Bai Lanxue assumed that dispatching the First and Second Fleets would secure the Wolf’s Lair headquarters with ease. However, just a moment before the Second Fleet made its move, the space station emitted a long, low alarm.
The Wolf’s Lair headquarters seemed to awaken from a slumber. Countless station police surged onto the silent avenues, and the military seized control of the docking bays and legion offices with unparalleled speed.
Everything was meticulously organized, as if rehearsed countless times.
Because the Second Fleet lost that crucial second of initiative, the majority of its forces were trapped within the station's docking bays.
All starship docks share one characteristic: they possess anti-attack capabilities. Within a dock, it is extremely difficult for a warship to deploy its turret launchers, and even if they are deployed, firing is impossible. Should they attempt a forced strike, the only outcome is mutual annihilation with the dock itself.
The Second Fleet personnel were utterly stifled by frustration.
Bai Lanxue was so enraged she felt like blasting the Wolf’s Lair headquarters into dust right there.
She tapped the control panel and issued an order to the Third Fleet.
The Third Fleet personnel, piloting airships, were already lying in ambush throughout the space station. Upon receiving Bai Lanxue’s signal, they immediately advanced toward the Wolf’s Lair headquarters offices.
They carried no heavy ordnance; their sole objective in approaching the offices was: eliminate the Wolf’s Lair high command!
Beep—
Someone detected the intruders, immediately severing the main power conduit to the offices.
The expansive office complex, covering several thousand square meters, plunged into darkness.
In the station, the lights were the sole source of illumination.
Deprived of that light source, everyone was swallowed by an absolute, suffocating blackness.
The Third Fleet personnel were battle-hardened veterans of countless campaigns. The defenders within the Wolf’s Lair headquarters offices were equally perilous, having survived through conflict; when they clashed, neither side could gain an immediate advantage.
Then, as if responding to a silent command, the lights began to extinguish, one by one. In mere minutes, the entire space station was shrouded in a darkness thick as ink, without the faintest glimmer of light.
Bai Lanxue sat before the control console. Gazing at the pitch-black screens, occasionally catching a distant, faint cry, she felt nothing but fury—and more fury. No power. No matter how many surveillance feeds she possessed or how extensive her deployment, she could execute nothing.
It seemed this was a duel she was destined to lose.
She frowned. "A bunch of useless trash!"
If they weren't so utterly ineffective, power wouldn't have been lost to external control; if they weren't so useless, they wouldn't be trapped in the docks; if they weren't so useless... Bai Lanxue tightly suppressed the urge to jump into the fray herself.
She was a commander, not a foot soldier.
Her task was to win through strategic warfare, not to wade in and fight alongside them!
Bai Lanxue took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.
Upon careful reflection, every single move she had made seemed to be playing directly into their hands. She couldn't see a single one of their people, yet she couldn't even subdue one station!
Did they know her deployment plan long in advance?
Were they prepared for this contingency?
Or was the intelligence she received regarding the strength of the Wolf’s Lair fundamentally misleading?
“No, they couldn’t possibly know!” Bai Lanxue hardened her resolve, purging all doubt from her mind. Her decision to attack the headquarters had only been finalized ten hours ago; even if the Wolf’s Lair had advance notice, they couldn't have orchestrated a response this precise in such a short timeframe.
Most crucially, regarding this attack plan, only she possessed the complete picture; everyone else knew only half or less. Even with a mole, the Wolf’s Lair could not know her entire sequence of actions.
Could it be that an opponent intimately familiar with her methods was involved?
The image of An Junlie flashed across Bai Lanxue’s mind. She immediately dismissed it; An Junlie was the commander of the Angel Legion; he would never be at the Wolf’s Lair headquarters.
Perhaps it was Red Hair?
Bai Lanxue scoffed. Red Hair was a former subordinate she had defeated; hardly a threat.
She refocused her gaze on the control panel and issued new orders to the Second and Third Fleets: Find a way to destroy the station’s defensive shields. Abandon the Wolf’s Lair headquarters space station!
Because no matter how excellent her personnel were, they lacked the home-field advantage here. Only by breaking out into open space would they have a genuine chance of victory.
After issuing the order, Bai Lanxue commanded the Fourth and Fifth Fleets to prepare for interception.
This battle, no matter the cost, had to be won.
One minute passed. No sound emerged from the darkened space station; nothing was visible, nor did anyone exit the structure.
Two minutes passed. Bai Lanxue stared intently at the screen, still seeing no activity.
Three minutes elapsed.
Just as Bai Lanxue was about to issue new commands, suddenly—
BOOM—
A colossal explosion rocked the Wolf’s Lair headquarters space station, accompanied by a massive flare of pyrotechnics. The intense light generated by the blast not only tore a rent in the station’s defensive shield but also illuminated everything within the station with startling clarity.
—It was filled entirely with corpses!
A battleship darted out through the breach in the shield, rapidly fleeing toward the rear lines of the Wolf’s Lair territory.
Bai Lanxue saw it clearly and immediately redirected her forces: "Fourth Fleet, pursue that battleship!"
The battleship's warp jump was incredibly swift; its white hull vanished like a thin thread in an instant.
The Fourth Fleet instantly pivoted to follow.
The Wolf’s Lair headquarters was already situated in an outer rim system, rife with nebulas and asteroids. After executing several successive warp jumps deeper into the rear systems, the battleship suddenly vanished without a trace.
The Fourth Fleet sensed something amiss and frantically activated their star chart localization systems.
What they saw shocked them into silence.
They were not on the star chart at all!
This meant they had entered an undeveloped stellar region!
Undeveloped regions could be summarized in two words: Danger.
Undeveloped meant unregistered; unregistered meant the hazards of that region of space were unknown—void storms, asteroid detonations, erratic meteor trajectories, black holes, spacetime depressions... a single misstep could swallow not just one warship, but the entire fleet.
The Fleet Commander urgently called a halt: "All warships, suspend warp jumping! Scan the vicinity for hazardous signals!"
After stopping their jumps, the fleet quickly formed a circular formation, spreading outward in a unified perimeter patrol. Each warship maintained a distance of two to three thousand meters from its neighbors, ensuring immediate mutual support if any issues arose.
The Fleet Commander opened the internal military comms, preparing to request operational directives from Bai Lanxue. However, upon accessing the channel, he discovered there was no signal!
He tried the external comms; nothing again.
This was a critical oversight, one that could prove fatal.
Cold sweat immediately broke out on the Fleet Commander’s brow. Acting decisively, he broadcast to the stationed vessels: "All personnel, check internal and external comms signals. Captains, please activate signal search systems."
The officers and crew aboard the fleet opened their respective comms and were astonished by what they found.
Being seasoned veterans, they did not panic immediately and maintained position, awaiting superior orders.
The Captains, however, were the most astonished.
The signal search system was being subjected to intense ray interference, rendering it incapable of finding any usable frequency.
Unable to reach the Commander via internal comms, he urgently tried to report, mistakenly activating the fleet-wide broadcast instead of the localized warship channel in his haste. "Report, Commander! The current coordinate ray intensity exceeds the warship's tolerance threshold by thirty percent! Recommend immediate withdrawal!"
The fleet instantly devolved into chaos.