Chapter 303

Chapter 304: Infiltration

After ending the call with Irene, Yu Sheng stopped resting and started moving again along the tower’s outer wall.

Without that big tail in his arms, he moved much easier. The only problem was he had to be careful and plan every handhold ahead of time. He could not pull too hard, or he might peel away from the tower and tumble into open space. [If I slip off, I am lost in space.] In a spacesuit without a safety line, he would have no idea how to “swim” back in a vacuum. At that point he could only use The Door to go home.

[Maybe I should leave a marker on the shell.] The tower might be moving right now. Without a reference, he could not tell. But if he recorded a marker using the tower under his feet as the origin point, he should still be able to use The Door to come back later.

Different ideas spun through his head. After climbing past a metal bulge of unknown purpose, he stopped again.

He took out his new Bloodletting Knife, forged from the Artificial Saintess’s Fingertip Blades, tough and razor sharp, and drew a cut across his palm.

Blood sprayed out. Red mist hissed and boiled in the vacuum.

At first he jumped, then he found the sight oddly fun. Thankfully he did not forget why he was bleeding himself. He focused his Mind Control on the jetting blood and guided it to drift over and settle on the tower’s outer shell.

Before the wound could finish healing, the boiling blood had already seeped into the tower without a sound.

Yu Sheng closed his eyes and felt for what the blood told him.

He “saw” fuzzy shapes. The tower whispered its own secrets. Under that heavy armor that looked like stone but was really alloy, he sensed a maze of pipes, lines, cavities, corridors, and a lot of tech he could not name.

His range was small, but within it he searched for a way to enter.

Wherever his blood could infiltrate, there was a path. Even so, he needed a safe landing spot. He did not fear death, but he hated dying in a stupid way. [I am not afraid of dying, but please don’t let it be embarrassing. Getting this far just to get chopped up the moment I drop in would be a joke. Irene will roast me for a month.]

No good entry here. He crept along the shell a bit farther. Near a set of Runic Chains that linked to some attached structure, he did the same trick and fed the tower more blood.

After doing this three times, he stopped near an armor join and smiled.

Below him was a safe corridor. No living presence nearby. A few passages led deeper in.

Yu Sheng pressed his hand to the thick, icy alloy.

The armor was heavy. Beneath it lay more layers for protection, buffering, and sensing. But the “door” he wanted was not a crude cut through all that mass. He would shape a short Teleportation channel instead, using the blood he had already sent in as the link. That path would jump past every layer of the shell and also dodge any damage alarm system under the armor.

He did not know much about starships, but he guessed they would have alarms so people inside would know the instant something pierced the hull. [I am sneaking in. The later I get noticed, the better.]

The Door formed quickly.

He gave the “handle” a light twist and pulled open the ghostly Door that blossomed on the tower’s skin: “I am coming in.”

…

“Can’t find him. Drones are in position. No one outside.”

“The Knight is searching near Bay Three. Nothing here either.”

“Sensors show nothing. External monitors are still offline. When will that subsystem be fixed?”

Sage sat at the center of the Control Hall, face dark, listening to the reports around him.

A tense mood filled the hall, yet at least the staff had calmed down. Everyone was doing their job. Still, Sage could feel a fresh wave of unease growing in every heart.

They could not find the “monster” that had been crawling on the Pillar of Order’s shell.

If that figure really caused the Veil of Concealment to fail and the jump to misfire, then the situation was awful. Seeing a joyrider hitchhiking in open space was scary enough. Watching him vanish a moment later was terrifying on a whole different level.

“Could it be a shared hallucination?” someone finally offered the hope everyone wanted. “We dropped out of jump in a rush. That shocks the nervous system. There are cases of group hallucinations in that state.”

“You mean the Ruby incident of Sacred Calendar 1882? That ship failed a jump and parked four light seconds from Youth Formport. The crew walked out without suits. They thought they were home.” Another voice said: “Maybe. I am saying, if.”

“Enough,” a Hermitage Member cut the talk short. “I would rather believe he is already inside than comfort myself with hallucinations.”

Silence fell at once.

As if The Door itself stabbed that silence, a Hermitage Member at a console suddenly shouted: “Report. An intruder spotted on the outer corridor of the Core Zone. He really got in.”

The white robed Sage shot to his feet. While the others wavered between fear and doubt, a thin smile touched his face: “Good. Find him, and end him.”

…

Yu Sheng felt a little lost.

He had entered the tower only to find a maze inside. Intersections and strange rooms were everywhere. The good news was that there was gravity, so he could finally walk with his feet on the floor. The bad news was that gravity was broken in some areas. More than once he would be walking and suddenly “fall” sideways, which made it even harder to tell up from down.

He did not think it was a big problem.

He did not know the way in here anyway. He was moving by bleeding for X ray sight and by strong confidence.

After looping around a few corridors, he stopped in a quiet corner, leaned on the wall to rest, and let out a slow breath.

A nearby light flickered. Maybe the power was failing. In that blinking light, he thought he saw shifting shadows.

Or maybe his eyes were just tired. He had spilled a lot of blood on the way.

Hostile auras were gathering. They moved in the nearby halls. Eyes watched him, careful and cold.

He had noticed these tails for a while and the feeling of being watched too. None of it surprised him.

He knew it would not take long to get spotted here. Even in a mall there are cameras everywhere. On a ship stuffed with black tech like this, there were “eyes” at every corner, stair landing, and doorway.

He lifted his head and looked around. The corridors were lined with classical reliefs and rich murals. There were even sculptures with religious symbols. Nothing here felt like a “ship.” It felt like a church or bell tower that could jump and sail through space. Leaving their crazy “save the world” ideas aside, the Holy Revere Hermitage had decent taste.

After one last look, Yu Sheng broke the silence: “You have tailed me long enough. The traps are set. You blocked the nearest routes. Why not come out?”

The air stayed weirdly quiet. Only the faint hum of machines and vents behind those fancy panels answered him.

He waited, patient, until other sounds finally rose.

Armor bumped. Iron boots marched in step. A few other footfalls were messy. The sounds came from both sides of the hall. Then the enemy showed themselves.

Yu Sheng counted more than a dozen Bronze Knights. This time the eerie suits did not hide. They strode out with heavy, crushing presence. Between them stood several humans. Those had to be Hermitage Members.

They wore black robes right out of a cult stereotype, wrapped tight from head to toe. A black shell like a mask covered each face.

Yu Sheng grinned and pointed at one of them: “Is there some industry dress code for this? Do cultists have to dress like that?”

The robed one took half a step forward. A muffled voice came from under the mask: “You have nowhere to run, intruder. Surrender, and you may live.”

Yu Sheng curled his lip, reached into the air, opened a small Door, and pulled out his Tetanus Staff.

Then, carrying the Spiked Mace, he marched straight at the Hermitage Members ringed by Bronze Knights.

The robed men had not expected the intruder to be this bold. Two even flinched back. In the next instant they recovered: “Kill him.”

The Bronze Knights charged at once.

The tilted gravity did not slow those strange suits at all. They swarmed him. Heavy greatswords came down cold and hard. Yu Sheng moved even faster. He had no plan to wrestle with these tin cans. He braved the hits and burst through the line, making only the blocks and dodges he had to, letting his torso and limbs get slashed open. Blood flew and splattered across the corridor.

He swung the Tetanus Staff and rushed the nearest robed figure. Before the man could react, Yu Sheng smashed down at his head.

That robed man never thought the intruder would take near fatal wounds from Knights just to reach him for a single strike. In that instant, his mind flooded with questions. Did he have some deep hatred with this intruder? Why? For what?

The robed body snapped backward with sudden speed far beyond a human, but Yu Sheng was still quicker. When the overhead blow missed, he stamped forward and whipped the staff in a sweeping arc. It hammered the Hermitage Member’s side.

A huge shock slammed back through the staff. Metal rang. Sparks burst.

Yu Sheng froze for a blink, then saw the cultist cartwheel away. The Spiked Mace had shredded the robe and bared the Powered Armor underneath.

The side of that armor was crushed by brute force. When the man hit the floor he was badly hurt, but somehow still alive.

Without the armor, that one strike would have split him in two.

Yu Sheng turned, dripping blood. Two robed figures rushed to pull their wounded friend back. The others formed up with the Bronze Knights. They opened their robes and showed their weapons, all kinds of blades, and two even held Chainsaw Swords.

Clearly, they did not want to fire guns inside a badly damaged ship.

Under those robes every one of them wore Powered Armor. It was much lighter than Xu Jiali’s heavy can, but it was not cheap gear. The black “mask” under the hood was part of the helmet.

Not stereotypical at all.

Yu Sheng felt the gashes from the Knights start to heal, but the blood loss turned his body weak. He knew he was about to die here. He shifted his weight, used the Spiked Mace as a prop, and glared at the Hermitage Members: “Who taught you to wear Powered Armor under a robe? If you are running a cult, at least sync your art style.”

The answer was a storm of blades.

The cultists did not fight fair.

Yu Sheng was more reasonable. He got hacked down on the spot.

He did not die at once. He held on by a thread, lying there in a terrible mess.

The circle of robed, armored Hermitage Members and Bronze Knights hesitated.

They had not expected the intruder who scared even Sage to fall this easily.

He was strong. For a person of flesh, he was beyond human. He had just clubbed a trained fighter in Powered Armor into the walls. No one would believe that.

But that was his limit. Surrounded, he still fell.

They looked at each other. Someone muttered: “He is really about to die?”

On the floor, Yu Sheng forced his mouth to move. It looked like he wanted to say something.

One robed man wavered for a few seconds, then finally found his nerve and stepped closer.

He heard the intruder whisper in a weak, dying voice: “Yes, I am about to die, but some things deserve to live.”