“It’s a good thing that everyone is here, let’s continue the meeting – Xie Yuduo, close your mouth.”
As soon as Old Marshal Chen spoke, it meant that Xie Yuduo’s gaffe was lightly uncovered.
However, Major General Xie had always been favored by the Grand Marshal, and the other generals, no matter how sour they were in their hearts, dared not speak. They could only take a deep breath and suppress the fire in their stomachs.
In this way, they all sat down with disappointment.
Ryann’s face was calm, but he cautiously pushed Jiang Jianming further inside.
…Deliberately separating his line of sight from Xie Yuduo and Tang Zhen.
“Continue.” Old Marshal Chen turned his gaze to a tall female general with brown and golden curly hair and a beautiful appearance of forties or fifties, “Tell the honorables, what happened to those Crystal Cult rebels in the end.”
“Yes.”
The one who stood up in response was Admiral Celine, who had been stationed at the Imperial Space Station for many years and was also the commander of the Golden Sun Starship.
At this moment, her face was gloomy, and she didn’t speak after standing up, but took a hollow breath.
Jiang Jianming, who was peeking through the gap in Ryann’s shoulder, keenly realized something: This female general seemed to be in a very poor mental state from the beginning, even when Xie Yuduo was making a fuss just now, her expression did not fluctuate at all.
“At that time, the Crystal Cult rebels’ plan failed and they were forced to leave Aslan Star City… We followed the orders of the Grand Marshal, led a hundred starships and three hundred mechas, and prepared to intercept the culprits in the imperial outer space.”
Celine’s eyes were red, and she said hoarsely, “But… we failed.”
“We encountered…a powerful alien life group with human-level intelligence.”
The whole scene suddenly became noisy.
“Impossible!” Someone exclaimed in a low voice.
“High-intelligence alien life? Appearing outside the empire?”
“Isn’t that the life form that was discovered in the Far Interstellar Space recently?”
“Would the Silver Big Dipper Fortress allow alien life to invade the empire’s border…”
Xie Yuduo, who was originally leaning on the chair with his legs crossed, sat up straight at this moment, murmuring, “Well, Xie just came and heard such a big thing…”
“They appeared directly in the domain.”
Celine raised her hand somewhat stiffly, sharing the video to everyone’s screen, “Our army was caught off guard, suffered heavy losses, and allowed the two masterminds of the Crystal Cult to escape.”
Jiang Jianming and the crown prince next to him quickly exchanged glances. The former focused on the screen in front of him, and the pop-up window had started to play automatically.
The picture quickly became clear, presenting a calm universe, dark and extending, countless rubble scattered within, this was a dense asteroid domain.
Jiang Jianming used to watch combat videos and conduct simulated battles against 3D star maps with Ryann every day, he understood as soon as he saw this picture.
——Between the empire’s outer territory and the three alien stars with military fortresses in the Far Interstellar Space, there is only one such dangerous asteroid belt, known as the “Devil’s Tongue”.
A few noises of soldiers’ conversations came from the video, this was the starship’s recording.
The fleet of the Golden Sun Wheel was carefully and cautiously shuttling through the “Devil’s Tongue”, locking onto the Crystal Cult mecha that was fleeing ahead.
The fleet’s formation spread out, an obvious encirclement tactic.
The noise of the conversation jumped, becoming much clearer, as if the speaker had walked near the cockpit of the bridge, where the recording equipment was stored.
“X month X day, Imperial time 14:10, confirm that the system of the Iron Mantis is functioning normally.”
That was the voice of an ordinary middle-aged man, the starship’s technical maintenance officer.
Jiang Jianming’s heart sank. If the fleet encountered alien life in such a cosmic environment, I’m afraid…
That man – the maintenance officer finished his regular inspection report and walked a little further away.
“Wow, just for a few broken mechas, such a big mobilization.” The man complained quietly, “It’s the New Year, and the fleet has been mobilized.”
“Yo, Dongzi, you still know it’s the New Year.”
The man’s companion called him from the side, laughing, “Your mother is at home alone waiting for you to come home for the New Year’s Eve dinner, you haven’t been home for several years, you unfilial son.”
The harmonious word mechanism of the meeting space played its role again, and the swear words of these rough soldiers were swallowed into silence.
However, this time, no one was laughing or cursing, and silence spread throughout the conference hall.
Despite being in a constant temperature virtual space, everyone present felt a bone-chilling cold piercing their hearts, that was the sadness of a known outcome.
The two maintenance officers exchanged a few words, the sound was a bit trivial and unclear.
After a while, one could faintly hear a few shoulder-patting sounds. One of the maintenance officers said in a low voice. “I’m telling you, Dongzi, I’m not joking. You’re getting old, after this trip… just retire.”
“Don’t blame this brother for meddling, your father passed away early, and it wasn’t easy for your mother to raise you alone. This year, she can hardly see, sitting by the window every day, hoping you will come home.”
The man said, “Like this brother, ah, with no worries, one person is full, the whole family is not hungry, it’s okay to work on the Golden Sun Wheel until death. But you still have people waiting for you to come home.” (TL: one person is full, the whole family is not hungry-the family here refers to himself. If himself is full, then himself is not going to be hungry)
“Auntie is a non crystal race, her body is not good, you… you know what I mean, Dongzi, don’t make yourself regret it later.”
The other man was silent for a few seconds, muttered vaguely, and then sighed.
“I know…sigh, I know, isn’t this just wanting to serve the empire for a few more years…”
He hummed a breath from his nose, “Sigh, if you saying that **** again, you should just laugh at me.”
The screen did not show the faces of the two men, only the starry sky, the eternal vast starry sky.
“Dongzi” and his “older brother” could never imagine that their conversation, as insignificant as they were, would be listened to by countless high-ranking generals, the Grand Marshal of the Empire, and the Crown Prince of the Empire.
They were just worrying. To put it broadly, it was difficult to balance loyalty and filial piety. To put it simply, they were worried that the empire’s army had too few holidays, worried about having to mobilize starships to chase a few rebel mechas, worried about how they hadn’t caught up with the enemy, whether they could go home to accompany their old mother before tonight.
Suddenly, to the right front of the starship, behind the shadow of a certain asteroid, a shiny crystal-like creature emerged weirdly.
——It’s really hard to say what it is, its form is like the tentacles of an octopus, like the body of a snake, like the intestines of a human being in motion, or simply a piece of meat with life.
Upon closer inspection, one could clearly see skin, flesh, bones, and things like eyeballs and mouthparts. This familiar concept of “animal” was currently coexisting with transparent crystals, wrapped in thick mucus, and pulsating irregularly.
Faced with such an indescribable alien existence, the first thing that came to mind would be an instinctive physiological nausea, which made people feel chills behind their backs, and their nerves “jumping”.
“Ugh!”
It seemed like a young man who had been brought to the meeting by a general couldn’t help it, he covered his mouth and retched. The projection flickered and hastily went offline.
The general next to him also looked extremely bad, almost everyone was sweating profusely.
In the picture, one after another such monsters emerged, in addition to the long ones, there were also chunky ones, spherical and angular ones.
They just moved in the vacuum of space, precisely rushing towards the starship.
“Dongzi! That is…****, what the **** is that thing!!?”
“Ahead–abnormal ahead!!”
The maintenance officer roared out in horror, his tone breaking. “Report to the commander! Report to General Celine!!”
Everything that followed seemed to happen very calmly.
“They” had been quietly clinging to the back of the asteroid all along, not knowing how long they had been waiting. It wasn’t until this moment that they quietly poked their “heads” out, like a group of white grim reapers, appearing in front of the starship.
Explosions began to flash in the picture.
There was the light of the starship firing, the light of the starship being shot down, and the light of the mecha soldiers just rushing out of the ship being smashed by this group of monsters.
“Ah, ah ah –zzz…–zzz.”
Finally, the picture froze on a suddenly enlarged crystal monster, at this moment three eyeballs were emerging from the crystal. The maintenance officer’s wailing broke off, and everything went dark.
Admiral Celine said in a low voice, “…We were ambushed by this group of alien creatures, the Iron Mantis starship was shot down, more than a hundred people on the ship died, including these two maintenance officers.”
“In addition, six starships were shot down, twenty-two starships were damaged, and thousands were killed or injured.”
No one answered her words.
“Look at the eyes of these things, those are human eyes…!”
Celine’s voice trembled, the female general’s pupils dilated, reflecting in the blue light of this virtual conference room.
“I can fully believe that this group of alien creatures used some kind of lurking strategy to get here, they evaded the Silver Big Dipper’s purge, and are clearly heading towards the empire. Even…even if it was said they came by starship, I can believe it!”
Xie Yuduo almost leaned his face to the screen, staring intently at the battle scene, replaying it over and over again.
He was different from the other generals present, the first fortress was the front line of the Silver Big Dipper, and it was not the first time the major general had led an expeditionary fleet, so the strange alien creatures did not scare him.
Tang Zhen next to him was already pale, biting his fist to prevent his teeth from clattering.
Celine suddenly turned her head. “Major General Xie, you once reported that high-intelligence alien creatures appeared in Alpha Alien, didn’t you say you captured a few!?”
“Yes, they all died,” Xie Yuduo said solemnly, “I was originally planning to lock them up for a few days of study, if I couldn’t figure it out, I would send them to the Omega for the base to mess around…”
The major general ruffled his hair and laughed coldly. “But even though we have been strictly guarding them, they still died mysteriously quickly, and now no clues are left.”
After saying that, Xie Yuduo took a deep breath, composed himself, stood up and looked around. “High-intelligence alien creatures, this is the second topic of this meeting, right – I agree with Admiral Celine’s view, I think, this group of monsters sneaked into the empire from the Far Interstellar Space.”
General Luther: “From…from the Far Interstellar Space?”
Xie Yuduo: “To be precise, it is the domain close to the Crystal Nest.”
“Do you all know that the closer you get to the Crystal Nest, the more bizarre the form of the alien creatures, the appearance presents a fusion of flesh and crystals, the expeditionary fleet has also confirmed this…look at the image.”
He said, patting Tang Zhen, “Little Tang, wake up and get to work.”
Tang Zhen came back to his senses and hurriedly uploaded the data again. Soon everyone saw the image of the alien creatures, with dates and star map coordinates.
These show that the closer the fleet got to the Crystal Nest, the more the form of the alien creatures encountered along the way tended to be disorderly and chaotic, and the more the flesh and crystal particles were mixed, just as Xie Yuduo said.
At the top right, next to Crown Prince Ryann, Jiang Jianming pursed his lips and had been pondering for a long time.
His gaze was moving between the video of the Golden Sun Wheel fleet and the image provided by Xie Yuduo. When he stared at these alien creatures, Jiang Jianming always felt a sense of familiarity.
This… hair-raising feeling of disgust.
It seemed like he had just seen it not long ago.
——That’s right! Jiang Jianming’s eyes moved…This state of flesh and crystal particles mixed together, it’s a bit like the symptoms of Crystal Chaos death.
Suddenly, the atmosphere of the meeting condensed.
Countless gazes came like arrows.
“…Ah.”
Jiang Jianming came back to his senses and looked up, the flickering blue screen made his cheeks look even thinner and paler, he found that everyone was looking at him in astonishment.
Ryann also turned his face and held onto his slightly cold fingertips.
Only then did Jiang Jianming belatedly realize that he had unconsciously voiced what he was thinking.
A few seconds later, General Boris was the first to smirk, mocking. “Disabled human, of course everything looks like Crystal Chaos.”
And Admiral Celine also cast a cold gaze. “You shouldn’t be here, go lie back on His Highness’s bed, little sick seedling…..that suits you better.”
