"Boom—!!"
A blinding azure pillar of flame erupted from the tail of the Black Rhino-class Transport Ship.
Following the vacuum channel Qin Yu had forcibly blasted open, the massive vessel plunged like a frenzied beast into the shimmering, eerie blue light of the Jump Node at the channel's end.
"Everyone, hold on tight!"
Old K's voice crackled through the communicator, strained to the point of breaking.
The next second, the entire ship began to shudder violently.
It felt as if they had been tossed into a high-speed spinning washing machine.
The view outside the portholes transformed instantly.
Gone were the streamlined streaks of starlight typical of a standard interstellar warp, and there was no smooth spatial tunnel.
What appeared before everyone was an utterly distorted, chaotic, and bizarre space.
"Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!"
One after another, the instrument panels in the main control room erupted with blinding sparks.
Su Tian clung desperately to the console, her body nearly yanked off her feet by the violent gravitational forces.
"Boss! The spatial constants here are all scrambled!"
Staring at the wildly fluctuating data on her screen, Su Tian's face turned as pale as paper.
"Gravity instruments offline! Timeflow calculation failed! Coordinate axes completely collapsed!"
Qin Yu gripped the armrest of the captain's chair with one hand, his feet planted firmly on the floor as if rooted.
He gazed coldly out the porthole.
This was no warp channel.
This was a "Rule Junkyard"—a space shattered and then forcibly mashed back together.
To the left of the porthole lay the inverted ruins of a modern city, suspended in mid-air.
Skyscrapers stood with their foundations pointing upward, while countless rusted cars and skeletal remains fell uncontrollably toward the "sky."
To the right, however, were the burning remnants of ancient wooden warships.
Two completely different fragments of space-time were grotesquely intertwined within this narrow warp channel.
"Urgh—"
Monkey, sprawled on the floor, retched up a mouthful of bile.
"Boss... I think I saw my great-grandma..."
Monkey covered his eyes, groaning in agony.
"The time out there keeps speeding up and slowing down... my brain's gonna explode!"
[Ding! Warning!]
[The ship has entered a high-risk Space-time Turbulence Zone!]
[Severe Space-time Folding has occurred within this Jump Node!]
Qin Yu pulled out a cigar, only to find the flame from his lighter flicker to life and then instantly, bizarrely, solidify into a solid form.
The laws of physics here had become a complete joke.
"Tch."
Qin Yu tossed the lighter aside, his eyes growing even colder.
"Those cheating bastards from Bai Ze have really made a mess of this world."
"Screech— Screech—"
An ear-grating sound of twisting metal came from the ship's external armor.
"Boss! The port-side armor is rapidly aging!"
Su Tian pointed at the monitor feed in horror.
"The timeflow in the space to our left is thousands of times faster than normal!"
"At this rate, the hull will completely rust and disintegrate in less than a minute!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Qin Yu snatched up the [Kiss of Death] pistol plugged into the console.
He aimed the barrel directly at the port-side bulkhead.
"Bang!"
A bullet imbued with a "Zero-Gravity Field" shot forth.
It didn't penetrate the bulkhead. Instead, it detonated just outside the ship's port-side Energy Shield.
"Hummm—"
The violent space-time turbulence was instantly isolated into a brief vacuum zone upon encountering the absolute zero-gravity field.
The trend of aging and rusting came to an abrupt halt.
But before anyone could catch their breath—
"Beep beep beep—!"
The highest-level red alarm blared frantically once more.
"Boss! There's no way forward!"
Old K scrambled to the main screen, pointing straight ahead and shouting.
Ahead of the chaotic passage, a massive space-time fault as smooth as a mirror had suddenly appeared.
Within the fault, countless phantom images of ships identical to the Black Rhino-class transport vessel were reflected!
Some phantoms were exploding, some were being torn in half by space, and the people inside others had already turned into skeletons.
Those were the tragic deaths of this ship across countless "parallel timelines"!
"That's a space-time fault!"
Su Tian's voice trembled with fear.
"If we crash into it, we'll be sliced into countless time fragments, trapped forever inside!"
Qin Yu stared fixedly at the massive space-time mirror.
He did not order a slowdown.
Instead, a cruel smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
"Slice me apart?"
"I want to see what's harder—it or my cannon!"
With one hand, Qin Yu slammed the [Kiss of Death] directly into the highest-level fire control interface on the main console.
[Ding! Shipborne Form activated!]
[Currently in high-energy space-time turbulence. Forcibly firing may trigger spatial collapse!]
"Collapse is exactly what I want!"
Qin Yu violently pushed the energy valve, channeling all the energy from the Zerg Crystal Cores devoured earlier in the ship's lower hold into the fire control system.
"Boom—"
The [Kiss of Death] erupted with a blinding dark golden light.
The barrel even began to warp slightly, unable to withstand this terrifying energy.
"Main cannon charged to two hundred percent!"
Qin Yu pressed both hands firmly against the console, his eyes blazing like a furious beast.
"Break for me!"
"Hum—!!"
A black annihilation beam ten times thicker than before erupted violently from the bottom of the ship!
There was no sound.
The moment the black light touched the massive space-time fault—
"Crack!"
It was as if someone had smashed a giant pane of glass with a heavy hammer.
The spatial mirror reflecting countless deaths was blasted open by the annihilation beam, leaving a massive hole!
Countless phantom images from timelines vanished into dust within the black light.
"Charge through!" Qin Yu roared.
Su Tian bit her lip until it bled and slammed the main thrust lever to its limit.
Dragging a long trail of exhaust flames, the ship forced its way through the blasted hole!
"Thud!"
Old K and Monkey were pinned to the floor by the violent inertia, unable to even catch their breath.
The thousands of scavengers in the lower hold screamed in agony.
But the ship had ultimately forced its way through to the other side of the fault.
Before anyone could get a clear view of what lay ahead—
An indescribably terrifying pulling force instantly enveloped the entire ship.
"Boss! Abnormal gravity!"
Su Tian frantically hammered the keyboard, but the data on the screen had turned into complete gibberish.
"We've been captured! Something is pulling us down!"
Qin Yu abruptly looked up at the holographic radar.
Directly below them.
A massive, flesh-like, writhing space-time vortex was slowly rotating.
At its center lay a bottomless black hole.
At the edge of this black hole, countless bizarrely shaped warship wrecks hung suspended!
There were interstellar battleships brimming with cyberpunk aesthetics.
There were colossal biochemical living ships covered in writhing tentacles.
There was even a floating island crafted entirely from pure ice crystals.
All were firmly gripped by the vortex born from the collapse of natural laws, slowly being dragged toward that destructive Abyss.
"A spatial sewer created by The Great Fusion?"
Qin Yu's eyes narrowed.
"These Administrators have dumped the entire world's waste here."
"Boss! The Engine is at full load! But we're still falling!"
Old K shouted in despair.
Though massive, the Black Rhino-class Transport Ship was like a leaf in a sewer drain before that terrifying spacetime vortex.
"Full reverse thrusters! Burn every last Energy Block!" Qin Yu ordered coldly.
"It's no use! The thrust isn't enough!"
Su Tian was frantic, sweat beading on her forehead.
"The vortex's gravitational pull is increasing! The periphery is already at fifty times gravity!"
"If we fall another hundred meters, the hull will be crushed flat like a pancake!"
"SCREECH—BANG!"
A section of armor plating on the ship's right wing finally gave way, torn off by the violent gravitational force and instantly sucked into the black hole below.
Not even an echo remained.
Qin Yu clenched his fists tightly.
Fifty times gravity?
The [Kiss of Death] in his hand could currently only release a gravity field of up to tenfold gravity at most.
Faced with such absolute physical domination, this battered ship simply couldn't withstand it.