Wormhole

As the saucer-shaped spacecraft ahead vanished from sight, inside the deep cyan triangular starship that had arrived in pursuit.

"Tsk." A cosmic human with a massive, rock-like head, clad in mottled earthy-yellow steel armor, stood before the console and let out a look of frustration, reporting in a buzzing, muffled voice to the tall figure behind him. "My lord, the target has exited the Dark Universe. Shall we pursue?"

"Forget it, forget it. At that speed, it's hard to catch them anyway." The cosmic powerhouse, who possessed a tall, golden werewolf head with a spiraled silver horn on his forehead, rested his chin on his hand. He scratched his cheek with sharp fingernails, his narrowed eyes cold and cruel. "Consider it their lucky day; we'll let them go. It's a pity—my original D-rank ship is still under repair after being damaged in the battle in the Huomang Star System, otherwise, they wouldn't have escaped so easily this time."

This starship hadn't been hunting here intentionally; they had merely been passing through when they detected the nearby C6-rank starship and decided to investigate.

In the vast expanse of the cosmos, a rock-gray saucer-shaped starship transformed into a streak of light, traveling at high speed through a sprawling asteroid belt.

Navigating complex environments could reduce the risk of being detected.

Inside the control room, Su Ke watched the screen, his mood easing slightly. He turned back and smiled at the others. "Alright, everyone, no need to be so tense. We've effectively escaped danger for now. The weakness of this C6-rank starship is that it takes a long time to accelerate, deceleration is slow, and it's sluggish to dodge... but once it reaches speed, it flies quite fast. Reaching sub-light speed to travel through an asteroid belt is a breeze."

The others finally relaxed, and the heavy, tense atmosphere in the control room began to dissipate.

Su Kai sighed with emotion as he spoke to his wife. "We've been traveling through the stars in spaceships for so many years, and none of them were as nerve-wracking as this one."

"Can you even compare them? The A-rank ship from our company wouldn't be hunted by a Universe Rank powerhouse," Alice joked.

How poor and bored would a Universe Rank powerhouse have to be to hunt down an A-rank ship?

With the danger gone, everyone went back to rest one by one.

Su Kai walked alongside his wife.

"Sigh, I feel like there's so much pressure on our son," Alice suddenly lamented.

"He's grown up. Sooner or later, he has to go through this process. Only by experiencing the baptism of wind and rain can he truly grow," Su Kai said, taking a broader view.

"It's a pity about those old friends we knew back on Moon River Planet..." Alice looked melancholic.

After leaving Moon River Planet, the friends and acquaintances Su Kai and Alice once knew had reached out to them one after another via the Virtual Universe. They had been fishing for information, and upon realizing this, the couple had decisively cut off all contact with those people.

Whether they were being coerced by the Blood Spring Society or were simply sniffing around out of greed, Su Kai and the couple were no longer willing to trust any of them.

Human hearts are hard to fathom!

In fact, Eloy and her mother, as well as Zuo Mu and his family, had encountered similar situations. But they weren't fools, and having received prior warnings, none of them had leaked any information about their current situation to the outside world.

Su Ke did remember that the purple-haired girl Zuo Mu had once pursued had died during the Blood Spring Society's attack on the New Moon Restaurant that day. However, he kept it to himself; let his brother forget this fruitless affection—it wasn't like Zuo Mu had ever succeeded anyway.

Even after seeing the miserable state of those adventurers who had been wiped out, Zuo Mu still couldn't stop thinking about becoming an adventurer. It was hard to tell where his persistence came from.

As for his other close friend, Eloy, she had been a bit strange lately. She didn't seem to like talking much, and the way they interacted was colder than before. Su Ke didn't think too much of it; he didn't understand a young girl's heart. Perhaps she hadn't yet emerged from the shadow of her uncle's death. On the other hand, her mature, beautiful mother, who looked almost exactly like her, was extremely enthusiastic toward Su Ke.

In the ship's central control room.

Su Ke was asking the intelligent optical computer for their current coordinates.

"Master, we are currently in the Zhaiyu Star System, 513,000 light-years away from the Feiluo Star System." A virtual star map appeared before Su Ke and rapidly expanded; a bright, flickering dot marked their current location.

Su Ke studied the star map carefully. "This location seems quite remote and desolate..."

"Yes, Master," the intelligent optical computer replied. "The Zhaiyu Star System has a diameter of 284,500 light-years. Its scale ranks among the top of the tens of thousands of star systems in the Jialan Empire. However, our current location is in a famously desolate region of the Zhaiyu Star System. It is said that there are very few life-bearing planets within tens of thousands of light-years, and the void in the middle has yet to yield a single life-bearing planet. According to information retrieval, it seems related to a massive catastrophe in ancient times. That disaster destroyed countless planets and resulted in very few life-bearing planets being born afterward. However, while there are many guesses about the disaster, it has not yet been confirmed whether it was man-made or a natural formation."

They had just entered the range of this star system, and even at full speed through the Dark Universe, it would take at least a week to traverse it.

Su Ke realized, "In other words, this patch of space is quite dangerous?"

"According to the star map, there is a certain level of danger, but the risk rating is not high. It is simply too desolate and lacks the value for exploration or development, so starships rarely come here."

This kind of place was equivalent to a backwater. Even if there were life-bearing planets, they were so far apart that communication was difficult, and the price of such planets was very cheap.

Su Ke nodded. He had only ended up here because he was traveling through the Dark Universe; otherwise, he wouldn't have stopped.

He pondered while looking at the star map. If one were to fly in the Original Universe, even at sub-light speed, a thousand years of travel would only equal one year in the Dark Universe.

Moreover, given the famously desolate, remote, and vast environment here, a life-bearing planet being tens of thousands of light-years away from the next wasn't a joke. Relying solely on sub-light speed, one would exhaust their Stellar Rank lifespan before reaching another planet! And there wasn't enough energy to power a ship for such a long journey.

Su Ke's ship had stored a large amount of C-rank energy crystals, but they couldn't sustain a journey lasting ten thousand years.

But if they entered the Dark Universe now, they might run into that malicious pirate ship from before, which would be like walking straight into a trap. Su Ke didn't want to take that risk.

Of course, they hadn't seen that starship follow them when they shuttled back, so it was possible they had given up.

"Continue flying. Let's fly for a few days first," Su Ke decided.

And so, the C6-rank starship continued to fly through the unfamiliar expanse of space.

Four days later, the ship made another major new discovery.

"Master, Master." Su Ke, who had been cultivating, was called out in a hurry again, though this time it was just him and a few Stellar Rank members who came to the control room.

"What is it now?" Su Ke felt a bit jittery.

"Master," the intelligent optical computer, appearing in the form of a young girl, shouted excitedly, her tail wagging like a fan. "At the edge of the asteroid belt ahead, we have discovered a natural wormhole."