Chapter 306

Chapter 306: Invasion

That was the last whisper he gave them. The breath behind it was so faint it almost sounded like a draft, drifting in from the edge of a hallucination. The sound dissolved against the ear, leaving only one unsettling rhythm behind.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Blood striking the floor.

“What did he say?” another Hermitage Order member asked, leaning in.

The robed man closest to Yu Sheng kept his head bowed, as if the half-heard words had left him stranded somewhere between wakefulness and a dream. When his companion asked again, he lifted his head and muttered blankly, “He said he was going to die, but something would come alive… I don’t know. I didn’t hear clearly.”

There was a tremor in his voice, like repeating the words scraped at something inside him.

Why? What was he afraid of?

He couldn’t have said.

Behind him, their wounded compatriot groaned. Yu Sheng’s blow had crushed his armor and pulped what was left inside. Even the massive doses of cardiotonics and adrenaline the suit had injected couldn’t fully drown the pain. The life-support system kept his body moving by sheer force, but if they wasted any more time, he’d be gone.

“He needs an operating room now,” someone said after a quick check. “His organs are like rotten mud. The original body can’t be saved. Decide—pure steel, or blessed flesh?”

The injured man wheezed inside his helmet. He lifted a hand a few centimeters. “Steel…” The word came out hoarse, torn.

The robed medic nodded. “Then we notify the medical team. Prepare for brain-body transfer surgery. We need a mechanical cultivator body.”

As he spoke, he clasped the wounded man’s hand and lowered his voice, heavy with practiced comfort. “Relax, brother. You’re about to have a pure and powerful new body. This useless shell will be fed to the biomass processor and become the foundation of our progress. Hold my hand and walk to the starting point of ascension. But first, I need to cut off part of your limbs. We can’t wait for a stretcher. We have to get your brain to the operating room as fast as possible.”

The harsh sounds of amputation echoed through the corridor.

Even severed below the neck, the N-K-22 powered armor helmet could keep a brain alive for fifteen minutes.

Yet the robed man who’d stood beside Yu Sheng’s body barely moved. He stared at the intruder with a dull, emptied look, as if something had been scooped out of his skull.

“What are you staring at?” someone snapped from the side. “We need to go. Leave that wreckage in the corridor. Cleanup will collect it later.”

He jolted like he’d been slapped awake. “Oh. Oh, okay.”

He turned to follow, but couldn’t stop himself from glancing back at the pooling blood. Then, as if he sensed something, he looked up toward the corner.

A hidden camera watched him quietly.

The Bronze Knights escorted the robed cultists away at a brisk pace. They moved like their instincts had already started whispering danger.

Where Yu Sheng had fallen, scattered clothing, a small knife that had slipped from a pocket, and the blood-soaked club all began to melt into the stain. Slowly, as if swallowed by another dimension, the items sank into the blood and vanished.

The mobile phone went next, soaked through. Thin streaks of red spread across its casing and screen like living veins.

Then the screen lit.

The border comms interface opened, followed by a private message window. The virtual keyboard flashed as a line of text was typed and sent to Bai Li Qing:

“Back to our earlier topic—do you want Holy Revere Hermitage’s cultists?”

A moment later, the phone buzzed. Bai Li Qing replied with a single word:

“Yes.”

After a beat, as if the answer suddenly felt wrong, she sent another message:

“You want to bring them back alive? Why don’t I send a support team? You’re alone in their nest—that’s too dangerous.”

The blood on the screen spread and the reply came quickly:

“No need. If you send people in, it’ll spook them. If they realize things are out of control, they might blow up the whole spaceship.”

“…Alright. Then tell me how I should coordinate.”

…

At the top level of the Pillar of Order, inside the control hall, the elderly man in white robes still sat in his high-backed seat, waiting for a report.

This time, he got good news.

The communicator on the arm of his chair lit. A Hermitage Order member appeared on the screen, black robe thrown over powered armor. “Sage! We dealt with the intruder in a corridor on the outer edge of the core zone.”

At last, some of the tightness in the old man’s face eased. “Good work. The recovery crew will handle cleanup. What were the losses?”

“One combatant is critically wounded. He was amputated below the neck. We’re carrying his head to the operating room now. He fought bravely and, at the end, requested entry into the steel-evolution branch.”

“Mmm. Those who fight bravely deserve that reward,” the Sage murmured, relaxing further. “Once it’s handled, return to the upper area and report.”

“Yes!”

The communicator went dark, and the control hall’s mood loosened, relief bleeding into voices and posture.

“I thought he’d be tougher,” someone muttered.

“He was just a weird guy. The world is full of weird things,” another said. “He wasn’t even as troublesome as the shadowspawn we dug out of Adar Crater.”

“Uh…”

“What is it?”

“Nothing. A few monitor feeds flickered just now. Maybe the core system reset some channels during self-repair. I checked—everything’s normal.”

“Don’t scare people,” an operator grumbled. He stretched in his chair and glanced up at the camera mounted high on the hall’s ceiling.

The camera stared back, as always.

For some reason, a twist of disgust and irritation flared in his gut at the idea of that eye watching him.

It was irrational. He shivered, had no words for it, and forced his gaze away from the ceiling.

In his headset, faint electrical crackle flared—like speech bleeding through a channel—but too distorted to understand.

He frowned. At first he thought the connection had loosened, but he quickly ruled that out. Someone really was speaking inside the static.

He switched through standby channels, tuning and retuning, trying to find the source.

Then Sage’s voice cut through the hall, snapping the idle chatter apart.

“Has the cleanup team still not reported back?”

“No,” a communications officer answered at once. Then his voice sharpened into a startled gasp. “Something’s wrong!”

“What happened?”

“The recovery team’s signal disappeared—just now, all at once!”

The relaxed air in the hall snapped tight again. Sage’s face darkened as he rose. “Signal disappeared? Find out why. Comms failure, or…?”

“Both their comms signal and their biosensor signal vanished. Sage, they’re gone!”

“What about surveillance?”

“We saw them pass through D-2 corridor and enter the connecting lock, but nobody came out at the next airlock down the hall!”

“Which drone bay is closest? Send drones immediately.”

The hall erupted. Orders fired and reports piled up, voices tight with restrained anger, panic, and shame.

Yet the operator at his console kept tuning his headset, almost entranced, stubbornly chasing the voice he’d heard.

After what felt like far too long, the static cleared.

A voice spoke, suddenly crisp, as if someone leaned right against his ear:

“Can you hear me clearly now?”

The operator ripped off his headset like it burned. His eyes went wide. He spun toward Sage. “Someone’s speaking on a listening channel! Something has hacked our equipment—”

“What?!” Sage went pale. He grabbed the communicator and connected to the action team still returning toward the upper area. “Situation changed. Go to the server bay immediately. There’s still an intruder on the ship!”

Only hollow white noise answered.

Someone checked systems and surveillance and reported, voice rising. “The action team signal disappeared too—near D-1 corridor. The cameras didn’t capture any attacker or any fighting.”

Sage stood with a face like still water, thinking in a way that made the room feel colder.

Something was hiding in this tower.

It was taking people one after another. Nobody knew how. It moved fast, struck viciously, and could drop powered-armor combatants before they even understood they were under attack.

And there might be more than one intruder. Two teams vanished in different areas, and there was also that voice on the listening channel. Whatever was on the ship was attacking everywhere while it cut into the system.

“…Send a second squad,” Sage said at last. “Track them with surveillance the whole way. Keep communications open. Seal every passage from D-1 to D-2 zone and search inch by inch.”

“Yes!”