The image Sophon transmitted froze there.
That Sophon, like the ones on Earth, had been captured by the Giant of Light.
My fleet—was just gone like that?!
The Three-Body leader stood rooted to the spot, his face full of disbelief.
In just a few minutes, his fleet had been reduced to fragments.
He simply could not accept such a reality—
Just then, another communication request forcibly cut in, its signal even more urgent than before.
It did not come from Earth, nor from the wreckage of the First Fleet.
It came from the Second Fleet he had dispatched afterward as a reserve force.
The leader's thought modules were practically about to crash, but he still forced himself to raise his head and look toward that black sphere.
The image lit up again.
This time, there was no distant standoff, no prelude before battle.
The Giant of Light appeared directly at the very center of the Second Fleet's tightly organized formation.
He spread his arms as though he intended to embrace the starry sky.
Then immense energy began to pour forth—
With the Giant of Light at its center, space began to dissolve, distort, and collapse like a sugar cube dropped into water.
The light of distant stars was stretched into thin strands, while the steel warships in the fleet formation groaned under the unbearable strain. Their armor plating peeled away like paper beneath gravity's tearing pull.
Then, a single point.
A pure, absolute black point that swallowed all light appeared before the Giant of Light's chest.
A black hole.
The moment it was born, it began feeding greedily.
Its immense gravitational field was like an invisible hand gripping the entire Second Fleet.
"All engines overload! Maximum thrust! Hurry! Escape the gravitational singularity!"
The Second Fleet commander's roar echoed through the