Bobo felt as if he had swallowed several hundred flies; the sheer nausea made him close his eyes and faint, wishing for oblivion.

Of those aboard the destroyer, few survivors were intact; all were crammed into the small infirmary of the space station.

This was merely a remote space station in a remote galaxy, equipped with only the most basic medical facilities. Suddenly inundated with so many people, the small clinic could not accommodate them and hastily requested support from the largest hospital in the nearest star system.

As it turned out, before any aid arrived, dozens of rescue fleets from the Interstellar Federation swarmed in.

The poor, tiny infirmary of the little space station had never witnessed such a massive deployment and was nearly terrified out of its wits.

The commander of the Interstellar Federation Search Fleet was Admiral Kony. After Admiral Molin’s fleet ran into trouble, Kony immediately directed the search fleet to enter the designated galaxy at maximum speed.

What astonished and baffled him upon arrival was that the designated galaxy was utterly empty. No planets, no asteroid belts, no space stations, no stargates, no vessels, no people—not even wreckage.

Molin’s super-fleet of over a hundred ships, encompassing battleships, stealth bombers, logistics carriers, frigates, and an aircraft carrier, had vanished from the star charts without a trace!

He searched the space stations in that galaxy for witnesses, only to find that every single station in the entire system had also disappeared!

Admiral Kony was profoundly shaken. He immediately reported the findings to the Federation Headquarters, requesting expert assistance while simultaneously dispersing his fleet to search the neighboring systems for survivors.

Soon, survivors were located at the Babada Space Station—the crew from the destroyer.

Thus, the people of the small Babada station and its tiny infirmary watched, dumbfounded, as a group of severely wounded and injured personnel disembarked from the destroyer. Just as they finally gathered themselves and threw their full effort into the rescue operation, another wave of military personnel flooded in, overwhelming the station with terrifying force as they snatched away the injured, leaving the locals gaping.

Was the sky about to fall?

Everyone on the entire Babada space station poured out to witness the first Admiral to visit this small station in decades.

Kony was in no mood for pleasantries. He ordered the medical teams to transfer all the wounded to the Interstellar Federation’s Grand Central Hospital, dispatched his fleet to conduct further searches, and waited for the experts and other rescue fleets to arrive, intending to personally question the survivors about what exactly had occurred.

Bobo remained deeply unconscious.

During that desperate flight, he had already exhausted every reserve of stamina, and coupled with the intense shock of learning that Illya had become his stepmother, once he fainted, he did not wake up.

Kony was becoming irritable.

But Bobo was the son of the Federation Commander. Even if he didn't care for Bobo’s person, he still had to respect Karu. It was awkward to rouse him, so Kony settled for questioning the other soldiers who were relatively more lucid.

The Interstellar Federation maintained ten major rescue teams; Molin’s fleet ranked fourth. Losing such a fleet was not just a direct loss of hardware; the sheer effort the Federation had invested into cultivating a fleet of that caliber felt like a knife plunged into his back.

What made Kony want to spit blood was that among the few survivors, the Captain and First Officer had both been rushed into emergency life support, and seven or eight of the remaining ten suffered from concussions.

Unable to vent his anger properly, Kony roughly grabbed a destroyer crew member who appeared outwardly unharmed. The staff member trembled violently, struggling to articulate words. "I... I don't know what happened. I heard someone say that Major General Bobo had been hijacked, but I was manning a turret and couldn't leave. Then, after that, the ship suddenly flipped over. When I woke up, I was here."

He went to question others, his face ashen, only to find their accounts were largely the same.

Kony had initially suspected an isolated incident, but now he began to wonder: Could someone have released an infrasound wave that caused them all to fall into a collective stupor?

Kony rubbed his forehead and reported the preliminary findings back to Federation HQ again, requesting specialized experts from more diverse fields and applying for a news blackout.

Before recovering Molin's fleet, he did not want any other Legions interfering. Being high up in the military hierarchy, he understood the checks, balances, and petty squabbling between the various Legions. If they got wind of this, endless conflict would erupt.

It could be said that the more Legions intervened, the harder it would be to find Molin's fleet, and the lower the chances of survival for the missing vessels.

He firmly believed that the tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of ships belonging to Molin’s fleet could not have simply vanished!

However, just as Bai Lanxue agreed to seal the information, several military media outlets simultaneously broke the massive story, titled: The Mysterious Disappearance in the Tuba Galaxy. The news reported that the largest five-star station in Babada had received a distress signal from Tuba, which vanished mysteriously five minutes later, with all contact lost thereafter.

The Babada Space Station police fleet dispatched to the Tuba Galaxy found, bizarrely, that the station itself was gone, and the stargate along with it.

When the news broke, the entire galaxy was stunned!

In military terms, a stargate was far more significant to a Legion than a space station. Destroying a Legion’s gate was equivalent to issuing a direct challenge.

The Tuba Galaxy belonged to the Interstellar Federation.

Various Legions quickly issued statements, announcing their intent to dispatch fleets to the Tuba Galaxy to provide humanitarian aid.

When Bai Lanxue saw the report, her face changed. She ordered the Combat Director to re-verify all war preparations and prepare to engage certain Legions immediately if necessary.

Kony nearly spat blood onto the screen. If a war broke out, the search and rescue operation would become even more complicated. He couldn't afford to hesitate; he decisively increased manpower and initiated a full-system search.

He had to find the missing fleet before the other Legions did!

The Tuba Galaxy was a small system, usually overlooked on star charts.

But that night, fleets of all sizes—including those from the Fia Family, the Mohk Legion, the Angelic Domain, and the Huaxia Legion—converged on the Tuba Galaxy. The Central Command also dispatched the Unification Fleet for rescue efforts.

Experts of every stripe descended: space station architects, satellite specialists, natural environment researchers—the list was endless.

For a time, Tuba became even livelier than Kolai.

In reality, before Kony even arrived at the Tuba Galaxy, a small frigate had quietly made it there first.

It was An Junlie’s vessel.

After receiving Zi Ye’s distress call, he requisitioned a frigate and pursued the destroyer at full throttle.

The destroyer possessed superior speed and firepower compared to the frigate, so An Junlie chased while simultaneously sending out long-range comms requesting battleship support. Battleships had several times the firepower of destroyers, though their speed was lacking.

By the time they managed to reach the neighboring system, the Tuba Galaxy had just detonated a nuclear super-missile that annihilated a planet.

Thus, when they arrived at the Tuba Galaxy, the starscape had only just settled back into silence.

An Junlie’s heart shattered in that instant.

-RS