Chapter 530: Crossed Channels

In the far reaches of deep space, far from any legitimate shipping lanes, an orbital laboratory shaped like a giant disc was operating in a high orbit above a barren, rocky planet.

Inside the Black Stone space station, the unsettling alarm finally began to subside, and the flashing red lights in the corridors returned to calm. With the order to stand down from the emergency, the technical staff who had been on standby in the evacuation compartments began to file back to their workstations.

And as the large space station slowly regained order, a team was cautiously and quickly making their way through a connecting corridor on the lower decks, heading toward the medical area.

A floating stretcher drifted alongside the team; the dark blue body bag on it vaguely outlined the shape of a human figure.

Threads of bloody odor seeped through the supposedly thick and sealed body bag, constantly dissipating into the air.

The Black Spot soldiers responsible for escorting the intruder's corpse seemed completely unaware of the blood mist spreading in the air, continuing to move forward in cautious, grim silence.

The connecting corridor in the lower section was very quiet. The chaos in the upper labs seemed like something from another world. A stagnant aura hung in the air, broken only by the low hum of machinery that penetrated the alloy walls on either side, dispelling the eerie, oppressive atmosphere that was almost tomb-like.

A Black Spot soldier felt a bit uneasy and finally couldn't help breaking the silence. "This atmosphere feels weird... Is this area always this quiet?"

"Don't scare yourself," the squad leader's voice came through the thick power armor helmet, sounding somewhat muffled. "That's because the upper level was just too chaotic."

The team fell silent again, but it only lasted less than two minutes before another soldier muttered, "I heard strange things have been happening frequently on the Black Stone station lately... lots of times. Some cabins suddenly have inexplicable foreign objects appear, some rooms disappear for no reason, and I heard a new room showed up near the logistics channel. Over at the cafeteria, someone saw a bunch of strange black shadows."

"Maybe it's caused by the rift generator," another Black Spot soldier said quietly. "I heard they switched to higher-frequency excitation crystals, but that thing isn't very stable."

"Or maybe some sections are haunted," the first soldier shook his head. "How does it go... Machine spirit displeased. The whole station is a big machine, and the stuff in the labs is a bit tainted with black psionics..."

"You'd better not let the Science Assessment Department hear that kind of talk," the squad leader interrupted the soldiers' conversation, somewhat displeased. "The research projects up there are the 'boss's' concern. Whether the station is haunted or not is a headache for the scientists. Talk less, work more."

The soldiers immediately quieted down, except for one who still muttered, "Yeah, my great-grandmother used to say, don't talk about sirens at sea, don't mention salamanders in the mines, and don't think about the Warp in a space station..."

The squad leader finally lost patience and elbowed the muttering soldier, who finally shut up.

Then they delivered the floating stretcher and the shriveled body bag to the medical bay.

Behind the team, the lights in the connecting corridor flickered faintly at a frequency barely visible to the human eye.

...

A silver-gray fast shuttlecraft silently slipped into the docking port of the Black Stone space station. After passing strict security checks and identity verification, the shuttle directly entered a berth near the core experimental compartment.

The shuttle's hatch opened, and a tall figure stepped out—a female Algrade Elf, with golden hair cascading over her shoulders, dressed in an elegant silver-white robe and skirt. Her starry-patterned pupils were deep and calm.

She stepped down from the boarding ramp, and the legs beneath her skirt had a metallic, alloy-like sheen. Then, with a soft clicking sound, those legs quickly transformed and recombined into a set of silver-white wheel-like appendages. She glided lightly across the berth's connecting section, not even pausing in front of the technical department heads who had come to greet her.

"Skip these formalities and go straight to the lab," the golden-haired elf said, her voice calm with a cold edge. "Compile the report on the lab attack within twelve hours and send it to my terminal. How is the 'Zolda Blackstone' doing now?"

"Understood, boss," one of the lab heads hurriedly replied, quickly keeping pace with the golden-haired elf. "The Blackstone itself wasn't impacted. The shields in the core area blocked the attacker's fire. The biggest damage was to the rift generator—we had to blow it up to close the channel. Additionally, four of the 'communication devices' between the rift generator and the Blackstone were burned out."

"Casualties?"

"Three soldiers killed, six injured—all were clones. The few who died are already undergoing the regeneration process."

"Mm."

The golden-haired elf nodded, acknowledging the report, and then entered the most central part of the entire space station—the circular laboratory that housed the 'Zolda Blackstone'.

In fact, the entire space station had been built around that unremarkable-looking 'stone.' Everything here—from the equipment to the personnel—was for that 'Zolda Blackstone.'

Only after seeing that black fragment still floating in the containment field did the low, oppressive aura that had been clinging to the golden-haired elf finally ease a little. She visibly relaxed (much to the relief of her accompanying staff), and then glided lightly over to the platform.

She lifted her head, a gentle, almost intoxicated smile appearing on her face. Her starry golden pupils, as if captured by gravity, gazed for a long time at the ancient, complex, and mysterious patterns on the surface of the Zolda Blackstone.

"Ah... you're still here..."

She murmured softly, her tension further easing.

The Blackstone trembled in her vision, emitting an inaudible whisper.

The golden-haired elf closed her eyes slightly, nodding gently, with a serene and gentle smile on her face, as if she were receiving some kind of enlightenment. Algrade astromancers often showed this kind of intoxicated expression when listening to the whispers among the stars—it was a natural reaction as truth and knowledge watered the mind and the soul was nourished.

The technicians working nearby noticed this scene and unanimously slowed their movements, trying to avoid making noise, as if afraid to interrupt the communication between 'boss' and the Blackstone.

But suddenly, the golden-haired elf, who had been earnestly listening to the Blackstone's whisper, frowned slightly.

She still had her eyes closed, but her brow was tightly furrowed in confusion as she muttered to herself, "I... I don't understand... What you are teaching this time...

What does it mean by 'Looking for mom and dad online, going to lane against them in a while'...?

Yes, yes, the mapping law of spacetime within the subspace channel is... what does it mean that this soldier is like a ten-year cerebral thrombosis...?

...Why do direct relatives need to spin at 6,000 revolutions per second during ascent... Exploded? What exploded?

...Who is 'Sweeping Maid Irritating'?"

Boundless roaring descended within the illusory starry revelation. The enlightening star illusions crumbled in her cognition. The chaotic torrent of information escaped its usual track and mercilessly expelled her fragile mortal mind from the connection state. The golden-haired elf suddenly opened her eyes. For a moment, she felt as if the earth were shaking and mountains swaying. Her wheel-like appendages lurched backward and then forward uncontrollably, and her whole body fell backward.

But at that moment, the bionic covering on her back instantly opened, and the nanomachine swarm hidden inside her body generated several mechanical limbs in the blink of an eye, supporting her faltering body.

The accompanying staff nearby rushed over immediately, protecting the golden-haired elf, while two guards stepped forward with outstretched hands to support their boss.

The golden-haired elf waved her hand, declining the attendants' help. She looked up with a bewildered gaze at the Zolda Blackstone in the containment field, and after a moment's hesitation, murmured softly, "...Too profound."

One of the nearby attendants didn't hear clearly and asked in confusion, "Boss?"

"Where is the 'lurker' who reported back earlier? Where is he now?" The golden-haired elf did not explain what had just happened, but asked with a serious tone.

"Ah, he's still in the life-support container—his physical mutation is very severe, and the contamination is difficult to cleanse. We're considering transferring his consciousness into a clone body..."

"Take me to him. I urgently need the knowledge he brought back."

The golden-haired elf spoke quickly. The noise and disorienting feeling caused by the torrent of knowledge washing over her cognition still roared and whirled in her mind, making it hard for her to concentrate. In fact, she could barely remember what she had just heard and seen, only vaguely recalling... that the enlightenment brought by the Blackstone this time was far more powerful and intense than any previous time, and the volume and form of the information were completely different from before.

These residual feelings of 'completely different' made her heart pound.

Glory to the stars, too profound.

It felt like being stuck in a tree during a calculus class.

...

The grogginess after death lasted a long time, even longer than usual. After an unknown amount of time, Yu Sheng finally managed to reconstruct his consciousness within the haze and get his thoughts flowing again.

"Is it because I died too far away this time? Or because I talked too much nonsense before dying and asphyxiated?"

He muttered in the dark chaos, then breathed a slight sigh of relief and let his mind float upward through the darkness.

The familiar feeling of crossing some boundary of nothingness came from all around. The symptoms of death faded from him. He roughly judged his current location and confirmed that there seemed to be no other life reactions around the area where he was about to revive.

Safe. Time to open my eyes.

So he opened his eyes and stepped back into the world of the living.

A long corridor came into view.

The lights were dim, deathly silent. In sight, there was not a single person, only crisscrossing black spider silk intertwining in his vision.

(End of chapter)