154: The Roar of the Ghost Ship

"It's... it's the 'Vulture Swarm'!"

Captain Fili's scream was distorted in the cramped bridge, his four eyes bulging out of their sockets in extreme terror.

On the main screen, the massive ship slowly emerging from the spatial rift looked as hideous as a cosmic monster. Its hull was pitch black, covered in sinister grappling hooks, cutting arms, and dense clusters of gun ports. A giant vulture emblem sprayed in blood-red paint on the hull emitted an ominous aura.

"'Vulture Swarm'... those hyenas who specialize in scavenging trash at the edges of battlefields!" Fili's voice carried a sob. "They have the most sensitive energy detectors. We were lured here by that damned signal... we're dead!"

Before he could finish, a forced communication request had already hijacked the screen.

The image flickered, and a rugged, fierce-looking man with rusty mechanical prosthetics covering half his face appeared in the center of the screen. He glanced contemptuously at the battered bridge of the lucky dice, his mouth curling into a cruel smile.

"Listen up, little bugs. I am the captain of the 'Vulture Swarm', Bloodclaw," he said in a condescending tone. "I smell the sweet scent of energy on you. Now, initiate the 'Scavenger Protocol'."

"Hand over half of the cargo on your ship, and that 'toy' that just sent out the high-energy signal." Bloodclaw pointed a mechanical finger at the screen, greed flashing in his eyes. "Then, I might consider letting you scurry off like dogs."

"We can't! We have nothing!" Fili shouted incoherently, scared out of his wits.

"Shut up."

Chen Feng's cold voice rang out.

He pushed aside the slumped Fili from the console and stood before the communication camera himself.

Facing the ferocious pirate captain on the screen, Chen Feng showed no fear. Instead, he smiled slightly and spoke slowly in an aristocratic tone mixed with arrogance and impatience.

"Thank you for your response, 'Vulture Swarm'."

The smile on Bloodclaw's face froze.

"Your reaction speed was three minutes faster than I anticipated," Chen Feng remarked as if critiquing a product. "Truly worthy of being the most efficient scavengers in this sector."

"What did you say?" Bloodclaw's brow furrowed. The other's reaction was completely beyond his expectations. This didn't look like the fear of prey meeting a hunter, but more like a master evaluating his hounds.

"What did you think you smelled? A delicious meal?" Chen Feng sneered, his eyes full of pity. "No, what you smelled was a dog whistle."

He paced slowly, as if in his own laboratory. "My name is von Klein, and I belong to the 'Titan Project'. We are conducting long-range attraction tests on a new type of 'Quantum Resonance Beacon'. And you... Captain Bloodclaw, congratulations. You and your ship are the first successfully attracted... test samples in our experiment."

On the bridge of the pirate ship, Bloodclaw's expression became incredibly vivid. 'Titan Project'? He seemed to have heard this name in some black market intelligence; it was a taboo military technology project jointly conducted by several high-dimensional civilizations.

Chen Feng gave him no time to think and issued a brief command to Eve beside him: "Eve, project the observation beam of Sample A-3 onto the bulkhead behind me. Let our 'guests' have a look."

Eve understood immediately. Through internal lines, she took the eerie light emitted by the stasis sliver on Reno in the medical bay—a light that blended coldness, death, and high-dimensional laws—and projected it onto the metal bulkhead behind Chen Feng via a spare fiber optic conduit.

In an instant, a mysterious patch of deep blue light, within which countless ice crystals seemed to form and dissolve, flowed slowly behind Chen Feng, making him appear mysterious and powerful.

"This is..." Bloodclaw's breathing quickened, a flash of horror in his eyes, but even more so, an uncontrollable greed.

An unknown high-tech prototype from the 'Titan Project'! The value of this thing was tens of millions of times higher than a ship full of junk cargo!

"What kind of garbage beacon is this? What does it do?" Bloodclaw roared half-doubtingly, trying to use volume to cover his lack of confidence. "Show me! Or I'll tear you to pieces!"

He was gambling. Gambling that the other party was just bluffing.

"Function?" Chen Feng laughed, a smile as cold as the vacuum of space. "Its function is to call for scavengers even more powerful than you."

"But since you're so curious..." Chen Feng's gaze instantly became as sharp as a blade, and he gave Eve the final command.

"Eve, execute Protocol B-7."

"Understood."

Eve did not hesitate. A flash of madness and determination crossed her eyes as she directly set the computing core on the main console—which had just received a massive stream of extra-dimensional data—to 'disordered overload' mode!

What she was doing wasn't blowing up a component, but venting the massive computational power from the 'Logic Web'—power far beyond the comprehension of this dimension—in the crudest and most chaotic way possible!

Boom—!

The hull of the lucky dice suddenly erupted with a chaotic energy halo that defied description, a mix of spatial distortion, data corruption, and a pure information storm!

It was like a punctured balloon filled with all the paradoxes of the universe!

"Warning! Warning! Unknown energy intrusion! All sensors failing!"

"Shields overloaded! Resonant damage detected in the hull structure!"

"Damn it! What is that thing!"

On the bridge of Bloodclaw's flagship, all screens were instantly swallowed by static and garbled code. Piercing alarms nearly burst everyone's eardrums. Through the porthole, the pirate captain watched in horror as that small, battered ship erupted with a terrifying power far beyond his understanding, a power that made him tremble from the depths of his soul.

This wasn't technology! This was... magic! It was Divine Punishment!

"Retreat! Full speed retreat!!" Bloodclaw was completely terrified by this power. He cursed hysterically and gave the order to flee. "Get away from that ghost thing!!"

The crisis was averted.

But a price followed.

Inside the bridge of the lucky dice, at the moment of the energy burst, all lights, screens, and equipment... everything fell into total darkness amidst a series of crackling electrical sparks.

A chain reaction of short circuits occurred in the ship's internal wiring.

Total silence.

It was as if even the breath of the universe had stopped.

In this absolute darkness and silence, the console screen in front of Eve suddenly flickered and stubbornly lit up.

On the screen, there were only two cold, shimmering words:

[Decryption Complete]