forward.

Even with their bellies split open, they pressed forward while holding them shut with their hands.

They didn't need formations.

They were a flood in themselves.

Before Hexiu could recover from the first wave of the bombardment, the outer ring firepower was forced to depress and fire. Gunshots were everywhere in the customs office, people were screaming everywhere, and the roar of turrets turning was constant.

Worse still, the system was still in chaos.

Just as a secondary turret locked onto a group of cannon fodder rushing into a berth, the identification tag of a nearby bounty boat suddenly turned red. The turret turned. The captain of the bounty boat only had time to shout half a curse before the entire ship was blasted into burning fragments.

"Who the hell fired!"

"It wasn't us!"

"The customs office has gone crazy!"

"Why aren't the shields opening!"

"The main tower side has blocked the certification line!"

The entire central ring channel was like a pot of boiling soup.

Veins throbbed on Hexiu's forehead. He lunged at the master console, forcibly cutting into the main tower's permissions. He didn't want to win this battle; he first had to seize back control.

But the moment his palm pressed down, he saw a string of old tax codes rolling out from the bottom of the buffer.

That string of codes hadn't been entered today.

It was very old.

As old as an account book dug out of a tomb.

Hexiu felt a chill down his spine.

Someone had infiltrated beforehand.

This wasn't a sudden attack at all.

This was poisoning the well before smashing the door.

He finally understood.

But he understood too late.

—

Li Cang saw the main tower's permission flow begin to shudder and raised his hand to cut into the next layer of the tactical interface.

In the top-right corner of the screen, the enemy's outer ring heavy firepower had been tied down. The central ring inner lines were a mess. The main tower guards were retreating. The remaining elite firepower began to concentrate toward the central axis.

The time had come.

He pressed the second permission key.

"Knights, go."

"Astartes, pierce the main spine."

As the command was issued, a heavy hidden deck in the belly of the Exile Fortress snapped forward. It wasn't a conventional drop platform, but an extended impact rail.

At the end of the rail, the Starfall Heavy Executioner Knight bowed its head, the thruster nozzles on its back lighting up section by section in dark red.

The elite Astartes company led by Number One was already on standby on both sides.

"Clear the way."

Li Cang said only three words.

The next moment, the entire impact rail spat out a burst of fire.

The Executioner Knight was like a red-hot steel wedge, slamming straight down along the outer wall of Fog Ring Nine's central axis. The layer of folding shields that had just barely been patched up ahead didn't even have time to close before being split apart by its frontal armor and giant chainsaw blade.

A hideous rift was torn into the metal outer wall.

Behind it, three thousand Astartes poured through the breach.

They were different from the five hundred thousand cannon fodder outside.

The cannon fodder were responsible for clogging.

They were responsible for the decapitation strike.

In the first corridor inside the main tower, tax guards and high-level mages had just established a defensive line. The first row of mages raised their hands, and as the Lance array lit up only halfway, the Astartes had already slammed into them.

Bolters swept through first.

Shields exploded first.

Before the people in the second row could retreat, chainsaws had already sliced through horizontally.

In the narrow corridor, there was no room for fancy maneuvers. There was only the sound of heavy boots slamming the ground, shell casings jumping, and chainsaws dragging through blood as they sliced through armor plates and bones.

Number One walked at the very front.

He didn't shout or roar, and he made no redundant movements.

Raising his hand meant a kill.

If something blocked the way, he smashed through it.

When people fell, he didn't even give them a second look.

In a place like this, speed was more important than ruthlessness.

Ruthlessness only determined how many you killed.

Speed determined whether you could pull out that brain before the main tower self-destructed.

Only two doors remained for the main tower's core layer.

Li Cang cut into the internal perspective. In the image, red lights had already begun to flash behind the doors. The customs main brain was forcibly sealing the account books and pushing the final round of emergency upload instructions to the outer ring.

Any slower, and the entire set of accounts would fly out.

"Forget the doors."

Li Cang spoke.

"Pull the wall down directly."

Hearing the command, Number One raised his hand and stepped aside.

The Executioner Knight pressed up from behind. Its tens-of-meters-long chainsaw blade sank along the base of the wall and suddenly heaved upward. The entire alloy wall panel, along with pipes and light strips, was hacked open. The main tower's core layer was exposed like a pried-open safe.

The central main brain was suspended between supports.

It looked like a giant, vertically standing silver-white spine.

Countless account codes, access certifications, blacklists, whitelists, tax chains, and bounty permissions flowed along that main bone.

The final circle of guards around the main brain had just raised their guns.

Bolters washed through them.

People fell, blood splattered, and rows of control consoles exploded into white fire.

Number One stepped through the flames and broken glass, throwing out a power anchor hook that bit directly into the base of the main brain. More than a dozen Astartes stepped forward simultaneously, wrapping thick adamantine tow chains around it tightly.

The main brain emitted a sharp whine.

The self-destruct sequence began to count down.

Li Cang watched the screen without even a furrow of his brow.

"Pull."

Number One's arms strained, and the dozen or so people behind him exerted force at the same time.

With the first pull, the base cracked.

With the second pull, the cooling pipes exploded.

With the third pull, the entire main bone was torn from its mounting slots, bringing with it a large spray of data sparks and fragmented account codes as it was forcibly yanked out of the main tower.

The moment it left its base.

The lights across all of Fog Ring Nine flared once, then dimmed simultaneously.

The outer ring turrets stopped firing.

The bounty certification screens went black.

The flow of tax codes ground to a halt.

The permission chips in the hands of the bounty groups failed one by one.

The entire customs office, like a snake with its throat slit still twitching, began to die section by section from the central axis outward.

—

In the main control room.

Li Cang watched the customs office slowly shutting down on the large screen and finally leaned back into his chair.

Only then did he pick up his cold coffee and take a sip.

It was very bitter.

But it was worth it.

The secondary screen popped up a collection completion prompt.

[Fog Ring Nine Main Ledger Main Brain: Stored]

[Peripheral Bounty Certification Chain: Disconnected]

[Hunting Permissions in this Sector: Widespread Failure]

[Additional Acquisitions: Federation Peripheral Gray Ledger Supplement, Whitelist Route Fragments, Prison Star Transfer Records]

Li Cang's gaze paused.

Whitelist routes.

Prison star transfer records.

These two things were the real haul today.

The customs office was a door.

The main brain was the lock.

And these accounts hidden inside the lock cylinder were the bait that could drag people into deep water next.

He set down his cup and clicked on the deepest part of the supplement.

The first line of a not-yet-fully decoded record slowly appeared.

[Whitelist Escort Star: Frost Prison No. 4]

[Cargo Category: Sealed High-Value Prisoners, Unregistered Psionic Samples, Special Experimental Materials]

[Authorization Level: Federation Inner Ring]

Li Cang looked for two seconds and smiled.

Not small.

And not light either.

"The customs office is dismantled," he said calmly, looking at that line of text. "Next stop, the prison."

Just as he spoke, the last secondary tower of Fog Ring Nine collapsed on the corner of the screen.

The bounty order of the entire star sector broke along with it.