The first mate's shout sent a jolt through everyone aboard, but what followed wasn't tension. It was an excited thrill. Before the captain even gave an order, the crew had already moved into combat readiness.
As for Yu Lian, he had already raised a hand to his brow and was gazing toward the site of the incident.
Even before the first mate reported the emergency, Yu Lian had caught the flicker of energy from the beam. It wasn't something he'd seen with his eyes or picked up through the ship's instruments, but an instinctive perception of a psionic.
After all, he was a fully realized Saint, a being just half a step from demigodhood. Detecting the telltale signs of a sudden attack several astronomical units away was perfectly normal. The principle was much the same as predicting an opponent's moves in a duel.
That was also why fleets with high-ring psionics on board were so difficult to ambush.
And he wasn't the only one to react that way. Feifei had noticed it too.
"The attack came from that dwarf planet," she said, making an even more precise judgment.
Yu Lian nodded, still staring toward the scene of the attack.
Of course, even with his current abilities—even if he really had cosplayed the Great Sage—he couldn't see with his naked eyes what was happening four astronomical units away. But at his current level, the rhythms of psionic energy could constantly create a resonance between his inner universe and the outer one. The events unfolding in the far reaches of space quickly took shape in his mind as a vague model.
A beam of light shot up from the dwarf planet like a venomous snake launching a deadly ambush, striking at the Imperial patrol fleet as it passed nearby.
Clearly, the Imperial