Blue Star's outer space, orbital altitude 37,240 kilometers.
Yun Palace 2 space base hung high above the nine heavens, navigation lights flashing on and off everywhere.
On one side of the base, a powerless shuttle tumbled and somersaulted, caught in a state of disordered rolling. Behind the shuttle, Ou Zhanpeng, piloting a large, hulking rescue boat, raised its mechanical arm, looking like a giant, sentient spider ready to pounce on defenseless prey.
Inside the shuttle's cockpit, Ling Xiao held the back of his head with both hands, a look of utter resignation on his face. "I say, Fatty Ou, it's been half an hour, can you actually do it?"
The dark starry sky, the azure planet, and the scorching sun flashed before his eyes in turn, making him dizzy.
Ou Zhanpeng ignored him entirely, seizing an opportunity to aggressively push the control stick. His two mechanical arms decisively reached for the shuttle... unfortunately, he was still a step too slow and failed to capture it.
He immediately maneuvered the rescue boat backward, avoiding a collision while preparing for another grab. "Less nonsense, don't feed me that useless talk!"
Ling Xiao rolled his eyes helplessly. "Fine, little master will play along today to the very end!"
Ou Zhanpeng stared intently at the shuttle, preparing to launch another assault, when he suddenly felt something was wrong. His gaze shifted, and he saw with surprise a massive black spot appear on the sun.
It wasn't a spot like a sunspot, but a pure black, circular patch, as if an invisible giant hand had used black paint to cover a circle on the sun's surface; or as if some supreme deity, whose existence no one knew, had opened a clear hole in the sun.
Ou Zhanpeng, in all his life, doubted his eyes for the first time. "Ling Xiao, look at the sun quickly!"
Ling Xiao's face darkened. "Look at the sun for what? I'm spinning here!"
Ou Zhanpeng immediately became anxious. "Drill stop, you look at the sun for me!"
Sensing a change in Ou Zhanpeng's tone, Ling Xiao immediately activated the engines. Two bright streams of flame erupted from the shuttle's tail, instantly stabilizing its attitude.
But by the time he found the angle, the black spot had already disappeared, leaving him looking puzzled. "It looks normal, what's wrong?"
Ou Zhanpeng's mind was struggling to keep up. "I just saw a dark patch on the sun, and now it's normal again?"
Ling Xiao sighed sympathetically. "Are you hallucinating from exhaustion? How about we stop here for today?"
"How is that possible!" Ou Zhanpeng, refusing to admit defeat, pulled up the data from the recorder and found the corresponding time point. His furrowed brow immediately relaxed.
He immediately took a screenshot and sent it to Ling Xiao. "See, is this my hallucination?"
"No way? What is going on?" Ling Xiao was utterly confused.
Although the black spot in the picture was small, it was much larger than Venus transiting the sun. The moon was large enough, but it was nowhere in this direction, so it absolutely couldn't be any known celestial body blocking the sun. Yet, it had genuinely appeared in the image data.
Ou Zhanpeng continued to stare at the sun. "I'm puzzled too..."
He had barely finished speaking when a dazzling light suddenly erupted from the direction where the black spot had appeared. Even under the sunlight, it was still so conspicuous.
Ou Zhanpeng didn't know what to say. First a black spot, then a flash, what was going on?
While he was still in a daze, a piercing alarm suddenly blared over the radio. Looking back, the three warships docked at the base had urgently set sail. Just as they cleared the berths, blue-green exhaust flames erupted from their tails, and they quickly moved away from the base.
Ou Zhanpeng was stunned, his entire being felt off. Without a word, he turned around and headed back.
Warships had to follow fixed procedures to ensure the safety of the base and the warships. An emergency departure meant disregarding safety regulations and leaving the base as quickly as possible.
With three warships departing simultaneously, something incredibly serious must have happened!
But as he turned back, a voice from the base came over the radio: "All units, attention, this is not a drill, this is not a drill! All non-combat units, immediately evacuate the station at the fastest speed, immediately evacuate the station at the fastest speed, fly as far as you can!"
Ou Zhanpeng felt as if he had been hit by a heavy fist, his head swimming, his vision blurred. He was neither able to advance nor retreat.
Why was there a sudden evacuation?
Ling Xiao's exasperated voice came over the radio. "Fatty Ou, what on earth happened?"
Ou Zhanpeng gritted out a few words through his teeth. "You ask me? Who the hell am I supposed to ask!"
As they spoke, a large number of escape pods flew away from the space station.
The rescue boat and the shuttle were not combat units. Ou Zhanpeng gritted his teeth and made a decision. "Go!" He twisted the control stick, and the rescue boat turned 180 degrees, speeding away from the space station.
The shuttle immediately followed. Ling Xiao was silent for a moment, but ultimately couldn't hold back. "Fatty Ou, why do I feel so panicked?"
Ou Zhanpeng wasn't much better. "Don't think too much, follow orders... Huh?"
As he spoke, the sun suddenly appeared to be half-missing, its curved edge unusually neat.
A bolt of lightning struck his mind, and he immediately realized something was blocking the sun!
"Watch out, there's something ahead!" Ou Zhanpeng shouted, and before Ling Xiao could reply, he quickly switched communication frequencies. "Rescue 023 calling base, abnormal contact ahead, something is blocking the sun!"
He didn't know how to describe it, but the only characteristic of that thing was that it was incredibly black.
The deep cosmic space was dotted with stars, but there was nothing there. His gaze fell upon it, giving a sense of stillness, like standing on a cliff and looking down into an abyss.
A hurried voice immediately came over the radio: "Flash... hiss... block... hiss hiss..."
The communication was suddenly subjected to extremely strong interference. Almost instantly, contact with the base was severed.
Before Ou Zhanpeng could figure out what had happened, a dilapidated, mottled giant spaceship suddenly emerged from nowhere, heading straight for the rescue boat and the shuttle.
Ling Xiao reacted swiftly, and the agile shuttle made a graceful turn to the side to evade.
Ou Zhanpeng was not slow either. He slammed the control stick to the floor, and the cumbersome rescue boat suddenly turned sideways. It avoided a head-on collision, but it couldn't dodge the rear. Its tail scraped against the giant ship, and the right thruster failed on the spot. The rescue boat spun and drifted to the side, passing by the giant ship.
Ou Zhanpeng was in a frantic scramble. He finally managed to stabilize the rescue boat, just in time to see the giant ship's tail emerge from a wormhole.
That's right, a wormhole, super technology far beyond humanity's current technological level!
Compared to the giant ship, the escape pod was like a grain of millet next to a watermelon, completely insignificant.
His heart beat violently, his mind a chaotic mess.
But the giant ship did not ignore the rescue boat. Ou Zhanpeng suddenly heard a soft sound, and the rescue boat was pierced through by the giant ship. The automatic control system immediately activated the meltdown mechanism, and the cockpit was ejected instantly, maximizing the safety of the occupants.
The cockpit spun and flew out, and the rescue boat exploded behind Ou Zhanpeng in a dazzling fireball. The scattering debris rained down on the cockpit with crackling sounds, like a sudden downpour.
Each sound struck Ou Zhanpeng's heart, making him tremble with fear and restlessness.
If even a single piece of debris had penetrated the cockpit, his life would have ended today.
The explosion came and went quickly. In the blink of an eye, the rescue boat had vanished.
Ou Zhanpeng was safe, but his heart felt like it had fallen into an ice cellar. He pressed himself against the porthole, his mask tight against the glass, his eyes wide as he searched for any sign of their warships.
There was only one voice in his heart: Don't come out, please don't come out—
However, things went against his wishes. A sudden flash of light erupted in the distance, and the vast space base suddenly exploded. Half of it was pulverized, and the other half was broken and dilapidated, with countless fragments scattering everywhere.
Ou Zhanpeng stared blankly at the scene, his mind completely blank.
Their three warships immediately counterattacked, and hundreds of shells and missiles rained down on the enemy ship.
The giant ship remained steady, unmoving and unyielding. It blew up the Wuzhou with one shot, and shattered the Haijiang with another. The last warship desperately evaded, but was still blown to pieces on its side by the enemy ship's single shot.
In just a moment, the wealth accumulated over half a world was almost gone. Ou Zhanpeng seemed to see the giant ship descending upon Earth, with Blue Star trembling under the muzzles of alien warships.
A chill instantly ran through his entire body.
There might be peace-loving interstellar civilizations in the universe, but this giant ship before him was clearly not associated with kindness.
Just as Ou Zhanpeng was about to fall into the deepest despair, a faint flash occurred on an unnamed asteroid at the edge of the solar system. The previously arrogant alien giant ship was struck as if by lightning, breaking in half silently. There was no sound or fire, as if it had always been in two pieces.
The front half of the enemy ship tumbled downward, while the rear half was thrown upward. Much debris gushed from the fractured edges, scattering in orbit at an altitude of over thirty-seven thousand kilometers.
Ou Zhanpeng was completely dumbfounded. The enemy ship had been so powerful and destructive moments ago, how had it been destroyed so quickly?
If the two halves of the warship were not still tumbling in orbit, if their damaged base and warships were not still floating in orbit, he would never have believed it was real.
What bothered him the most was that the enemy ship was destroyed, but it was three to five minutes too late. If it had been just a little earlier, their fleet could have survived.
Alas, it was too late to say anything now.
Ou Zhanpeng sighed, when suddenly there was a dull thud, and the cockpit tilted to one side. He instinctively held his breath, then heard a few more sounds, some light, some heavy.
Not good, it's debris rain!
Ou Zhanpeng's pupils contracted sharply, but he could only huddle in the small cockpit, lowering his head and resigning himself to fate.
From asteroids passing by Earth to screws dropped by satellites, danger lurked everywhere in orbit. Anything, flying at speeds exceeding the first cosmic velocity.
Flying in the same direction was not a problem, but debris coming from other directions was like incoming shells and bullets. Even the slightest collision could be the end of the fragile cockpit.
He had already foreseen his tragic end and was praying with a final sliver of hope. However, in the next second, with a crisp crack, the porthole and his mask simultaneously shattered.
Ou Zhanpeng's forehead throbbed with pain. The air inside his spacesuit, carrying blood, escaped through the holes in the mask and vanished in an instant.
Then, the scene froze, this moment becoming the last image in his eyes.