In the soul-stirring battle of the Blue Sky Market, even at the most critical moment, Boss Bai's belief was still firm and indestructible without the slightest wavering.
But at this moment, his belief seemed to have been pierced into a bottomless crack by the shrieking cry for help, raising intense quakes.
As if he had just swallowed ten kilograms of rat poison, Boss Bai's face turned pale.
Even when A Boxing Champion showed a hundred iron clones and opened fire at him, he was not as panicked as he was now.
Tilting his head, every wrinkle on Boss Bai's face was cramping crazily. With disbelief beaming out of his eyes, he listened to the signal carefully.
"Boss Bai, help! Boss Bai, help! Boss Bai, help! "
The signal was louder and louder. The guy seemed to be chased by something and was running toward him in panic.
"Pa!"
Boss Bai turned off the signal quickly and coughed. Glancing at A Boxing Champion and his subordinates on the light beam, he said calmly, "Don't panic. It's just noise. It's cosmic noise."
"Cosmic noise?"
His subordinates were suspicious. "Boss …"
"Exactly. It's cosmic noise."
Taking a deep breath, Boss Bai said, "The high-energy celestial bodies in the universe are releasing radiation and spiritual waves to the outside world every second. When the radiation, high-energy particles, and spiritual waves hit our communication magical equipment, they will congregate into weird cosmic noises. Occasionally, by chance, the noises will sound very similar to the voices of human beings, which is not surprising at all.
"So, it's just noise. It's just an insignificant noise in the universe. Ignore it. Just remove this noise from our scanning channel."
His subordinate scratched his head. "Boss, it doesn't sound right."
"Yes, Boss Bai. I don't think it's a noise either. It sounds familiar. Let me compare it with the data in the database."
After a brief silence, A Boxing Champion said, "Found it. It sounds like … Li Yao's voice."
"Li Yao?"
Boss Bai blinked quickly and asked in confusion, "Which Li Yao?"
A Boxing Champion: "… She was the one who introduced me to you. We were just talking about Li Yao, who was like an earthworm and a primary school student."
"Is it —?"
Boss Bai turned on the distress signal again and listened to it carefully. Finally, he made a conclusion, "As I expected, it sounds very similar to Li Yao. Then, it's even more impossible to respond! Listen. Keep the Spiritual Nexus silent immediately. Enter the highest level of defense in the Blue Sky Market. Also, speed up the transfer of personnel and assets so that we can leave immediately in the worst case even if we have to leave behind a lot of assets. Speed. I need speed!
"As for this distress signal … Don't answer it! Don't answer! Don't answer! "
"Uh …"
A Boxing Champion and his men were puzzled. "Why? Is Li Yao's distress signal that scary?"
"Of course it is, because it is very possible that it is not Li Yao."
Boss Bai said solemnly, "It is the scheme of the Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium. They are simulating Li Yao's voice to trick us. If we really respond, it is very possible that the Immortal Cultivators of the Imperium will notice something wrong and catch us all. Therefore, don't answer it. Just pretend that we have never received the distress signal. Pretend that we are not in the Blue Sky Market at all and that this place is empty!"
"But we can't."
Frowning, his subordinate stammered, "Boss, after receiving the distress signal, we performed a remote scan at the periphery of the Blue Sky Space Zone, the source of the signal, and detected a rather enormous fleet. Right. The fleet was chasing after a few unarmed, ragged carriers without sparing any effort. The distress signal was sent from the carriers. Also, the signal was sent straight to the Blue Sky Market, and the carriers were fleeing toward the Blue Sky Market precisely. There was no sign that they were changing their direction at all, as if they knew that you were here, boss, and they were determined to kill you!
"We have analyzed the speed and the distance between the pursuers and the fugitives. Even if we do not respond to the distress signal, it is very possible that the fugitives will run to the Blue Sky Market before they enter the range of the pursuers. That should happen in twelve hours.
"In other words, in twelve hours at most, a whole fleet of pursuers will arrive at the Blue Sky Market. Whether or not they have destroyed the carriers of the fugitives, their starships must've been repaired and supplied after such a long chase. The Blue Sky Market is the best port for supplies in the few lightyears nearby. They will certainly anchor here. That — that's not going to be good!"
Hearing his subordinate's words, Boss Bai took a deep, deep breath.
"Well …"
In a trance, he said, "Assuming, and I mean assuming, that we abandon everything in the Blue Sky Market and even more than half of the starships that we just captured, can we escape before the mysterious fleet and the wretched carriers arrive?"
"It's almost impossible, boss."
His subordinate wailed, "In order to swallow the twenty-eight pirate gangs and Li Wuji's fleet, our starships have suffered heavy losses. We need to catch our breath before we resume our journey. At this moment, we will be dead for sure if we do not have reliable ports for supplies and maintenance!
"Also, we've been planning for such a long time and fought bloody battles to achieve what we have today. Are we going to abandon everything? How is it possible? "
"Yes, it's indeed impossible …"
Boss Bai tried to hold it back again and again, but he finally couldn't hold it anymore. His face turned from white to green, and from green to red. He stomped so hard that the entire forsaken port was almost crushed. "Li Yao, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you!"
He rushed to the command center in fury while he helplessly asked his subordinates to send out the alarms of the highest battle readiness.
A Boxing Champion also asked the fleet of the Cultivators to be prepared for a new battle through remote control.
The entire Blue Sky Market was in chaos for a moment.
The warriors of the Big Bai Pirate Gang were human beings, too. Their nerves were not made of iron after all. Every human being had weaknesses. They needed to catch their breath and slack off. Having just won such a shocking victory, both the space pirates of the Federation and the Cultivators of the Imperium were exhausted after the exhilaration. Who could've foreseen that a new enemy would show up at such a critical moment?
"Wu — Wu — Wu —"
The pale alarm instantly reverberated above the sea of celebration, as if a scoop of ice water had smashed down on their heads.
"What's going on? Enemy attack? Enemy attack! "
Coloured Glaze had just come to complain to Mr. A Boxing Champion, whose eyes were swollen from crying, when she suddenly heard the earsplitting alarms. Greatly surprised, she stood where she was at first and looked at the panicked scene in the port at a loss. Very soon, she put on a determined expression and rushed to the command center. "Mr. A Boxing Champion! Mr. A Boxing Champion!"
"* sshole. What's going on?"
Deep inside the Blue Sky Market, at the end of an alley that was filled with the intense smell of cosmetics, Han Te also screamed and staggered out in disarray.
There was no telling who had ripped off some of his buttons, and the zipper of his pants was only half open. There were also quite a few lipstick marks of different colors on his face.
The fury that was enough to burn through the sky haunted the young man who was determined to be the "Cannon King of Space". His bloodshot eyes emitted brilliance that was comparable to that of the main guns of starships. "Who said that they were bold enough to disturb Grandfather Han's business? Then, I'll show you the toughness of Grandfather Han's giant cannons!"
He sprinted madly towards his own starship.
Countless space pirates and Cultivators, like Coloured Glaze and Han Te, rushed to their battle posts in a hurry. The Blue Sky Market that had just calmed down was on fire again. The captives of the twenty-eight pirate gangs and Li Wuji's fleet were even more agitated and showed signs of instability.
On their way back to the command center, Boss Bai and A Boxing Champion received more news about the pursuers, which was not very optimistic.
The pursuers were the regular army of the Imperium, and it was a coalition fleet made of the elites of quite a few Sectors in the regular army. It was the forty-seventh fleet in the regular army, known as the "Flying Rainbow Fleet".
Of course, the Flying Rainbow Fleet was not the elite A-class fleets of the four Kurfürst families, nor was it the expedition army that had been weathered into steel after more than ten years of bloody battles in the frontline like Lei Chenghu's Thunder Fleet. It was just a regional defense force that was jumbled up from a few Sectors at the edge of the Imperium that were barren and weak.
Under normal circumstances, the strength of such a coalition fleet was between that of a "garrison fleet" and a "deep-sky fleet". They did not have the ability to fight across space zones for a long time. Therefore, they were not too difficult to deal with.
They were the main opponents of the space pirates, and they often played the game of "cat and mouse" with the space pirates. Although they had more soldiers than the space pirates, their speed and efficiency were not satisfactory because of the complexity of the command system and the low fighting will. It was often the case that the space pirates escaped after looting, and they could not even catch the tails of the space pirates. They were the targets that the space pirates mocked as "stupid and slow soldiers".
But today was different from the past.
The four families and the reformists were fighting for the hegemony at the edge of the Imperium. Even the space pirates had to be attracted to them. Naturally, the local armed forces of the barren Sectors were the targets that the two parties fought for.
The Flying Rainbow Fleet was more inclined to the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the reformists in the beginning. Most of the Sectors at the edge of the Imperium were deeply associated with the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and naturally inclined to the reformists.
However, the four families were too rich. There was no telling what promises they made, but they attracted the few Sectors behind the Flying Rainbow Fleet to their side and supported the four families and the old Council of Elders.
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