147: The Breath of the Ghost Ship

The lucky dice was like a giant beast struck by a heavy hammer, violently thrown out from the smooth flow of hyperspace.

Ear-piercing alarms instantly shattered the dead silence of the bridge, and red failure lights flashed frantically on every console, like pairs of terrified eyes.

The violent tremors knocked almost everyone to the floor.

"We're finished! Finished!"

Captain Fili scrambled to the main console, his four eyes staring fixedly at the shocking damage reports filling the screen, his face as pale as a dead fish's belly. He whipped his head around and let out a hysterical scream at Chen Feng, who was barely steadying himself:

"The engine is overloaded! A third of the jump stabilizers are burned out! Do you hear me?! Repairing it will cost a fortune! That pittance you gave me isn't nearly enough!!"

Chen Feng ignored his roar.

His gaze swept past the damage reports representing the ship's death throes, finally locking onto a small screen in the corner.

The green indicator bar representing the ship's cloaking signal was depleting at a visible rate. The camouflage of their 'ghost ship' could fail at any moment.

"Shut up." Chen Feng's voice was cold as he strode toward the communication console to prioritize this most fatal crisis.

"Shut up? I'll make you fucking shut up!" Fili's nerves finally snapped, greed and fear driving him to a state of blind rage. He suddenly drew a bulky energy pistol from his waist, the dark muzzle pointed straight at the center of Chen Feng's back.

"Now! Immediately! Transfer all your account permissions to me!" Fili's voice became shrill and piercing with agitation, "Otherwise I swear, I will personally throw you out of the airlock to feed the space dust!"

Chen Feng's movements paused for a moment.

But he didn't turn around, nor did he even look at the gun pressed against his back.

He simply brought up a file on the console without haste, his voice devoid of emotion as if stating a fact that had nothing to do with him.

"'quick hand' Fili, in the Black Water Conglomerate's Seventh Transport Fleet, there's a logistics officer named Dorn who is your cousin, right?"

The sinister grin on Fili's face instantly froze.

"You... how do you know?"

"I also know you owe a huge debt to 'Butcher', the owner of the Tartarus Underground Arena. With compound interest, it's already exceeded three hundred thousand." Chen Feng's voice remained steady, yet it was like an ice pick driving inch by inch into Fili's heart. "Guess what happens if the Black Water Conglomerate finds out that not only do you owe so much money outside, but you also dared to take private jobs behind their backs... will they help you pay it back, or help you 'decently' disappear from this universe?"

"You... you..."

Cold sweat poured down Fili's face, stinging his four terrified eyes as it flowed from his forehead. The hand holding the gun began to tremble uncontrollably, the muzzle no longer able to point steadily at Chen Feng's back.

Those seemingly unrelated scraps of intelligence bought in Tartarus were, at this moment, woven by Chen Feng into an inescapable net sufficient to hang him.

The scales of power had silently and completely reversed.

"Beep— Beep— Beep—"

Just then, the main search radar suddenly emitted an urgent alarm.

A standard Alliance patrol ship blip abruptly appeared on the nearby star map, and it was heading in their direction.

[Unknown signal source identification request received...]

A cold electronic voice rang out.

"The Alliance... it's an Alliance patrol ship!" Fili was scared out of his wits. His legs went weak, and he slumped to the floor, the gun falling onto the deck with a clang.

Chen Feng didn't give him another look.

He shoved the limp Fili aside and sat in the captain's chair himself, his hands flying across the console.

"Shut down all non-essential power supplies! Close the life support system's external circulation! Shut down the inertial dampeners!"

As the commands were issued, the battered ship instantly fell into a deeper silence, drifting quietly in the cold space like a genuine corpse.

Immediately following that, Chen Feng activated the 'signal simulator' that Lao Mo had forcibly installed, which Fili had dismissed as junk.

"Hum—"

A chaotic and decaying energy signal radiated from the lucky dice, perfectly simulating a starship wreck that had just been destroyed in battle with its power core slowly leaking.

During the dead silence of the wait, Chen Feng stood up and walked to the medical bay.

He looked at Reno, whose life signs were weak and who was encased in ice-blue gel, his gaze complicated beyond words. He reached out and gently adjusted the gel delivery line.

Eve, curled up in the shadows of the bridge corner, had been silently watching all of this. When she saw Chen Feng's subtle movement, a strange light flickered for the first time in her hollow eyes.

Time passed minute by minute.

The Alliance patrol ship circled the area, scanned the 'wreckage' several times, and finally, finding nothing, turned around and slowly departed.

The crisis was temporarily averted.

Fili let out a long sigh of relief, looking completely exhausted.

However, before he could even crawl up from the floor, the cold and heartless electronic voice of the medical AI rang out through the bridge once again.

"Warning. Entropy reversal phenomenon detected in target lifeform. Current life support measure [Type-III Military Grade Stasis Gel] is accelerating the target's structural collapse."

"Based on the current collapse rate, estimated remaining time: 8 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds."

A new desperate situation had descended abruptly.