To be fair, that word "again" had a certain weight to it. It immediately brought to Yu Lian's mind the terror of being ruled by bugs amid the vast desert sands. In his previous life, he'd been the sort who could fight his way through a swarm of bugs seven times over, but back then, a bunch of zerglings, hydralisks, and lurkers had nearly left him half-paralyzed. What a disgrace! It had been so humiliating that Yu Lian was almost traumatized by it.
He put away his smile and asked gravely, "Bugs?"
"We're still looking, but we haven't found any conclusive evidence." Akinayama Hachiman sighed. "But after making inquiries and investigating, we found that around the time of the Tulong incident, there were several reports of Sandfolk groups being attacked by unknown creatures, apart from the one at Outpost 14, where you were stationed. At least according to the witness statements, these strange alien creatures should exist. The problem is, we still haven't found any physical evidence."
Yang Xiyi sighed too. "The Outer Ring Fleet's scientific investigation lasted a whole year, and we came up empty-handed as well. Commander Bonaparte has already ordered us to bring the research ships back. I'm sorry, Yu Lian."
"No, you've done everything you could. I'm truly grateful," Yu Lian said.
To be honest, two specialized scientific research vessels and a military technical team of nearly a hundred people had spent over a year conducting a detailed search. They could have combed a newly discovered Earth-like planet from top to bottom in that time—perhaps even cataloguing every species on it. But now they were sifting through the sands of New Jade Gate, a planet Earthlings had been colonizing for nearly half a century. If Teacher Yang hadn't insisted, the Outer Ring Fleet would never have