Under the gloomy starlight, above the orbit of the No. 3 planet not far away from the Martial Meritocrats Sector, a small space gate made of eighty-eight star beacons was revolving slowly on its own in the shape of a crystal, emitting lackluster redness.
Centered at the space gate that looked like a blood red crystal, ripples of the void flowed out of the space nonstop. Starships jumped to the Martial Meritocrats Sector one after another like whales and giant squids that had surfaced from the deep ocean.
The lightning trident emblem on the head of their starships was even more hideous under the illumination of the redness. It was the symbol of the Imperium of True Human Beings.
The Martial Meritocrats Sector was not a self-sufficient Sector.
Because of the experiments of advanced magical equipment and techniques, the only habitable planet here was in a mess. It was impossible to maintain a stable ecological system and a material and energy circulation system.
Even though there were some experimental farms in "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" and the enormous Heavenly Rails, they were still far from enough to meet the needs of all the Immortal Cultivators, the sinners, and the biological weapons.
Therefore, countless carriers carrying assets from various parts of the Imperium were delivered to this place incessantly every day to transfuse blood for "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky".
Perhaps because the "epic quest" had been activated and a soul-stirring space battle was about to begin, more carriers were shuttling between the Martial Meritocrats Sector and the heartland of the Imperium. Perhaps some of them were even the most advanced warships under the guise of "transportation"!
The carriers large and small from different Sectors, with a myriad of models and styles, were sailing toward the "tentacles" that extended to the sea of stars from "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky". Every tentacle was an enormous spaceport.
But none of the carriers discovered that a Crystal Suit that was almost transparent was standing in midair right next to them. It seemed to have been melted into the dark universe and was observing them coldly.
The Crystal Suit, which was almost transparent, was surrounded by a unique twisting force field that blocked all the scanning and detection. Even though a few alert satellites of the Imperium passed by it just now, they did not notice it at all.
Li Yao stared at the stargate for an hour and a half before finally locking onto the target.
He did not want to sneak into "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" directly. There was no telling what kind of defense measures the Immortal Cultivators had. It would be too difficult for him to barge into a space fortress even though he was in the Divinity Transformation Stage.
The carriers of the latest model, which were large in size, smooth in shape, and full in spiritual shields, were not ideal prey either. After all, it was barely possible for him to sneak into the starship from the vacuum of space without being discovered.
The old carrier, which was slightly clumsy, ragged, and riddled with holes as if it had just been scourged by a cosmic storm, was the best target.
With a telepathic thought, Li Yao turned into an almost invisible ripple and dashed toward the carrier that had the symbol of a black bear painted on the side wing. Like a dry leaf or a dandelion, he landed at the tail of the carrier next to the spurting flames of the power rune arrays.
The temperature of the spurting flames was at least thousands of degrees, mixed with all kinds of violent rays and particles. If it were in the past, Li Yao would not have been able to persist for more than a few minutes. But right now, he felt as comfortable as having an iced drink in the cool breeze of summer.
Li Yao smiled and stuck his hands to the shell of the old carrier softly. His telepathic thoughts turned into ripples that leaked, snuck, and spread out, invading the engine compartment of the old carrier.
Closing his eyes, Li Yao imagined his soul into thousands of threads and crawled into the depths of the carrier together with the ripples inside his palms. Every tube and every crystal wire inside the engine compartment popped up in his brain clearly. Then, they interweaved and connected to each other, establishing a virtual engine compartment model that was 100% accurate quickly.
Li Yao did not guess wrong. The unlucky carrier indeed encountered an unexpected cosmic storm soon after it left the mother port, which seriously damaged the starship.
The proof was the liquid metal menders that filled the gaps that were riddled with holes all over the shell.
Although such menders boasted the advantages that they could take all kinds of forms and could quickly condense when exposed to air or a vacuum, they could not maintain a solid form for long. Therefore, they could only be used as a one-time, temporary material for emergencies.
Generally speaking, after a voyage, the starship would be dragged into the dockyards, where all the menders would be removed and replaced with regular materials that could be used for a long time and had higher hardness and ductility.
The universe was too unpredictable. Nobody would joke about a matter of life and death. Therefore, the liquid metal menders must have been spurted out not long ago.
Also, almost all the power units inside the engine compartment were seriously overloaded. Quite a few power units were on the verge of collapse and could reach the tipping point at any moment.
It suggested that the commander of the carrier had just performed a very violent operation not long ago. For example, he had struggled to escape from the swallowing of a cosmic storm.
It was truly the perfect prey.
Li Yao's telepathic thoughts snuck into the most seriously damaged and unstable power unit like a viper in the void. He focused his attention on interfering with the circuits of spiritual energy that were already on the verge of collapse. In the meantime, he crushed dozens of sensors inside the power unit so that the crew inside the engine compartment could not discover the problem of the power unit on the operation interface of the crystal processor.
All the values on the operation interface were normal. All the crew members were still in the dumbfounded state. Many of them thought that victory was within their reach when they saw "Manjusaka, the City in the Sky" right next to them. They were all relieved, with smiles of relief on their faces.
Right then —
BOOM!
The power unit that had been tampered with by Li Yao had a serious explosion. The high-energy fuel spurted everywhere, triggering a series of serial explosions that even spread to the shell of the carrier. A shocking hole was left on it, and countless scraps, fuel, and broken limbs of the crew members were spurting out like a fountain.
"Not good. Another explosion!"
"Extinguish the fire. Repair it immediately. Hurry up!"
"Goddamn cosmic storm!"
The entire carrier immediately fell into an uproar. The damage control department took action in an orderly manner. At first, the super-dense fire-extinguishing foam blocked the fire and the fuel from spreading. Then, a lot of liquid metal that looked like gel was sprayed to the damaged parts, solidifying into a silver shell instantly. A lot of fully-armed crew members lunged at the area of the explosion while cursing.
Ever since the level-seven carrier of the Imperium encountered a cosmic storm the moment it set off, the level-seven carrier named "Black Bear" seemed to have been haunted by bad luck. Four small-scale explosions had taken place. The crew members of the damage control team were already used to it.
But none of the crew members realized that a fiend that was a hundred times more dreadful than the explosions had snuck into their starship without a sound in the middle of the fire, smoke, and venomous gas.
Li Yao leaned against a corner where the fire was soaring and the venomous gas was surging out. He did not even bother to look for a place to hide himself.
On the ragged carrier, there were at most some Immortal Cultivators in the Refinement Stage and the Building Foundation Stage. It would be good enough if there were a few in the Core Formation Stage. It was almost an impossible mission for them to discover him, a Divinity Transformation Stage expert.
After he snuck into the starship, the speed and efficiency of the expansion of his telepathic thoughts were even higher than before. He figured out the overall structure and the distribution of personnel on the carrier in the blink of an eye.
Even by the standards of the Xing Yao Federation, it was a rather shabby carrier. In front of the engine compartment were four enormous warehouses. Below the warehouses were the assets and fuel area. Further ahead was the rest area for the crew members and the bridge. Only the bridge could vaguely sense a few auras that were not too weak, but they posed no threat to Li Yao at all at this moment.
The only thing worth his attention was that the goods inside the warehouses were not common assets but human beings. They were a thousand human beings who were crouching in the hibernation cabins like babies with twisted bodies, painful faces, and frost all over their bodies.
The hibernation cabins that they used were also rusted, ragged, and surrounded by thick helical tubes. They were even more underdeveloped than the engine compartments that Li Yao had seen in the Black Wind Fleet before to accommodate the immigrants. They were almost like narrow iron coffins.
The thousand iron coffins were arranged on the two sides of the warehouse. Illuminated by the pale light, they emitted a gloomy and terrifying air, as if they were in a weird space graveyard.
Li Yao noticed that the warehouse had been scourged by the cosmic storm, too. A lot of tiny meteoroids had broken through the defense of the carrier and pierced through almost a hundred hibernation cabins brutally. The hibernators inside had long been deformed and lost their lives.
Every hibernation cabin was connected to a small crystal processor, on which a thin light beam was floating.
Li Yao snuck his telepathic thoughts into one of the crystal processors and read the information on the light beam curiously, only to discover that there were only a few simple lines of data.
"No. 11546, female, 44 years old, in good health. Guilty of incitement, riot, and endangering national security."
Below were her detailed physical data, but it did not involve too many features and was only used to prove her physical health.
In a daze, Li Yao sensed the woman inside the hibernation cabin who was only 44 years old but whose hair was gray and whose face was full of wrinkles.
He could tell after a quick glance that the woman's spiritual root had not been awakened. She was a standard ordinary person, or in the words of the Imperium of True Human Beings, 'hominoid'. ‘
Li Yao found it hard to understand. In the Imperium of True Human Beings, which was governed by the Immortal Cultivators, how could a hominoid whose spiritual root had not been awakened commit 'endangering national security'?
It was the same for the other hundreds of hibernation cabins. Most of the people sealed inside were ordinary people who had not awakened their spiritual roots. There were men and women, old and young, but most of them were strong young men. Although their bodies were strong, their tendons and joints were slightly twisted, which was obviously not a result of cultivation but a result of years of hard work.
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