There was a faint pain on the back of his hand, and he turned his head to look at his right hand again. A needle tube was stuck in the black back of his hand, and a life‑sustaining hormonal potion was slowly being infused into his body through the tube.

In his heart he was screaming and howling like a madman.

What have I done?

How did I become this old?

The boundless ambition of the once high‑spirited blond youth had been hacked into fragments by time, that blunt knife.

What hit him even harder was that in the blink of an eye he suddenly realized he had somehow foolishly worked himself to the bone for Li Yang for nearly twenty years, and now, before he had even had time to set foot on a warship for the grand expedition, he was already decrepit, on the verge of the grave.

He was on the verge of collapse.

The stewards of the other great families in the video conference room looked at this fellow with considerable sympathy.

Although they themselves had fallen as well, at least over these years they had enjoyed normal frozen sleep, instead of being squeezed dry like this one.

In their hearts there even rose a secret sense of relief.

But then, thinking further, that Ying Hao, who had been even more ambitious and more capable…

Forget it, it was hard to say who was actually worse off.

At least Ying Hao had died with his dreams.

That too was a kind of happiness.

But they themselves might not be so lucky; everyone knew how important the frozen Elders were.

There was no doubt that every person present had taken part in this rebellion and murder that would absolutely not be permitted inside the Empire.

Yes, they had all participated in the murder of their own ancestors and of the creators of Source Star Society.

By rights they could be said to have completed a fairly clean coup and could reasonably inherit power, but the problem was that Source Star had never possessed independent power at all; it had always been nothing more than a vassal among vassals under the Empire.

So, what punishment would await them, who had killed the Administrators?

Would an imperial warship suddenly descend from the sky, then fire a single shot outside the asteroid belt and blast Source Star to pieces?

In their own immensely tangled thoughts, the silence in the video conference room lasted nearly a minute.

In the end, it was still Ren Zhong, the supreme military Commander, who spoke first with a heavy heart: "According to reliable intelligence, we have suffered a terror attack from the Empire's enemies, the Spirit Demon Race. The creators and guardians of Source Star civilization, the nine great Administrators of the Source Star Tracer colony, have unfortunately been killed."

"The Spirit Demon Race?"

The participants were stunned for a moment, then gradually saw the light.

Obviously, as the core Steering Men of the Nine Major Groups and members of the Supreme Elder Council, they were among the very few on Source Star who were entitled to know the true history.

They did indeed know parts of the story about the Mechanical Empire and the other three mortal enemies.

It was just that in previous war reports, everyone had been kept in the dark; all were "friends" of Li Yang, and in those reports no one had ever mentioned the existence of the Spirit Demon Race.

But now, with just a hint from Ren Zhong, many of the doubts and confusions from before were instantly resolved.

At this moment, it was actually Ma Xiaocheng, the current Steering Man of Deep Communication Group and Ren Zhong's former close comrade‑in‑arms, who was the first to regain his composure. With a hint of doubt he asked, "If it really was the Empire's enemies secretly infiltrating us, then how did we… shake off their control?"

Ren Zhong grinned, moved his fingers slightly, and pulled up that patch of once again silent starry sky in the video conference.

There had once been Warship 0001. Now there were only a few pea‑sized metal granules, melted and then re‑凝结 into a cluster.

The crowd looked at this Void, not understanding.

Ren Zhong clicked replay, and the footage in the video began from the explosion of Warship 0001, then quickly fast‑forwarded to the return of silence.

"Fortune smiled on us."

After that, Ren Zhong told a "story" that wasn't very long.

In this story, he put himself back into Li Yang's circle of friends and pushed many of his past actions onto Li Yang's instigation, including the establishment of the Dragon Slayer Camp and the development of the terrifyingly powerful compressed three‑phase thermonuclear bombs.

"Under Li Yang's direction, I placed a Three‑Phase Bomb on every warship. You've seen its power. The purpose of placing these bombs was to threaten you at critical moments and maintain complete control of the situation. But the Three‑Phase Bomb on 0001 had a small quality issue. There was a parameter error in the sensor of its detonator's trigger mechanism; when subjected to an overload‑intensity information‑flow impact, it would misjudge the situation and initiate the detonation procedure."

"The Administrators' Tracker Spaceships have a special feature: once destroyed, or once all the Administrators aboard die, they emit an especially powerful information‑flow signal to the outside, to alert the Empire. It's called the Last Wave."

"This is the signal transmitted during the instant before the Three‑Phase Bomb's detonation device in Tracer 0001 was activated, when it was performing information exchange with Warship 0001's black box. Before being destroyed by high temperatures, the black box successfully broadcast this information, and we captured it. This is what the situation looked like at that moment…"

Ren Zhong released a long string of program code, and after Ma Xiaocheng and Ying Ye read it, they double‑confirmed Ren Zhong's account.

It was the truth.

After listening, the dozens of people present all marveled inwardly at the inscrutable workings of fate in the cosmos.

At how unbelievably lucky they were.

They could turn the tables even like this!

"In addition, I have another piece of good news. After the Administrator Elders died, the Last Wave broadcast to the outside by the Tracker Spaceship was picked up by the 'Net', which has just had its basic functions restored. You can take a look at this piece of information."

He then gave the others nearly ten minutes to digest the "final ripple" of the old popsicles. Only when everyone's thoughts had recovered again did Ren Zhong speak, with a sigh: "So, it was not we who murdered the Administrators, but the Spirit Demon Race. This is a message broadcast to the entire universe; no one can fake it, and the Empire will soon learn that we are innocent. As the inheritors of the Source Star colonization fleet, we still possess the legitimate right to return to the Empire and be integrated into the imperial system."

The listeners' eyes all involuntarily showed joy. The whole matter just seemed overly comedic, with far too many coincidences; their luck felt almost outrageously good.

Only Hugh Augustus still wore a deathly ashen face.

He had only a few days left to live; all his ambitions had turned to smoke and illusion. Whether they returned to the Empire or not had nothing whatsoever to do with this dying old man.

"Everyone, the cosmos has favored us, and we have safely weathered this catastrophe. Next, we should discuss by what kind of system we will return to the Empire. My proposal is as follows: after all, the journey is still long and far; the Last Wave is a universal broadcast that does not distinguish between friend and foe, so our road home may not be so smooth. Therefore, we should establish a more powerful management system."

In the video everyone was watching, Ren Zhong—Marshal of the army, the natural highest figure in Source Star's current administrative hierarchy, and the man occupying the largest frame on the screen—grinned as he spoke.

His ambition was written plainly on his face, as blatant as the rows of pale teeth revealed by his smile.