Chapter 529: The Course Gradually Goes Astray

With a strange screech, the spatial tunnel suddenly collapsed and shattered. The last few strands of spider silk snapped in midair. Irene rolled several times on the ground until Luna casually picked her up.

The acrid smell of high-energy weapons burning the air still lingered in the thin mist. The afterimage of Yu Sheng riding the fox tail through the tunnel seemed to linger on her retina. The fox girl in her great demon fox form looked at the thick fog that was beginning to gather again across the street. She suddenly sniffed, pawed the ground a couple of times with her front claw, and shook her head—which was as big as a three-wheeled scooter—and said, "Benefactor has successfully infiltrated the enemy's interior, huh."

"I wonder if he'll come back for dinner..." Irene was dangling in the air, swaying back and forth, muttering. Suddenly she looked up at Luna. "C-clasp, put me down!"

Zheng Zhi, however, was still dazed. The events of the last moment were just too much information for him. He stared blankly into the distance. Only after several seconds did he suddenly snap out of it and turn his head to look at Irene. "Is Brother Yu okay?"

Irene frowned, folded her arms, stood on the ground to sense for a moment, then waved her hand reassuringly. "He's fine, just barely hanging on at the moment."

Zheng Zhi was stunned for a moment. He looked up at the others, but before he could say anything, Hu Li sighed. "Just get used to it. Her education level is just like that."

Zheng Zhi: "..."

...

Actually, Irene wasn't wrong.

Indeed, Yu Sheng hadn't died yet in the short time after he passed through the channel.

In an orbital laboratory located somewhere in the distant depths of space, heavily armed security forces were on high alert.

The air was filled with the pungent smell of scorching. The purification system was doing its utmost to expel the toxic smoke from the hall. The warning sounds of various equipment malfunctions and error reports were startlingly loud. Pipelines around the research platform were still spewing sparks, and smoke rose from the ruins of the rift generator.

The soldiers surrounded the intruder who had flown in from the other side of the rift. A huge, fluffy fox tail was steaming, curled up in a pile of equipment debris next to the antigravity platform. The fox tail itself was rapidly disintegrating in the air. The man, who had been shot over a hundred times all over his body, was leaning against a twisted piece of steel, blood pooling on the floor.

The next second, the "corpse" suddenly twitched.

Under the horrified gaze of the Black Spot commander on the scene, Yu Sheng pushed himself up using a section of steel plate beside him. He shook his somewhat dead body, then looked down at the dissipating fox tail. In order to extend Yu Sheng's stay on "this side" as long as possible, Hu Li's tail had not exploded after barging into the lab. Instead, it used the last bit of spiritual power to form a barrier, helping Yu Sheng block the most lethal gunshots.

...Of course, the remaining hundred or so shots that weren't blocked were also quite fatal, but those were minor issues.

Yu Sheng raised his head and looked at the Black Spot soldiers before him. He grinned, revealing an extremely enthusiastic deathbed smile. As if he hadn't seen the guns pointed at him, he stepped forward to shake hands with them. "Hard work, hard work, everyone has worked hard. That was a good shoot just now... Hey, no need to panic, no need to panic. I'll be leaving in a bit..."

Yu Sheng's attitude was extremely good. Considering the spectacular manner of his arrival and the considerable damage his passage had caused, his words of appreciation to the Black Spot soldiers actually had a bit of sincerity to them. He wasn't sure about the customs on the Algerade side or wherever, but he figured this was his way of offering deathbed condolences—though who exactly was on their deathbed, don't ask yet.

The next second, the encirclement around him suddenly "swished" back a considerable distance. Even the Black Spot soldiers, whose mental fortitude was exceptionally strong and who cared little for their own lives or anyone else's, were completely stunned. Only the commander on the scene had a slightly stronger mind. Faced with this bizarre sight, he quickly regained his composure. Realizing that this strange intruder might be an extremely valuable "research sample," he immediately shouted, "Capture him alive!"

Yu Sheng spread his hands. "That's a bit difficult."

And then, with a gak, he died.

The Black Spot soldiers around him had already rushed forward. But halfway through their charge, they saw the intruder fall flat on his back. Instantly stunned for a second time, they all looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Finally, all eyes fell on the commander on the scene.

The commander was also stunned at that moment. Through his full-head helmet, it was impossible to tell his expression. After two or three seconds, he waved a hand. "...Check him."

So one Black Spot soldier stepped forward boldly toward Yu Sheng. He carefully skirted around the nearly completely dissipated fox tail, poked the intruder's body with his gun barrel, then crouched down for a detailed inspection. He looked up and reported, "Sir, the intruder is dead."

The commander pressed his lips tightly behind his visor.

It did seem like he was dead—but the problem was that the intruder should have been dead the moment he landed.

The piercing alarm sounds of the equipment prevented him from pondering further. The Black Spot commander looked up and surveyed the current state of the laboratory. The rift generator in the corner of the hall had been destroyed. Some equipment directly connected to the central research platform had also suffered considerable damage during the forced "disconnection" process. Adding to that the wanton shooting and destruction from that group of... weirdos on the other side of the channel when the rift opened, the entire laboratory was almost in shambles.

The only good news was that the core area of the laboratory was covered by a powerful force field shield and had not been damaged in the earlier battle. The barrier device used to restrain the "Black Stone" also appeared to be still operational—otherwise, the consequences would have been unimaginable.

A moment ago, he had even considered detonating the nuclear bomb buried beneath the laboratory.

—Fusion bombs were a primitive and cheap weapon, but they had always proven stable and reliable for an "emergency shutdown" of an out-of-control laboratory.

"Clean this place up. Send the body to the medical bay and let the experts there take a look," the commander exhaled and gave orders in a calm tone. "Also, inform the engineering department to come over and hurry up and resolve these annoying alarms... Where are the researchers who evacuated earlier? Notify them that the laboratory is safe now."

The soldiers immediately began carrying out the orders. Two quickly found a stretcher and a body bag, skillfully collecting the intruder's corpse. As one of them zipped up the body bag, he still felt uneasy and checked once more, muttering in confusion, "...His heart has evaporated. How was this guy able to stand up and talk just now?"

"Don't know, but it's best not to get too curious," the other soldier said in a low voice, a cautious tone carrying through. "There are plenty of things in this world that look human but are indescribable on the inside. Curiosity is the door that brings them into the material world. This kind of thing should be left to the more professional scientists."

"Sir," another soldier came before the Black Spot commander on the scene. After saluting, he spoke with a serious tone. "The 'Boss' has already learned of the incident here. She is coming from the 'Weaver Constellation' and will arrive shortly."

"I understand," the commander sighed, clearly not in a good mood. "Go prepare for her arrival."

Experimental accidents kept happening one after another, and now there was a bizarre intruder that had broken in. Although he, as a "non-technical personnel," didn't need to take responsibility for the rift generator's malfunction, it was clear that the "intruder" was now the biggest problem.

...Maybe it would have been better to just detonate the nuclear bomb directly?

...

At the same time, in the depths of the "Dark Alley" alien domain in Border City .

A heavily armed deep-dive team and several technicians were cautiously dealing with the "silver-white device" standing at the crossroads.

In the alley under the twilight sky, wisps of black spider silk still crisscrossed and covered the tops of buildings. But compared with the situation previously reported by the "Inn," the spider web erosion here had clearly receded a lot.

Since the rift that was opened at the Dark Alley crossroads last time was forcibly closed, the "spider silk" that had invaded here seemed to have been affected to some extent. Most of the spider web that had previously blocked the crossroads had now disappeared—for the Special Affairs Bureau personnel on this mission, this was good news.

The technical experts were carefully disassembling the casing of the silver-white cylindrical device.

They still couldn't determine exactly what this device was, nor did they know for what purpose those tech-crazies from the Black Spot Group had "teleported" this device into this alien domain. It could be a beacon, or it could be a container for spreading contamination. More likely, it was just a test subject before some larger-scale "invasion operation" began. In any case, its arrival definitely signified an insidious plot brewing.

The Black Spot Group had a bunch of black tech. But compared to those black tech items, these tech-crazies were even more famous for their ruthlessness to achieve their goals.

The structurally complex locking device was finally safely disengaged. A gap opened in the device's casing, which was made of an unknown alloy. The technicians carefully removed one of the protective panels.

Two deep-divers approached the device. They activated the protective force fields of their power armor to cover the engineer performing the disassembly, while curiously peering inside the container.

Inside, there were complex pipelines and a cage-like structure that looked like a restraint. Inside the cage was an unremarkable-looking silver-white cylindrical object.

An engineer stared at the thing for a moment, then suddenly let out a puzzled sound. "Huh?"

The deep-diver next to him immediately asked, "Can you tell what this is?"

"...If I'm not mistaken," the engineer scratched his head, "it looks like a bomb."

As soon as these words came out, there was an immediate chorus of gasps around them. The protective force fields of a few deep-divers hummed and went to maximum power in an instant. They were about to drag the nearest technical experts and evacuate, but the next second, the engineer waved his hand. "Don't panic, don't panic—it won't explode. If it were going to blow, it would have done so already. Let me take another closer look..."

With that, he leaned in again to study it carefully. Suddenly, he clapped his hands. "Oh! It's a KK-I fusion bomb."

(End of chapter)