100: Chapter 100 The Prince's Identity Confirmed, Everyone Arrested (Third Update)

Diana stared at him.

Her voice was extremely cold and steady,

but the few words she spoke directly froze the right hand that Sterling had stuck in his pocket, which had been trembling incessantly:

"What do you think? You want to get off the pirate ship after you've already boarded?"

"The moment you jump off, before the Zeta Star's million-strong army even arrives, the Longevity Faction will have us all 'commit suicide' together."

"How Walsh died, how his wife died, how many bullets his son took in the back—you know better than anyone."

Sterling pulled his still-trembling hand out of his pocket, pressed it against his forehead, and dug his fingertips into his temples, remaining silent for a long time.

Augustus squeezed out a sentence from the depths of his throat in a dry, low growl:

"Since we can't get off the ship, then before it sinks, we need to figure out just how much of this deadly, prince-level dirt the Longevity Faction is hiding."

A hundred meters away,

Musk was still there, slapping his knees and laughing,

but halfway through his laugh, he suddenly noticed that Edward beside him wasn't making a sound.

He turned his head, and his laughter stopped abruptly.

Edward Warren was facing the sky filled with burning blood-red characters, his face pale to the point of transparency.

It wasn't fear, nor was it panic; it was the look of utter devastation that only appears on the face of a veteran politician after the foundations of all their beliefs have been shattered.

His knees went weak, and his whole body, as if his spine had been pulled out, knelt straight down onto the gravel ground,

his knees making a dull thud as they hit the ground.

Brick, standing nearby, was the first to react; he bent down to help him up, but he couldn't lift him.

Brick was a retired veteran of SEAL Team Six, capable of carrying heavy artillery and ammunition with his bare hands, yet he couldn't lift this old man who had already given up the thought of even standing.

"My son... Link..."

"The things he saw in that garage in Las Vegas..."

Edward's voice was hoarse and broken,

his eyes vacant, as if the focus of his pupils had landed somewhere very, very far away, piercing through these ruins, piercing through the sky that was still burning above,

piercing all the way to the afternoon when his only son sat alone in the driver's seat of a Porsche, locking eyes with a Grey Alien that had just slid out from the ventilation duct,

"The one in the underground garage of City Hall, beaten alive by two Men in Black and stuffed into a grey bag, the one with green blood..."

"That is the Fourth Prince of Zeta Star."

"My son watched with his own eyes as they beat him half to death..."

He slowly lowered his head, grabbing the gravel on the ground with both hands, gripping it tightly.

Blood seeped from between his fingertips, slowly spreading along the cracks in the grey-white rock slabs.

"A million-strong alien army, their arrival means destruction..."

"What will Link's fate be?"

"What kind of end and outcome will the Warren Family have?"

Musk stood beside him, his outstretched hand hanging in mid-air for two seconds, then slowly pulled it back.

He didn't say any words of comfort.

Because he knew that no matter how the outcome played out, even if the Longevity Faction finally returned Prince Dao Dun to Zeta Star intact, the Warren Family would not be safe.

For the sake of the Prince's face, for the dignity of the royal family,

all the people and families who had once seen with their own eyes the Fourth Prince being beaten so miserably would definitely be completely erased from history by the Zeta Star royal family.

The most lenient outcome would be that the situation didn't spread to the entire planet,

but there would absolutely be no leniency for that century-old political dynasty that had witnessed everything in the underground garage and was still active in the Tech Faction camp as a political ally.

For a veteran dignitary who valued family heritage more than life itself, this was equivalent to having his spine broken, vertebra by vertebra, on the spot.

Edward knelt on the ruins, his ten fingers deeply embedded in the crevices of the gravel, his voice so soft it sounded like he was talking to himself,

but every syllable carried the debris of something crushed by despair that could never be glued back together:

"What should I do... What should I do..."

"I am a sinner of the Warren Family, I am a sinner of the family..."

Musk remained silent for a long time.

He opened his mouth to say something, but swallowed the words, and in the end, just rested his hand on Edward's shoulder—not patting, not moving, just leaving it there.

It was at this very moment,

that in the sky above, the 200,000-strong Space Fleet that had just annihilated two thousand alien flying saucers suddenly decelerated simultaneously.

All the ships simultaneously transitioned from their strangulation formation to a cruising posture,

the left fleet all turned toward the opening on the left, which had previously been torn by a spatial rift and whose edges were still shimmering with dark purple ionization ripples;

the right fleet similarly turned in unison toward the opening on the right.

The mother ship's bow was the first to enter the rift, followed closely by the battleships, with the frigates and attack fighter groups closing formation in sequence.

Within a few dozen breaths, all 200,000 silver-grey ships had entered the rift.

The two massive spatial breaches closed silently the exact same moment the tail flame of the last attack fighter disappeared inside,

and the entire sky returned to the scene of an ordinary desert night,

scattered clouds, a cold moon, and stars.

Musk looked up at the sky that had returned to emptiness, his expression shifting from brief astonishment to a kind of complex contemplation.

"The alien fleet invaded... and they immediately stopped fighting."

"The conflict between the Longevity Faction and the Tech Faction might not be irreconcilable after all."

"Faced with external invaders, they can at least put aside their prejudices and unite against the common enemy."

"This can also be considered..."

Before he had time to continue deducing this thought, a dull roar of heavy armored engines came from the night in the distance.

Rows of armored vehicles and the tracks of M1A2 main battle tanks crushed the dried-up gravel on the edge of the ancient Colorado River bed,

and vehicle-mounted searchlights illuminated the entire square in front of the ruins with a ghastly white light.

The elite mechanized infantry of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment jumped off the armored vehicles and deployed into a horizontal line on the spot in a standard tactical formation,

the muzzles of their semi-automatic rifles and light machine guns rising in unison, aiming at everyone in the ruins square who was still standing, still kneeling, or still lying on the ground.

Major General William Stratton stepped down from the lowered ramp of the command armored vehicle, stood between two rows of armored vehicles, and addressed everyone on the ruins, stating the ultimatum amplified by a military loudspeaker, concisely and powerfully.

"This is the Lighthouse Country Army 3rd Cavalry Regiment!"

"You are currently in a military-controlled zone and are suspected of multiple charges violating federal law!"

"Everyone! Raise your hands high and lie on the ground. Any act of refusal to comply will be executed on the spot according to military orders!"

Musk did not resist; he raised his hands high and obediently lay on the ground, which was covered with shell casings and gravel.

Brick and the group of retired special forces soldiers behind him also lay down one by one.

Edward remained kneeling on the ground,

but he slowly raised his hands, which were bleeding profusely from being cut by the gravel, and placed them on the back of his head,

moving extremely slowly, as if completing a mechanical procedure completely unrelated to his own will.

Before he had thought of a way out for the Warren Family, he knew he couldn't just die.

The two, along with their respective accompanying Retainers, death squads, and tactical teams, were quickly restrained by the 3rd Cavalry Regiment soldiers with tactical zip ties and pushed one by one into the back of the transport trucks waiting behind the armored vehicles.