"Boom—!!"
Propelled by its dark blue exhaust flames, the Black Rhino-class Transport Ship pierced through the pitch-black cosmos like a sharp blade.
Space twisted violently, stretching starlight into slender white lines.
Old K and a group of scavengers clung desperately to nearby fixtures, their faces flushed with excitement.
"We're warping! Boss! We're really doing an interstellar warp!" Old K roared at the top of his lungs.
Qin Yu sat in the captain's chair, his expression as still as water.
He stared intently at the light point representing the "Aurora Fortress" on the holographic star chart.
Almost there.
Yao Xue, wait for me.
Right at that moment.
"Thud—!"
An incredibly dull, thunderous impact suddenly echoed from outside the hull.
Immediately after, the entire massive transport ship began to shake violently!
The holographic screens in the main control room were instantly flooded with blinding red light.
A piercing alarm shrieked madly!
[Warning! Warning!]
[High-Dimensional Physical Barrier encountered!]
[Warp Engine forcibly interrupted! Course deviation!]
"Thump!"
Old K and the others were thrown violently by the savage inertia, crashing heavily against the metal bulkheads.
"What the hell happened!" Monkey cursed, clutching his bleeding head.
Qin Yu steadied himself abruptly, grabbing the console in front of him.
"System! Report the situation!"
[Ding!]
[Due to the effects of the forced large-scale zone merger, the current universe's rules have completely collapsed.]
[Conventional interstellar routes are now invalid.]
Qin Yu's eyes sharpened, and he directly pressed the button to open the viewport armor.
"Switch to the external view!"
The thick blast-proof armor slowly retracted to both sides.
When they saw the scene outside, everyone in the main control room gasped in shock.
Old K scrambled frantically to the viewport, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.
"Boss... what the hell is this place?!"
This was not the familiar cosmos of common sense!
There was no vast galaxy, no serene nebulae.
What appeared before them was a "sea" floating in the vacuum.
Yes, a sea!
An endless expanse of black seawater, unaffected by gravity, undulated slowly in the vacuum like a colossal jellyfish.
And within that seawater...
Were interspersed shattered continental plates, the wreckage of rusted giant cruise ships, and even the upper half of a towering modern skyscraper!
A mutated deep-sea leviathan, over a kilometer long, half-submerged in the seawater and half-exposed to the vacuum, let out a silent roar.
"So this is the collapse of rules?"
Qin Yu lit a cigar, took a deep drag, forcefully suppressing the shock in his heart.
Even the laws of physics had become a joke.
No wonder the System said that to get supplies, you could only seize them.
[Ding! Prompting the host.]
[Due to the shattering of the World Anchor, space has been fragmented into countless "Rule Fragment Zones."]
[The direct coordinates to the Aurora Fortress have been folded.]
[If a direct warp is forcibly attempted, the ship will be torn into atoms by spatial turbulence.]
Qin Yu exhaled a thick cloud of smoke fiercely.
"So you're saying, I can see her right in front of me, but I can't fly there?"
[Answering the host.]
[We must follow the gaps in the spatial turbulence, cross the fragment zones one by one, and find safe jump points.]
"One step at a time, huh."
A flicker of bloodthirsty ferocity rose in Qin Yu's eyes.
"Fine."
"Then I'll just kill my way through."
Just then.
The door to the main control room slid open.
Su Tian, wearing an old uniform clearly two sizes too big, rushed in hurriedly.
The engine grease had been washed from her face, leaving her fair skin pale with anxiety.
"Boss! We can't accelerate anymore!"
Su Tian dashed straight to the auxiliary control console, her hands becoming blurs as she frantically hammered the keyboard.
"The heat dissipation pipes on the jump Engine have developed cracks!"
"The spatial friction outside is ridiculously high; it's like driving a sports car through a swamp!"
Qin Yu turned his head to look at the chief ship repairer who had just cleaned up.
"Can you fix it?"
Su Tian gritted her teeth, staring at the data on the screen.
"I can fix it, but it needs time to cool down."
"And the Gravity Field in this sector is extremely chaotic. Right now, we're like fish trapped in a net, unable to move."
Qin Yu let out a cold laugh.
"A net?"
"Then we'll tear the net apart."
He abruptly stood up and slammed the [Kiss of Death] onto the control console.
"Warning! Radar detects a High-Energy Reaction!" Old K suddenly shouted, pointing at the screen.
Ahead, in the black seawater.
A massive shadow slowly emerged.
It was a "sea fortress" crudely cobbled together from countless warship wreckage, dilapidated Rafts, and meteorites.
Atop the fortress, a tattered flag bearing a bloody skull was prominently planted.
"Beep—"
The main control room's communication channel was suddenly forcibly overridden.
A grating, hoarse voice echoed through the ship.
"Listen up, black ship ahead!"
"This is the territory of the 'Shattered Star Pirates'!"
"Hand over all the Energy Blocks, women, and any living, breathing creatures on board!"
"Otherwise, I'll blast you into space junk!"
Old K swallowed hard and turned to look at Qin Yu.
"Boss, we've run into highwaymen."
A cruel arc curled at the corner of Qin Yu's mouth.
He was just itching for a place to vent his pent-up fury.
"Energy Blocks?"
Qin Yu pressed the communication button, his voice icy cold.
"All I have here are bullets to send you on your way. Want some?"
There was a brief pause on the other end of the communicator, followed by a burst of maniacal laughter.
"Looking to die! A broken-down transport ship dares to challenge me?"
"Fire! Blow their main Engine to pieces!"
On the pirate fortress, over a dozen rusty but large-bore Plasma Railguns instantly began charging.
A dazzling blue light ignited in the vacuum.
"Boss! The shields can't withstand firepower this concentrated!" Su Tian's face turned deathly pale with fright.
Qin Yu completely ignored her.
He gripped the barrel of the [Kiss of Death] with one hand and forcefully plugged it into the Fire Control interface on the main console.
[Weapon connection detected.]
[Shipborne Form activated: High-Energy Particle Annihilation Cannon.]
"Fire?"
Qin Yu's finger pressed down hard on the firing key, his gaze like that of a furious, starving wolf.
"Let me teach you what the hell real firing looks like!"
"Vwoom—!!"
The dark golden cannon barrel beneath the transport ship extended instantly.
Without any charging process!
A black beam of light, as thick as an arm and carrying an aura of utter annihilation, instantly tore through the vacuum ahead!
There was no deafening explosion.
Only the teeth-grating "crack-crack" sound of Space being violently crushed.
The black beam struck directly at the center of the pirate fortress!
"What is that..." a terrified shriek came through the communicator, sounding like a raspy duck.
The next second.
The sound abruptly cut off.
At the center of the fortress that had been hit, a black dot the size of a fist suddenly appeared.
Immediately after, a terrifying, irresistible gravitational force erupted violently!
Tenfold Gravity collapse!
The massive fortress, pieced together from countless wreckages, was like a soda can being crushed by an invisible giant hand.
"Creak—creak—"
Huge cannon barrels snapped, thick armor plates were compressed.
In just two seconds.
The entire fortress, stretching several kilometers long, was forcibly compressed into a dense iron sphere less than ten meters in diameter!
The thousands of pirates inside didn't even shed a drop of blood—they were directly fused with the steel.
The control room fell deathly silent.
Old K and Monkey stood with their mouths agape, even forgetting to breathe.
Su Tian's legs gave way, and she slumped to the floor, staring at Qin Yu's back as if he were a monster.
One shot.
It had directly erased the physical existence of an interstellar fortress!
Was this even a weapon humans could wield?!
Qin Yu expressionlessly pulled out the Sniper Cannon, shaking the slightly overheated barrel.
[Ding! Small space pirate group defeated.]
[Starburst Points +3000.]
Qin Yu walked to the viewport, looking at the dense iron sphere floating in the black seawater.
"Old K."
"Boss... I'm here." Old K answered, trembling.
"Put on your protective suit and take some men outside."
Qin Yu pointed at the iron sphere.
"Strip all their high-energy batteries for me."
"And see if there's a navigation chart for this area."
"Yes, boss!" Old K snapped out of his daze and hurriedly led the men toward the airlock.
Half an hour later.
Old K ran back to the control room, drenched in sweat.
In his hands, he held a black metal disk stained with engine oil and unknown bodily fluids.
"Boss! We got the batteries, enough to keep us flying for a while!"
"And this, it should be their voyage recorder!"
Qin Yu tilted his chin upward.
"Su Tian, get to work."
Su Tian quickly scrambled up from the floor, took the metal disk, and directly connected it to the auxiliary control console.
A series of garbled codes immediately flashed across the screen, quickly reorganizing.
A fragmented three-dimensional star map appeared.
"Boss! Decryption successful!"
Su Tian pointed at several winding red dotted lines on the star map.
"This is the 'Chaos Stone Sea,' a lawless zone formed after the collapse of the rules."
"According to the pirates' records, going straight to the Aurora Fortress's star domain is impossible."
Su Tian's finger slid across the screen.
"We have to pass through three high-risk nodes and use the remaining 'Spatial Anchors' there for short-range jumps."
Qin Yu narrowed his eyes, staring at the three nodes.
"Distance."
"At our current speed, it'll take about three days to reach the first node, 'Storm Cape.'"
Su Tian swallowed, her voice trembling slightly.
"But the records say... Storm Cape is infested with a group of Space Mutant Zerg."
"They specialize in devouring the armor of passing ships."
After listening, Qin Yu directly sat back in the captain's chair.
He pulled out a cigar, lit it, and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke.
"Three days."
"Make sure the crew eats well and rests."
Qin Yu looked up, his gaze icy cold as he stared at the location of the Aurora Fortress on the star map.
"Zerg?"
"Anyone who dares block my path, even if it's the King of Heaven himself, I'll crush him to dust."
"Full speed ahead."
The transport ship let out another low rumble.
Its pitch-black hull, like a phantom, slowly sailed into the perilous starry sea of the Wasteland.
...
Three days later.
Lower cargo hold of the ship.
Thousands of scavengers sat cross-legged on the metal floor, greedily chewing on the high-grade Nutrient Paste seized from the pirates.
Monkey was boasting about the might of Qin Yu's shot three days ago.
"Let me tell you, the moment the boss pulled out that gun, the enemy fortress was crushed into a ball!"
Everyone listened with wide-eyed excitement.
Just then.
"Woo—!!"
A piercing red combat alarm blared throughout the entire ship without warning!
Immediately after, the ship tilted violently.
Everyone tumbled together like rolling gourds.
Old K's distorted roar came through the loudspeaker.
"All combat personnel! Grab your weapons now! Assemble on the deck level!"
"Bugs! Bugs swarming everywhere!"
In the main control room.
Qin Yu sat imposingly in the captain's chair, his sharp eyes fixed on the Holographic Screen.
Ahead lay an asteroid belt shrouded in green phosphorescence.
This was the first node, Storm Cape.
But at this moment, those asteroids were writhing violently.
Upon closer inspection, they weren't asteroids at all!
They were tens of thousands of ferocious beetles, each the size of a heavy-duty truck!
Their shells gleamed with a dark golden metallic sheen, their mouthparts resembling massive hydraulic clamps, frantically devouring the surrounding space debris.
"Boss!"
Su Tian's hands flew across the Shield control panel, sweat beading on her forehead.
"They've spotted us! Thermal Radar shows at least thirty thousand of them!"
"They're too fast! The Shield can hold for ten minutes at most!"
Qin Yu snatched up the [Kiss of Death] resting on his lap.
"Ten minutes?"
Qin Yu stood up and strode toward the exit of the main control room.
"Won't take that long."
As he walked, he activated the ship-wide broadcast.
"Old K."
"Boss! The brothers are all ready!" Old K roared over the communicator, the background noise filled with the sound of rifle bolts being pulled.
"Open all outer cargo bay doors."
Qin Yu's voice carried an excitement that sent shivers down the spine.
"Since these bugs like to eat metal."
"Today, I'll feed them till they're stuffed."
"Rumble—"
All eight massive outer cargo bay doors on both sides of the ship opened simultaneously.
The vacuum of space instantly sucked the air out of the bays.
Old K, leading three hundred of the most elite scavengers, stood firmly on the deck in heavy magnetic boots.
Each of them held a fully charged Gauss Rifle.
"Here they come!"
Monkey shouted, pointing straight ahead.
In the darkness, the dense swarm of bugs surged toward the ship like a green metallic tide, blotting out the sky.
The sheer, terrifying numbers were enough to drive anyone to despair.
Qin Yu slowly emerged from the airlock.
He wore no protective suit, only a barrier of rules constructed by the [World Heart] covering his body.
Carrying the heavy Sniper Cannon in one hand, he walked to the very front of the deck.
The violent turbulence of space whipped his trench coat fiercely.
"Open fire!" Old K bellowed.
"Rat-tat-tat-tat—!"
Three hundred Gauss Rifles spat blue flames simultaneously.
A dense web of fire instantly covered the leading edge of the bug swarm.
However.
High-explosive energy rounds struck the dark golden carapaces of the insects, erupting into bursts of sparks.
Not a single crack appeared!
"Boss! We can't penetrate! These bugs' shells are harder than alloy!" Old K shouted in despair.
The largest of the lord-class beetles had already charged to within less than a hundred meters above the ship.
Its massive mandibles suddenly opened wide, lunging down toward Qin Yu as if trying to crush both the human and the ship's deck in one bite.
Qin Yu sneered coldly.
"Hard?"
He abruptly raised the [Kiss of Death], switching directly to the [Gravity Magazine].
"Then try this."
The muzzle instantly locked onto the lord-class beetle.
"Bang—!"
A bullet carrying a terrifying gravitational field shot from the barrel.
It didn't penetrate.
The moment the bullet made contact with the beetle's shell, it adhered directly.
"Zero-Gravity Field, activate."
Qin Yu uttered four words coldly.
"Hum!"
The space within a hundred-meter radius centered on the lord-class beetle suddenly twisted!
Hundreds of beetles that had been charging forward menacingly suddenly began spinning wildly in the vacuum like out-of-control kites with severed strings.
Their prized armor became their greatest burden in the state of weightlessness.
"Old K!"
Qin Yu lowered the muzzle with a reverse grip, switching ammunition again.
"Watch closely!"
"This is called firepower coverage!"
Spiritual Energy surged wildly within Qin Yu's body, pushing the [Kiss of Death] to its limit!
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang—!"
Four shots in one second!
Four bullets carrying "Tenfold Gravity" shot precisely into the center of the weightless insect swarm.
Extreme weightlessness and the sudden onset of tenfold gravity triggered a terrifying physical conflict in an instant.
"Crack—Squelch!"
Space seemed to be violently twisted by two invisible hands.
The hundreds of metallic beetles that had withstood Gauss Rifle fire unscathed—
Their hard shells instantly shattered!
Green bodily fluids erupted like fountains in the vacuum.
"Hiss—"
A piercing shriek of agony burst from the insect swarm.
The three hundred scavengers stared in shock.
This was the power of laws.
Can't break through their defense? I'll just rewrite the physical rules around you!
Standing amidst the green shards filling the sky, Qin Yu violently pulled back the bolt.
"Don't just stand there!"
Qin Yu's voice exploded through everyone's communicators.
"While their formation is in chaos, aim for their joints and hit them hard!"
"Break them apart, and we feast tonight!"
The scavengers snapped out of their daze, their eyes instantly burning with fervor.
"Kill!!"
Gauss Rifle fire poured out once again.
This time, the insects, having lost their speed and balance, became perfect living targets.
Qin Yu was like a cold, ruthless symphony conductor.
Weightlessness in his left hand, gravity in his right.
Under the pull of these two extreme rules, the insect swarm turned into minced flesh in waves.
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