Spirit Boat was full of regret, but what was done was done.
He flew toward the Warden, intending to take the Lawkeeper's Spear.
The Starburst Battle Cloud still blanketed the sky, its crushing threat looming overhead. He could not hold it off for long. He needed the spear.
But just as Spirit Boat reached the Star Destroyer, he heard Huang Ji's voice.
"Don't go any closer. He's not dead."
Startled and delighted, Spirit Boat exclaimed, "Whoa! You scared me!"
"You're the one who's not dead!"
"Wait... Ah! The one who died earlier was a decoy?"
He realized at once that the "Huang Ji" who had left the armor was not the real Huang Ji, but an identical flesh-and-blood body made as bait.
Still, Spirit Boat could not understand. "But how could it be so convincing? I didn't detect a control signal from you at all."
"In that situation, how could it dodge the repulsive field four times in a row unless you were controlling it yourself?"
Huang Ji smiled faintly. "I didn't need to. I programmed its evasions in advance and predicted his four responses."
Spirit Boat's dragon eyes widened. Huang Ji had gone to the trouble of predicting four moves just to make a disposable decoy dodge like mad.
Together with a flesh-and-blood body convincing enough to pass for the real thing, those evasions had fooled everyone.
The Warden had come to kill Huang Ji. When Huang Ji separated from the armor, how could the Warden pass up such a perfect chance? He immediately redirected his attack to pursue him, never realizing that the armor carrying the real Huang Ji was closing in on him as though by inertia.
When the decoy was annihilated and the Warden turned away, thinking he had won, the Star Destroyer's third eye began