Chapter 44: A Moment of Life and Death

Deep within the rift, there was no brilliant sea of stars.

Instead, a distorted, vague scene seemed shrouded in shadows—

Faintly visible were non-standard metal structures, tiny figures moving about busily, and a section of some colossal ring-shaped device!

"It's a hidden space station! Or a construction base!" Duan Peng cried out in disbelief.

At that very instant!

A harsh alarm shrieked violently!

Red structural overload warnings instantly flooded the displays!

"No good! The rift is unstable! High-intensity spatial shear forces are forming!" Wu Mingjie reported urgently, "Stress peak at the shield junction! Buffers number three and number seven have overloaded and failed!"

Almost simultaneously, the forcibly torn rift writhed violently like a wounded beast.

An invisible, violent spatial turbulence jetted out from it, heading straight for the Explorer 7!

The hull emitted a teeth-setting screech and tilted sharply to one side!

The main lights flashed crazily, and the emergency lighting snapped on with a pale glow!

"Port engine hit! Power imbalance!"

Duan Peng roared, his hands gripping the out-of-control control stick tightly, the muscles in his arms bulging as he tried to stabilize the ship.

"Abandon stabilization! Emergency evasion! Duan Peng, hard starboard, full power reverse!" Xu Yan's voice drowned out the alarms.

But the moment Duan Peng pulled the stick with all his might, an even stronger spatial turbulence slammed into the left side of the hull like a heavy hammer!

Boom!

A violent tremor struck, accompanied by the terrifying sound of tearing metal!

"Portside external maintenance bay plating has detached! Duan Peng! Your position!" Ouyang Nan screamed.

On the side of Duan Peng's control station, a thick protective plate on the exterior hull was ripped away violently, and the turbulent energy currents and vacuum suction rushed in instantly!

Duan Peng didn't even have time to cry out before the immense suction yanked him violently from his seat, hurling him toward the breach!

His safety tether snapped taut, emitting an unbearable creaking sound, and his body slammed viciously against the edge of the twisted metal fracture, nearly exposing him directly to the vacuum of space!

Duan Peng let out a muffled groan, grabbing desperately at an exposed pipeline nearby. A sharp pain shot through his arm from the instantaneous violent yank, and his face instantly turned deathly pale.

"Duan Peng!" Ouyang Nan and Wu Mingjie cried out simultaneously.

'Hull structural integrity compromised by 17.8%. Maintaining current posture, Duan Peng's survival probability is below 12%. Immediately cut the port safety tether and seal the zone; this will increase the probability of preserving the ship and remaining crew to 85.3%.' The calculation from the entity known as Covet was cold, efficient, and utterly devoid of humanity.

"Shut up!" Xu Yan roared internally, his body reacting with almost zero hesitation.

He tore off his own safety harness and stumbled through the violently shaking bridge toward Duan Peng.

"Xu Yan! What are you doing?!" Ouyang Nan tried to stop him.

"Hold the course! Ouyang, calculate the optimal egress angle! Mingjie, give me real-time pressure data for the port damaged zone!" Xu Yan roared without looking back, grabbing another fixed pillar and struggling to approach the breach.

The howling roar of the vacuum and the screech of energy turbulence were deafening.

Half of Duan Peng's body had been sucked out of the breach, relying entirely on one hand and the swaying pipeline to hold on, his face turning purplish due to hypoxia and the rapid pressure change.

Xu Yan lunged forward, grabbing the shoulder strap of Duan Peng's combat suit with one hand while pulling out an engineering magnetic anchor hook from his waist with the other, smashing it fiercely into the relatively intact metal bulkhead.

"Hold onto me!" Xu Yan roared, fighting against the terrifying suction, feeling as though the muscles in his arm were about to tear apart.

'Irrational operation! Survival probability calculations are plummeting rapidly!' Covet's warning echoed like background noise.

Xu Yan turned a deaf ear, using every ounce of his strength to drag Duan Peng back.

Ouyang Nan and Wu Mingjie rushed over as well. Ouyang Nan wrapped her arms tightly around Xu Yan's waist, while Wu Mingjie used his good arm to shove an emergency sealing plate toward the breach with all his might!

A few seconds of life-and-death struggle felt as long as a century.

Finally, through their combined efforts, Duan Peng was laboriously dragged back into the relatively safe zone.

Wu Mingjie forced the emergency sealing plate to lock into the breach; although it could not completely seal it, it drastically reduced the pressure and suction.

"Cough! Cough, cough!" Duan Peng collapsed to the deck, coughing violently and gasping for the air that had not yet fully drained from the interior, lingering terror written all over his face.

Xu Yan leaned against the bulkhead, breathing heavily, his arm trembling uncontrollably.

The hem of his combat suit was torn, and a sharp metal edge had sliced open a gash on his arm, from which blood was seeping.

On the main control screen, the forcibly torn rift was rapidly shrinking and annihilating as it lost its energy supply.

At the very instant of its final disappearance, the scanning array captured an extremely brief yet exceptionally clear encrypted data stream, automatically triggering the shipborne recorder.

"The rift is closing... We've broken free..." Ouyang Nan slumped down, her voice weak.

The bridge was in ruins, the alarms still whining softly, and the air was filled with the smell of ozone and burning metal.

The relief of surviving death lasted only a brief moment.

"Just now... that final message..." Wu Mingjie spoke up suddenly, pointing at a piece of data automatically decoding on the secondary screen, "Priority is very high... It looks like... a directive copy?"

All eyes converged on it.

The rudimentary decoding software was laboriously deciphering the surface encoding of the message.

A few disjointed lines of text popped out:

"... 'Gateway' Project Phase 2... 'Pioneer' exploration team data confirmed erased... Induced wormhole collapse experiment preparation... Coordinates..."

Following the coordinates was a familiar star map designation.

Xu Yan's pupils constricted sharply—those coordinates completely overlapped with the last known coordinates where his parents had disappeared years ago!

The truth struck like a cold flash of lightning, parting the layers of fog!

There had never been any accidental disaster!

His parents' exploration team had discovered Redeem's secret—this so-called "Gateway" project might even involve such insane acts as inducing wormhole collapse!

They had been silenced! And Redeem was attempting to cover all of this up, perhaps even utilizing the spatial characteristics of Echo Valley to conduct even more dangerous experiments!

A brief, suffocating silence blanketed the bridge.

Duan Peng's breathing grew heavy, flames of anger igniting in his eyes.

Ouyang Nan covered her mouth, her face painted with shock and disbelief.

Wu Mingjie stared fixedly at that line of coordinates, his single fist clenching tightly.

Xu Yan stood frozen in place, his blood feeling as though it had turned instantly cold, only to boil the very next moment.

Grief, rage, and a trace of icy murderous intent finally finding its target intertwined in his eyes.

At that silent moment, the main communication channel was abruptly forced open, emitting a harsh buzzing sound!

A cold, arrogant, and emotionless voice rang through the bridge, sounding like the tolling of a death knell:

"Explorer 7, this is the Interstellar Command Center monitoring ship Adjudicator. You have severely violated deep space navigation safety regulations and are suspected of endangering spatial security. Immediately halt all operations, accept our guidance, and return to the designated coordinates. Any resistance will be treated as defection and met with immediate destruction."