Counterfeit Hero

”Really going to leave?!” Zhang Pengcheng raised his head. This question, along the way, he had already asked Fatty many times. Even now, it still uncontrollably slipped out from his mouth.

Until now, he still couldn’t understand Fatty’s reasons for doing this. Before this, he had always thought that the Twelfth Group Fleet would fight alongside the bandit army. After all, if the lips are gone, the teeth will feel cold; Mars holds much more significance for the bandit army than Chuckna does.

If Fatty is willing to abandon this survival ground for the bandit army, why did he participate in the arena competition? Was it only to show a demonstration to the Feiyang people?!

With the bandit army’s strength, and with Fatty along with Major General Fang Xiang of Saleria’s commanding skills, they could increase the Fei Alliance Joint Army’s success rate against the Suss people by thirty percent! Zhang Pengcheng was even willing to hand over the command of the Twelfth Group Fleet entirely to them. Yet at such a critical moment, their departure, as seen by Zhang Pengcheng, was like adding insult to injury. He simply couldn’t believe this was Fatty’s decision.

”Really!” Fatty rolled his eyes at Margaret, who was glaring at him from a distance. Even if he couldn’t openly tell Zhang Pengcheng about Hastings’ plan, he still needed to give some hint. How could Master Fatty miss such a chance to ingratiate?

”No matter how this battle changes, I hope you can hold out for half a month.”

”Half a month......” Zhang Pengcheng, perplexed, said: ”What exactly are you planning?! With the bandit army’s participation, our odds of success in this battle would be much higher! You’re leaving at this time.......”

Zhang Pengcheng didn’t continue. In front of him, Fatty, with the back of his head facing Margaret, was winking and making faces at him. The features on his chubby face seemed to skitter around like mice on a globe.

Recalling Fatty’s words and thinking of Carolina’s indifference to Fatty’s desertion, Zhang Pengcheng seemed to understand a bit....... He cast a glance at Margaret.

Beside him, Fatty solemnly patted his shoulder.

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The year 2063 was destined to be a dark era for the human world.

As the Feiyang Republic and the Binart Empire clashed fiercely in the Karsdon Star River, war had fully erupted in the human world. Over thirty Fei Alliance Member Countries and more than twenty Western Alliance Member Countries were violently slaughtering each other across the thousands of years of human civilization’s interstellar map of conquest. Under the iron fists of Mecha and the missiles of warplanes, countless cities were destroyed, countless homes were burned, and countless civilians met untimely deaths.

On the human interstellar map, the red war fire spread, starting from the southeast, to the east, to the center, to the north, to the west.... One by one, Immigration Planets continued rotating as usual, yet the civilization accumulated over thousands of years on the planets regressed amidst the war fire. Across the countryside were sprawling trenches, the silhouettes of running soldiers, all-pervasive artillery fire, lightning-fast fighters skimming the sky. In the cities were collapsed buildings, broken bridges, burning fierce fires, pervasive smoke, shattered bricks and tiles hurled into the sky by shockwaves.

To escape the war fire, displaced refugees began their migration.

Across the global resource roads on star planets, vehicles were densely packed. There were heavy trucks, sleek black luxury Flying Cars, colorful economic Flying Cars, and old, heavily rusted buses barely hovering. Without exception, these vehicles were filled with people and luggage. Even the roofs were crammed with variously sized suitcases and backpacks.

At the ports, similar scenes were unfolding. One ship after another risked leaving the planet, sailing into the vast universe. Passenger ships, Exploration Spaceships, private ships, transport cargo ships, and even mining ships temporarily acting as refugee boats..... In every Star Domain, on every flight route, there were all sorts of ships. To find sanctuary far from war, humanity collectively chose migration.

Leaving one’s home is painful. In this era of chaos, people didn’t know where they could find peace and tranquility. They could only drift from place to place, from one planet to another.

Pirates, bandits, fraudsters, thieves, shipwrecks, car accidents, kidnappings, murders...... In this epic migration, the hardships people faced went far beyond the pain of losing their homes; along the journey, they had to confront all sorts of natural and man-made disasters.

Some ships were hijacked by pirates, with all refugees cruelly executed; others encountered irreparable faults in the vast expanse of space and failed to receive rescue; others still were struck by asteroids or cosmic particle storms while crossing dangerous barrier zones, leading to shipwrecks. These ships all shared a common name—they were Ghost ships.

They might silently appear one day at the end of a warp path, floating motionless, or get captured by a planet’s gravity, orbiting it day after day, or drift off the path into the endless cosmos, only to reappear in front of people after many years.......

This is war..... Humanity nurtured it from small to large with hatred, and when it was unleashed with the accompaniment of hatred, revealing its hideous face and enormous destructive power, no one could lock it back into a cage.

The Newton Star System, unchanged, Miloke and Miloke II continued to rotate quietly.

A Destroyer, under the escort of dozens of warships, entered the orbit of Miloke Star. The Space Port, mineral transfer platform, satellites, Space Station.... all the human technological marvels floating in orbit watched as the fleet slowly entered the atmosphere. The unshielded light of the Constant Star shone on the fleet’s port side like a blazing pattern. The small Destroyer nestled among imposing Battleships appeared particularly conspicuous.

The fleet descended, Battleships were the first to leave the group, followed by cruisers, then the escorting Destroyers. These steel behemoths, dominant in the starry sky, cut horizontally across the atmosphere, returning to the profound universe.

As the last two escort warships disengaged from the Destroyer, dozens of fighters pierced the clouds, taking over the escort duties from the warships. The massive fighter formation appeared lightly in the cruiser’s window view as the escort warships departed. The whole tactical maneuver was executed flawlessly.

The Destroyer continued descending. The black hull revealed a crescent-shaped red glow amid the air friction. Over ten minutes later, the mountains and rivers on the ground became clearly visible.

Saleria No. 2 Military Airport was a sea of people. Government officials, journalists, military generals..... When the distinctive rumbling of warships and fighters echoed in the sky, everyone ceased their clamor. They silently gazed at the steel migratory birds that obscured the bright sunlight.

The black Destroyer drew closer to the ground, finally, amidst the fighter jets’ whistling past and the loud roaring of the anti-gravity device, it slowly descended onto the airport’s first tarmac.

The heavy automatic hatch opened, a stairway unfolded silently and landed on the ground. An elderly yet upright figure appeared at the hatch.

At the moment this figure appeared, earth-shaking cheers suddenly erupted. The roaring sound waves rose like a tsunami to the sky. The entire Gallipalan could hear the sound of this wild joy. It was the voice of the Leray people—after Hamilton’s death, Leray welcomed back its current President.

Flavio, returning to Leray!

The next day’s newspapers featured Flavio’s words upon stepping on Miloke soil as the main headline.

”I come to tell the invaders that we have not yet been conquered!”

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For this month, I will update six days a week. Please give me your monthly tickets over the weekends, alright?

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