In the space outside the ship, a small shuttle detached from a docking port on Zhenyuan's flank. Its engines ignited, and it sped toward Blue Star at full thrust.
Yang Wanqing stood at the bridge viewport, watching that tiny point of light recede into the distance.
She turned back toward the holographic table. The crimson heat-map regions were gathering again. The second wave was coming.
"Xi He."
"Here."
"Progress on replenishing the Flame Spirit Stones?"
"Thirty minutes remaining."
Yang Wanqing walked to the center of the tactical table... the spot where Chen Siyao had just stood.
"Notify all attack craft formations. Prepare to intercept the second wave."
The staff officers on the bridge looked at the young woman standing at the command station. She was still holding half an unfinished compressed biscuit.
She stuffed the biscuit into her pocket.
"Don't just stand there. Take your stations."
On the holographic table, the red was closing in.
Inside the black hole.
Time had lost its meaning here. A second might have passed, or a day. Chen Hao had no way to tell.
The only thing he could confirm was... he was still alive. And he was growing stronger.
His integration with the Way of Water: forty-seven percent. Forty-eight percent. Fifty percent.
The extreme spacetime environment inside the black hole was accelerating his comprehension of the laws.
The distortion of space, the stretching of time, the disintegration of matter... these phenomena were themselves extreme manifestations of the workings of the Great Dao.
His Dao Foundation thrived in this environment, greedily absorbing every trace of the laws it could reach.
But Blind Ancient would not give him time to contemplate them in peace.
The grayish-white behemoth had already stabilized itself. Its Hundredfold Law Domain shut out every effect of the black hole.
It hovered