Gu Xichen let out a dry chuckle. He said frankly to Jin, "But even without your help, I could have completed the mission successfully and returned safely!"

Fu Yaming’s lips curled upward. Her greenish complexion flushed to a vibrant, lovely red. Jin Bai’s fair, tender face turned slightly pale; she frowned and reached out as if to grab Gu Xichen’s arm, but Fu Yaming executed a surprisingly deft turn, and it was Fu Yaming's waist that Gu Xichen found himself embracing.

Penghua ripped open a cigar, mixing in ten times the usual amount of dried cannabis buds. As he puffed out smoke dense enough to kill an ordinary person, Penghua grumbled, "Alas, Junior Brother, it's not that your Senior Brother isn't loyal, but this kind of shrew you’ll have to handle yourself! While it's true that brothers are meant to take the blame, I'm only interested in taking the blame for big busts. For a flat-chested one like this..."

He sighed softly. E’hua pulled a delicate, lovely, sheer pale-pink pair of panties from his belt. He gazed tenderly at the garment and muttered, "My dear Princess Jessia, will you miss me? As the first mentor in your life, I truly gave my all, sweating blood and tears. Ah, the love that crosses species and lifetimes between us will surely be sung of by all intelligent beings in the universe!" Lost in thought for a moment, E’hua suddenly muttered in a low voice, "Damn it, if I end up having children with them, what will be born?"

Penghua suddenly started jumping around wildly, rushing out of the command module in a state of panic.

Gu Xichen’s ears were sharp; he clearly heard E’hua’s hysterical and utterly terrified scream.

"Ancestor Han Kui, hurry and save me! Heavens, oh heavens, I forgot I've already reached the realm of the Sky-Soaring Yaksha! The Sky-Soaring Yaksha has recovered its physical vitality, and there's a high chance of impregnating someone! Heavens, oh heavens, what will be born if I have children with them? I'm not ready for parenthood yet! Save me, save me!"

It seemed Han Kui had ignored Penghua. E’hua rushed back in, weeping and shouting hysterically. He yelled until his voice was raw, "Quick, connect the comms for me! That group of madwomen—at least half of them said they're willing to bear me a child! I, I thought it would be like before, that I wouldn't get them pregnant! Heavens, heavens, I've messed up big time this time! I can't let them give birth, I can't let them give birth!"

Everyone in the command module looked at Penghua with that subtle, indescribable expression that somehow conveyed shared amusement. After a long moment, Hailis spoke very softly, "I apologize, Lord Penghua, but this is the Stardust Turbulence Zone; all communications are down."

Penghua bellowed, "Then let me off the ship!"

Hailis shrugged helplessly, "Even more apologies, but every time we pass through this route, the disturbance we cause makes the route quite dangerous for the next two months. If you want to turn back, you’ll have to wait two months. By then, their bellies will likely already be showing—it will be too late!"

With a thud, Penghua launched himself up, slamming his head against the wall of the command module. The hard alloy wall buckled under his impact, leaving a huge crater. E’hua groaned from inside the wall, "Don't pay attention to me, just let me think properly. If I return with more than a dozen grand-disciples, will Master strike me down?"

Everyone wisely ignored E’hua. No one spoke a word to him until the three warships had cleared the secret route.

Penghua kept his head jammed in the alloy wall, stifling himself for nearly a full day and night.

The warship exited the dangerous turbulence zone, and suddenly a bright light appeared ahead. It was a circular space with a diameter of only about a hundred kilometers; the three small Level Three warships felt somewhat cramped turning within this area. At the very center of the space, a silver aperture shimmering with a diameter of over a thousand meters radiated an enchanting halo, sending light streams stretching thousands of meters long. Within this dazzling ring of light was a pitch-black space jump gate, rippling gently like disturbed water.

"Everyone, this is the entrance to that ancient base!" Hailis bowed gracefully to Gu Xichen and the others. He deliberately played coy: "However, if we pass directly through here, then unfortunately, we will materialize directly in the heartland of the Som Kingdom."

"Lord Hailis, please don't waste our time!" Fu Yaming snapped coldly at him.

Hailis spread his hands in exasperation. He muttered to himself, "Oh, this marvelous jump point is the crystallization of my hard work. I painstakingly uncovered its secrets, and I paid a fortune to find what can break its..."

Gu Xichen slanted a glance at Hailis, his divine sense already covering the entire circular space. His invisible awareness, like a gentle spring drizzle, delicately wrapped around the shimmering jump point.

Waves of extremely high-frequency, subtle energy fluctuations continuously poured into Gu Xichen's divine sense. The Soul Orb erupted with streams of five-colored intense light. Gu Xichen rapidly discerned seven different frequencies within these energy fluctuations. Following the lowest frequency, he projected a wisp of divine sense toward it. Suddenly, the jump point exploded in a blinding flash of light, and a vague silhouette appeared from it. On the other side was a star system densely packed with administrative planets and spaceports.

"What is happening?" Hailis nearly jumped out of his skin. Seeing the scene on the other side directly through a space jump point was an event so outlandish it surpassed Hailis’s wildest imagination in his entire life.

Gu Xichen now understood. That lowest frequency corresponded to that secret commercial channel, a secret trade route leading directly into the core of a Six-Star Civilization. Then what about the other six frequencies?

Glancing at the flustered, hopping Hailis, Gu Xichen sneered slightly, "Hurry and open the channel. Although this looks like just one jump gate, the one leading to that ancient base should be integrated with it, shouldn't it?"

Fu Yaming grumbled unhappily. Jin, who was equally unhappy, tightly gripped Fu Yaming's waist and let out a heavy grunt.

Hailis immediately straightened up and burst into loud laughter. "That's right, it is this seemingly ordinary jump point. According to a secret archive of the Hiss Royal Family, in ancient times, those terrifying demons could travel to different locations through a single jump point. The secret lies in the different spatial dimensions these jump points occupy."

He coughed lightly, adopting the posture of a teacher imparting wisdom, and smiled, "According to the theory of subspace multi-spectrum spatial navigation..."

Gu Xichen slammed a palm onto the command officer’s seat; the alloy backrest instantly shattered into large pieces again.

Hailis wisely cut short his lengthy discourse and quickly issued a series of orders.

Gu Xichen’s warship slowly glided forward, stopping less than ten kilometers from the jump point. An armor plate in the main cannon housing slid open, revealing a thirty-meter-long, pale-purple rhombic crystal cone. Fu Yaming and Jin both gasped in surprise. They exchanged a quick glance.

Hailis keenly caught the astonishment of Fu Yaming and Jin. He smiled slightly, "Indeed, just as Your Majesty the Queen has seen, this is a high-energy crystal cone excavated from the ruins of the ancient demons. For many years, no one knew what this crystal cone was for, as most excavated cones were incomplete. But through my accidental discovery, this crystal cone is the magical key to activating the jump point before us."

An intensely bright purple beam shot out from the crystal cone, striking precisely the core section of the jump point ahead.

Hailis laughed heartily, "My luck is quite good. A down-on-his-luck merchant carried this crystal cone to my territory, and I acquired it."

Gu Xichen’s divine sense closely followed the purple beam. The space jump point fluctuated violently. As the energy of the purple beam intensified, the lowest frequency fluctuation was gradually neutralized, and another energy fluctuation, one level higher in frequency, was stimulated, subsequently gaining control over the entire jump point.

Intense light flared out from around the jump point, and the silver halo turned a deep crimson. The space jump point, which had been gently oscillating like ripples, violently churned like boiling porridge.

Hailis shrieked, "Launch, depart, pass through quickly! Level Three warships have limited energy; we can only sustain this jump point for less than half an hour!"

Amidst Hailis's urgent prompting, the three Level Three warships entered single file, plunging into the violently fluctuating jump point.

Retracting his divine sense, Gu Xichen smiled happily. He had mastered the secret of this jump point; he was capable of mimicking that energy fluctuation and activating the remaining five frequencies. He glanced at Hailis, who was wiping cold sweat from his brow, and felt a touch of confusion. Did this fellow truly fail to discover the other five frequencies, or did he only discover the hidden first one?

His body lurched sharply as the warship passed through the jump point and arrived in an entirely new star sector.

It was pitch black all around. Even with the scanners of a Level Three warship operating at overload, they could not detect the presence of any nearby celestial bodies. Looking out with the naked eye, everything was black, save for a thumb-sized red light blinking extremely far ahead.

Hailis looked excitedly at the red light and declared loudly, "It's over there, it's over there—an ancient military base left by the demons. But it is guarded by incredibly powerful intelligent robots. I tested it once and lost over five thousand soldiers; their power is simply too great!"

Taking a deep breath, Hailis cheered, "But this time, with the mighty Lord Gu, we don't need to worry about those weak robots at all!"

The viewscreen lowered, and a colossal space base appeared before everyone’s eyes.

A super-mothership, over three hundred kilometers long, hovered above the space base. Hundreds of thousands of construction robots were continuously offloading various metal ingots from the mothership—from the rarest metal ores to the most common metal and non-metal ores. All kinds of minerals were present. Essentially, the minerals these robots were hauling could constitute an entire planet!

Fanning himself gently, Gu Xichen looked worriedly toward Fu Yaming.

"Fuya, I have a very strange feeling..."

"Say it," Fu Yaming looked back with a smile.

"Could it be that these robots, by constantly excavating various minerals for so many years, have actually smelted away all the planets in this star sector?"

Everyone in the command module gasped simultaneously. Gu Xichen’s words were simply too astonishing.

But looking at the empty, pitch-black star field, this possibility seemed quite high. Otherwise, where would the metal ingots being unloaded from that mothership come from?

While the group was marveling at the power of this Roman base, several triangular spaceships, no longer than twenty meters in length, suddenly rushed towards them at astonishing speed.

Without any warning, these ships simultaneously opened fire, and dense beams of high-energy light struck Gu Xichen's vessel.