Opening - Sub-dimension!

A pillar of fire hundreds of meters high surged into the sky, rolling flames carrying smoke and dust as they spread frantically. Every building in its path was pulverized, and the entire earth trembled under the bombardment of countless energy missiles.

Dozens of missiles, small in size but with power comparable to nuclear weapons, continuously broke through the clouds, slamming into a massive city on the desolate land below.

Thick smoke nearly obscured the entire sky. Everywhere lay the corpses of humans whose bodies had been partially modified into machinery; the vast city had been transformed into a purgatory.

Outside the city, the wrecks of nearly a hundred conventional warships could still be seen.

Beyond the desolate planet lay even more warships that had lost their combat capability or been reduced to scrap metal, three lusterless starships among them being the most prominent.

Not far away, Star Origin hovered amidst the countless shipwrecks, launching missiles toward the surface.

"Modified into cyborgs for enhanced combat power and growth speed the moment they were born, their minds completely brainwashed—tsk, tsk."

"If even four digits of them had their own thoughts, I wouldn't have bothered wiping the place clean."

Feng Xiao shook his head. He was no bloodthirsty demon, but when faced with creatures who had lost all self-awareness and had been brainwashed since birth, why leave them alive?

What if one of them had the template of a destined big boss and grew up to cause him trouble?

The universe was vast; such things had happened before, with both positive and negative examples.

The positive example was a powerful family that conducted human experiments and left a child behind; the child grew up to be a high-talent esper, cultivating all the way to level 90, and eventually led the Guardians to wipe out that family.

The negative example was a major nation that accidentally injured civilians while clearing out space pirates; a child who lost their parents in the incident joined the pirates and awakened a starship. After enduring many hardships, they killed the high-ranking official who had ordered the indiscriminate attack.

Though, they were immediately killed by a descending Guardian afterward.

But they had achieved their goal, hadn't they?

Therefore, when doing things in the universe, if you can pull the weeds out by the roots, you should. It is best to blow the very land where the weeds grew into crystals before you leave.

The bombardment lasted for a full ten minutes. Missiles were replenished wave after wave, and in the end, he simply fired a main cannon shot and dropped a virus for good measure.

Only after confirming everything was clear did Star Origin depart.

Watching the pirate city vanish completely, Feng Xiao couldn't help but praise himself for his caution.

That's right, this was caution.

It was absolutely not because when that pirate leader had cursed him as a "bastard" on the wide-area channel earlier, most of the millions of people in the pirate city had joined in the mockery.

"Tell me, I noticed you two haven't killed anyone before, so why aren't you feeling even a little bit uncomfortable?"

Sipping his tea with a relaxed mood, Feng Xiao looked up at Wang Hao and Ilde, who still seemed to have an appetite for more, and asked with some confusion.

"Huh? Do those die-hard pirates, whose bodies and even brains have been modified into machinery, count as people? Shouldn't they be considered high-intelligence war droids?" Wang Hao waved his hand.

Millions of beasts who ignored abundant food supplies and preferred to eat human flesh—it was a mercy they hadn't been reduced to subatomic particles.

Feng Xiao, accepting Wang Hao and Ilde's logic, shook his head and began to tally the spoils.

Aside from Star Points, as a pirate group capable of occupying a habitable planet—even if it was the trashiest one—they were quite wealthy.

There were even ten pieces of titanium, along with various rare metals and plants, and a full pound of Planet Crystal Core, which could be called the interstellar version of diamonds.

It was a haul worth nearly twenty million Alliance Coins.

"Find a normal star and hide in the corona for a while. We'll continue our operations once Star Origin is fully recharged."

Wang Hao nodded and steered Star Origin toward a nearby small star system.

Hum...

[Special spatial fluctuations detected. Locking coordinates based on spatial tremors.]

[Coordinates confirmed—×××××××××]

The three people inside Star Origin jolted, exchanged a silent look, and then immediately surged toward the displayed coordinates.

At the same time, pirate starships throughout the Blood Cloud Chaos Sector received the notification. Numerous captains looked at the coordinates on their displays in confusion.

Most dismissed it after a moment of doubt, but a small number of captains seemed to know something, their expressions shifting to one of interest.

In an instant, nearly a thousand powerful starships converged from all directions, including veteran elite-class starships and Star-Land Class starships!

However, the most intense reaction undoubtedly came from the four Blood Guard Starports. The moment they captured these spatial fluctuations, they identified the source.

The Sub-Dimension!

"We must not let these pirates lay a finger on the Sub-Dimension world. Dispatch the fleet to seize it immediately!"

The Colonel ordered decisively.

The pirates occupying three collapsed spaces to breed and multiply was already the limit of tolerance. If they dared to covet the Sub-Dimension world—which was smaller in volume but comparable to a standard sector—that was nothing short of a pipe dream.

The Sub-Dimension was different from collapsed spaces; the latter would collapse if the Space Heart were removed, whereas the Sub-Dimension could continue to exist even if its core were extracted.

It even had the potential to condense a new one.

The most important aspect is that the laws of a sub-dimension are relatively complete, and they usually contain a large number of intact resource and ecosystem systems.

Even a sub-dimension at the bottom of the size scale can support the resource requirements of a civilization from level one to level five.

Furthermore, the Sub-dimension Core has numerous functions; for example, a device developed by the Alliance that can permanently connect to a fixed anchor point in another universe requires a Sub-dimension Core to serve as its power source.

Another example is the Dimensional Essence it produces, which can elevate a captain's talent of purple quality or higher directly to epic-tier, while also bestowing a dimensional trait.

It has many uses; in short, we absolutely cannot let the guys in the Blood Cloud Chaos Sector get their hands on it.

"Yes! Sir, how many troops should we dispatch for this operation?"

The adjutant stood solemnly in place and asked.

The colonel rubbed his chin: "All four Blood Guard Starports will dispatch troops. Sending one Star Dome Class starship, four Star-Land Class starships, and twenty Merit Elite Starships from each will be sufficient."

"What about conventional warships?"

The colonel said indifferently: "Conventional warships cannot enter the sub-dimension, but to clear the field, have each port dispatch one Small Battle Star and its auxiliary fleet."

"Yes!"

Violent explosions rose up, and all kinds of metal debris flew in every direction.

After using the ship's cannons to cleanly blast apart the starships blocking his path, Ilde curled his lip.

Even intermediate starships dare to block the way? Is it because the Star Origin's size lacks intimidation?

Feng Xiao quickly verified the data and asked without looking up.

"How much further?"

"Ten minutes at most, and we will reach the coordinate of the spatial fluctuation's source," Wang Hao replied casually while focusing on controlling the Star Origin.

Whoosh! Whoosh, whoosh!

Several starships suddenly appeared, then ignored the Star Origin entirely and charged straight ahead.

"The third wave."

Feng Xiao looked up calmly, his mind constantly recalling the possible locations of the Sub-dimension Core; his old man seemed to have mentioned it before.

That's right, not long ago, Feng Xiao also confirmed the specific type of space opening this time.

It was precisely the most precious sub-dimension world!

For the sake of this event, he had even spent nearly half of his Star Points and a large amount of Titanium to upgrade the Eternal Sun Wall directly to Lv5!

60,000 shield points.

With such powerful defensive capabilities, even the core main cannon of a Star-Land Class starship would need at least two shots to break the shield, causing his safety coefficient to soar.

The only pity was that the Star Origin lacked a powerful main cannon.

Compared to its defense and speed, its damage output of less than three thousand felt like it was falling behind.

Fortunately, this time he didn't need to go head-to-head with Star-Land Class starships; the arrival points after entering the sub-dimension entrance were all random, so there was no need to fight the space pirates to the death.