The Turbulence

This included boarding the War Axe and, relying on what he had accumulated before his rebirth, earning more of Yuan Shu's trust through excellent performance and a little white lie.

He would try to see whether he could avoid the hassle of the Yuan Family Secret Medicine.

But after careful consideration, he abandoned the idea.

What if Yuan Shu saw Wang Dong's outstanding performance and raised his expectations of him, changing the requirement from killing a direct descendant of the Jin Family to destroying the Jin Family? Or what if he chose a harsher method instead of using the Yuan Family Secret Medicine?

What then?

It wasn't impossible.

So in the end, Wang Dong still chose the most conservative plan, the one with the fewest variables.

He would keep playing dumb and take command of the War Axe.

Only after obtaining command of the War Axe would he make his Strategic Retreat a little earlier.

With that slight head start, Wang Dong would pilot the War Axe into the depths of the Asteroid Belt, easily evading the Jin Family warships' search.

He would hide his presence perfectly while also preventing the War Axe from being badly damaged, preserving as much of its combat strength as possible.

At this point, the thing Wang Dong should have done most was look through the information Yuan Shu had left in the Shipborne Optical Computer.

Before his rebirth, Wang Dong had indeed done exactly that.

The more information one had, the clearer one's understanding of the situation became, and the more methodically one could make decisions.

But the current Wang Dong had no need to review the War Axe's logs or study its combat methods.

More than ten years of fighting the Jin Family had made him intimately familiar with the War Axe.

To put it bluntly, Wang Dong could complete the entire process of going to the bathroom aboard the War Axe with his eyes closed.

So far, Wang Dong's plan had gone fairly smoothly.

"Now that I've avoided a direct encounter with the Jin Family warships, I just need to wait for these two additional modules to finish buffering. Then I can return to the Mine Overlord Type 2 and continue mining.

"That way, I can cleanly distance myself from today's events and remain an ordinary space miner.

"The only lingering concern is whether the notoriously vengeful Jin Family will take its anger out on the miners in the mining zone because it couldn't find the War Axe.

"They don't need to target any particular miner. Just a few random main-gun bombardments could trigger a chain reaction, causing the gravitational turbulence in the surrounding space to react violently.

"In that situation, the mining zone would be a living hell. Near-space mining spaceships wouldn't stand a chance."

Wang Dong made his deduction calmly.

But so much time had passed without anything happening.

That concern could be put aside, too.

Wang Dong stared intently at a small virtual screen to the right of the command cabin.

He had brought it up specifically to monitor the miniature probes he had sent out earlier.

The results had come in two hours ago.

After the Mie Particle effect in that area disappeared, the more than ten miniature probes he had placed there sent back their observations.

Less than an hour after Wang Dong had ordered the War Axe to make its Strategic Retreat, another Kindling Warship of the same destroyer class had appeared there.

"As expected, it's that Sima Decao."

From certain details of the warship, Wang Dong recognized it as the one that had beaten him badly when he was a rookie captain in his previous life.

It would have been a lie to say he didn't want to get revenge right away.

Unfortunately, Wang Dong knew his own limits.

Right now, he couldn't win.

Sima Decao was a direct descendant of the Jin Family, backed by his family and supplied with resources far beyond what an ordinary person could imagine.

His warship's overall rating was above LV.11.

Compared with the War Axe's LV.6, that was a difference of an entire tier.

In a head-on fight, the War Axe's main gun would have to hit ten times in a row just to break through the other warship's energy shield.

Meanwhile, the energy shield aboard the War Axe might not even withstand two consecutive shots from the enemy.

Of course, the fact that he couldn't fight head-on didn't mean there were no other options.

In his previous life, even after the War Axe had been badly damaged, Wang Dong had temporarily escaped the pursuit and spent several days thinking hard. In the end, he had found a way.

He used his advantage of knowing the celestial environment to find a suitable stretch of space for an ambush.

Gravitational turbulence was common in the Asteroid Belt Mining Zone.

Some hidden gravitational turbulence remained relatively balanced within itself and showed no signs of activity under normal circumstances.

But when an external disturbance reached a certain threshold, it would suddenly erupt.

Star miners considered these hidden yet powerful currents the greatest of all traps.

Drawing on his years of experience in the mining zone, Wang Dong found a stretch of space where powerful gravitational turbulence lurked.

He searched for asteroids a certain distance away and planted a large number of space mines there in advance.

Inside the Asteroid Belt, warships' scanning radars had far less effective range and precision. Because of the distance, it would be difficult to detect the mine traps Wang Dong had laid.

Then Wang Dong had the War Axe reveal its position just enough. The Jin Family warships, which had been searching nearby, immediately picked up its trail and chased after it.