In fact, while Duke Bairen's forces were sealing off the Diamond Nebula and casting a wide net in their search, and while Sobek's fleet was chasing the Ghosts and "purging dissenters" along the way, another group of escapees had managed to evade the Imperial Army's surveillance and embarked on a long, arduous journey through the Abyss toward the light.
The news came from a report sent by an Imperial patrol fleet in the Heilaosi star system. They had finally detected residual gravitational readings in the Hanshi-12 system and believed pirates had most likely entered the area. They hoped for support from the Outer Ring Theater's Grand Command.
But Hanshi-12 was not only one of the entrances to the Tan Gong Passage; it was also where the first batch of Ice Universe ships had been built.
The Imperial Army would probably wake up to the truth once it discovered the shipyard hidden inside that frozen planet.
They should have been the tenth refugee fleet Yu Lian knew of. If two-thirds of the escapees managed to reach their destination, the settlements Tan Jize had established would have a population of at least thirty thousand.
...All right, compared with the 150 billion slaves in the entire Heilaosi sector, that really was an almost negligible number.
It was even smaller than the normal "operational losses" among slaves assigned to dangerous work, so the Imperial government's slow response was understandable.
Deng Zhengqing was rather interested in the matter. "Come to think of it, their destination is the frontier world Mr. Tan Jize acquired in the Three Paths Star Region, right? And the one providing them with safe haven is Marshal Akbar of the Cherk Kingdom?"
Feifei smiled. "It's not just safe haven. They're working very closely together. Mr. Tan has already united all the original