Chapter 304

Chapter 304: Infiltration

After ending the conversation, Yu Sheng stopped resting and continued along the outer wall of the high tower.

Without the tail tucked under his arm, moving was easier. The problem was that he had to stay careful every second. Every step required a planned handhold. If he shoved off too hard, he might slip free and drift into open space.

Walking outside a space station without a safety line probably felt exactly like this. If he truly lost contact and floated away, he couldn’t imagine how he’d “swim” back in vacuum and zero gravity. At that point, his only option would be opening a door to go home.

Unless he left a coordinate.

The tower might be moving right now—without reference points, Yu Sheng couldn’t tell—but if he marked a coordinate using the tower beneath his feet as the reference origin, he should be able to return later through door opening.

His mind spun with half a dozen ideas at once. After crossing a jagged metal protrusion, he stopped again.

He pulled out his new bloodletting knife—crafted from the artificial saintess’s fingertip blades. It was tough, unbelievably sharp, and cold to the touch. He cut a gash into his palm.

Blood sprayed into the void, red mist boiling and curling in slow motion.

Yu Sheng flinched at the sight, then found it weirdly fascinating. He didn’t forget the point of it, though. He focused his control, guiding the drifting blood toward the hull.

Before the wound fully healed, the blood had already seeped into the tower without a sound.

Yu Sheng closed his eyes and listened to what it told him.

In that blood-sense, the tower became a living diagram. Beneath the thick “armor” that looked like rock but was clearly alloy were tangled pipes, circuits, cavities, corridors—technology he couldn’t even begin to name.

What he could see was limited, but within that limited range he searched for a way inside. Wherever the blood reached, there was a path. He just needed a safer entry point.

He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of dying embarrassingly.

He’d come all this way, only to slip in and immediately get chopped into pieces by some cultist popping out with a single surprised “ah.” Irene would laugh at him for a month.

There wasn’t a good entry point here. Yu Sheng moved along the hull again. Near a chain linked to an auxiliary structure, he repeated the trick—offering the tower more blood.

After three tries, he stopped near an armor joint, satisfaction curling in his chest.

Beneath this section ran a corridor with no nearby life signs, and multiple routes leading deeper inside.

Yu Sheng pressed his palm against the thick, ice-cold hull.

The outer armor was layered—protection, buffering, sensors, probably an entire suite of alarms designed to scream if anything pierced it. But Yu Sheng wasn’t trying to cut through. He was forming a short-range teleportation passage.

Using the blood already inside as a connection, the passage would bypass every layer without triggering the kind of damage alerts that came from a physical breach.

The door took shape quickly.

Yu Sheng curled his fingers around the unseen handle and pulled.

An unreal doorway opened on the tower’s hull, quiet as a held breath.

“I’m coming in,” he murmured.

—

“Still can’t find him!”

“The drones are in position. Nobody outside.”

“The knight searched near Bay Three. Nothing.”

“The sensors aren’t reacting either—external monitors are still offline. When can you fix this subsystem?”

The Sage sat at the center of the Control Hall, listening with a dark face as reports piled up.

The crew had regained their composure. Everyone was doing their job. And yet unease kept building like pressure under a sealed lid.

Because they couldn’t find the “monster” that had been crawling across the Pillar of Order’s hull.

If that thing was responsible for the Veil of Concealment failing and the jump collapsing, then the situation was beyond disastrous. A space joyrider hitching a ride in open vacuum was horrifying enough. But a space joyrider who vanished without a trace?

That was the kind of fear that gnawed at sanity.

“Could it be mass hallucination?” someone suggested at last, voice cautious and hopeful. “We crashed out of jump status. That heavily stimulates the nervous system. There are documented cases of shared hallucinations under those conditions.”

“You mean the Ruby incident of Holy Calendar year 1882?” another person said, latching onto the idea like a lifeline. “That ship docked four light-seconds from the starport after a jump failure, and the crew walked out without protection because they thought they’d made it home.”

“Maybe. I mean—what if—”

“Enough,” a Hermitage Order Member snapped, cutting through the self-comforting chatter. “Rather than cling to mass hallucinations, I’d rather assume that thing is already inside.”

The room went silent.

Then, as if the tower itself wanted to answer, a console operator suddenly shouted, “R-report! The outer corridor of the Core Zone detected an intruder… He really got inside!”

The white-robed Sage shot to his feet. While everyone else was still reeling, a slow smile crept across his face.

“Good,” he said softly. “Find him. Eliminate him.”

—

Yu Sheng felt like he might be a little lost.

He’d entered the tower only to find its interior was a maze—intersections everywhere, corridors branching into inexplicable rooms. The good news was there was gravity inside, so he could finally walk on something solid.

The bad news was that gravity was broken in places. He’d be walking normally and then suddenly “fall” sideways, stumbling into a new orientation, instantly unsure which way counted as up.

But he didn’t think it mattered.

He didn’t know the layout to begin with. Lost or not lost, it was all the same. He would navigate with blood-vision and overwhelming confidence.

After wandering through a few corridors, he stopped in a deserted corner and dug into his pocket.

He pulled out his phone.

Unlocked it. Screen lit. Opened Border Comms.

Yu Sheng was more convinced than ever that this “ordinary” phone was packed with Special Operations Bureau black tech. Forget everything else—just the fact it had survived being in space and still ran smoothly meant it wasn’t built from normal civilian parts.

But that wasn’t even the craziest thing.

The craziest thing was the signal.

Full bars.

Yu Sheng had planned to snap a few photos, then open a small door and scare Bai Li Qing with surprise evidence. Instead, he stared at the status bar in disbelief. The carrier name had changed from “Boundary City Communications” to “Stellar Union Communications,” and a notice beneath it read: “Currently using Interstellar Union Channel. Additional charges may apply…”

He was awed for exactly one second.

Then he got to work.

He took a rapid series of photos and switched on the phone’s environmental monitoring. Then he messaged Bai Li Qing: “Guess where I am?”

Her reply came almost immediately—starting with a string of question marks.

“??? You’re already inside the high tower?!”

Yu Sheng blinked. “Huh? You already know?”

“I got a report saying you were launched by Foxy’s tail and vanished into the Mistbound City fog along with that bizarre high tower,” Bai Li Qing replied at once. Somehow, she managed to sound almost calm while typing something this unbelievable. “I called you several times. You didn’t pick up.”

Yu Sheng checked his call history.

Missed calls—several of them—all from Bai Li Qing.

He frowned, baffled. He didn’t remember hearing anything. Then it clicked, and he typed back: “I was in vacuum earlier, so I didn’t hear it. I was also busy finding a route, so I didn’t notice the vibration.”

Bai Li Qing responded with another string of question marks.

Yu Sheng sighed. There was no way to explain “I hitchhiked on the outside of a cult spaceship and opened a door in its hull” in a few neat lines, so he sent: “It’s complicated. I’ll explain later.”

Then he put the phone away, glanced at his palm—already healed—and pulled out the bloodletting knife again.

He cut.

Blood seeped out as if it had a will of its own, drifting over the walls and floor before sinking into them within seconds.

Only after he felt the blood fully infiltrate did Yu Sheng move again.

All along the way, stopping and starting, he kept doing it.