Dozens of minutes passed in suffocating anticipation.
In the upper-right corner of the screen, the first hypersonic nuclear missile's trajectory was already approaching the rift in the void, thousands of kilometers wide.
"Ten seconds to contact!"
The fire-control staff officer pressed hard against the console, veins bulging on his forehead.
"Five, four, three..."
"The warhead has entered the wormhole!"
Before the words had faded, the main screen's white-balance system overloaded. The entire wall turned pure white, swallowed by a blinding glare!
Everyone in the Command Center instinctively turned away, unable to look directly at it, even through a screen.
The power of a megaton nuclear bomb was deeply ingrained in everyone's mind. They could not face it head-on.
Then a terrifying shock wave swept out of the wormhole, violently shaking the high-altitude surveillance drone. Only afterward came the terrifying sound of the nuclear explosion.
A massive mushroom cloud rose inside the wormhole, flames towering as though they would fill the enormous space wormhole.
Yet the violent collapse they had expected to tear apart the wormhole's structure never occurred. Things were not as they had imagined: the space wormhole had actually not collapsed!
In other words, the Space-Jumping Beast at the other end of the wormhole had not been killed!
"What's going on?!" Zheng Jinren roared.
"Reporting! The warhead detonated prematurely inside the wormhole! It seems to have struck some obstacle. It never penetrated to the other end!"
Zheng Jinren said in disbelief:
"A collision? What did it hit?!"
"Send two drones in immediately. Get close and go inside! Find out what the hell is blocking my doorway!"
Two flat miniature shuttles spat out deep-blue plasma exhaust, braved the residual thermal radiation, and plunged into the purple storm.
Their sensors pierced the billowing smoke.
The screen shook twice, and the image