The man in the trench coat was named Fang Lian. He was no famous pirate, but he was extremely powerful, a true expert of the Liexing Upper Realm. He had run rampant along the fringes of the Great Industrial Starfield for years, and the Galaxy Alliance authorities had failed to capture him despite years of pursuit.
Then, a few days earlier, all the spatial passages leading from the Scorpion Tail Nebula to the main starfield had been sealed, and aircraft had been forbidden to take off or land on any planet. He had suddenly discovered that he had become a beast in a cage.
Ordinary people did not feel this imprisonment because, to them, a planet or even a city was already a sufficiently large world. But ability had always correlated positively with spatial range. For a Stellar Realm expert, living on one planet for too long felt stifling, and dangerous.
The Alliance Military had dispatched just three warships to destroy that famous pirate clan. He could not imagine what would happen if he were discovered.
He had hidden in this planet's abandoned mines and wilderness for a long time. His Stellar Realm cultivation meant he needed very little food, and in principle, he could have held out another six months or a year without trouble. But the military blockade kept tightening, with seemingly no end in sight. Most troubling of all, he had heard that the government was preparing a second round of registration... was this aimed at him?
An inexplicable unease and fear grew ever stronger in his mind. He decided to find a way off the planet, so he returned to the city and sought out those figures who operated in the dark to ask about ways to leave. Yet he discovered that this blockade was so