Yang Yong had heard something like it before: primitive tribes beating animal-hide drums, making low growls deep in their throats...
It sounded somewhat similar, but this sound was far more sinister.
Every syllable was like fingernails scraping back and forth across bone.
No.
Yang Yong suddenly realized.
"The other side is about to attack."
Sure enough.
The next moment, the vessel thundered straight toward the Space Channel.
Its speed abruptly multiplied several times over.
The space around its hull began to warp and distort.
Those black hairs writhed wildly in the void like ten thousand tentacles.
A white eye grew at the end of every strand.
All those eyes were open.
Their eyeballs rolled upward, showing only the whites.
Hundreds upon thousands of white eyes turned at once, fixing on the Mechanical City.
Through the Light Screen, through the barrier between two worlds.
With those hundreds upon thousands of eyes staring at him at once, Yang Yong felt...
As though he had been stripped naked and thrown into an icehouse.
His back snapped against the wall, every hair standing on end as cold sweat seeped from every pore.
There was something in those eyes.
Not malice, not murderous intent.
Hunger.
Pure, undisguised hunger that had lasted for thousands of years.
They wanted to eat.
They wanted living prey.
Yang Yong whipped his head toward Sevian on the raised platform, wanting to see her reaction.
That murderous ghost ship was about to charge through the Space Channel.
Could the Mechanical City stop it?
He wanted to see Sevian order a counterattack.
He wanted to see her activate some hidden ultimate weapon.
He wanted to see even the slightest flicker cross her face.
Yet, after all that waiting...
Sevian showed no reaction.
She sat steadily on the raised platform, her silvery-white metal