Chapter 303

Chapter 303: Caught Up to You

The unfamiliar starfield outside the portholes plunged the control room into an eerie, uneasy silence.

A Hermitage Order Member in slightly better condition hauled himself up and staggered toward the Sage. Every step was a fight—not only from the impact of dropping out of jump, but because the gravity system had malfunctioned. Gravity in the hall now came from the wrong direction, shifting and unreliable.

“Sage… where are we?”

The old man’s face was grim. He gripped the armrest until his knuckles whitened. Only after a long pause did he speak in a low voice. “…The jump process was disrupted. Navigator. Report.”

“Y-yes!” another member answered, panic scraping raw through his voice. “Our preset jump point should have been near the gravity collapse point close to the Bright River Nebula. It’s a bright dust cluster—easy to identify—but none of the external monitors can see it now. Star chart comparison… the entire navigation system is offline. Manual comparison will take time.”

“Confirm the Pillar of Order’s damage,” the Sage ordered. “Check for inner hull leaks. Then repair each subsystem. Priority is restoring navigation and engines, locating our position—and then fix this damn gravity system.”

“Yes! Yes!”

The Sage drew a slow breath, forcing his voice back into calm. “What about the Space Calibrator and the ‘holy coffin’ chamber?”

“We’ve contacted the core section,” someone replied. “The Space Calibrator is undamaged. The Holy Sarcophagus Chamber suffered some damage, but the saintess wasn’t affected. She’s still in recovery.”

The Sage lowered his eyelids, hiding his eyes. His fingers tapped the armrest in an irritated rhythm as he muttered, too softly for most to hear, “…That useless trash…”

After a suffocating beat, he raised his head again, voice cold. “Speed up repairs. Get the artificial saintess out of that iron coffin as soon as possible.”

“But… her damage this time is severe, especially the mind barrier. If we force it, there could be problems later—”

“As long as it doesn’t melt down today, later problems can wait for later,” the Sage cut in. “I need her back in combat condition immediately. I have a very bad feeling. Our trouble isn’t over.”

“Yes!”

The Sage nodded. His expression loosened slightly.

A Hermitage Order Member beside him finally dared to ask, “Sage… what do you think attacked us? Could it be jump-interference technology from the Special Operations Bureau?”

The Sage slowly shook his head. “The Pillar of Order carries the strongest Phase Engine and core defense systems. To interfere with it, you’d need large fixed disruption devices installed near a star gate or mounted on a fortress facility. The Bureau only recently learned of the deep boundary city. They don’t have time—and they have no reason—to build something like that there.”

He fell silent, then spoke again more slowly. “In the battle data the artificial saintess sent back… everything began slipping out of control after those suspicious people entered the fog. The collapse of the Veil of Concealment was tied to them as well. The question is—who are they, and how did they do it…”

His voice stopped.

His gaze locked on the porthole.

Shock—almost terror—flooded the old man’s face. He stared as if witnessing the most absurd, impossible nightmare.

One by one, the others followed his line of sight.

A person—one of the “them” the Sage had just mentioned—was pressed against the porthole, studying the Hermitage Order Members in the Control Hall.

He wore an ordinary casual jacket that looked like something bought from a cheap street stall. One arm hugged something fluffy that resembled a tail. He was exposed to open space without any protection, peering in at them like a curious tourist.

Then he realized they could see him.

The “humanoid creature” smiled—bright, cheerful—and raised a hand to give them an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

The Control Hall erupted.

Terrified shouts collided with barking orders as leaders tried to restore order.

“Quiet!” the white-robed old man roared. “Everyone, calm down! Send out a knight and eliminate that monster!”

Outside, the figure latched onto protrusions on the tower’s hull and began crawling sideways.

“He moved!” someone cried. “He’s heading toward the radar array!”

“External monitors—switch to that view—damn it! More than half the external monitors were destroyed in the earlier impact. That’s a blind spot!”

“Deploy the hull-cleaning drones! They have cameras!”

“The knight is in the corridor. Three minutes to airlock departure!”

The hall dissolved into chaos. They had survived a lethal crisis, the Pillar of Order was crippled and lost, and now a “person” was casually crawling across the hull in open space. Seeing him was terrifying. Losing sight of him was worse.

The Sage sat at the center of it all, saying nothing, face livid as he stared at the now-empty porthole.

That thing had moved out of view—into the blind spot on the Pillar of Order’s hull.

What was he doing?

What was he planning?

How had he “followed” them after the jump failed?

Who was he?

What… was he?

Yu Sheng crawled carefully along the bizarre hull, still hugging Foxy’s big tail with one arm.

It reminded him of Irene, squeezing into every shadowed corner of the house—under the table, under the coffee table, under the sofa. Little Doll loved that kind of crawling.

But Yu Sheng felt there was an important difference. Little Doll’s crawling was creepy. His was bright, wholesome, and appropriately measured.

Even his goal was wholesome.

He wanted to find an entrance, slip inside, and deliver surprise and joy to the cultists hiding in this flying tower.

If they weren’t happy about it, that was their problem. He was having a great time.

He paused on a flatter section of hull to rest, then tilted his head up and stared into the endless black. Stars glittered like scattered salt across velvet.

[So beautiful…]

He couldn’t say it out loud.

He couldn’t breathe out here.

At first, that had felt deeply wrong. He’d even braced himself to come back in half an hour and face Irene’s smug stare—because after the blackout, he’d opened his eyes to find himself floating in outer space. He’d been sure he was done for.

But after a while, Yu Sheng realized breathing wasn’t necessary for him.

It was just a symptom attached to the condition of “being alive.”

At least, that was how he understood it.

Staring into the abyss of deep space stretched his thoughts thin, like taffy pulled too far.

He’d heard that stronger cultivators from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain could survive in space too. He had no idea how they did it. Had they “optimized” breathing away, the same way?

Could Irene move around in space like this, since she seemed to have no heart or lungs in the first place?

What about Foxy? She was powerful. Maybe she could do it as well.

A voice suddenly rang in his mind, cutting through his drifting thoughts.

“Hey, hey, Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng, are you still alive? Dead yet? If you’re gonna die, come back to die, okay?”

That punchable way of speaking could only be Irene.

“I’m alive,” Yu Sheng replied in his head, irritated on principle. “I’m floating in space. Listen—this tower the cultists built? It’s a damn spaceship. When it started teleporting, I nudged it a bit. Looks like I broke it, and now it’s drifting around. I’m hanging on the hull right now, trying to find a way inside. Haven’t found a good spot yet.”

For several seconds, Irene didn’t respond at all.

Then she finally shouted in his mind, “Holy—! You can do that?!”

“I’m surprised too,” Yu Sheng shot back. “Oh, tell Foxy something. Her tail stopped moving once it got here. I don’t know if I broke it.”

A moment later, Irene replied, “I told her. She said it’s just too far—your connection got cut. Once it’s disconnected, the tail’s useless. Toss it somewhere or use your door thing to throw it back home. She also said later she’ll turn it into a scarf for you…”

Yu Sheng thought about it, then casually opened a door beside him. On the other side was Wu Tong Road 66. He tossed the tail through.

“Tail’s back home,” he said. “How are things on your side?”

“The Special Operations Bureau is here. Xuan Che is explaining everything to them,” Irene answered. “The deep-diving unit’s commander even came to me earlier and asked where you went. I told him Foxy launched you with her tail, and he immediately injected himself with something…”

Yu Sheng didn’t bother replying.

After a beat, Little Doll’s voice chimed in, too. “Hey. When are you coming back?”

“I’m going to try getting inside this tower first,” Yu Sheng said. “Without blowing it up, if possible. It seems pretty easy to break. And if I can, I’m bringing back souvenirs. I chased it all the way out here—going back empty-handed would feel weird.”

“All right then,” Little Doll said. “Don’t die too fast.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”