Zi Ye had never felt so utterly cornered. She had never imagined being immobilized because Dou Zai was too heavy, pressing down on her!

In the stretched-out cockpit, she couldn't reach behind her back to lift the round Dou Zai. If she managed to climb up, Dou Zai would press against the metal above, the chair was already warped, and there was no space for either of them to roll away.

As the black hole expanded, the stabilizing pin was sucked in. The mecha lost its resistance and plunged into the singularity.

"Jee!" Dou Zai cried out again. Zi Ye impatiently snapped, "Jee what the hell!" Dou Zai shut its mouth, wounded.

The mecha fell into endless darkness. This darkness was not the ordinary night; it was like black ink, where nothing could be seen.

The light screen was squeezed down to a width of barely two inches, the illuminated interface casting a small pool of light around her. Zi Ye felt the suction in front intensifying, the mecha thinning out, beginning to press painfully against her bones.

Dou Zai’s iron-like body weighed heavily on her spine, filling her heart with dread. Zi Ye couldn't help but recall the first time she and Little Sprout had passed through the wormhole above Planet Yin Fu—the terrifying tension of which could instantly tear a mecha into particles.

Now, having just entered the black hole, the suction was already at such a terrifying level. The further inside they went, the greater the pull would become.

By then, never mind the mecha, even she would probably be reduced to particles. Zi Ye stared at the two-inch light screen, her fingertips precisely pressing a specific button.

That button was for expanding the mecha. Against the overwhelming suction, the front of the mecha could not expand, but the pull from behind was less severe, forcing the space to widen slightly.

Zi Ye shifted backward, finally gaining some room to move. She hurriedly flipped Dou Zai off and set it aside, simultaneously retracting the light screen to enlarge it in the slightly wider space, trying to expand the mecha’s rear section as much as possible.

Once there was enough space for her to lie down without pressure, she let out a breath. She located an ammunition canister in the mecha warehouse, installed a tracker onto it, and then loaded it into the slender cannon, firing it without locking onto a target.

The ammunition launched, not with the usual bang, but with a soft, muffled "poof," and vanished. In a brief moment, Zi Ye used the launched projectile to probe the suction ahead.

It had indeed grown stronger! Zi Ye picked up the second canister.

She no longer had a tracker, but fortunately, Renwei metal was versatile. She sliced off a piece from the mecha's interior, stuffed the spare sensor inside, and fired again.

With successive launches, she gradually mapped out the hidden mechanisms within the black hole. The essence of the Light Burst Shell was consumption.

This vastness was a space formed after the Light Burst Shell consumed an asteroid. This anomalous space had a vortex at its center, sucking everything nearby into it.

When she fired the ammunition earlier, she felt it hit other things—probably the wreckage of battleships. Currently, the mecha had not reached the center.

If they reached the core, the Renwei alloy mecha would likely be twisted into a pretzel. There was only one solution she could conceive: use enough ammunition to blast the space open directly.

She tapped the ammunition canisters in her hand—far from enough! Did she have to start crafting explosives herself?

Zi Ye reached behind her, searching for anything useful, and her hand brushed against Dou Zai’s plump, round rear. Her eyes lit up: "Dou Zai, I need you to poop, the more the better!" When certain metals mixed with ammunition, the explosive force doubled!

She immediately brought up the system on the light screen, beginning to calculate the maximum potency formula for the explosives. As Zi Ye was crunching the numbers, a strong metallic odor suddenly assailed her nostrils.

She whipped her head around, screaming—ah, ah, ah! Dou Zai hadn't just pooped; it had pooped on her!

Zi Ye was on the verge of tears: Good heavens, couldn't you pick somewhere else to go? However, the fact that it pooped immediately upon her command was quite positive.

Zi Ye ignored the disgust, reaching out to scoop up the excrement and telling Dou Zai, "Eat this piece of metal." The seat had been stretched into a long strip, leaving only a thin layer of metal between the seat and the warehouse. Zi Ye couldn't pry it open, but with Dou Zai, the glutton, there was nothing it couldn't eat!

Dou Zai looked at her with a crestfallen face and tearful eyes. This mecha was made from its feces in the first place!

Now she was making it eat it back? That was inhumane!

Zi Ye disregarded Dou Zai's plea, watching it gnaw the piece of metal clean. She didn't have time to wait for it to lick it smoother.

With the space provided by the warehouse, she now had at least half her body free to move. Zi Ye began dismantling the ammunition, reintegrating it with the metal.

This process was extremely tedious. She had no containers nearby, so she could only estimate the proportions herself.

Seeing that Zi Ye was ignoring it, Dou Zai sulkily crawled to the side, taking the opportunity to lick smooth the jagged edges it had bitten off. "This ratio seems a bit off," Zi Ye muttered to herself while working.

Holding the materials in her current posture was painful, but she had to risk it to get out. "If only Little Sprout were here." Lately, Zi Ye had been thinking every day about when she could find a wormhole or the site of a planetary explosion to let Little Sprout recover its energy, but other matters kept arising, delaying everything.

Now, she regretted it fiercely. Zi Ye sighed as she fiddled with the materials.

Suddenly, she felt a faint itch near her ear. Her hands were covered in feces, so she ignored the urge to scratch and simply rubbed her ear against her shoulder while continuing her work.

Then, her ear itched again. Zi Ye became irritated.

But she had to endure it. Time passed, minute by minute.

Zi Ye focused intently on creating her massive explosive. When her back got tired, she stretched, feeling an immense sense of relief.

She leaned back against the metal, let out a breath, and suddenly felt something uncanny—what was going on? When did the space become so much larger?

She glanced at the light screen—oh my god, even the speed at which the mecha was being sucked toward the center had slowed down! What was this situation?

Zi Ye's eyes widened, and then she witnessed a truly bizarre phenomenon. The ink-like blackness seemed to stop flowing forward; instead, it began to flow around the mecha.

How did the mecha become the center of the vortex? Zi Ye felt intensely uneasy.

She glanced at the light screen, then at Dou Zai, and decided to keep making the explosives. No matter what, having explosives in hand gave her a much better chance of survival.

Her hands moved rapidly. The external suction slowly stopped pulling inward; in a spot she hadn't noticed, the suction was actually being absorbed into the mecha.

One minute, two minutes. Half an hour later, Zi Ye finally finished crafting the giant projectile.

She raised her hand, wiped a bead of sweat with her sleeve, and was about to run a diagnostic check. Suddenly, a voice chuckled dryly: "I tell you you’re dense and you still argue.

You didn't even notice a two percent increase in your Renwei metal housing. Oh, Zi Ye, how would you survive without me around!" -RS