Deep Space Scavenging, Hand Over Alien Warships at the Beginning

Chapter 170 Judgment: Illegal Building, Forced Demolition!Lin Yuan was suspended in the void. It should have been absolute zero all around him, but his perceived temperature was at least three thousand degrees.

The energy contained within the three anti-matter missiles was colliding crazily inside his Subspace stomach. This sensation wasn’t one of fullness, but a bloating pain that felt like it would tear every blood vessel apart.

”Boss, your current energy overflow rate has reached 400%. If you don’t vent it out, you’ll really turn into a suicide bomber!” gaia’s voice was laced with an urgency that sounded like her pants were on fire.

Lin Yuan struggled to open his eyes, dark golden light flickering rapidly across the surface of his eyeballs. He stared fixedly at the two patrol ships in the distance that were preparing to turn around and flee.

Want to leave?

You covered me in dust, and now you want to go home for dinner?

”Full power output, lock onto those two wrecks.” A deep, bass-like rumble emanated from Lin Yuan’s throat.

He opened his mouth, but no sound was emitted, as sound cannot travel in a vacuum. However, a thick beam of incandescent light that obscured the starlight behind him erupted from his chest, through his throat, and finally out from his fingertips.

This beam was composed entirely of compressed anti-matter energy. The moment it tore through the void, the meteorites and debris along its path didn’t even have time to vaporize; they simply collapsed and vanished.

The adjutant of the patrol ship flagship was frantically slamming the jump button.

”Sir! Coordinates locked! System self-check... Total system collapse!”

The adjutant looked back at the screen; that white light had already filled the entire field of view.

”What kind of monster is this...”

Boom!

There was no fire, only the purest annihilation.

The patrol ship, thousands of meters long, was as fragile as water-soaked paper in front of the beam. First, the anti-matter shield disintegrated, and immediately after, the expensive titanium hull was shattered at a microscopic level, disappearing into the ripples of the void.

The entire warship didn’t even manage to send out a distress signal before it completely turned into a brilliant firework blooming in deep space.

Lin Yuan breathed out a puff of murky air, and the scorching dark golden patterns on his skin slowly calmed down. He patted his burning palms and turned his gaze to the remaining auxiliary ship, which was already terrified out of its wits.

”gaia, leave the remaining one for Old Chen and the others to practice on. We... have real work to do.”

His gaze landed on the wreckage of the Black Shark Fortress.

The Black Shark Fortress was a sorry sight now. Earth’s ”celestial impact” earlier had smashed half of its body, and coupled with the aftershock of the anti-matter explosion, this former lair of an interstellar hegemon was now just piles of floating metal trash.

But in Lin Yuan’s eyes, this was all cold hard cash—rations that could keep Earth alive.

【Ding! Large abandoned space station wreckage detected.】

【Judgment: Illegal construction, affecting the cosmic cityscape. Recommended forced demolition.】

【Activate ’stellar-class Recycling Mode’?】

”Demolish! Don’t leave me a single screw!” Lin Yuan waved his hand grandly.

The system interface flickered wildly.

The demolition work, which would have taken thousands of engineering troops half a year to complete, became extremely stress-relieving in the face of the system’s rule-based power.

Large swaths of armor plating vanished wherever Lin Yuan pointed, subsequently turning into standard metal ingots with one-meter sides, neatly stacked in the system space.

The precision instruments that would have caused the Earth’s Science and Research Department to go bald for a whole year were stripped away in complete sets.

”Boss, at three o’clock, front left, a large number of life signals detected.” gaia reminded him.

Lin Yuan flashed, passing through a bulkhead that was still spewing fire.

Before him were rows of cold iron cages. Inside were tens of thousands of creatures: there were reptilians covered in scales, mechanical dwarves only half a meter tall, and even a few soft-bodied monsters that looked like a lump of gelatin.

They were curled up in the corners, their eyes filled with nothing but numbness and despair.

Until Lin Yuan smashed the electromagnetic lock in the front with an iron rod.

”Great Xia Civil Affairs Bureau is on duty, bystanders move aside.” Lin Yuan casually tore off an obstructive iron plate.

The alien slaves in the cages stared blankly at this man who had demolished a spaceship with one hand.

In this lawless Oort Cloud, people only ever came to capture slaves; no one ever offended pirates for the sake of slaves.

The mechanic A Ji, who had once warned Lin Yuan, was currently huddled in a cage. He was missing a mechanical arm—it had been blown off by stray fire just moments ago.

”You... you really killed the Black Shark King?” A Ji’s voice was trembling.

Lin Yuan didn’t waste words. He fished out a high-energy power rod from the system that had just been dismantled and was still hot, and tossed it over: ”Eat up first. When you have strength later, take me to your boss’s private vault. If you miss even one place, I’ll recycle you as scrap metal.”

A Ji tremblingly picked up the power rod. Looking at Lin Yuan’s back, two pools of green liquid suddenly welled up in his eyes. That was how their race shed tears.

”We... are we free?”

Wails and cheers erupted from the cages one after another.

Lin Yuan didn’t have time to listen to these testimonials. He was currently following the system’s prompts, sprinting toward the gravity core area in the deepest part of the fortress.

That was the power source of the entire fortress, and also the place Lin Yuan coveted the most.

”Boss, high-energy readings detected! Just behind that big door!”

Lin Yuan stood before a heavy door made of deep-sea sunken iron; this metal could absorb ninety percent of kinetic energy.

He didn’t use brute force, but directly activated his recycling authority.

The entire door vanished in an instant.

The scene behind the door made even Lin Yuan, who was used to big scenes, gasp.

It was a warehouse the size of three football fields.

There was no gold, nor jewelry inside.

Only rows of neat blue crystal canisters, each flowing with a dreamy, ghostly blue light.

Heavy fusion fuel!

And it was ”Stellar-core grade” fuel of extremely high purity.

This stuff was hard currency on the black market—priceless and in short supply. A single canister was enough to keep a medium-sized city running for a year.

And the reserves here were piled up almost like a small mountain.

”Struck it rich...” Lin Yuan muttered to himself.

He connected to the Earth Command Center’s communication channel.

”Old Man Wang, is the heart medication ready?”

Academician Wang’s haggard old face appeared on the screen: ”Lin Yuan, is the battle over yet? There’s less than two minutes of fuel left, the engines have already started down-clocking... If we don’t get moving again, the surface temperature will drop to minus eighty degrees immediately.”

”Take a look at this.” Lin Yuan turned sideways, aiming the camera at the sea of blue.

Academician Wang on the other end of the screen was stunned.

He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, put them back on, and pressed his whole face almost against the screen.

”This... this... this...” Old Man Wang couldn’t squeeze out a complete sentence for a long time, and finally, his eyes went black and he fell backward.

”Quick! Ambulance! Academician Wang’s heart has stopped!” The other side of the screen instantly descended into chaos.

Lin Yuan’s mouth twitched.

Half a minute later, Academician Wang climbed back up, panting, and shouted hoarsely: ”Move it! Move it all for me! This is life! Earth’s life!”

”With this fuel, let alone running out of the Solar System, we could drive all the way to the center of the Milky Way without stalling!”

Lin Yuan smiled and pressed his palm firmly onto the ground.

”Then I won’t be polite.”

The recycling program started.

The huge warehouse was emptied in a few seconds, and that pile of blue mineral wealth was continuously transported into Earth’s planetary engine warehouse.

At this moment on the Earth’s surface, the tens of thousands of planetary engines that had previously gone dark erupted at the same time with brilliant red tail flames.

These tail flames were more magnificent than any before, like giving Earth strong artificial limbs, pushing this heavy planet to accelerate once again.

The family fortune that the pirates had painstakingly managed for a hundred years had now become the fuel money for Earth’s wandering.

As the last keel of the fortress was recycled by Lin Yuan, apart from floating dust, there was no trace of the Black Shark Fortress left in this airspace.

The soldiers of the Great Xia Expeditionary Army were like a plague of locusts.

They drove transport ships, not only carrying away weapons, but not even sparing the synthetic meat in the pirates’ cafeteria.

In Chen Weiguo’s words: ”We are a wandering civilization, understand? Wanderers are all about gathering every grain into the storehouse.”

An hour later, the aftermath was cleaned up.

The tens of thousands of rescued alien slaves were settled in the satellite city that Earth originally used for storing ores.

Lin Yuan sat on the bridge of the ”great xia dragon sparrow”, toying with a personal terminal he had pried off Zeta’s adjutant.

That was the lifeblood of that higher civilization young master.

A Ji stood behind him, rubbing his hands somewhat uneasily: ”Sir, I want to... take my people and join you.”

”Oh? We are on the run, and there’s a big group of lunatics chasing us.” Lin Yuan said without turning his head.

”As long as I can repair those big guys, I’ll go anywhere.” A Ji looked at the massive Earth outside the warship window, ”That is the most shocking miracle I have ever seen. A civilization like yours, that dares to carry its home on its back just to survive, will definitely go very far.”

Lin Yuan turned his head and looked at this one-armed mechanic.

”Since you want to stay, show some value. We don’t raise idlers on our ship.”

A Ji nodded vigorously: ”I will improve your energy guidance system, at least I can increase engine efficiency by 15%.”

”Deal.”

Just as Lin Yuan was about to close the system interface to take a break, gaia’s voice suddenly became extremely grave.

”Boss, the top-secret file in that kid’s terminal has been decrypted.”

A holographic projection unfolded.

It was a star map covering half of the Milky Way.

In a remote corner of the star map, the coordinates representing the Solar System were circled in a glaring bright red.

Below the coordinates, there was a line of translated interstellar common language:

【Target Number: No. 109 Pasture (Earth).】

【Status: Mature, ready for harvest.】

【Rating: S-class high-quality prey.】

【Note: Titan Civilization branch technology has been awakened, recommended that the Tribunal execute ’Holy Baptism’.】

What made Lin Yuan’s spine chill even more was that the issuance date of the document was actually before Earth officially set sail on its wandering journey.

In other words, while Lin Yuan thought he was playing hide-and-seek with pirates, in the eyes of higher dimensions, Earth was nothing more than a pet struggling in a cage.

”It seems these guys don’t just want to rob our stuff.”

Lin Yuan gripped the terminal in his hand tightly. The list of rescued alien slaves jumped on the side, each one from a planet that had been ”baptized.”

”They are raising us like pigs waiting to be slaughtered.”

The screen suddenly flickered, and a phantom figure wearing a red robe appeared in the last recording of the terminal.

The figure had no face, only a mass of writhing mechanical lines, and the voice sounded like a synthetic sound of thousands of types of metal colliding together.

”Twelve hours from now, the Tribunal’s vanguard will arrive at the coordinates.”

”Evasion is useless, mortal.”

”Under the judgment of order, every star will eventually return to silence.”

The audio cut off abruptly.

Lin Yuan looked up at the distant void, the originally deep black now seemingly hiding countless greedy eyes.

Twelve hours.

”Old Chen, stop moving stuff! Get everyone back to defense within ten minutes!”

Lin Yuan stood up abruptly, his eyes no longer having the ease from just a moment ago, replaced by a wild energy that wanted to pierce through this starry sky.

”Tell those old men to pour all the fuel they just got into the engines for me!”

”Since they want to harvest, then we’ll see, who exactly is harvesting whose life!”

The exhaust ports at the rear of Earth erupted once again with light more dazzling than the sun.

Planetary acceleration.

It was no longer just fleeing for survival.

Lin Yuan glanced at the Void Rune that had re-condensed in his palm.

If they didn’t gouge out all those eyes staring at them, this wandering would never have an end.

”The Tribunal, right?”

”Next stop, I’m going to tear your Tribunal down and sell it as scrap metal!”

In the distance, several extremely faint spatial folds were slowly unfolding in the silent void.

That was the precursor to a large-scale jump.