by <unknown>
Li Yao smiled and stuck his hands against the shell of the old carrier. His telepathic thoughts turned into waves, leaking and expanding into the engine compartment of the old carrier.
Closing his eyes, he moved his soul out of his body and flooded into the carrier along with the waves in his palm. Every tube and every crystal wire in the engine compartment was clearly displayed inside his brain before they were connected to each other quickly and established a perfectly accurate virtual model of the engine compartment.
Li Yao's guess was correct. The unfortunate carrier had indeed encountered an unexpected cosmic storm soon after it left the mother port, which had seriously damaged the starship.
The evidence was the liquid metal fixers that had filled the gaps and holes everywhere on the shell of the starship.
Although such fixers boasted a lot of advantages, such as flexible forms and rapid consolidation when exposed to air or a vacuum, they could not maintain their solid form for long and therefore could only be used as temporary materials in emergencies.
Generally speaking, after a voyage, all the fixers would need to be cleaned after the damaged vehicle was pulled into a dock before they were replaced with legitimate materials whose durability was better.
The sea of stars was always treacherous. Nobody would dare joke with their lives. Therefore, the liquid metal fixers must have been spurted out recently.
Also, almost all the power units in the engine part were showing signs of being overloaded. Several power units were on the brink of collapse and would reach the tipping point at any moment.
It meant that the commander of the carrier had just performed very violent operations, say, competing against a cosmic storm and struggling to get away from its pull.
It was truly the most perfect prey.
Li Yao's telepathic thoughts, like vipers in the vacuum, snuck into the most severely damaged and the most unstable power unit, where he focused his attention interfering with the circuits of spiritual energy that were already on the verge of short circuiting. In the meantime, he crushed dozens of sensors inside the power unit so that the crew members in the engine compartment would not notice anything wrong with the power unit on the operation interface of their crystal processors.
All the values on the operation interface were normal. In their ignorance, the crew members even thought that victory was close at hand after seeing Manjusaka not far away. They were all relaxed and put on a smile now that the heavy burden had been removed.
Right then…
Boom!
The power unit that Li Yao had messed with exploded. The high-energy fuel was spurted everywhere, leading to a series of explosions that even spread to the shell of the carrier. A devastating hole was formed, and scraps, fuel, and severed limbs of the crew members darted out like a spring.
"Damn it! Another explosion!"
"Put on the fire. Repair the damage immediately. Hurry up!"
"The f*cking cosmic storm!"
The entire carrier fell into chaos once more. The damage control team began their action in an orderly fashion. First of all, they prevented the fire and the fuel from further spreading with high-density antifire foam. Then, abundant liquid metal that looked like gel was sprayed onto the damaged parts, where it froze into a silver shell immediately. In the end, a large batch of fully-armed crew members moved toward the explosion area, cursing and complaining.
The level-seven carrier of the Imperium named 'Black Bear' seemed to have been haunted by bad luck ever since it encountered a cosmic storm soon after it set sail. Four minor explosions had already taken place. The members of the damage control team were already used to it.
None of them realized that a fiend a hundred times more dreadful than the explosion had already snuck into their starship under the cover of fire, smoke, and poisonous gas.
Leaning against the wall in a corner where fire and poisonous gas were surging, Li Yao did not even bother to look for a hideout.
On this ragged carrier, the best of the Immortal Cultivators were only in the Refinement Stage or the Building Foundation Stage, and those in the Core Formation Stage were few to none. It was almost impossible for them to discover Li Yao at his level.
After he snuck into the starship, the speed and efficiency of the expansion of his telepathic thoughts were further improved. He figured out the overall structure and the distribution of the passengers in the blink of an eye.
It was a rather shabby carrier even for the standard of the Star Glory Federation. In front of the engine compartment were four enormous warehouses. Below the warehouses were the asset and fuel areas. Further ahead, there was the rest area for the crew members and the bridge. Only from the bridge did Li Yao detect several auras that were rather impressive, but they did not pose any threat to Li Yao.
All that attracted his attention were the goods in the warehouses. They were not regular goods but about a thousand human beings, curled up inside hibernation cabins like babies, their faces in pain and their bodies twisted and covered in frost.
The hibernation cabins that they were using were also rusty and ragged, surrounded by thick, spiral tubes. They were even less developed than the cabins in which the Black Wind Fleet carried the immigrants and seemed more like narrow iron coffins.
The thousand iron coffins were placed on two sides of the warehouses neatly. Illuminated by the pale light, they gave out a creepy air of horror, as if the place was a weird cemetery in space.
Li Yao noticed that the warehouses had been scourged by the cosmic storm, too. Many tiny meteoroids had broken the defense of the carrier and pierced through almost a hundred hibernation cabins. The hibernators inside them were already deformed and lost their lives.
Every hibernation cabin was connected to a small crystal processor, on which a thin light beam was floating.
Li Yao submerged part of his telepathic thoughts into one of the crystal processors and read the information on the light beam curiously, only to discover a few rows of simple data.
"No. 11546, female, forty-four years old. Health: good. Guilty of instigation, insurgency, and jeopardy to national security."
Then, there was her physical data, but not too many personal features were involved. They were only used to prove the health level of her body.
Dazed, Li Yao continued to sense the female inside the hibernation cabin whose hair had turned white with wrinkles all over her face even though she was only forty-four.
He could tell at first glance that the female's spiritual root had not awoken. She was a standard ordinary person, or in the words of the Imperium of True Human Beings, a 'hominoid'.
Li Yao could not understand how a hominoid whose spiritual root was not awakened could commit a crime that jeopardized the national security of the Imperium of True Human Beings.
The remaining hundreds of hibernation cabins were the same. Those sealed inside were mostly ordinary people whose spiritual roots had not awoken. Their genders and ages varied, but most of them were brawny young adults. Despite their impressive body figures, their tendons and joints were slightly twisted, which suggested that their bodies were not formed by working out but came from years of heavy work.
All of them had similar crimes: instigation, insurgency, and jeopardy to national security. They did not have names but only cold numbers.
Chapter 2062: Bloody Interrogation |
At the frontmost part of the place that seemed both like a prison and a cemetery were thirty-six hibernation cabins that were streamlined and larger. They looked much more advanced. Observing through the translucent holes on them, it could be seen that thirty-six hibernators were also crouching inside like babies.
But different from those who were found guilty of 'instigation, insurgency, and jeopardy to national security', the hibernators had complicated, shining nails smashed all the way down from the back of their head to their spine every few centimeters. The tops of the nails were connected to each other with solid and complicated mechanical structu
res. They also spread to their limbs and extended to their fingertips, like some sort of weird external skeleton.
Li Yao thought for a moment and realized that the nails were probably bashed into the gaps on their spines in order to control their spine, their central nerves, and all their limbs and organs.
Even if they escaped hibernation, there would barely be any room for their resistance when their spine was confined in such a shackle.
In conclusion, they were not passengers but prisoners.
It did make sense on second thought. This was a carrier that jumped and sailed among different Sectors in the heartland of the Imperium of True Human Beings. Judging from the structure and the performance of the engine compartment, it was not suitable for carrying out a super-long space jump mission. Its voyages would not take very long, and there was no need for the crew members to hibernate.
Li Yao keenly sensed vague spiritual energy from the hibernators.
He was particularly drawn to the cluster at the center of their eyebrows that was still bouncing feebly like virtual neurons even though they were deep asleep.
It was the place where the spiritual root was located.
Their spiritual roots are all awakened. Are they Cultivators, or are they…
There was a small crystal processor next to the hibernation cabin of each of the thirty-six people whose spiritual roots were awakened. The physical information recorded on them was much more detailed than that of the ordinary people. It included their major level, minor level, familiar arts, and even a few clips of their battle videos.
However, their name and background were not included. There were only simple numbers, as well as new crimes: dereliction of duty, treason, and crimes against humanity.
Most of the prisoners whose spiritual root was awakened were found guilty of one or two of those crimes. One of them was even charged with all three. He also happened to be the strongest of them and was at the beginning level of the Core Formation Stage. He was bound tightly by a particularly thick shackle. A hundred crystal wires extended out of the topmost part of the shackle and reached his face from the back of his head, piercing into his brain through his nostrils, ears, and eyes.
Judging from the horrible look on his face and his rapidly shivering eyeballs, his soul was still suffering indescribable torture in the frozen hell even though his fleshly body had been sealed in the extremely low temperature.
If he is a Cultivator, it will be understandable that he committed treason and crimes against humanity, Li Yao thought to himself. But what about 'dereliction of duty'? Even if they were just fabricating crimes for him, such a crime should still be too weird for a Cultivator, right?
The warehouse that was as cold and gloomy as a refrigerator was utterly silent. Only several spiritual puppets were patrolling mechanically according to the routes that they were preset with, which only added to the creepy and rejective atmosphere of the place.
After thinking for a moment, Li Yao retracted his telepathic thoughts and focused his attention back on the engine compartment at the rear of the starship that was drowned in smoke, fire, and poisonous air.
The whole engine compartment had no secrets at all before him. The lick of every flame, the explosion of every fuel transmission tube, and the action of every Immortal Cultivator in the damage control team disintegrated and separated like translucent virtual pictures and appeared in his brain in the most fundamental data and models.
Boom!
When a squad of the damage control team ran past the pathway next to the engine compartment, Li Yao made up his mind. One of the tubes of ancillary catalysts that he had sabotaged earlier by remote manipulation immediately broke apart. The catalysts immediately expanded by thousands of times after they were vaporized and led to new explosions when they collided with the poisonous gas. Everybody was swallowed by the venomous flames. Some were even blown dozens of meters away because of the blast and hit the end of the pathway brutally.
The spot turned into chaos. Explosions and screams were everywhere. All the lights and surveillance systems were in disorder. The wounded fled from the fire with their crippled arms or legs. Those who were lucky enough to be unhurt had breathed in poisonous air, too, because of the damage to their crystal suit. Confused and lightheaded, they ran amok in the gas and the fire like headless flies.
In such turmoil, none of them noticed that their captain disappeared into the poisonous air that was as intense as ink the moment he was blown to the end of the pathway by the blast!
Li Yao opened his fingers and grabbed the captain by his head, with such force that the helmet of his crystal suit was squeaking and seemed to be on the verge of exploding.
Spiritual energy slithered over like vipers, cutting off all the rune arrays and the crystal chips on the crystal suit that could transmit information to the outside world. It also pierced through the crystal processor and paralyzed the crystal suit into a fully-enclosed iron coffin.
It was not until then that Li Yao dragged the captain to an inconspicuous corner. He had carefully studied the structure of the engine compartment, deduced based on the current damages, and released hundreds of telepathic thoughts to stay on alert. Nobody would disturb him in the next five minutes.
BAM!
Li Yao slightly increased his strength. The helmet of the crystal suit, which was made of super alloys and special porcelains and could resist the close-distance shot of a storm bolter, broke apart immediately. What was most amazing was that the head below the crystal suit was not hurt at all. There was not even a bloody scratch when the helmet exploded into pieces.
The captain had a pale face, not knowing what had happened at all.
But when he looked at Li Yao's fiendish air and immeasurable eyes, he was like a hyena faced with a velociraptor and could not even think of resisting. He did not even have the strength to scream anymore.
Li Yao curled his lips. Having no time to waste on him, Li Yao gradually turned his left eye red. From deep inside the pupils beamed out demonic bloody streaks, which even crawled out of the eyeball and proliferated in midair before they all pierced into the eyes of the captain.
In utmost fear, the captain cramped as if he had suffered an electric shock. Hissing sounds echoed from his throat, but they could not be condensed into a scream at all. There was not any substantial resistance, either.
In the end, his both eyes were bloodshot, and bloody streaks protruded out of his face as if an enormous spider was lying on his face.
"Alright. Go ahead."
The mental devil grinned.
The chasm between the two parties was too huge. Li Yao did not need to play any tricks of interrogation or language games but simply let the mental devil break the opponent's defense line in the mind and hypnotize him.
"Who are you? What is your mission?" Li Yao asked.
The bloody streaks on the captain's face were wriggling and absorbing the secrets in his brain cervixes like eelworms. Half a second later, he replied clearly and quickly, "We are the 221st carrier of the 'Triones Shipping Group'. We are carrying a regular shipping mission to transport a batch of assets to the Heavenly Eye Group's space base in the Martial Meritocrats Sector."
The Heavenly Eye Group?
Li Yao pondered to himself and realized that it was probably the force of the Immortal Cultivators that controlled Manjusaka. After thinking for a moment, he asked, "Were you caught in a cosmic storm during your voyage?"
"Yes," the captain said. "We encountered a fairly large cosmic storm soon after we set sail from the 'Spiritual Snake Sector' twelve days ago and only managed to arrive here through all kinds of difficulties."
"Are the goods that you are shipping the people in the hibernation cabins? Who are they exactly? Why are they being sent to Manjusaka?"
"They are all prisoners." The captain's eyes glazed, but his head was very clear, and the speed of his speech was higher and higher, as if a mysterious force was reading information from his brain forcefully. "They are
the felons that have been sentenced with life imprisonment and death with reprieve. They are going to serve their term in the prison in Manjusaka."
Li Yao was slightly surprised. "Is there a prison in 'Manjusaka, the City in the Sky'?"
"Yes. There is an extremely large private prison, which ranks among the top in terms of scale and level even taking all the space prisons of the Imperium into consideration," the captain said. "The 'Triones Shipping Group' and the 'Heavenly Eye Group' have a transportation contract. We send a large batch of prisoners from everywhere in the universe to them to serve the term."
"I saw their crimes. Instigation, insurgency, dereliction of duty, treason, jeopardy to national security, and even… crimes against humanity," Li Yao said. "There were only the names of the crimes but not the details. Do you know how exactly they committed the crimes?"
The captain hesitated for a moment. "We are only responsible for shipping. Other people are in charge of capturing them. I only know some hearsays."
"It doesn't matter." Another few bloody streaks popped out from Li Yao's left eye and darted into the guy's eyeball. "Tell me all the things that you have overheard. Now!"
The captain trembled. His eyes shook quickly, and he spoke as if he were in a dream. "They seem to be the miners on a certain remote resource planet in the Spiritual Snake Sector. Because they were dissatisfied with their working conditions, or maybe because the compensation after several accidents in the mine was not given to them in time, they had strikes first and then illegal demonstrations, which escalated into armed rebellions. After they were suppressed quickly, all the key personnel in the riot were sentenced to life imprisonment and death with reprieve and sent here to serve their term."
That explains a lot, Li Yao thought to himself. No wonder all the prisoners looked rather strong despite their genders and ages and although their spiritual roots were not awakened. They were actually miners.