Chapter 1 The Mainframe's Malfunction

The mainframe was malfunctioning. It had issued orders prohibiting anyone from investigating the "visitor from beyond the stars" on the mother planet's surface. However, its directives failed to address the scenario where the theoretically crashed "visitor" suddenly took flight again, even flying directly towards Zenith.

The mainframe's instructions lacked such a clause. Consequently, Zenith's autonomous response program kicked in: as the Nolan brazenly accelerated towards the distant giant space station, a multitude of antenna-like appendages on the station's surface sprang into action. They rotated, targeting the approaching intruder. Piercing alarms echoed throughout Zenith as fighter launch bays opened. One after another, aircraft resembling twin-hulled shuttles glided from Zenith's silvery-white ramparts, ignited their plasma engines, and surged toward the enemy in space.

Simultaneously, defense turrets floating in the space around Zenith deployed their transformation mechanisms. Electromagnetically accelerated rails, arranged in parallel, swiftly locked onto the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform under the control of high-precision fire control computers. Charging capacitor banks beneath the rails pulsed with dim red light, foreshadowing the powerful barrage about to erupt from these enormous cannons.

"Hostile targets detected, quantity 75, increasing… 102 and rising… Small warships entering the fray…" Nolan stood beside the central projector in the bridge, data streams forming a meteor shower-like spectacle in her eyes. "Tsk, looks like we're getting special attention."

Hao Ren chuckled. "After going head-to-head with the First Born for thousands of years, even a rabbit would grow fangs and claws."

N-4 and N-6, however, watched the terrifying scene in space with evident tension. They saw countless launch bays opening on Zenith's surface, various turrets emerging from the space station's interior, and over a hundred aerospace fighters spewing bright plasma flames as they rushed forward. Behind the fighters, they could even see a dozen warships called "Cutters" entering space from large passageways—and the number of all these fighters and warships was rapidly increasing every second!

They had once been members of these fighter and warship crews and deeply proud of these war machines' power. But now, the situation was completely reversed—they had become the targets of these very weapons!

Although the Seed's "fear" emotions could be forcibly controlled by the program, a data surge representing tension inevitably arose in their logic circuits. N-6 finally stood up. "Is this your plan? Weren't we supposed to go to the lunar fortress?"

"Relax, this *is* our plan, and it's an absolutely brilliant one! Guaranteed to cause no casualties!" Lily, who had self-appointed herself as the vice-captain, donned the slightly oversized military uniform once again and stood spiritedly at her station. Her ears stood upright, and a hole had been cut in the uniform's lower back for her tail to wag freely. She pointed forward with one hand, like a valiant female general, "We're going to make preparations for the upcoming infiltration, right here in the open!"

Nangong Wuyue nudged Nangong Sanba's arm with her tail tip. "Brother, does it seem like Lily just said something grammatically incorrect?"

"Don't be silly, she's a literary figure. How could a literary figure make grammatical errors…"

"A literary figure who specializes in dog food reviews?"

Lily's ears twitched, and she glared at the Nangong siblings—her hearing was incredibly sharp.

At the same moment, the brilliance of artillery fire began to erupt in space.

"Armor chargers online, shield chargers online, main power furnace energy transferred to ship defense systems," Nolan reported the ship's status rapidly. "Enemy fighter fire is about to make contact…"

The first wave of attacks from Zenith's defense forces struck the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform's forward shields. Various attacks, including electromagnetic projectiles and focused ion beams, rained down like a torrential storm on the suddenly bright blue shield—but like raindrops falling into a lake, the ripples were numerous yet unable to quell the water's surface. The Giant Tortoise Rock Platform was enveloped in a shimmering "light membrane," and the ship's hull suffered no damage.

"This level of attack is nothing compared to that divine power storm back then," Nolan said dismissively, arms crossed. "My ship can handle…"

Hao Ren interrupted Nolan's boasting. "Too much bragging can lead to capsizing, and we're not really here to fight them—where are the nearest drone swarms?"

Nolan clicked her tongue, and a new data stream flowed through her eyes. "The vanguard is within a single warp jump range, ready to deploy at any time."

"Before they deploy, pick one."

"Let me see…" Nolan nodded, switching to the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform's main viewpoint. She observed the Zenith fighters flying around her—although the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform was as insignificant as a pebble compared to the enormous Zenith space station, Hao Ren's several-hundred-meter-long ship was a behemoth compared to those fighters, which were only a few dozen meters long at most. From Nolan's perspective, it looked like she was being harassed by a swarm of annoying flies, but the ship spirit didn't seem impatient at all. On the contrary, she looked rather excited. "This one… is a little too thin. This one… has a really ugly head. This one… um, the paint job has no taste, I feel like eating it would affect my health! And…"

Hao Ren quickly interrupted the ship spirit, who was starting to get a little too excited. "Stop, stop—I understand that you're excited to be flying again, but we're here on business. Just quickly pick one and we'll haul it in."

"Uh, okay," Nolan shrugged, locking onto a target at random. "That one, it looks like it can carry a lot of people."

Hao Ren nodded. "Release a beacon, notify the drone swarm to deploy, and execute the capture program in fifteen minutes."

A powerful hyperspace communication was sent from the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform, traversing the vast universe to reach a drone hive composed of metal capsules, towers, pipelines, and shattered asteroids.

This drone hive had been established only twelve hours ago—before that, this empty, desolate region of space contained only a dying red dwarf star and a large field of fragmented planetary debris orbiting the red dwarf. But a drone mothership led its offspring squadron to this location and, in a short time, erected a forward hive that combined production, storage, defense, and signal relay functions. Thousands of offspring drones moved in and out of the hive, expanding and improving their new home like busy worker ants.

Until they received the hyperspace communication from the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform.

All of the offspring drones received the order at the same time. They froze instantly, like soldiers with the strictest discipline. Two seconds later, the steel legion began to turn and accelerate towards a bright starlight in the distance.

The next second, more than two thousand offspring drones disappeared into space, accompanied by countless distorted spatial ripples.

The Giant Tortoise Rock Platform was still under fire from Zenith's defense forces, and the number of fighters and warships around it continued to increase—Zenith space station's alert level had been raised to the highest level. The forward fortress was releasing almost all of its garrison to intercept the exceptionally nimble and powerful mysterious alien ship in space. Tracer rounds crisscrossed everywhere, and the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform—darted nimbly through the storm of fire, causing ninety percent of the attacks to miss.

As Zenith's defense forces continued to increase, Nolan didn't dare to casually stroll through the sky with that overwhelming barrage anymore.

But she was still more than capable, her powerful maneuverability and short-range warp capabilities allowing her to maintain the rhythm of battle even in the face of the opponent's superior firepower. She evaded the lock-on of those high-energy turrets while tightly clinging to a specially marked Zenith fighter, waiting for the moment when the drone swarm would enter the fray.

The drone swarm didn't make them wait long.

The deep, dark background of space behind Zenith space station seemed to suddenly ripple, and the distant starlight that was originally blocked by the space station appeared around the station in curved lines due to spatial distortion, as if plating the ancient silver "egg" with a silver edge. Then, a large number of strange machines that resembled a combination of metal and insects, flashing with metallic luster, suddenly appeared before everyone's eyes, dragging long warp trails behind them.

The swarm sent a message to Hao Ren: "Drone swarm deployed, commencing designated operation."

Zenith's defense system paused briefly due to the sudden intrusion of these uninvited guests, but the advantages of artificial intelligence quickly became apparent: a large number of defense forces quickly adjusted their flight paths. Some of the fighters turned back to pounce on the armed drones that had appeared out of thin air, and a large number of guns on the Zenith space station also began to turn at the fastest speed.

However, the drone swarm's fighting style was completely different from the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform's. Their speed and group coordination were even more out of reach for Zenith's fighters.

The drones, which resembled a combination of machines and insects, charged towards various locations around the Zenith space station. Because they had received Hao Ren's orders in advance, they deactivated their artillery modules, instead transferring all of their energy to shield systems and armor enhancers. This allowed these originally relatively fragile machines to withstand Zenith's defensive firepower for a longer period of time. After only a few breaths, the drone swarm completed its battlefield deployment: they did not concentrate their attack on any one place, but rather seemed to be evenly distributed throughout the space, forming a seemingly loose "net" around the Zenith space station with more than two thousand armed drones.

Then, each drone opened the armor on the bottom of its fuselage, and the energy amplification array beneath the armor bloomed with dazzling light.

A battlefield-level super-EMP erupted…