Card Room (Rebirth)

Chu Huaying returned to the Dark Night starship and brought Shao Qingge and Ye Qi to the command room. At the suspicious looks of her subordinates, Chu Huaying waved her hand. “Everyone, scatter. The money you grabbed today will be enough for you to eat for several years.”

Her subordinates left. Chu Huaying closed the hatch and walked to the console.

Xiao Lou’s group of four took off their invisibility cloaks.

Lu Jiuchuan laughed and joked, “Huaying, you really are like a female demon star thief.”

Shao Qingge reluctantly said, “Our good names will be destroyed by you.”

Ye Qi scratched his head. “Perhaps there will be a hot search on the Internet: Star thieves intercepted a passenger starship and abducted two men. Will these two people be mistreated?”

Chu Huaying took off her mask. “Where are we going? I will enter it in the navigation.”

Lu Jiuchuan also put away the jokes. “Go straight to the Hilt No Man’s Land.”

Chu Huaying’s fingers found a red-marked area on the navigation map. “This area? It should be the domain of the bug species.”

Everyone was shocked when they heard this.

Xiao Lou nervously asked her, “Have you ever seen the bugs?”

Chu Huaying answered, “According to the setting of the secret room, my parents were both star thieves and died many years ago. I have been wandering around the universe with this starship since I was born. I have passed through the Hilt No Man’s Land many times. It is the territory of the highly intelligent bugs and it is very dangerous.”

She looked at Lu Jiuchuan in a puzzled manner. “Why do you suddenly want to go there?”

Lu Jiuchuan briefly explained, “Tang Ci and I led the Arrow Corps to perform a special mission there but we have lost our memories of that mission. The Locke Empire… that is the nation where Xiao Lou is located, has clones, two of which are clones of Xiao Lou. We found out that the empire launched this ‘Noah’s Ark project’ 25 years ago to make the clones and the plan was restarted 20 years ago. Nine insiders have been killed successively to silence them since then.”

Chu Huaying understood. “In other words, the subject of this secret room investigation is cloning and the so-called Noah’s Ark project?”

Lu Jiuchuan nodded. “Yes, things are complicated and we don’t have many clues at the moment.”

Tang Ci added, “The special mission I performed with Brother Jiu and our lost memories must have something to do with this. Therefore, we want to go back to the Hilt No Man’s Land to see what secrets are hidden there.”

Chu Huaying was silent for a moment before telling them, “I can enter the Hilt No Man’s Land with my starship.”

Everyone was very surprised when they heard this and Lu Jiuchuan wondered, “What do you mean by being able to enter?”

Chu Huaying asked, “Don’t you think my starship looks like something?”

Ye Qi’s eyes brightened. “It looks like a huge spider!”

Xiao Lou murmured, “Don’t the bugs… look like spiders?”

He recalled the bugs encountered in 8 of Spades and the small bugs that crawled out of Ye Qi’s fingers when he healed Tang Ci. It was indeed very similar to the appearance of a spider.

Chu Huaying opened the 3-dimensional view of the starship on the virtual screen. “The design of this Dark Night starship is inspired by the shape of the bugs. The eight wings of the starship can deform at any time or expand to increase flight speed. They can also elongate and become eight very aggressive claws. At the same time, high-energy electromagnetic guns can be fired from under the eight flanks. They are wide-range shots that make it impossible for other starships to get close.”

She paused before continuing, “The important thing is that this starship doesn’t only look like an enlarged bug. It also has anti-surveillance capabilities that allows it to disguise itself as a bug and sneak into the bug territory in the Hilt No Man’s Land.”

Xiao Lou wondered, “Why is the design like this?”

Chu Huaying shook her head. “I don’t know the specific situation. I’ve been on this starship for as long as I can remember but the designer of the starship is long dead.”

Who was the designer of the Dark Night starship?

Why would they design a starship that could enter the bugs’ territory?

Everyone looked at each other. These coincidences were telling them that there was a secret hidden in the bugs’ territory. The special mission that Lu Jiuchuan and Tang Ci performed at the beginning must be related to this secret.

Chu Huaying’s starship provided great convenience to everyone.

Xiao Lou inquired, “Have you ever been to the bugs’ territory? Do you know how many bugs there are on the planet?”

Chu Huaying thought about it. “I have passed through the Hilt No Man’s Land many times over the years but I haven’t landed on the planet of the bug race. I just heard my parents say that the starship can land on the planet.”

Lu Jiuchuan said, “Go and see.”

Ye Qi remembered the bugs from 8 of Spades and couldn’t help getting goosebumps. “Do we have to experience 8 of Spades again? In case we are infected by the bugs…”

Shao Qingge gently pressed a hand to Ye Qi’s shoulder. “What are you afraid of? We have the Bug King card.”

Ye Qi immediately became happy. “Yes, the Bug King card allows you to transform for 24 hours. At that time, all the bugs must listen to Chief Shao’s words. No matter how many bugs we encounter, there won’t be a problem escaping.”

Xiao Lou said, “In order to avoid fierce resistance from the bugs, don’t attack them when we land on the bug planet, let alone use fire.”

Lu Jiuchuan had thought about calling out his Vermillion Bird directly to burn all the bugs. However, at Xiao Lou’s reminder, he directly dispelled the idea of fighting against the bugs.

After all, fighting was very costly. In addition, they were breaking into the nest of the bugs. If those bugs couldn’t be burned, angering them wasn’t a good thing. It was best to investigate secretly.

The group reached an agreement and Chu Huaying said, “I will prepare the space jump and take a shortcut to the Hilt No Man’s Land.”

Her fingers quickly entered instructions in the starship’s navigation screen.

The Dark Night starship was worthy of being a starship wanted by the major empires. It flew extremely quickly and made several space jumps in a row. It crossed a galaxy in no time and arrived at the Hilt No Man’s Land in just one hour.

It was a familiar environment, triggering their memories so Lu Jiuchuan and Tang Ci started to get headaches.

Many messy pictures flashed through their heads but they couldn’t see what was going on.

Chu Huaying controlled the starship. All eight wings spread out, stabilizing the ship. The spider-shaped starship broke through the heavy airflow of the atmosphere of the Hilt No Man’s Land like lightning…

Moments later, a brown planet appeared directly in front of them. The black clouds and fog surrounded the dark brown planet that had a slightly lighter gold circle in the middle. It was quietly suspended in the universe like an eye staring at the surroundings.

Ye Qi was taken aback by the strange look of the planet. “This… is the bug planet?”

Everyone’s hearts became uneasy as they got closer to the planet. 8 of Spades was the invasion of the bug species. In the end, only a few bugs came to the human city. Now they were going straight to the bugs’ stronghold! What was the secret here?

Proofreader: Paranoid Kitten & Fictional Reality