Pulling the dagger from the mutant beast's neck, Mu Fan wiped the blood off on the body of the over two-meter-long fierce beast. He paid no attention to the five claw marks still bleeding on his back and grinned.
He had gotten lucky. This was a lone mutant beast wandering at the edge of the jungle—dangerous, but not deadly. In his eyes, the blood and wounds on his body were far less important than the several hundred kilograms of meat lying on the ground!
It seemed he had never truly eaten his fill. Mu Fan narrowed his eyes wistfully. Forget it, no point thinking about that. Filling his stomach came first. If he rationed this food carefully, it could last him several days. Lowering his head, he prepared to carry his ingredients out.
Something was wrong. There was a sound! A deafening roar that broke the sound barrier came from the sky, making his scalp tingle. A shadow suddenly fell over the prey on the ground.
Mu Fan abruptly looked up. A fiery rainbow streaked down from the horizon, tearing through the dark night sky and plunging straight toward Luoqie Star's ground like god's sword!
Mu Fan could only stare blankly as the shocking fireball crashed deep into the jungle.
Wait, deep in the jungle?
Mu Fan's eyes flew wide. Just as he realized that he might not be safe, the fireball struck the ground. A shockwave from the violent impact surged toward him from the jungle three kilometers away with crushing force, toppling trees in every direction.
Before Mu Fan could close his hanging jaw, he was knocked to the ground with a bang.
A huge cloud of smoke rose, and the firelight died out in the jungle. The people in the city district over forty kilometers away merely heard a loud boom. Just another meteorite fall, something they were used to. They continued their intoxicated nightlife.
Crack.
My teeth... Can I still eat meat? A crisp clacking sound came from beneath the loose earth. Mu Fan forcefully shook his head from side to side. When the two slanted tree shadows before his eyes finally merged into one, his mind finally cleared.
With his head resting on the ground, he looked at the sky, which had returned to silence and darkness. Then he let out a howl—my meat!!
With a sudden flip, Mu Fan's explosive body sprang off the ground. This time, he more directly ignored the new wounds on his body and the dirt covering him as he looked around. Luckily, the meat had not been blown away. He immediately sat back down in relief.
"What could that have been? A meteorite from outside the planet, or some drifting space junk?" Thought flashed through Mu Fan's bright eyes. "I'll go take a look first. It won't be too late to come back and carry it away."
The darkness was nothing to him. The fierce impact had already frightened away the nearby fierce beasts. The farther forward he went, the more severely the trees had been toppled. Mu Fan nimbly made his way toward the impact site.
He could already smell the scorched trees ahead. Leaping over a giant tree thick enough for several people to wrap their arms around, Mu Fan saw the enormous spiderweb-like crater spreading outward in all directions. At its center lay something that occasionally crackled with sparks... a "black egg"? Yes, a black egg. Mu Fan satisfactorily confirmed his own conclusion. His scant knowledge made it difficult to find a more fitting description.
Carefully sliding down from the crater's edge, Mu Fan curiously watched the black egg lying quietly at the very bottom as he approached it step by step. The occasional sparks from the black egg could not reveal its true color. A pitch-black egg-shaped object over a meter long lay before him.
"There are electrical sparks. It should be made of metal." Mu Fan casually picked up a broken branch beside him and tapped it. "Thud." There was empty space inside. He touched the leaves on the branch he had picked up. They were warm. "Hmm, the surface temperature has already dropped."
Mu Fan pressed his hands, clad in ragged leather gloves, against the black egg's surface and felt the heat against his palms. It was slightly hot. He gave it a light push, and the black egg shifted within the giant crater.
"About two hundred kilograms." Mu Fan stood up and looked around, then used the loose earth nearby to cover the places on the black egg where sparks occasionally flashed. He clenched his fist and shouted. The black egg was lifted straight off the ground, then hoisted onto his right shoulder. With several rapid bounds, he leaped from the crater to its edge with strength that did not match his build, then ran straight toward his ingredients. On the outskirts of District 22 on Luoqie Star beneath the night sky, no one noticed a slender figure racing down the path deep into the wilderness, carrying a huge black egg on one shoulder and dragging a dead mutant beast with one hand.
Mu Fan grinned, his eyes shining. Home. Eat meat. Then see what good thing he had picked up. Was this a gift from the stars?
Heavy clouds blanketed the night, along with the thick layer of space junk surrounding the planet. Far from the city district, at the edge of an empty wilderness jungle, everything perfectly concealed this small incident on a distant planet.
At the edge of the Local Star System, 0.7 light-years from Luoqie Star, fragments of rock drifted aimlessly through the quiet, mysterious void. Deep within a Meteorite Belt, a huge pitch-black rift suddenly tore open space. Three massive silver-white Heavy Warships emerged. Their sleek, polished hulls bore no markings, but the dragon-like Heavy Particle Cannons mounted on their exteriors and the dense array of differently shaped barrels extending from their hulls proclaimed the terrifying combat power of the three warships.
"Family Head, the fleet has jumped beyond the borders. We've lost them! This subordinate has failed in his duty. Please punish me, Family Head!" On the flagship, the captain in a Dark Blue military uniform knelt on one knee. Before him stood a tall middle-aged man in the same blue uniform. Behind the lenses on his nose bridge were cold, imposing eyes. The older man expressionlessly glanced at the captain kneeling before him and paused for several seconds. "Our Huangchuan Family has remained silent beneath the Empire's banner for a hundred years. Amid the open and hidden struggle between the Empire and the Federation, how many former nobles have already vanished into nothingness? Protecting themselves wisely, hmph. Those Emperor Star nobles have completely fallen into decay. Opportunity has now fallen into our hands. If we do not seize it, there will never be another chance. Chuan Shisan, which star system is our fleet currently in?"
"Family Head, we have now jumped into Star River Federation territory. We are currently within a small Meteorite Belt and have not yet been detected by Federation forces. Please make your decision, Family Head." An officer to the middle-aged man's right swiftly operated the holographic light screen, displaying a small three-dimensional star map before everyone.
"Chuan Yi, get up. It probably wasn't those lackeys from Empire Hawk Eye. They would not enter Federation territory, so we can rest easy. Avoid exposing the fleet and return to speed up the preparations." After a brief moment of thought, the middle-aged man called Family Head said, "Return."
"Yes, Family Head!" The captain rose and returned to the command station to issue orders. "Activate the Jump Engine, power at 175 percent. Activate Huangchuan Iron Curtain mode. Load the coordinates for Spatial Node One. Perform coordinate vector correction. All personnel—return!"
The pitch-black rift that had just disappeared suddenly reappeared, opening sideways like an enormous vertical eye. The flowing white color across the warships eerily turned Dark Blue, and then they slowly entered the rift. The vertical eye closed, and the Meteorite Belt returned to its usual silence.
If anyone from a Federation scientific laboratory had been present, they would have been utterly shocked. Small Static Space Transmission Channel Technology was a field the Federation had only just begun to explore, yet someone was already using it in practice. But no one knew any of this.
P.S. Thanks to reader Dare to Make All Saints Bow for the reward, and thanks to readers Bai Yiduo and Remnant★Snow Without Trace for their rewards!
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