Lure and Kill

By the eighteenth day of the search, Jiang Muzhou knocked on Xu Wuyi's door before dawn.

The Northern Line Base's lighting system was running at minimum power. Only the emergency lights along the walls remained on in the corridor, their dim yellow glow casting long shadows across the floor.

Xu Wuyi had not lain down. He sat cross-legged on a training mat, the Rules of Order within him still circulating slowly. With each heartbeat, the node near his heart pushed energy crystals throughout his body.

He heard footsteps approaching down the corridor, evenly paced and light on the ground. That was Jiang Muzhou's habit.

The door opened.

Jiang Muzhou stood outside, his long coat covered in a layer of gray-white dust. His hair was somewhat disheveled from the peculiar energy currents in the void.

His eye sockets had sunk in, and the bloodshot veins in his pupils were denser than they had been a few days ago. Yet he still stood ramrod straight, a palm-sized data tablet in his hand.

"We've locked down the location." Jiang Muzhou entered the room and set the tablet on the table.

The tablet lit up, projecting a hologram into the air. It displayed a gray-white region Xu Wuyi had never seen on the Federation star map.

At the center of that region was a narrow spatial rift. The rock walls on either side were crystalline, and the edges still bore high-temperature scorch marks left by colliding Star Realm passages.

The rift was less than twenty meters wide, yet it stretched more than three thousand kilometers into the depths. Meteor fragments of all sizes hung along its length.

Roughly two hundred kilometers into the rift, there was an extraordinarily faint energy signature, half-hidden behind several massive meteorites.

"A Star Realm Rift." Jiang Muzhou tapped the