Chapter 677: Target, The Conclave

Upon hearing the good news from Momo, Yüsheng hurried with his crew to Blackstone Station—Huli had been sleeping groggily, but she immediately followed when she heard Yüsheng get up, though she didn't really understand what was happening until she saw Luo, since she still hadn't fully woken up from her meal...

In the Control Ring of Blackstone Station, within Luo's private laboratory.

The fairly spacious room was filled with all sorts of dazzling equipment. Neatly chaotic cables and material-transport tracks crisscrossed overhead. Luo sat beside the curved platform at the very center of the room, surrounded by rapidly refreshing holographic projections and conventional displays of various sizes. When Yüsheng opened the door and walked in, she was still frantically operating something, with several mechanical appendages behind her connected like tentacles to the surrounding equipment.

The visual style looked from the front like a beautiful scientist sitting in a cluster of screens in a story mission, babbling background exposition to players; from the back, like a mad villainous doctor (or considering this sister's education, a mad postdoctoral researcher) planning world destruction in an underground base; from the side—you couldn't see it, blocked by the screens.

The moment Yüsheng appeared, Luo stood up happily. "Boss, you're here!"

"Actually, I've been wanting to ask for a while," Yüsheng said, waving at her as he looked up at the cluster of screens around her. "In every movie, TV show, and game, why do you science types always surround yourselves with so many flashy monitors? Can you even watch them all?"

Luo hadn't expected Yüsheng's first words to be this, and she froze for a moment. But having stayed in the Traveler's Lodge for quite a while, she quickly recovered and waved a hand. "To put it bluntly, it's just a stereotype—surround yourself with a bunch of displays and flicking data charts to look profound, otherwise how would the director let you see at a glance that the person sitting in the middle is a scientist..."

Yüsheng was taken aback. "Then you..."

"I don't actually need to look at these at all," Luo said, her mechanical tentacles clicking and rotating behind her. "I'm directly connected to all the equipment; data goes straight into my brain. If it weren't for safety concerns requiring some critical systems to have physical controllers for command input, I wouldn't even need a keyboard."

Yüsheng: "Then this pile around you...?"

Luo: "To reinforce the stereotype."

Yüsheng: "...?"

"That way, when clients see it, they think you're professional," Luo said calmly. "My mentor back in the day said outsiders can't perceive the true difficulty or workload of a technical field. Put up a couple extra screens playing loops to look busy. When you go on site, even if it's something fixable in two twists of a screw, drag it out for two hours. That way the client pays more willingly."

She paused, then added, "I don't really need this setup anymore, but it's a habit from years of practice. You can think of it as my lab's decor style."

Yüsheng thought for a moment. "Alright. From now on, when I see a bunch of flickering screens around you, I'll know you're not busy."

"Wait, that's not what I..."

But Yüsheng waved a hand, jumping straight back to business. "First, tell me about that star gate. Momo said you found it?"

Luo opened her mouth, then resignedly sighed a few seconds later. She turned and sat back down. The holographic projection closest to Yüsheng flickered twice, stopped playing its pre-set loop, and displayed a complex star chart with countless marked coordinates and annotations.

Several coordinates and navigation routes on the chart shimmered brightly.

"If my calculations are correct, the Conclave has at least one illegal star gate at this location. In other words, this should be their border," she said, pointing at the projection. Then, considering her boss's education level, she added, "A star gate has two major functions: long-range transport and beacon lighthouse. It can instantly 'launch' a ship to another star gate, and it can emit a navigation signal capable of crossing deep space, guiding ships within a galactic sector to warp back. Ships in warp state are affected by curled space and cannot observe an accurate or real starry sky. Without a navigation beacon, they would be lost in the vast space between celestial bodies..."

Yüsheng listened while stroking his chin and nodding slightly. He actually understood—after all, Baili Qing had given him a thick pile of starship captain manuals (driver's exam materials), and even if he skimmed them, he had accumulated some basic conceptual knowledge. Of course, the stuff on the holographic projection was another matter—it wouldn't have hurt if Luo kept playing her loop...

Huli then suddenly twitched her ears and looked up at the star chart and coordinate transformation table on the holographic projection.

The big fox finally woke up from her meal.

"...Looking at it, it's not far from the Morona Fault, is it?" she said with some surprise.

"Yes, surprisingly close, but that's for a large ship with a superluminal core, and also because we now have its coordinates. Without these coordinates, that border would remain forever hidden in the vast darkness of the Dark Meteor Stream. The Conclave's territory is surrounded by massive gravitational faults of astonishing scale. These spatial discontinuities of various sizes not only completely block the starlight from their nest but even extend into part of the Triga Nebula. No wonder no one had discovered their lair all these years."

"Alright. Since we've found it, let's take the ship and go take a look," Yüsheng said, clapping his hands and making a decision instantly. "You and Momo stay at Blackstone Station. Transmit the coordinates to the Exotic Hotel. We're leaving now."

"Right now?" Luo stood up in surprise. "That's Conclave territory. Even if we found the star gate coordinates, we can't be sure what else is near that gate. If you go deep alone and get discovered..."

"If I'm discovered, I'll open a door and come back," Yüsheng said casually. "Wherever I go, the Lodge's front door opens there. Even if I can't fight, can't I run away?"

Luo: "...Damn, I forgot about that."

Yüsheng said nothing, just cheerfully waved and opened a door to the Exotic Hotel. Before stepping through, he remembered something and looked back. "Oh, right. I'll just 'send' the ship directly to the Morona Fault. That's a shorter route. You help us plan the jump path from the fault onward."

"Understood."

---

On the upper deck of the Exotic Hotel, the lights in the control hall had already lit up.

The vast power output from the reactor core had been injected into the entire ship's systems. A low, pleasant hum resonated deep within the interstellar vessel. Yüsheng sat in the captain's seat of the control hall, feeling the ship awaken like an extension of his own body.

The communicator picked up an external signal. Yüsheng glanced at the signal source, his expression shifting subtly as he answered.

A boisterous, impulsive voice came through from the console communicator—a certain golden-furred girl. "Bro! Bro, are you going on a long trip? I heard the automatic announcement from the starport at the Dark Forest saying the ship is preparing to launch... Are you going to pick a fight? Take me!"

"Don't get all riled up over every little thing—use your winter break to catch up on your missed lessons," Yüsheng said, pressing a hand on the communicator. "We're on a stealth infiltration mission this trip. Not a fight."

"Hey bro! Takin' such a big ship to infiltrate what..."

The communicator clicked off. Peace at last.

On the external monitor display, the mountains outside the valley slowly descended. Moments later, the Exotic Hotel touched the sky and was swallowed by a rolling spatial rift, vanishing into a flash of starlight.

By the time the light through the observation window stabilized again, the distorted starlight near the Morona Fault was already pouring into the control hall.

With a thought, Yüsheng activated the Exotic Hotel's stealth field. A nearly transparent "light film" rapidly extended from both ends of the tower-shaped ship and enveloped it in the blink of an eye.

As a special operations starship built by the Conclave for infiltrating civilized worlds, this vessel's armor and firepower were unremarkable, but all its auxiliary and special warfare systems were exceptionally excellent—especially its stealth capability. It had once hidden under the very noses of the Special Operations Bureau for ten years and hadn't even been exposed after the "City in the Mist" incident. Now it had been retrofitted by the Special Operations Bureau, with all the Conclave's system backdoors and identification features wiped clean. With its stealth field engaged, it was as ghostly as could be anywhere.

That was also Yüsheng's reason for daring to bring this ship to the Conclave's border to find the way—not even the Bureau's stealth reconnaissance ships could match this one.

After a short cruise, the Exotic Hotel received navigation data sent from Blackstone Station.

A deep rumble came from deep within the starship.

The ship's AI announced in a somewhat stiff voice: "Calibrating coordinates... Course clear. Warp engine starting."

Outside the observation window, the starlight began to move backward slowly, then accelerated abruptly. All points of light contracted into a blue vortex of light in front of the ship, while infinite space turned into a dark red "wake" behind the ship. Then the warped space closed, and the real universe's starry sky became countless infinitely stretched projections on the surface of the space bubble.

Yüsheng was no longer as excited and nervous as the first time he entered warp—even though his consciousness was still directly connected to the Exotic Hotel, even though he could still "look up" and see those great information structures and countless bizarre messages left by the Creator called the "Captain" imprinted in the stars, he could now calmly enjoy the process and even chat with those around him.

Eline sat in the seat beside him. The little puppet had appointed herself the vice-captain of the Exotic Hotel, and her tiny body was almost completely blocked by the armrests when she sat in the seat. In front of her was a little control panel adjusted to her height, allowing her to push buttons and pretend to be busy.

That control panel wasn't connected to anything—it was just a simulated flight interface, specially made for her to play with. Its function was like the steering wheel of a parent-child bumper car at an amusement park, mainly to provide an immersive distraction.

The little puppet knew it was useless, but she didn't care. She still played happily.

Huli sat on Yüsheng's other side, studying the warp engine telemetry and the navigation parameters Luo had sent.

Actually, she hadn't known this system at first, but later she got a bunch of flight manuals from Baili Qing and asked Luo about some starship control knowledge in this world. She studied on her own for half a month.

Now she understood.