Kan Hua’s lips were stretched into a gleam of drool, staring blankly at the Earth shrinking outside the viewport. He was still immersed in some rosy reverie; the fact that his boundary puppet turned out to be one of the legendary progenitors of their zombie clan filled Kan Hua with an inexplicable impulse and yearning.

Three Nantianmen-class heavy dreadnoughts and fifteen Beitianmen-class battleships—a fleet not large in number but terrifying in combat power—had launched from a secret base belonging to the Special Operations Bureau deep within Bronzilia, successfully evading the alert network of the Terran Federation’s Pan-Pacific theater and heading straight for the Moon. With the speed of the new-model warships, the journey from Earth to the Moon took only about three hours, most of which was spent on acceleration and deceleration; uniform cruising lasted less than ten minutes.

On the far side of the Moon, within a crater pitted with sharp rocks and dust, a plume of murky gas suddenly erupted from underground, kicking up a massive cloud of lunar dust high into the sky. A colossal valve, over five kilometers in diameter, slowly slid open, releasing a thick energy barrier that sealed the atmosphere within the base below. The fleet carefully flew through the valve and docked in a gargantuan underground hangar bay. A throng of ground crew personnel swarmed forward, rapidly cleaning the exterior of the warships to scour away adhering space dust.

Glancing at Kan Hua, who had sunk into a lovesick stupor, Gu Xiechen shook his head. With a light sigh, he couldn't be bothered to call out to Kan Hua, whose brains had apparently been burned away by the peerless Drought Demon, and walked off alone.

Bell Adams, leading a squad of intelligence agents from Hadewater Defense Corporation, stood at the edge of the hangar bay to welcome Gu Xiechen. From a considerable distance, Bell Adams boomed with laughter, "Hey, Boss, you finally remembered us! You absolutely have to give me a raise; I’ve been cooped up here for so long, I was nearly bored to death!"

Delivering a light but firm punch to Bell’s chest, Gu Xiechen gripped his shoulder forcefully. "A raise? Judging by the rosy glow on your face, your living conditions can’t be that bad. What’s wrong with being here? I pay everyone working at the Lunar Base triple the salary!"

Sighing deeply, Bell shrugged, shaking his head and complaining theatrically, "Boss, it's fine here, it's very nice. But, there are no girls here!"

"Girls?" Gu Xiechen paused, instinctively glancing back at the vessel he arrived in—there was still one fellow inside immersed in a pink dream. He frowned and asked, "You want girls?"

Bell spread his hands helplessly. "Boss, I don't need girls; I have my dearest wife and my most adorable children. But the young men here need girls! Heavens, this base has hundreds of thousands of members, and not a single woman among them." Bell looked at Gu Xiechen innocently, shouting with exaggerated drama, "Are you expecting these strapping young men to become homosexuals?"

Gu Xiechen gave Bell a strange look, momentarily picturing the spectacular scene of several hundred thousand men engaging in same-sex relationships, and immediately shuddered.

After pondering for a moment, Gu Xiechen nodded and promised, "If the Internal Affairs Office can properly manage those girls... I'll arrange a sufficient supply for you tomorrow. But you must understand, those girls are not 'our people.'"

Bell grinned, his eyes narrowing into slits of delight. "Don't worry, Boss, that’s my specialty. Absolutely no one will leak anything. Those girls won't even know they are on the Moon!"

"Excellent!" Gu Xiechen finalized the matter with a clap. He could see the flames of suppressed desperation burning in the eyes of the young men standing behind Bell; they were all vigorous youths, spending their days in the base doing nothing but training. It was indeed time to consider matters more comprehensively. This base was crucial, and security was paramount, but things could certainly be handled with more humanity. He decided to hold mass recruitment drives on Earth immediately to hire tens of thousands of women for clerical positions at the base.

With such a large influx of personnel, it was inevitable that people affiliated with various factions would be mixed in; this would test Bell Adams's capacity for control. Gu Xiechen did not want the base's secrets to be betrayed to those dazzlingly made-up women the moment these lovesick young men got carried away!

The talent cultivated by oneself was still the most reliable! However, whether it was the former Hell's Angels Mercenary Group or the current Hadewater Defense Corporation, finding experts in arson and murder was child's play, but finding a few female beings was proving incredibly difficult.

Under Bell Adams's guidance, Gu Xiechen was led to the most secret production line on the lowest level of the Lunar Base.

Inside the massive factory, ten kilometers long and three kilometers wide, countless gigantic robotic arms and engineering robots bustled around an unprecedented colossal warship. At least twenty thousand workers, like ants, clung to the scaffolding layered over a dozen tiers outside the hull, working with rapt concentration. Inside several open hatches of the vessel, numerous workers hurried in and out. Large engineering vehicles transported various modular instrument components into the ship, only to rush out carrying heaps of scrap materials.

The warship was nearing completion; its hull length reached an astonishing six thousand meters, with a maximum width exceeding five hundred meters. The raised bridge section at the center of the hull stood nearly five hundred meters high.

An intelligence agent drove a maglev engineering vehicle over, carrying Gu Xiechen toward the bow section of the warship.

The bow of the ship was densely packed with main gun emplacements. Gu Xiechen did a quick count; there were more than fifty main cannons with calibers exceeding three thousand millimeters—50% larger than the largest primary weapon caliber specified by the Terran Federation Military for their new generation of mainline vessels. From bow to stern, the ship was densely arrayed with over five thousand auxiliary cannons of various calibers, among which were more than eight hundred primary-grade barrels with calibers over one thousand millimeters. The total firepower intensity of the entire ship was equivalent to forty of the Federation's active First-Tier mixed fleets. However, compared to the single main cannon barrel near the center of the hull, which had a caliber approaching one hundred thousand millimeters, all other main guns paled into insignificance.

Its caliber was nearly ten meters; a small three-story building could easily fit inside that single cannon barrel. Embedded within the barrel was a large, blue crystal radiating a mysterious, faint blue luminescence, within which hundreds of faint glows, as thick as a man's fist, flowed intermittently. Even from a distance, a chilling aura washed over them.

"Sky-Quenched Azure Crystal!" Gu Xiechen quietly swallowed, referring to the miraculous crystal he had obtained from Paradise Star.

He did not possess the strength to refine this crystal himself, so when the Federation Military proposed the new generation shipbuilding plan, he handed the Sky-Quenched Azure Crystal over to Bill Rox, Chief Researcher at Hadewater Defense Corporation. After nearly a year of countless experiments by Bill Rox, the crystal demonstrated extremely strong energy focusing and amplification effects, making it the ultimate material for manufacturing energy weapons.

Thus, when constructing this unprecedented behemoth, Bill Rox had the Sky-Quenched Azure Crystal inlaid into the ship's primary weapon.

Bell stared blankly at the Sky-Quenched Azure Crystal, taking a deep breath. He muttered to himself, "Boss, every time I see this thing, I wonder if it could punch a hole straight through a planet!"

Bill Rox’s hoarse voice came from nearby. "Punching through a planet is impossible, but facing any existing warship, a single shot at just ten percent power could reduce all current naval vessels to ash. Even our strongest Nantianmen-class heavy dreadnought, even with all energy shields active, couldn't withstand a tenth of its power!" An engineering vehicle flew over, and Bill Rox, his white lab coat stained with oil, looked at the Sky-Quenched Azure Crystal with deep emotion. "This is a weapon of mass destruction!"

Thud! Before two engineering vehicles could align, Bill jumped across from the other side. Gu Xiechen quickly reached out to steady him; the old man had a real knack for throwing himself around. This was hundreds of meters in the air; if he had fallen, his frail body would have vanished without a trace.

"Bill, introduce it to me—this ship, the Qiankun Primordial!" Gu Xiechen looked at the giant vessel before him, feeling a surge of fire ignite from the soles of his feet, causing his heart to pound violently.

Bill Rox stared at the massive ship for a long moment, murmuring incoherently in an almost dreamlike voice, "Boss, this is the Ship of Miracles!"

The Nantianmen-class heavy dreadnoughts and Beitianmen-class battleships were designed and manufactured by Hadewater Defense Corporation for the Federation Military's new shipbuilding program, but every technology applied to those two classes was essentially inferior material discarded during the development process of the giant ship before them. Simply put, the Nantianmen and Beitianmen classes were just prototypes.

The Qiankun Primordial, on the other hand, was the culmination of over a year of painstaking design work by Bill Rox and all of Hadewater Defense Corporation’s research personnel.

The ship's engines were based on GE Company’s most advanced engine technology, optimized and improved by Bill Rox and his team. Especially with the use of new alloy materials, the volume of a single engine was reduced by 45% compared to GE’s original model, while per-unit power increased by 57%. When thousands of individual engines were coupled into massive engine blocks, the ship's total motive power was 547 times greater than that of the Nantianmen-class heavy dreadnought! And the power of the Nantianmen's engine block was already more than forty times that of the Federation’s current active First-Tier warships!

On any other ship, even with such enormous volume, it would be impossible to withstand such immense power. Only the special alloy recorded in the third bamboo scroll of Gu Xiechen’s Dao of Self-Refinement could allow such a massive vessel to withstand the recoil force generated by such tremendous power. If the Qiankun Primordial's engine block were installed on another warship, never mind whether the other ship possessed such massive dimensions, the moment the engine block ignited, the vessel would be instantly torn to shreds by the massive energy surge.