Gu Xiye stared intently. The Yatishian soldiers who were supposed to accompany Linghu and Holm to receive the warships were reduced to a quivering, melted heap on the ground. Gu Xiye Chen was terrifying in that moment. He hovered about a meter above the ground; the dark storm clouds in the sky churned as he wielded the Fuyao Fan, and thunder and lightning crashed down in rhythm with his breath. Hail and freezing winds answered his every beck and call. This power no longer belonged to humanity; it was the domain of an entirely different order of being.

“Who did this!” With a point of his finger, a Yafik officer flailed wildly before being flung into the air. He looked at Gu Xiye Chen in utter horror. After screaming a few hysterical shouts, his head lolled sideways, and he fainted.

Gu Xiye Chen ground his teeth in anger. These Yafik people were truly too useless.

Fuya Ming’s face flushed. She strode up to her subordinates and snapped, “Did you not hear Lord Gu? Who did this?”

The Queen’s deterrent effect was far less than Gu Xiye Chen’s; in front of Fuya Ming, these Yafik soldiers felt no particular fear. A military officer tentatively raised his hand and stammered, “It was the ‘Bloodfang’ Adept Group. It was Bloodfang’s people! Their four Grand Leaders attacked simultaneously!”

Jin’s brows furrowed tightly. She cautiously approached Gu Xiye Chen and murmured, “The Bloodfang Adept Group. They are the second-ranked adept group in the Star Alliance, even slightly stronger than our Broken Hook. They have four Grand Leaders, all of them peak Six-Star Venerables, and twenty-four Deputy Leaders, every one of them an adept nearing or having reached Six-Star strength. They are very difficult to deal with.”

The Fuyao Fan swept lightly. Gu Xiye Chen smiled faintly. “Oh? Is that so? I just won three thousand warships, and the Bloodfang people arrived so quickly?”

Jin gazed at Gu Xiye Chen’s face in rapt admiration. She murmured, “I heard that many high-ranking officials from the thirteen nations from whom you won the warships have connections with the Bloodfang people. Perhaps they were actually aboard the fleet.” Her small hands twisted tightly together, and Jin whispered, “Just as Sister Fuya invited me here to help her, it’s likely someone invited them, mingling within the fleet, preparing to invade Yafik by force. Three thousand warships couldn't breach Yafik’s planetary defense system, but several hundred powerful adepts might be able to.”

Gu Xiye Chen understood. The Bloodfang Adept Group was hidden within one of the nations’ fleets. Their original target was the Yafik Kingdom, but they never anticipated that the thirteen princes leading the charge would blunder so spectacularly, losing three thousand Tier-One warships to Gu Xiye Chen. This was not only a fatal blow to the thirteen princes themselves but also a significant weakening of the strength of the thirteen kingdoms backing them. Therefore, the faction colluding with the Bloodfang Adept Group, or perhaps the thirteen kingdoms acting in concert, simply ordered the Bloodfang people to make their move.

Linghu and Holm, who had been heavily injured while preparing to receive the warships, would now take the blame, allowing the Bloodfang Adept Group to shoulder the infamy. These kings would no longer have to bear the disgrace of breaking the duel agreements through treachery.

It was likely that the three thousand Tier-One warships were already speeding away from Yafik under the control of the Bloodfang Adept Group. As for how those nations would retrieve the warships from Bloodfang later, perhaps at a ruinous price, that was none of Gu Xiye Chen’s concern. If he couldn't protect the ships he had won, that was his failure, not the responsibility of the thirteen kingdoms.

“Good, good, good!” Gu Xiye Chen laughed heartily, summoning his hand. “What a plan, what a scheme! Hey, Fuya, help look after my subordinates and get me the fastest warship in Yafik!”

Fuya Ming nodded. She knew what Gu Xiye Chen intended to do. Having witnessed his terrifying power firsthand, Fuya Ming had no apprehension about his next move.

Pu raised a small hand and called out eagerly, “I have the fastest vessel in the Spiral Star Domain, but only I can pilot it!”

Gu Xiye Chen waved his wide sleeve. Instantly, the anomalies in the sky vanished rapidly; the dark clouds, the chilling winds, the thunder, lightning, and hail all disappeared without a trace. The cataclysmic scene from moments before seemed like nothing more than a bad dream. If not for the thick layer of hailstones still covering the ground, everyone would have thought they had all hallucinated the terrifying sight together after consuming some psychedelic drug.

The fast ship that Pu claimed was the quickest in the Spiral Star Domain lived up to its reputation. This small vessel, less than a hundred meters long, could approach absolute light speed in normal space. Compared to the half-light-speed cruising velocity of ordinary warships, this speed was frighteningly fast. Even when entering subspace, this ship, named the Great Falcon, could achieve speeds more than double that of current Star Alliance standard warships.

Diligently ushering Gu Xiye Chen into the cockpit of the Great Falcon, Jin swiftly placed a helmet over her own head. She smiled and introduced it, “The Great Falcon was my coming-of-age gift from my father. Because I tend to stir up trouble, this warship has virtually zero offensive capability, but its defense is three times that of a standard Tier-One warship, and its speed is several times that of those standard models.”

“It’s for escaping after you cause trouble!” Gu Xiye Chen pierced through to the Great Falcon’s ultimate purpose with one sharp remark.

Jin laughed awkwardly. Her pair of lovely eyes swirled over Gu Xiye Chen’s face, and her eyes immediately narrowed into delighted crescents. “It’s not always me looking for trouble; sometimes trouble finds me. Like that time I first met Sister Fuya, a princess from a Tier-Three civilization relentlessly pursued me, even deploying her nation’s Royal Guard to hunt me down. Fortunately, Sister Fuya upheld justice and scared them off with the name of the Yafik Kingdom, otherwise—”

Penghua, perched on a seat, spoke in a bizarre voice. “A princess was chasing you?”

Gu Xiye Chen also looked at Jin in surprise, his small, delicate face wrinkling in confusion. As she deftly flipped various switches in the cockpit to preheat the power core, she sighed with a troubled expression. “I just thought she was quite pretty and played the sānxián beautifully, so I gifted her a ‘Three-Colored Cloud Brocade Flower,’ a specialty from Floating Cloud Star. And then she insisted on marrying me! It was completely baffling!”

With a cold snort, Jin tilted her head back defiantly and said dismissively, “Of course. If her looks were half as beautiful as mine, I wouldn’t mind having a relationship with her. But she is not half as beautiful, not half as capable, nor half as smart as me. Even the smoothness of her skin isn’t half as delicate and supple as mine. So, why would I want her?”

“Uh!” Gu Xiye Chen fell silent, subconsciously leaning back into the seat, squeezing his body into the confines of the chair. Jin’s words were chilling.

Penghua, however, resembled a hungry wolf spotting a white rabbit, exclaiming excitedly, “You like women?”