238: Chapter 238 Black Hole Charging, Top-Tier Divine Ship of a Level 3 Civilization Appears!

Outside the porthole of the messenger, the far side of the moon shrank into a grayish-white disc.

The Star Speaker stood beside Su Che, their silver robes dragging on the cabin floor.

"Excellency, the jump sequence has been initiated. Space Jump will commence in twenty minutes."

Su Che spread his feet half a step apart and gripped the handrail beside him.

The weakness left behind from clearing his points had not yet fully faded, and his legs felt heavy.

A low-frequency hum emanated from deep within the cabin walls, growing from faint to strong.

Twenty minutes later.

"Engine preheating complete," the Star Speaker reported. "Coordinates locked, Gaia BH1 safe orbit."

Su Che did not respond.

He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, the other party would detect the tension in his voice.

As an envoy of a Level 4 Civilization, they had seen Space Jump so many times that they shouldn't even bat an eye.

The cabin lights stretched toward both sides, pulling into a thin thread.

Then, everything in front of his eyes collapsed toward the center.

The Star Speaker, the silver-robed attendants, and the semi-transparent circular platform were all compressed into a single point.

Su Che's stomach lurched upward; that sensation of weightlessness was even more intense than when the luan bird plunged rapidly.

He bit down on his back molars, forcing the breath that wanted to escape back into his stomach.

On the surface, he maintained an air of leisure, as if he were just looking at the scenery.

Time lost its measure in that moment; it could have been a few seconds, or it could have been the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

The light threads gathered again, and the contours of the cabin returned bit by bit.

The Star Speaker's voice fell into his ears, "Space stabilization cooling complete. We have arrived at Gaia BH1 safe orbit."

Su Che released the handrail and flexed his numb wrists.

Space Jump—from the far side of the moon to fifteen hundred light-years away in just a few seconds.

Plus twenty minutes of engine preheating.

He pondered this number in his mind, his face remaining completely still without a single wrinkle.

"Open the porthole," the Star Speaker said, raising a hand.

The light-shielding layer across the entire cabin wall slowly receded, and Su Che's gaze collided with that thing.

It was the first time in his life he had seen a black hole with his own eyes.

It was a patch of absolute darkness that swallowed all surrounding starlight, digging a bottomless hole in deep space.

At the edge of the hole, a circle of incandescent matter rotated around it.

An accretion disk.

The gas and dust torn apart by gravity were ignited by friction as they fell, shining with a blinding light.

What was even more eerie was the back of the hole.

The half-circle of the accretion disk that should have been blocked by the black hole had actually bent upward, like a halo crowning the black hole.

The light had been bent by gravity and wrapped around to the front.

Su Che's breath hitched for half a beat.

He had seen the simulations on the luan bird's main screen.

But the simulations were worlds apart from this living entity before him.

This was the most primitive violence of the universe.

A cage from which even light could not escape, hanging quietly among billions of stars, rotating slowly.

The hand gripping the handrail tightened, then relaxed.

He could not show weakness.

People of a Level 4 Civilization used black holes as charging piles; who would make a fuss over a charging pile?

Su Che withdrew his gaze and turned to the Star Speaker, "How far is the safe orbit from the event horizon?"

"Three astronomical units," the Star Speaker replied. "The messenger's shields are sufficient to withstand the tidal disturbances here."

Su Che nodded and opened his palm.

The palm-sized Star Core Terminal floated up from his palm, the light patterns on the surface of the thin sheet swirling a few times before drifting toward the porthole on its own.

A narrow slit opened in the cabin wall, and the terminal slipped out, disappearing into deep space.

The silver robes of the Star Speaker and several attendants fluttered simultaneously.

"It is going by itself?" the Star Speaker asked.

"It knows better than you or me how to scrape energy from a black hole," Su Che said, pulling back his hand. "Manual operation would only cause trouble."

On the main screen, a point of light detached from the messenger and flew toward the inner side of the accretion disk.

The place it was entering was called the ergosphere.

Outside the event horizon, that circle of distorted space dragged along by the black hole's rotation.

In his consciousness space, the Star Core Terminal delivered a line of text.

[Activating Penrose process, extracting black hole rotational angular momentum, supplemented by accretion disk radiant energy, to ensure charging stability.]

Su Che ran these words through his mind.

The Penrose process.

Throw a piece of matter into the ergosphere and let it split in two inside.

Half falls into the event horizon to feed the black hole, while the other half bounces out.

The half that bounces out carries away more energy than was thrown in; the excess is what is forcibly scraped from the black hole's rotation.

The slower the black hole rotates, the more energy is obtained.

The point of light deep in the ergosphere on the main screen was doing exactly that.

A progress bar lit up.

[Black hole charging progress: 12%.]

The numbers slowly climbed upward.

The Star Speaker stood beside Su Che.

"Excellency, Gaia BH1 is a dormant black hole with limited energy levels."

"I know," Su Che replied. "This kind of stuff won't fill it up."

He said it lightly, but in reality, the system had already leveled with him: this trip could only charge up to eighty-five percent at most.

A dormant black hole has no violent flares and no directional jets; its advantage lies in its stability.

But the price of stability is that the high-energy output from the depths is beyond the reach of Level 3 Civilization technology.

The special quantum energy that can be reached has a ceiling.

[Charging progress: 38%.]

The attendants gathered around a terminal, whispering in the Kairos language.

Su Che's attention was entirely on that progress bar.

[Charging progress: 51%.]

[Charging progress: 65%.]

The moment the number jumped to sixty-five, the main screen shook.

The alarm in the cabin sounded; the tone was not high, but it was dense.

"Tidal resonance," the Star Speaker frowned.

In his consciousness space, the system's text scrolled by rapidly.

[Directional extraction of angular momentum, inducing ergosphere tidal resonance, accretion disk generating large amounts of high-speed interstellar debris.]

On the main screen, a burst of bright spots erupted from the edge of the originally smoothly rotating accretion disk.

That debris was flung out, shooting toward the messenger.

The first batch hit the shields, causing a flash of light on the hull.

The Star Speaker's voice sank, "The density of the debris flow exceeds estimates; the messenger's outer defense is approaching critical."

"The mothership shields can't take it?" Su Che asked.

"They can take it, but it's hard to say if it goes up another magnitude."

Su Che cast his gaze back to the progress bar; the number was stuck at sixty-five and wouldn't move.

[Outer defense reached tolerance critical, Star Core Terminal automatically reducing extraction power.]

[Charging efficiency decreased.]

Su Che was not anxious; the system had warned him about this phase in advance.

The point of light on the main screen began to change tactics.

It no longer stuck to a single orbit, but navigated back and forth along the chaotic texture of the ergosphere, sticking to wherever there was less debris.

Extract a little, retreat a little, then extract a little more.

The progress bar began to move again, though every tick was a struggle.

[Charging progress: 66%.]

The Star Speaker stared at that point of light for a long time.

"It is adapting to the chaotic ergosphere."

"Charging while dodging debris," Su Che added. "No downtime throughout the process."

The attendants' silver robes fluttered again. Su Che observed this reaction and knew they had been bluffed.

This ability for autonomous fine-tuning was all supported by the system behind the scenes.

He, the so-called envoy, had just stood and watched a show from beginning to end.

[Charging progress: 72%.]

The density of the debris flow fluctuated, and the progress bar followed, speeding up and slowing down.

[Charging progress: 80%.]

[Charging progress: 84%.]

The number climbed to eighty-five and stopped; the system's text floated up.

[Micro-extraction of Hawking radiation energy, completion of database encryption lock cracking.]

On the main screen, the point of light pressed against the closest position to the edge of the event horizon and stopped for three seconds.

[Encryption lock cracking complete.]

[Extractable special quantum energy of Gaia BH1 exhausted, charging program terminated.]

[Current charging progress: 85%, reached the energy level limit of this black hole.]

The alarm stopped accordingly.

The accretion disk returned to smooth rotation, the debris flow dissipated, and the point of light broke away from the ergosphere and flew back toward the messenger.

The narrow slit in the cabin wall opened, and the Star Core Terminal slipped back in, landing in Su Che's palm.

The light patterns on the surface of the thin sheet turned from dark red to a warm, gentle gold.

Su Che tucked it into his consciousness space.

In that long-empty grayness, the blue-and-white panel lit up again.

The task bar and skill tree had all returned, but the points column was still zeroed out.

But he didn't care; the database was open, and this trip was worth it.

"Charging complete," Su Che said to the Star Speaker. "Return to base, far side of the moon."

The Star Speaker bowed, "messenger jump engine preheating initiated."

Twenty minutes later.

The light-shielding layer closed again, the black hole disappeared from view, the engine hum rose once more, light threads stretched, and the world collapsed into a point.

This time Su Che was prepared, and the turbulence was much lighter.

The light threads dispersed.

Outside the porthole, the pockmarked gray surface of the far side of the moon filled his vision once again.

Su Che called up the database in his consciousness space.

[Unlock the first batch of technical documents for the Kairos trade?]

"Unlock."

The system mobilized the reserve energy accumulated during this trip, and a piece of technical data, compressed to the extreme, was stripped from the database.

Su Che opened his palm, and the Star Core Terminal floated up, precipitating a silver light that condensed into a data disk containing layers of data streams.

He handed the data disk to the Star Speaker, "Peak technology of a Level 3 Civilization, the first installment, delivered according to the agreement."

The Star Speaker took it with both hands and moved to a terminal to scan it.

A long string of Kairos language scrolled across the light screen.

The attendants gathered around, falling silent one by one.

After a long while, the Star Speaker looked up and bowed deeply to Su Che.

"Verification passed. This is exactly what the Kairos have been unable to reach for tens of thousands of years of stagnation."

"That's good," Su Che withdrew his hand. "The remaining ninety-nine installments, come to the door."

The Star Speaker turned his head and gave a few instructions to an attendant behind him.

The attendant quickly retreated toward the cabin door and disappeared.

"Excellency, the news of the completed transaction has been reported to the home planet headquarters. The interstellar mothership promised to you is being dispatched."

The Star Speaker straightened up, "Accompanying it are the one hundred scientists and engineers stipulated in the agreement, as well as a rare materials library."

"How long until it arrives?"

"It will take some time for personnel and materials to board, but the mothership will arrive via Space Jump; fifteen thousand light-years, it can arrive in a few tens of minutes."

The previous bluffing operation was fierce as a tiger, and he had fleeced the Kairos bald.

Everything was coming together. He had hit the jackpot, hit it big.

Su Che suppressed his excitement, his face remaining impassive.

The messenger stopped in orbit on the far side of the moon, waiting in place.

Su Che stood before the porthole, looking down at the ancient, silent gray landscape beneath his feet.

Earth was on the other side of the moon, invisible.

But he knew that General Shen Wangchuan must be guarding the Xishan Command Center at this moment, staring at that red line of L2.

Just a little longer, and everything will be over.

The promise he made to General Shen Wangchuan was about to be fulfilled.

The attendants returned to their respective stations one after another.

The cabin fell quiet, leaving only the low hum of equipment running.

He didn't know how much time had passed; just as Su Che was about to fall asleep, the Star Speaker suddenly tapped him and raised a hand, pointing toward the porthole.

"Chief Excellency, the mothership has arrived."

Su Che looked out in that direction.

At first, there was nothing in that patch of starry sky.

Immediately after, a ripple spread through the void in the distance, and the starlight was twisted and distorted.

In the center of the ripples, a massive silhouette slowly emerged.