As soon as Erchan Wo departed, Cass’s colossal purple hand descended from the sky, landing with a gentle thump upon the courtyard lawn, where several trees lay splintered and the surroundings were left in disarray. When the immense purple hand lifted again, Bai Bai was found sitting unharmed on the grass. Her fists were clenched tightly, and a trace of shock and tension lingered in her eyes, as if she were strenuously holding back any outward display of fear.

Because the preceding events had unfolded so rapidly, Bai Bai hadn't quite registered what had transpired before she was snatched up into Cass’s hand. Far from being an ignorant little girl, she was remarkably intelligent. She quickly understood that this was almost certainly not a good thing.

Cass concealed her within the fissures of space, shielding her with a stasis field. Protected by a barrier of such intensity, she was perfectly safe—even if Sandwor attacked with his full strength, it would take more than a few swift moves to breach it. Yet, ignorant of the outside situation, Bai Bai was immensely nervous, fearing she might be captured by villains and used to blackmail her elder sister and Empress Mother, perhaps even her sworn brother Yang Ying, her sister Katerina, and so on and so forth.

Now returned to the light, the first thing she did was check her condition. She immediately realized she was still within the palace, and above her loomed a gargantuan hand, burning with purple flame, which looked strangely familiar. More importantly, her Empress Mother was right beside her!

“Empress Mother!” Only upon seeing the Empress Dowager did the tension drain from Bai Bai’s eyes. She shot to her feet and bolted into her mother’s embrace.

“There, there, it’s all right,” the Empress Dowager murmured, gently patting her back while also expressing her gratitude to Cass.

“A small effort. I heard everything from Yang Ying regarding what transpired here, Your Majesty. You likely have many matters requiring your attention, so I won’t monopolize your time.” Cass said no more, retracting the massive purple hand back into the wormhole.

Bai Bai raised her head from the Empress Dowager’s embrace and called out toward the wormhole shrinking in the sky, “Thank you! Uncle Speaker.”

Cass’s laughter echoed from within the wormhole, which then shrunk to a pinpoint and vanished.

Bai Bai had barely ever met Cass face-to-face, having only heard Yang Ying speak of the Protoss Speaker. Thus, she had taken the liberty of calling Cass ‘Uncle.’ Yang Ying paid no mind to this casual address, seeing no reason to bother correcting such a minor detail.

Meanwhile, on the distant, minuscule battlefield in the depths of space, Miller had assumed command from Yasuvin, leading the Regent’s Guardian Fleet in the ongoing battle against Yang Ying, his many avatars, and the Empress’s Imperial Cosmic Fleet.

The fighting had reached a fever pitch. Millerum likely understood that the tampering they had enacted upon the Imperial Cosmic Fleet warships would not hold for long; the interference program would soon be cracked, and time was running short.

Therefore, they split their fleet in two: one half engaging the eleven Zenith experts who had sliced into their formation, and the other half assaulting the Imperial Cosmic Fleet.

In the initial phase, the Imperial Cosmic Fleet was utterly defenseless, lacking even the capacity to resist. Soon, tens of thousands of warships were damaged or destroyed.

Millerum, relying on the infinite energy supply of his own fleet to withstand the assault of the six Zenith experts, simultaneously broadcast a surrender offer to Empress Alimia.

The Empress, naturally, refused sternly. However, the losses inflicted upon her fleet were agonizing; to quickly restore some defensive capability, she joined the effort to crack the interference program.

As a top graduate of the First Royal Academy during her youth, the Empress held multiple degrees and possessed considerable expertise in psychocomputer knowledge. Working in tandem with Dao Feng, the efficiency of breaking the interference program suddenly escalated to a new level.

Soon, the two managed to decrypt a portion of the program, liberating the fleet’s defensive systems from the jamming. Warships began powering up their shields one after another, causing the rate of fleet attrition to drop sharply.

Seeing this, Millerum’s sense of urgency spiked. His Regent’s Guardian Fleet was significantly smaller than the Imperial Cosmic Fleet. He knew that if he allowed the Empress to fully neutralize the interference on the Cosmic Fleet’s core systems, the entire operation would effectively be a failure.

At that moment, a piercing shriek—sharp as an owl’s cry—reverberated through the mental plane. Millerum instantly recoiled in alarm. He recognized Fimud’s voice!

He glanced over and saw Fimud impaled simultaneously by six lightning javelins, his entire body exploding into a rapidly expanding fireball, the surface of which crackled with electric energy!

“This!”

Millerum instantly sensed disaster. He turned his gaze toward the six figures surrounding him, his mind shifting the bulk of the fleet’s firepower instantly towards them. Concentrated beams converged from every direction onto a single figure. That figure made no attempt to evade, absorbing millions of energy beams before shattering like a pane of glass.

“An illusion.” Millerum gritted his teeth, realizing he had been toyed with right up until this moment.

The situation was now decidedly disadvantageous for him. On one hand, he needed to annihilate the Empress’s fleet before it recovered its strength; on the other, he had to eliminate the eleven harassers led by Yang Ying within his own ranks.

If he had only one of those two tasks, operating at full capacity, success might still be possible. But handling both tasks simultaneously made victory a near impossibility.

“It seems I must choose only one objective,” Millerum conceded internally.

He decided to focus on the Empress’s Imperial Cosmic Fleet. They were still entirely on the defensive, lacking the capacity to counterattack. If he let them survive today, there would never be another opportunity like this.

Just as he prepared to commit all remaining reserve firepower for one final desperate attempt, a wormhole abruptly opened in the void. Out stepped a figure clad in red robes and gold armor—Regent Sandwor.

“Your Majesty!” Millerum called out immediately.

“This feeling…” Xiaosandwor frowned as soon as he arrived on the field. “Has Yasuvin fallen?” He could not sense Yasuvin’s presence.

“He has,” Millerum replied without hesitation, immediately transmitting a psychic message detailing everything that had occurred.

“Eleven Zenith experts!” Even without Millerum’s report, Sandwor felt those eleven potent mental signatures. He also sensed that these signatures did not include Blade or Katerina, both already confirmed Zenith experts.

“Meaning, thirteen Zenith experts!” Sandwor felt events slipping beyond his control. The Zerg of the Perseus Arm had produced thirteen Zenith experts, and Yang Ying’s side also had thirteen. No—adding the three from Protoss brought the total to sixteen! When had Zenith experts become so common?

“Millerum, yield command of the fleet to me!”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” Millerum instantly obeyed, transferring command of the Regent’s Guardian Fleet directly to Sandwor himself.

As Sandwor took control, his entire demeanor shifted, as if he had transformed into an army of thousands.

“Very well, no matter how many Zenith experts you field, you will not halt my advance! I am the one destined to become a Fifth Level entity!”

With a roar, Sandwor commanded the entire fleet to unleash a synchronized volley!

Zenith experts were indeed extraordinary. Once under Sandwor’s control, the Regent’s Guardian Fleet became instantly transformed. The firing pattern and distribution of energy beams showed vast improvement, operating on an entirely different level than under Millerum’s command.

After that single coordinated barrage, all of Yang Ying’s manufactured illusions were destroyed. The eleven figures, caught beneath the net of light, scrambled desperately, feeling the pressure multiply tenfold. They were forced to trade minor injuries for major ones, suffering several glancing blows from low-energy beams just to survive the initial salvo.

It was like two evenly matched commoners suddenly finding one armed with a gun and the other bare-handed; the disparity immediately became stark. Moreover, Yang Ying was already slightly inferior to Sandwor; now that Sandwor commanded a fleet, the gap widened impossibly.

Yang Ying instantly released countless new illusions to confuse and scatter Sandwor’s attacks. While he could mount some effective challenges against Millerum, now he could only manage limited harassment.

Following this, the Regent’s Guardian Fleet fired at full capacity, virtually every shot finding its mark. Besides Yang Ying, the Imperial Cosmic Fleet also received considerable attention. Under Sandwor’s unified command, the efficiency of the energy beams was maximized: a shield that could be pierced by ten shots would never require eleven.

The loss rate of the Imperial Cosmic Fleet began to climb again.

“Sandwor! Are you betraying the Empire?” the Empress’s voice boomed across the battlefield. “Firing upon the Emperor’s own forces!”

“Hmph, you all branded me a murderer of the former Emperor long ago, eager to strike me down with every means possible. Do you begrudge me the right to defend myself?”

Sandwor roared back, “You disbanded the Senate and sought to subvert millennia of Imperial tradition, all for the selfish desires of your royal family! Truthfully, ever since the Great Cataclysm shattered the Sea of Force, the Imperial system should have been abandoned. You cling to existence only through the mercy of the Senators who spared you. If you truly cared for the Empire, you would abdicate immediately, surrender power, and reorganize the Empire into a federation!”

“And then seize the Sea of Force from the Imperial family’s hands so you can control it and ascend to the Fifth Level?” the Empress scoffed. “I don't know why you believe the Sea of Force can help you break through the bottleneck beyond the Fourth Level, but I tell you, it is impossible!”

“Impossible in your eyes, but I will succeed!” Sandwor commanded the fleet to fire another salvo, wiping out Yang Ying’s illusions and nearly five thousand Imperial Cosmic warships. For future installments, please log in to Kanzhula for more chapters, supporting the author and legitimate reading! D

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