207: Mechanical Tyrant and Forbidden Coordinates

Outside the base, the Alliance's blockade was like an overturned black pot, isolating Ashen Earth Star from the sea of stars. The air was thick with suffocating pressure, but in the core laboratory on the third basement level, the atmosphere was as scorching as a volcano about to erupt.

Countless holographic data streams intertwined in the air to form a dense net of light. Eve floated above the anti-gravity console, her long silver hair moving without wind along with the energy field. She wore a pair of oversized multi-spectral goggles, and the high-frequency cutting knife in her hand was like a precise surgical operation, peeling away the core of the high-dimensional engine salvaged from the wreckage of the slaughterer bit by bit.

Sparks flew, each one burning through the special floor glue as it landed.

"Beautiful... it's simply a work of art."

Eve murmured to herself, her voice a bit raspy due to extreme focus. She completely ignored the red lights warning of excessive radiation around her, like a greedy gold prospector, extracting fragments of laws belonging to high-dimensional civilizations from those complex circuits.

Heavy footsteps broke the hum of the laboratory.

Reno walked in, shirtless. On his scarred body, his left shoulder was empty, the muscles at the stump still twitching slightly—a medal left from the previous battle.

His gaze bypassed Eve and fixed firmly on the large cylindrical incubation tank in the center of the room.

In the pale green nutrient solution, a hideous mechanical arm was suspended.

It wasn't the sleek and shiny kind of high-dimensional prosthetic, but a steel beast woven from black metal and dark red fiber-optic cables. The armor plates had a coarse matte texture, reforged by Eve using the hull armor of the slaughterer. The hydraulic rods at the elbow were as thick as the pistons of construction machinery, and the fingertips were designed as sharp alloy claws, glinting with a bloodthirsty cold light.

This was a freak of nature created by Eve using "Dimensional Reduction Adaptation Technology," forcibly stitching together the wreckage of a high-dimensional warship with low-dimensional mechanical nerves.

Violent and dangerous.

"Ready?" Eve didn't look back, the cutting knife in her hand still moving steadily over the engine core.

"Install it," Reno walked to the operating table and lay directly on it, the alloy surface letting out a dull thud. "Now."

Eve finally stopped her movements. She pushed up her goggles, revealing a pair of bloodshot but terrifyingly bright eyes—the look a scientist gives a lab rat.

"The neural connection protocol for this thing was stripped from a Giant Star Mining combat mecha; it's very crude." Eve pressed a button on the console, and the mechanical arm slowly rose from the incubation tank, bringing with it a splashing sound. "To ensure reaction speed, I've removed all pain filtration modules. The connection process will directly impact your cerebral cortex."

She picked up an anesthetic from a tray.

"I don't need it." Reno raised his hand to ward off the needle, a wildfire dancing in his lone eye. "Pain keeps me awake. I want to remember every bit of it; it's what those high-dimensional bastards owe me."

Eve stared at him for two seconds, a manic curve appearing at the corner of her mouth.

"As you wish, madman."

The mechanical arm was hoisted by a massive mechanical claw, slowly aligning with Reno's severed shoulder. Countless hair-thin neural probes wriggled like living things, searching for nerve endings in the flesh.

"Begin."

As Eve pressed the enter key, the probes plunged into the flesh.

"Ugh—!!!"

Reno's body instantly tensed like a fully drawn bow.

It wasn't ordinary pain. It was the torture of thousands of red-hot steel needles piercing into the brain marrow simultaneously and then being stirred violently. The veins on his neck bulged like earthworms, his teeth ground together, and blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

Sweat instantly soaked the operating table, evaporating into white mist upon contact with the heat.

But he didn't pass out, nor did he let out a single cry for mercy. He was just like a wounded beast, a low growl rolling in his throat, staring fixedly at the pale surgical light above as if he wanted to crush the bulb with his gaze.

It was a thirst for power that overrode biological instinctual fear.

Ten minutes.

Those ten minutes felt as long as a century.

When the final soft click of the pneumatic lock sounded, Reno crashed back onto the operating table, his chest heaving violently like a drowning man just pulled from the water.

But he immediately sat up.

He raised his new left arm. Red energy halos flowed over the black metal surface. With a thought, the five alloy fingers moved flexibly, making a tooth-grinding sound of metal friction.

Eve casually tossed over a two-centimeter-thick high-strength alloy plate.

Reno didn't even look; his left hand shot out like lightning.

"Crack!"

A piercing sound of shattering exploded in the lab. The alloy plate, capable of resisting kinetic bullets, was twisted into a pretzel in his mechanical palm like a crispy cracker, metal fragments clattering to the floor.

This wasn't a prosthetic.

This was a naval cannon mounted on a shoulder.

"Vrrr—"

The miniature reactor inside the mechanical arm let out a low hum, as if responding to its master's killing intent. Reno looked at the twisted alloy, the violent flame in his lone eye finally finding an outlet.

"This feeling... is fucking great." He grinned, revealing a mouthful of bloody teeth.

From the shadows that had been silent all along, a massive figure stepped out.

Grom held an injection gun, his stone-like face filled with complex emotions. As a member of the Rock Guard Clan who revered nature, he felt an instinctive repulsion toward this act of transforming flesh into a killing machine.

But he said nothing, only silently walking behind Reno and pushing a pale blue enhancement serum into Reno's carotid artery.

"This is an anti-rejection serum extracted from 'Earth Dragon' glands." Grom's voice was deep and resonant, like stones rolling over the ground. "It will help stabilize your gene sequence. Don't kill yourself, big guy."

Reno patted Grom's rough arm without speaking. In this damned universe, surviving was more important than anything, even if it meant becoming a monster... Spaceport, maintenance dock.

The blinding arc of electric welding lit the place up like daylight.

Chen Feng stood on a high walkway, overlooking the busy scene below.

The originally dilapidated Vast Sea Fleet was now undergoing a complete transformation. Thousands of miners and technicians, like industrious worker ants, swarmed over the surfaces of those warships.

They didn't have standard parts, but that was no problem for this group of scavengers who had survived in trash heaps.

Shield generators, high-energy capacitors, and even armor plates stripped from the slaughterer and the several destroyed enemy ships were crudely but effectively welded onto the Hanhai Trade vessels.

The flagship, vengeance, looked like a stitched-together monstrosity now. Its prow was fitted with a ram that originally belonged to a destroyer, its sides were mounted with overloaded energy shields, and its originally streamlined hull had become bloated with various external armor plates.

Ugly.

But lethal.

"Boss, this is simply a miracle."

The old technician in charge of dock scheduling walked over, wiped the grease from his face, and pointed below. "Miss Eve's 'adapters' are incredible. Those high-dimensional devices weren't supposed to run at all, but she added some kind of 'Phase Conversion Valve,' and now the shield strength of these junk ships has tripled! Although the engines overheat a bit faster, as long as they don't fire continuously for half an hour, they definitely won't explode."

Chen Feng looked at those hideous warships, a hint of gratification flashing in his eyes.

This was his trump card.

The Alliance blockaded supplies? Then steal the enemy's.

No guns or cannons? The enemy will build them for us.

"Hurry up." Chen Feng patted the railing. "Tell the brothers, these aren't for running away. They're for biting."

Just then, his communicator vibrated.

Eve's avatar popped up, the background still that messy lab, but her expression was even more crazed than before, carrying a hint of greed like a child discovering treasure.

"Boss, you have to come see this."

She held up a memory chip the size of a fingernail. It was the memory chip extracted from Xing Zhan's shattered head.

"This isn't just a set of coordinates." Eve's voice was trembling. "I found a codename in Xing Zhan's encrypted logs—'Titan Project'."

Chen Feng's pupils constricted slightly.

Titan Project. He had seen this name on the Black Water Conglomerate's bounty list.

"Details?"

"The coordinates point to an abandoned interstellar fortress on the edge of District 9. Official Alliance records show it was abandoned fifty years ago due to a 'stellar storm'." Eve quickly pulled up a star map, a red dot flashing on the edge of the darkness. "But Xing Zhan's logs show that Giant Star Mining has been secretly transporting 'living samples' and high-energy crystals there.

Eve paused and licked her dry lips.

"There's a prototype hidden there. An individual war machine that fuses high-dimensional biotechnology with heavy machinery. Xing Zhan originally intended to go there and receive this unit after dealing with us."

Chen Feng looked at that red dot, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the railing.

Tap, tap, tap.

The rhythm grew faster and faster.

The Black Water Conglomerate was looking for this. Giant Star Mining was hiding this.

"This isn't just a piece of intelligence that could be exchanged for a sky-high bounty; it was a sharp knife that could pierce through the Alliance's blockade."

If they could get that prototype and combine it with Reno's current mechanization... Reno's newly installed mechanical arm flashed through Chen Feng's mind.

That would be a true "Mechanical Tyrant."

"Send the coordinates to the navigation team." Chen Feng's voice turned cold, carrying a decisive chill. "This will be our first stop in breaking the blockade."

"That's Reno's new toy, and also a letter of introduction for the Black Water Conglomerate."

He turned to give the order, and just then, the emergency communication channel of the command center suddenly blared.

"Boss! Emergency!"

Ying's face, which was always blurry, popped up on the holographic screen. At this moment, a rare hint of solemnity appeared in her sharp eyes.

"What's going on?"

"An unknown signal source has been detected." Ying's fingers swiped through the air, pushing a radar scan in front of Chen Feng.

At the edge of the blockade, near the shipping lane the Hanhai Trade fleet had to pass through, a strange ripple appeared.

"Optical camouflage, and it's military-grade." Ying's voice was very low. "If I hadn't placed passive gravity sensors in that asteroid belt, I wouldn't have discovered them at all."

On the screen, that ripple was moving slowly but steadily, like a pack of ghost sharks lurking in the deep sea.

"It's not an Alliance fleet," Ying said with certainty. "There's no match in the signal signature database. Their engine radiation frequency is very low, more like..."

"More like hunters."

Chen Feng stared at that shadow, a cold smile curling his lips.

New power had just been put in place, a new target had just appeared, and uninvited guests had already come smelling the scent.

Was it the Black Water Conglomerate? Or other hyenas moving upon hearing the news?

"Notify Reno."

Chen Feng straightened his collar and strode toward the command center, his cloak fluttering in the wind behind him.

"Let his new arm warm up."

"The guests are here. Get ready to serve the food."