199: Silent cemetery

"The current silence is the prelude to the hunt."

On the bridge of the vengeance, Reno's voice was terrifyingly calm, carrying a bloodthirsty pleasure. He had personally severed the connection with the rear, as well as the last tether of rationality.

Outside the porthole, the starry sky was dead.

In its place was an endless expanse of shattered celestial bodies tumbling like the carcass fragments of a giant beast. They collided and rubbed silently in the chaotic gravitational field, kicking up dust from billions of years and swallowing all light. Dark red nebulae and violent electromagnetic storms snaked through them like venomous serpents entrenched in a graveyard.

"Commander, the radar screen is all static! The intense magnetic interference is too severe; we're blind!" A young helmsman's voice trembled; this was his first time witnessing such a treacherous cosmic environment.

The adjutant anxiously attempted to restart the long-range communication link. "We must find a way to reconnect with the command center, Commander, we can't..."

"Shut up!" Reno barked, a fanatical fire burning in his single eye. "Reconnect? I don't need those bureaucrats who only know how to point fingers at data! Here, eyes are more reliable than radar! The entire fleet maintain radio silence and switch to visual target acquisition!"

His orders were transmitted through an encrypted short-range channel to every warship that had likewise charged into the darkness.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of miles away at the Ashen Earth Star command center, it was as deathly silent as a true tomb.

*Smack!*

Chen Feng slammed a fist onto the cold metal console, blood instantly seeping from his knuckles. He stared fixedly at the last flashing coordinate on the main screen representing the fleet's final position, followed by a row of startling red warnings: "Physical Connection Interrupted."

"They've gone in... completely gone in..." Su Li's face was as pale as paper, her voice as light as a breeze. "They've entered the high-energy radiation zone. Even the quantum signals at those coordinates are being distorted. We..."

"I'm trying to connect to the shipboard AI through the backdoor reserved via 'Bio-Etching' technology!" Eve's fingers became a blur on the light screen, her forehead drenched in cold sweat. "It's no use... the signal attenuation is too severe! The feedback is... Physical Connection Interrupted! Completely severed!"

"Calm down." The two words Chen Feng uttered seemed squeezed out from between his teeth. He forced himself to turn around and stop looking at the despairing dark screen.

"Eve, Su Li."

His voice regained its usual, emotionless tone.

"Immediately initiate the 'Black Forest' protocol."

"But Boss, the passive gravitational wave detection range is limited and its precision is extremely poor. We can only..."

"I didn't ask if you could," Chen Feng interrupted Eve. "I asked when I can see the first blurry echo. I need to know if my fleet is advancing or falling."

In the dark graveyard, the threat of death came without warning.

"Left wing! Miner! Evade! Evade now!"

The captain of an assault ship let out a desperate roar over the visual channel.

A runaway comet fragment over three hundred meters in diameter, trailing a blue ice-crystal tail, was hurtling at a tricky angle toward the "Miner," a modified freighter on the left wing of the Vast Sea Fleet. For the cumbersome freighter, this was a fatal collision.

However, just 0.5 seconds before the collision, the Miner's hull suddenly dipped, and the entire ship performed an extreme drift at an angle that completely defied common physical sense!

The comet fragment whistled past its hull shields, the high-temperature ion stream stirring a violent ripple on the shield and leaving a shocking, hundred-meter-long scorch mark on its thick armor.

"My God..." The Miner's captain's breath, sounding like a survivor of a catastrophe, came through the channel. "It's... it's Lady Eve's automatic evasion system... it forcibly took control of my ship."

"Hahaha!" Reno's laughter echoed through the short-range channel. "See that! This is our technology! Our power! Even the stones want to make way for us!"

"Commander!" The vengeance's chief engineer urgently reported via internal comms. "The output power of the second-generation energy core has been maintained at 110% for over ten minutes! The gravitational turbulence in the environment is too complex. If this continues, the reactor's structural stress will exceed the critical threshold!"

Reno glanced at the red values jumping wildly on the dashboard. Instead of showing any concern, he laughed out loud again.

"That's more like it! This is what you call war! Tell the boys to keep the engines roaring! We're going to let Xing Zhan know what true power is!"

He viewed the overload alarms as proof of technical superiority and a prelude to victory.

"Report, Commander!" the radar officer shouted excitedly. "At the edge of the radar at the twelve o'clock position, we caught a fleeting tail flame signal! It's the slaughterer! They can't run fast!"

"Enlarge the image!"

"Yes, sir!"

The blurry image was forcibly enlarged. Amidst the noise and static, that massive black warship appeared somewhat bedraggled. It seemed that due to a clumsy evasion, its stern had collided with a massive meteorite.

Everyone clearly saw a large piece of armor plating peel off from the slaughterer's hull, tumbling powerlessly into the darkness.

"Hahahahaha!"

Reno could no longer suppress his ecstasy. He snatched the microphone for the fleet-wide broadcast, his voice cracking with excitement.

"Entire fleet! Did you see that?! That's the so-called Giant Star Mining regulars! Those are the executioners who killed my brothers!"

He pointed at the falling fragment on the screen like a general displaying his spoils of war.

"They're so scared of the rocks in this graveyard they've pissed themselves! They're running for their lives! Running like dogs!"

After a brief silence, the entire short-range communication channel erupted in mountain-toppling laughter and cheers.

This laughter echoed in the deathly silent graveyard, sounding so piercing and so absurd.

"Report! Commander!" The navigator's voice rang out at the right moment, full of excitement. "Navigation channel scan complete! A very clear passage has appeared! The gravitational field there is exceptionally stable! We can proceed at full speed!"

"Full speed ahead!" A terrifying light erupted in Reno's single eye. He slammed the joystick forward and let out a final roar into the microphone.

"Catch up! Drag that broken-legged stray dog out and tear him to pieces!!"