Three minutes earlier.
At the Royal Spaceport docks in the Imperial Capital.
Beep, beep! The central control display of the Phantom, hidden inside a luxury cruise ship, suddenly switched on by itself. The entire spacecraft began to rise slowly, its rear engines gradually blazing with light.
Bang! Before anyone aboard the cruise ship could figure out what was happening, a ghostlike shadow punched a large hole through its side.
The glasslike figure left only an afterimage on the retinas of the people outside the docks before vanishing without a trace.
Three minutes later, while the Imperial Capital's security forces were still urgently investigating the incident at the Royal Spaceport docks, alarms suddenly sounded from the defense system on the Imperial Star... tens of millions of kilometers from the scene.
Before anyone could understand what had happened, a streak of light descended from the sky and punched straight through the entrance to the escape passage the emperor's palace had used to retreat underground.
Gates several meters thick could not slow it in the slightest. It tore through them one after another.
Following the exact route Nie Yun had taken, the Phantom traced a complex maze through the depths without losing any speed!
Before the Imperial Star's defense system could even react, the Phantom had already burst into the Underground Space where everyone stood!
As the dust slowly settled, an enormous "steel needle," a full fifteen meters tall, stood embedded upright before them.
To be precise, it was a long, narrow aircraft with a rather peculiar design.
Its tip, however, had been completely twisted out of shape by the repeated impacts. It had smashed a huge crater into the floor, leaving a vast web of cracks across the surrounding metal.
Buzz! With the underground power lines severed, the cage of light