Chapter 2469 - He's Coming Straight at Us!
Boss Bai’s heart had been indestructible and utterly unshaken during the soul-stirring conquest of the Blue Sky Market when he was terribly outnumbered. He did not doubt himself at all even in the most perilous moment.
But right now, a bottomless crack seemed to have been dug into his heart by the cry for help, and it was shaking violently.
As if he had just taken ten kilograms of rat poison, Boss Bai’s face suddenly turned pale.
He was not as flabbergasted even when the Fist King opened fire at him vehemently with the hundred iron clones a moment ago.
His head tilted; every wrinkle on Boss Bai’s face was cramping nervously while he listened to the signal carefully with disbelief beaming out of his eyes.
“Boss Bai, help! Boss Bai, help! Boss Bai, help!”
The signal was more and more high-pitched. The guy seemed to be coming at him desperately while being chased by something.
Pa!
Boss Bai turned off the signal quickly. After a slight cough, he glanced at the Fist King and then at his subordinate on the light beam, before he said calmly, “Don’t panic. It’s just a cosmic noise.”
“Cosmic noise?”
His subordinate was rather suspicious. “Boss…”
“Exactly, cosmic noise.”
Taking a deep breath, Boss Bai said, “The high-energy celestial bodies in space release radiations and spiritual waves every second. When the radiations, high-energy particles, and spiritual tides hit our communication magical equipment, they will congregate into weird cosmic noises. Sometimes, and coincidentally, the noises may sound like the voices of a human. It is nothing to be surprised at.
“So, it’s just the meaningless noise from space. Just ignore it and eliminate the noise from our scanning spectrum.”
His subordinate scratched his head. “Boss, that doesn’t sound right.”
“Yes, Boss Bai, I don’t think it’s noise either. It sounds somewhat familiar. Let me compare it to the data in my voiceprint library.”
After a brief silence, the Fist King said, “Found it. It seems to be… Li Yao’s voice.”
“Li Yao?”
Boss Bai blinked quickly in confusion. “Which Li Yao?”
The Fist King: “… The Li Yao who introduced me to your place, and whom we just talked about just now. You said that he was like an earthworm and an elementary school student.”
“Did I?”
Boss Bai turned on the distress call and listened carefully again before he finally reached the conclusion. “So, it does sound a lot like Li Yao’s voice. Then, it’s all the more reason why we can’t respond! Listen, start radio silence immediately, and let the Blue Sky Market enter the highest defensive state. In the meantime, speed up the transference of captives and assets. Make sure that we can get out of this place immediately under the worst circumstances. It doesn’t matter if we are leaving abundant assets behind. Speed! Speed is all that matters!
“As for the distress call… Don’t answer it! Don’t answer it! Don’t answer it!”
“Well…”
The Fist King and his subordinate were both confused. “Why? Is Li Yao’s distress call so dreadful?”
“Of course it is, because it is probably not Li Yao.”
Boss Bai said with all solemnity, “It may be a scheme of the Immortal Cultivators, who are trying to deceive us with Li Yao’s voice. If we really respond to it, chances are that the Immortal Cultivators will notice the anomaly and catch all of us. So, don’t answer it. Don’t answer it at all. Just pretend that we have never received the distress call and we are not even in the Blue Sky Market!”
“But it won’t help.”
Frowning, his subordinate stammered, “Boss, after receiving the distress call, we remotely scanned the edge of the Blue Sky Space Zone where the signal came from and detected a rather massive fleet. Right. The fleet was fervidly chasing a few unarmed, ragged carriers. The distress calls were sent from the carriers straight at the Blue Sky Market, and the carriers are fleeing toward the Blue Sky Market precisely too. They-they show no sign that they are changing their course at all. It’s almost like they are certain that Boss is here, and they are determined to find you!
“We have analyzed the speed of the hunters and the runners as well as the distance between them. Even if we do not reply to the distress call, the runners are highly likely to reach the Blue Sky Market before they enter the firing range of the hunters, which will probably happen in twelve hours.
“In other words, in twelve hours at most, a whole fleet of hunters will arrive at the Blue Sky Market. Whether or not they will have destroyed the carriers of the runners, their starships are certainly in need of maintenance and supplies after such a long pursuit. In the several lightyears around, the Blue Sky Market is the best port for supplies. They will certainly be anchored in this place. That… That will be terrible!”
Hearing what his subordinate said, Boss Bai took a deep, deep breath.
“Well…”
In a trance, he said, “Assuming—just assuming—that we abandon everything in the Blue Sky Market and the starships we have just captured, will it be possible for us to escape before the mysterious fleet and the damn carriers arrive?”
“It’s barely possible, boss.”
His subordinate cried, “In order to swallow the twenty-eight pirate gangs and Li Wuji’s fleet, our starships suffered heavy losses and are in dire need of a good rest before they take off again. If we embark on a long journey right now, we will be dead for sure without reliable supplies and maintenance ports!
“Also, we’ve been planning for such a long time and fought bloodily to achieve what we have achieved. How can we abandon all of it?”
“Yes, it’s truly impossible…”
Boss Bai held himself back, but he finally couldn’t hold it anymore. His face turned from pale to blue and then from blue to red, before he stomped on the ground so hard that almost the entire forsaken port was razed to the ground. “Li Yao, I’ll kill you! I’ll certainly kill you!”
He rushed to the command center in fury and, having no choice, asked his subordinate to send out the alarm for the highest battle preparation.
The Fist King also asked the Cultivators’ fleet to be braced for a new round of battle remotely.
The whole Blue Sky Market was immediately caught in a mess.
The warriors of the Big Bai Pirate Gang were humans, and their nerves were not made of iron. Every human had weaknesses and needed to rest. Having just secured a shocking triumph, both the space pirates from the federation and the Cultivators of the Imperium were both excited and exhausted. Who could’ve thought that a new enemy would come at such a critical moment?
Wu—Wu—Wu—
The earsplitting alarms, echoing above the ocean of joy, poured down like a bucket of cold water.
“What’s going on? A new enemy? A new enemy!”
Liu Li’s eyes were swollen from crying. She was wiping her tears and looking for the Fist King to accuse Han Te when she suddenly heard the alarms. She was so shocked that she stood where she was, overwhelmed by the panic in the port for a moment, but very soon, she became firm again and went to the command center in a hurry. “Master Fist King! Master Fist King!”
“A*shole! What’s going on?”
Deep inside the Blue Sky Market, at the end of an alley that was full of red lights, Han Te screamed too, and he ran out of the house; his clothes unorganized.
Quite a few of his buttons were missing, and his pants were only half zipped. There were the marks of multiple lipsticks in different hues on his face too.
The fury that was burning through the sky surrounded the young man who had made up his mind to be the “Best Banger in the Universe”. His bloodshot eyes unleashed the brilliance that was almost equal to the main cannons of a starship. “Who has lived long enough and decided to disrupt Master Han’s business? Let me give you a taste of Master Han’s giant cannons!”
He ran to his starship crazily.
Countless other space pirates and Cultivators were returning to their battle posts in a hurry like Liu Li and Han Te. The Blue Sky Market that had fallen quiet before long was on fire again. The captives of the twenty-eight pirate gangs and Li Wuji’s fleet were seething too, gradually going out of control.
On their way back to the command center, Boss Bai and the Fist King learned more about the hunters—very unoptimistic information.
The hunters were the regular army of the Imperium. They were the forty-seventh fleet in the sequence of the regular army, commonly known as “Flying Rainbow Fleet”, which was a coalition fleet made of the elites of quite a few Sectors.
Of course, the Flying Rainbow Fleet was not a top-tier fleet in the four Kurfürst families or an expedition troop that had been tested by battles for decades in the frontline like Lei Chenghu’s Astounding Thunder Fleet. It was merely a regional defensive force made of the few weak, barren Sectors at the edge of the Imperium.
Under normal circumstances, such coalition forces were between “garrisons” and “deep-sky fleets” in terms of strength. They did not have the ability to fight for a long time across space zones, and they were not a tricky enemy.
They were the main opponents for the space pirates, who often played the catch-me-if-you-can game with them. Although they were much larger than the space pirates in number, their speed and efficiency were not always satisfactory because of the complicated command system and their low fighting will. It was often the case that the space pirates looted and escaped, and yet they could not catch the tail of the space pirates. They had always been mocked by the space pirates as “the slow and stupid soldiers”.
But today, the situation had changed.
The four families and the reformists were fighting over the hegemony at the edge of the Imperium so passionately that they were even recruiting the space pirates without caring about the cost. The local armed forces of the barren worlds were naturally also the targets that the two parties fought over.
The Flying Rainbow Fleet had been more inclined to the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the reformists in the beginning because most worlds at the edge of the Imperium were deeply associated with the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors. They were naturally disposed to the reformists.
But the four families turned out to be more powerful and wealthy. There was no telling what promises they had made, but the few worlds behind the Flying Rainbow Fleet had taken their side and announced their support for the four families and the old Council of Elders publicly.
Naturally, the equipment of the Flying Rainbow Fleet had also been upgraded, and their combat ability had been improved. They were no longer the slow and stupid fish that they used to be.