160: Burning Credits

Chen Feng's fingertips slowly traced across the equipment list Eve had handed him.

Every line of characters on the list was like a greedy black hole, exuding an aura of devouring credit points.

His gaze finally settled on the equipment name at the very top, highlighted in red by Eve.

【Singular Law Sampler】.

Beside it, the real-time synchronized quote from the Interstellar Exchange was a number long enough to be suffocating.

Two million three hundred thousand interstellar credit points.

This was almost their entire fortune after escaping Tartarus by the skin of their teeth. It was Black Mountain, it was the two fallen soldiers, and it was the last spark of hope exchanged for half of Reno's life.

Chen Feng's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.

He did not hesitate for more than three seconds.

“Confirm purchase.”

He issued the command to the system in his heart.

In Su Li's office, she was staring intently at the financial monitoring light screen.

The number in the upper right corner of the screen, representing all the liquid capital of Hanhai Trade, was her only source of security at this moment.

Suddenly, that number flickered frantically, and then, as if wiped away by an invisible giant hand, over ninety percent of it evaporated instantly.

“Clang!”

The water cup in her hand slipped and crashed to the ground, shattering into countless pieces as water quickly spread across the floor.

Su Li's face was even paler than the water stains on the floor.

She leaned against the table, barely managing to keep herself from falling, her hand holding the cup—now gone—trembling uncontrollably. It was only at this moment that she truly realized for the first time just how heavy Chen Feng's words “at any cost” really were.

That wasn't a slogan; it was a bleeding reality.

“Boss, bring Ms. Eve and Lao Mo to Secret Warehouse A-3.” Chen Feng's communication request carried an unquestionable tone of command.

When Eve and Lao Mo followed Chen Feng into the heavily guarded warehouse, the space in the center began to distort eerily.

Accompanied by a low hum, an extremely sophisticated-looking instrument, seemingly composed of countless nested silver ring structures, appeared out of thin air before the three of them. It emitted a soft shimmer, as if it were an independent, breathing living entity itself.

“My god...” Eve's eyes were instantly filled with the obsession and fanaticism of a technician seeing a miracle, “It... it's even more perfect than the prototypes in the textbooks!”

“Boss, this thing...” Beside her, the technical supervisor Lao Mo frowned. His experienced old eyes keenly noticed the energy interfaces at the bottom of the instrument that didn't conform to any known universal standards, “The power supply protocol for this thing is probably unusual.”

“Your feeling is correct,” Chen Feng said in a low voice.

The equipment was carefully transported to the medical center and interfaced with the medical bay where Reno was located. Lao Mo personally led his team and began trying to connect it to the base's energy network.

“Boss, I must warn you.” Lao Mo wiped the sweat from his forehead, his tone more solemn than ever before, “Its instantaneous startup power consumption is enough to completely overload the entire base's power system and even burn out our main reactor!”

“Authorization granted to you,” Chen Feng's answer was simple and cold, “Cut off power to all non-core areas, including my office.”

“Yes!”

Just as Eve, with a mood bordering on pilgrimage, pressed the sampler's start button—

The entire Hanhai Trade Base suddenly went dark.

All the corridor lights flickered a few times, their brightness dropping by two-thirds, becoming as dim as a ghost realm.

“Hey! My nutrient paste was only half synthesized! Who cut the power?!” A desperate wail came from the cafeteria as the nutrient paste synthesizer let out a strange cry and completely stopped working.

In the entertainment room, the light screen playing loud music instantly went out, and a group of workers who had just finished their shift in the mines erupted in loud boos and complaints.

The dormitory area, the training grounds, every corner... the rising and falling sounds of cursing composed a symphony belonging to the brink of bankruptcy.

Inside the medical center, however, there was a deathly silence.

Eve took a deep breath and controlled the sampler probe, slowly approaching Reno's exposed skin, which was covered in ice crystal patterns.

The moment the probe was about to make contact, the main body of the instrument suddenly erupted with a sharp, piercing alarm! All the readings on the screen instantly soared into the deep red warning zone!

“Warning! Ultra-high intensity Law Condensate detected! Exceeds conventional processing scope!”

The seemingly weak 'Law Contamination' on Reno's body was far more intense than this sky-high priced instrument had imagined!

“Dammit!” Eve cursed under her breath. She had to manually adjust the instrument's 'Law Damping' immediately to adapt to this terrifying energy level.

But the operation interface was as complex as the star map of some ancient god, filled with all sorts of anti-human logic and inconceivable symbols.

This technical genius, hailed as a 'Law Hacker,' was now like a primitive person touching a computer for the first time, fumbling frantically at the light screen. For several full minutes, her smooth forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat before she finally stabilized the nearly collapsing equipment after a series of dazzling operations.

“I swear, the guy who designed this instrument must be a lunatic...” she couldn't help but complain in a low voice.

The alarm finally subsided.

The first Law sampling was finally completed, albeit with some stumbles.

When the first preliminary data model was slowly constructed on the central light screen, both Eve and Chen Feng were stunned.

It wasn't the chaotic, violent, destructive signal they had imagined.

Instead, it was a complex, orderly, and progressively spiraling structure, exuding an indescribable, eerie beauty that carried the scent of death. It was like a dark nebula in the process of self-construction—beautiful, yet lethal.

Just then, an extremely faint 'crack' sounded.

Both of them looked at the body of the sampler simultaneously.

An almost imperceptible fine crack had appeared on the instrument's core crystal shield.

A line of cold, small red characters then appeared in the corner of the operation screen.

“Warning: Core crystal wear: 17%. Please replenish 'Law Harmonization Fluid' for maintenance within 24 hours, otherwise the equipment will suffer irreversible permanent damage.”

Chen Feng's gaze fell on the words “permanent damage.”

And in his account, the balance of interstellar credit points was a cold “zero.”