Chapter 49: All Insects Must Be Killed! Aihua Returns HomeÂ
Su Wudeng gently stroked the cooperative mother deer. “Thank you, Nuannuan. You did amazing today.”
Nuannuan lowered her head, leaning forward to brush her velvet antlers against Su Wudeng’s shoulder. Within the Lingnai Deer clan, a gentle touch of the antlers was a gesture of absolute, uncontested trust and lifelong friendship.
Su Wudeng, misinterpreting the gesture as a request for affection, leaned in and planted a loud, cheerful kiss right on the smooth curve of the bone. Smack!
“You have the most beautiful antlers in the forest, Nuannuan,” she praised with a grin.
A heavy shudder rippled through the elegant mother deer.
Su Wudeng laughed, wrapping her arms securely around Nuannuan’s neck. But as she glanced over her shoulder, her gaze locked onto Lufeng. The reclusive, highly analytical stag was currently standing perfectly still by the observation deck, allowing Su Yulan to gently run her fingers across his forehead. He didn’t show a single ounce of his typical hyper-vigilance or resistance.
Huh? Is Yulan actually bonding with the stag? Su Wudeng’s eyebrows shot up.
The Lingnai Deer were unmatched as support and healing familiars, acting as the ultimate field medics for any squad. But given their inherently skittish, deeply reclusive psychology, cases of a Lingnai specimen voluntarily establishing a contract with a human were practically unheard of in modern beastmaster academies.
Yet, looking at the silent resonance flowing between the young girl and the proud stag, it was clear a definitive spiritual alignment was forming.
Not bad at all, Su Wudeng thought, highly approved.
But a sudden logistical concern crossed her mind. Once the summer recess concluded, Yulan would have to board a transport back to the core worlds to resume her studies at the Elite Beastmaster University. Would a wild, forest-born stag like Lufeng be willing to leave his ancestral woods to travel to a hyper-developed metropolis halfway across the galaxy?
Before she could analyze the theory further, an piercing electronic ping shattered the peaceful atmosphere.
Chu Feng and Lin Yue, who had been laughing and feeding the other fawns, froze simultaneously. Their wrist terminals were flashing with a high-priority, crimson overlay. The instant their eyes scanned the raw data, the color completely drained from their faces.
“An orbital emergency vector—”
Chu Feng didn’t even finish the sentence, frantically waving Su Wudeng over to a secluded corner of the plot and throwing up a secure display projection.
“Governor, our planetary defense satellites just logged a critical warning event. A high-mass biological signature—strongly matching a high-tier Zerg bio-vessel—has just breached our deep-space perimeter. It’s descending toward our atmosphere at a terrifying velocity!”
The warning file originated directly from the planet’s central mainframe core, which continuously processed regional satellite telemetry to track unauthorized slipspace entry and monitor potential Zerg migration corridors. While Su Wudeng had successfully integrated her personal system architecture across the world’s internal facilities, she hadn’t yet scaled her grid to encompass deep-space defense lines, leaving her entirely dependent on the legacy mainframe for atmospheric threats.
“How could a Zerg vessel target our coordinate?” Lin Yue’s voice shook, her fingers flying across her console to activate defensive measures. “Regardless of the motive, we need to initialize a hard lockdown immediately!”
Chu Feng’s jaw was clenched tight, an icy sweat breaking across his neck. “We lack the diagnostic data to identify the strain. If it’s a standard rogue swarm, our localized defense grid can hold the line. But if this signature belongs to an elite vanguard unit from the 7th Zerg Legion…”
We are as good as dead.
The 7th Zerg Legion was a nightmare faction that even the combined armadas of the Ether Front struggled to contain on the front lines. If a localized detachment of that caliber descended upon an underfunded, unmapped Tier 4 rock, their regional forces wouldn’t survive the first ten minutes of an engagement.
“Everyone, remain calm,” Su Wudeng began, her voice steady and measured. But before she could outline a strategy, a deafening, synchronized emergency siren blared directly through every star-brain interface on the planet.
“CRITICAL EMERGENCY SYSTEM OVERRIDE. ALL CITIZENS ARE COMMANDED TO TERMINATE RECREATIONAL AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS IMMEDIATELY. EVACUATE TO YOUR DESIGNATED UNDERGROUND SANCTUARY NODES WITHOUT DELAY.”
“REPEATING: TERMINATE ALL SURFACE OPERATIONS IMMEDIATELY. SEEK HARD REINFORCED SHELTER AT ONCE.”
This was the automated catastrophe protocol programmed into the planetary mainframe, triggered only when the system analyzed an absolute, existential threat to human life.
Even Su Wudeng’s localized system interface flashed a heavy, crimson diagnostic warning: Warning. Multiple high-density Zerg threat signatures have successfully penetrated the upper stratosphere. Target vector locked onto current coordinates.
“Damn it! Their atmospheric descent is impossible!” Lin Yue’s face went pale. An automatic global siren of this tier only triggered if the invaders had already bypassed the high-altitude defense batteries and entered the lower cloud layers!
In other words, the enemy was already inside their skies.
“Hold on… a speed metric of that scale… it has to be the 7th Vanguard,” Chu Feng muttered, his heart dropping into a cold abyss. The terrifying variables were rapidly connecting into a single, cohesive theory in his mind.
The reality was staring him right in the face. Their entry vector was too clean. Their velocity was mathematically perfect. Their targeting array was laser-focused.
He whipped his head around to stare at Su Wudeng, a sudden horror in his eyes. “No… Governor, this isn’t a random migratory raid! This is a surgical, pre-planned strike vector!”
They had charted a direct course for this exact coordinate. But why? What could a primitive, desolate world possibly possess that would draw the attention of an elite Zerg vanguard?
Su Wudeng’s features turned incredibly stern, her tone dropping into an absolute command voice. “Chu Feng, Lin Yue, execute an immediate evacuation. Herd the staff, the owners, and the deer onto the shuttle and retreat directly to the Pet Center’s reinforced hangar!”
“Amber, Yingying—fall in line on my flank!”
Chu Feng and Lin Yue froze, their minds screaming with questions. Was the governor seriously suggesting she was going to stand alone on an open hillside to face an elite Zerg vanguard?
It was insanity!
They were likely dealing with the biological elite of the hive mind—the terrifying executioners of the 7th Legion!
But the executive order had been spoken, and their most sacred duty as officers of the colony was absolute execution.
Swallowing their panic, the two mobilized with military precision. They rounded up the terrified Lingnai Deer and the trembling owners, shoving them toward the transport shuttle’s loading ramp.
Within a fraction of a second, Amber and Yingying materialized directly in front of Su Wudeng, their muscles coiled like steel springs as they flanked her left and right. Their eyes were locked onto the cloud line, their front legs dropping into a low, predatory crouch as deep, warning rumbles vibrated through their chests.
The civilian cohort understood the gravity of the situation, filing onto the shuttle in strict, disciplined order. But just as the automated landing gear began to retract and the hydraulic doors hissed shut, Xia Xiyao peered through the rear viewport and realized the governor hadn’t boarded.
“Wait! What is happening?! Why is Governor Su still on the ground? Why isn’t she boarding?!”
“Hold the launch! She’s staying behind alone! Is she insane?!”
Su Yulan’s eyes went wide, and she lunged toward the manual emergency release valve, desperate to sprint back onto the field. But Lin Yue’s arm clamped down on her shoulder like a iron vice, pinning her to the deck.
“Sister Lin Yue, release me! Let me go! I refuse to abandon my sister!” Yulan screamed, thrashing violently against the hold.
Lin Yue didn’t relax her grip for a fraction of a millimeter. As the premier military commander of the regional garrison, a college sophomore—no matter how elite her beastmaster lineage—possessed zero leverage against her physical strength.
“My apologies, Miss Su. This is a direct sovereign command from the planetary governor. Chu Feng, initialize thrusters and execute maximum vertical takeoff immediately!”
Do they honestly think she wasn’t sick with worry? Lin Yue’s eyes burned as she stared down at the lone figure of her governor through the cockpit glass, every instinct screaming at her to drop the shuttle and fight by her side.
But a soldier executes orders.
Su Yulan let out a ragged, desperate cry, twisting like a feral, trapped animal within Lin Yue’s arms. “Let me go! I said release me!”
She slammed her fists against the reinforced structural glass, staring down at the retreating earth. That was her sister! Her only remaining family! How was she supposed to remain calm? How could they expect her to just fly away while her sister faced the swarm alone?
Seeing that Yulan was on the verge of seriously injuring herself against the bulkheads, Zhong Huihui lunged forward, throwing her weight into the hold and grabbing the girl’s hands. She forced Yulan to look directly into her eyes, her voice fierce with conviction. “Yulan! Yulan, listen to me! Stop thrashing!”
“You have to trust your sister! You have to believe in her strength, do you understand?!”
“I have absolute, unyielding faith in Governor Su! As her sister, you need to match that faith!”
Tears streamed down Su Yulan’s face, but the intense conviction in Huihui’s voice broke through her panic, and she gave a sharp, trembling nod.
Seeing the psychological breakthrough, Huihui pressed on, her tone softening. “Then let her fight. She commanded us to evacuate for a reason. If we stay on that field, we aren’t assets—we are liabilities. We become leverage for the enemy.”
“Look closer. She isn’t alone. She has Amber, whose sword art can cleave mountains, and she has Yingying, the apex empress of the peaks. Both of them are guarding her life with everything they have.”
Huihui understood the tactical math behind the governor’s decision. The Snow Crystal kittens and the Husky pups were still fragile newborns; they lacked the conditioning and scale to survive an elemental battlefield. Standing their ground would yield zero tactical value. The Lingnai Deer were non-combatants who required total protection, and Su Yulan lacked a finalized contract.
Forcing an immediate evacuation preserved her human capital, leaving the governor completely unburdened by collateral parameters.
But still…
Huihui stared out the viewport, her knuckles turning white. Could the governor truly neutralize an elite Zerg vanguard with just two familiars?
The news broadcasts from the core worlds always depicted the Zerg as an apocalyptic, hyper-intelligent virus—monsters possessing unstoppable physical output, acid secretions that dissolved starships, and an insatiable hunger that consumed entire ecosystems. And vanguard detachments always deployed specialized mutant sub-strains that coordinated their biological warfare with terrifying hive-mind efficiency.
For a brief second, a wild urge to override the cockpit and dive out the airlock took hold of her, but she brutally suppressed it. Doing so would only degrade the governor’s tactical focus.
Uncle Lan’s expression was grim, but his analytical mind remained sharp. He turned his gaze toward the cockpit, addressing Chu Feng directly. “Executive, has the planetary core successfully transmitted our local telemetry data to the Ether Front command network?” His voice carried a faint, imperceptible tremor.
Chu Feng stared at the diagnostic console. “Affirmative. The structural data burst was initialized and transmitted the exact millisecond the perimeter was breached.”
“But the feedback loop is entirely dead. The receiver lines are flatlining. If my structural diagnostics are correct, this specific Zerg vanguard includes a specialized bio-signal dampening strain that is actively choking our quantum communication arrays.”
“We are entirely cut off,” Uncle Lan muttered, his chest tightening as he looked down at the tiny silhouette of Su Wudeng standing on the barren dirt.
“Wait, Executive Chu, check the tracking arrays! Can you still map the trajectory of the bio-vessels?”
Chu Feng’s tone turned dead serious as he read the incoming telemetry. “Their vector hasn’t shifted a fraction of a degree. They are diving straight down… directly toward Experimental Zone 001!”
The color drained from Uncle Lan, Chu Yansen, and Shu Can’s faces. The terrifying truth was staring them in the face: the Zerg weren’t invading the planet; they were hunting Su Wudeng.
The transport shuttle was packed with life signatures, yet the swarm had completely ignored their flight path. The only logical deduction was that the planetary governor was the explicit target of the strike vector!
She realized they were coming for her, so she forced us into the air to keep us out of the crossfire!
“They’re breaking the cloud line!” Xia Xiyao gasped, her eyes snapping toward the eastern horizon.
As a scion of an ancient beastmaster dynasty, her baseline spiritual perception and tracking range far outclassed anyone in the room. She stared intently out the opposite viewport, her posture locking into high alert. “They’re here!”
Everyone scrambled to look through the glass. The sky had been an empty expanse of blue just a second ago, but a massive, jagged shadow suddenly tore through the atmospheric veil.
The silhouette expanded at an impossible velocity, rendering into a terrifying, chitinous leviathan. A heavy, palpable aura of absolute destruction slammed into their consciousness, suffocating their thoughts.
“It’s over…” Lin Yue’s voice cracked, her hand trembling against her holster. “It’s the vanguard elite of the 7th Zerg Legion!”
“Look at the apex cephalic structures… those massive tentacles…”
Little Keke clutched her father’s coat, staring wide-eyed at the descending monsters. A dark, oily bioluminescence pulsated across the Zerg’s tentacles—the terrifying mark of a sub-strain capable of breaking down and devouring raw matter and spiritual energy.
“Daddy… big sister…” her voice whimpered. “Big sister is going to beat the bad bugs, right?”
Nobody could answer her, their hearts clenching into tight knots as the shadows swallowed the field below.
Yingying sniffed the descending air current, letting out a loud, aggressive sneeze. She aggressively rubbed her pink nose against her paw, her silver eyes narrowing. “So these are the Zerg? Their biological odor profile is exceptionally rancid.”
“But I have permanently logged their scent matrix.”
“Gggrrr!” Amber bared his fangs, a low, savage growl vibrating in his throat. An understatement, Yingying. This smell is an absolute biohazard!
The husky scowled, his ears pinning back. What kind of evolutionary trash produces a stench this foul? I can literally feel my brain cells dying!
This is a personal insult to my olfactory senses!
Su Wudeng dropped into a crouch, her left hand resting firmly against Yingying’s neck, her right hand scratching behind Amber’s ears. She pressed a gentle kiss against each of their foreheads.
“Thank you for enduring it, my elite team. You both are doing amazing.”
“Now that you’ve successfully logged their unique biological frequency, I’m going to purge them from our atmosphere. Once they’re back in open space, I’ll have you track them down and finish the job.”
Yingying and Amber exuded an absolute, icy confidence. Leave it to us, Master!
Amber’s eyes flashed with a cold, blue light. A biological atrocity that smells this offensive will never slip past my radar again! I will track them to the edge of the galaxy!
Su Wudeng smiled subtly. Amber really is suffering out here.
But she had no other choice. Her management system currently only possessed the structural parameters to enforce an immediate territorial expulsion; it lacked a built-in tracking array to hunt targets beyond her sovereign boundaries.
The exact millisecond the Zerg bio-vessels breached her atmosphere, she could have easily clicked the eviction sequence. But unlike humans, who would suffer immediate cellular collapse in a vacuum, the Zerg were deep-space organisms. Ejecting them into orbit would do zero physical damage to their hulls.
They would simply materialize outside her gravity well, maintaining a permanent, predatory blockade right on her border, waiting for her defense grid to drop.
Furthermore, given their extreme warp velocity, evolutionary cloaking capabilities, and matter-devouring traits, allowing an elite vanguard to sit right outside her front door was equivalent to living with a ticking quantum bomb wired to her bedframe.
How can I sleep peacefully if monsters are nesting on my porch? They must be completely wiped from the map!
However, the Zerg were notoriously elusive, and tracking them through a massive galaxy after a blind retreat was a monumental statistical nightmare.
Therefore, she had chosen to execute a high-stakes tactical gamble: allowing the vanguard to descend into close-combat proximity while they were blinded by their own predatory arrogance, giving Yingying and Amber the perfect window to permanently log their unique genetic and spiritual scent signatures.
As for why she didn’t just initiate a live combat sequence inside her atmosphere?
This is my planet! Every single blade of grass, every brick of her facilities, and every tile of her pavement represented hard-earned capital and endless manual labor. She refused to let her pristine paradise be scarred by corrosive Zerg blood and explosive shockwaves.
“Excellent,” she whispered, her fingers hovering over her virtual interface as the shadow of the leviathans completely blacked out the sun.
“You’ve chosen the wrong world to hunt in!”
The massive, chitinous forms of the three vanguard beasts accelerated toward her position, their multi-layered mandibles unhinging to reveal rows of jagged, devouring teeth, eager to consume her life force in a single swallow.
But the exact millisecond their shadows touched her boots, the three gargantuan alien hulls vanished from the landscape without a single microsecond of latency.
Vanguard Beast One: “…?”
What just happened? Where are our target metrics?
The monster stared blankly at the infinite, silent expanse of the void, cosmic dust drifting past its eyes. Weren’t we just entering the planet’s inner atmosphere?
Vanguard Beast Two clicked its mandibles in absolute fury. Explain this anomaly! Why have our coordinates been reset back to deep space?!
This is the exact orbital boundary outside the gravity well!
Beast Three, did you initialize a localized space-fold sequence?! You’re trying to hoard the human essence for yourself, aren’t you?!
Beast Three let out a sharp, telepathic shriek. …You absolute brainless idiots!
This wasn’t our magic! This is the human target’s sovereign spatial command!
It twisted its massive, armor-plated torso, channelling its biological warp drives to charge back toward the atmosphere. But the absolute second its hull crossed the boundary line, its coordinates instantly glitched, and it materialized right back at the starting pin.
“……?”
We physically cannot cross the perimeter?
What about our feast?!
Back on the ground, Su Wudeng reviewed her system’s holographic mapping, noting that the massive red threat indicators had completely vanished from her atmospheric grid. She let out a long, clean sigh of relief.
“Perfect. They didn’t manage to fracture a single piece of infrastructure. They just swallowed a few cubic meters of my air.”
Otherwise, she would have hunted them down out of pure financial spite. This world was being built from her blood, sweat, and credits! Every blade of grass was a investment!
But she had to admit, the Zerg’s psychic assault was an incredibly greasy, unsettling sensation. She shook her head, clearing the mental residue.
Moving quickly, Su Wudeng sprinted toward her private high-speed scout shuttle, guiding Amber and Yingying into the cabin. It was time to switch roles. The hunt was officially on!
Since they had the audacity to drop out of warp to terrorize her world, she was going to teach them exactly what it meant to invade her domain. Not a single bug would leave this sector alive.
Up in the air, Chu Feng maintained a steady hand on the transport shuttle’s controls.
But the entire passenger cabin had fallen into a heavy, surreal silence.
After what felt like an eternity, Uncle Lan broke the quiet, his voice tight. “Is it statistically possible that my optical implants just glitched?”
“Did those colossal monsters just… blink out of existence?”
Chu Yansen adjusted his collar, his tone laced with immense caution. “Assuming my biological sight is intact and we aren’t trapped inside a collective neural illusion… that matches my visual data perfectly.”
A singular, terrifying question echoed through everyone’s mind: What tier of cosmic power is that?
The sheer scale of the spatial displacement was mind-boggling!
Lin Yue recalled the classified security briefs from her previous garrison shifts, offering a tentative hypothesis. “This aligns with the security profiles we recovered from the regional files. Previously, multiple high-ranking mercenary syndicates attempted to launch clandestine incursions against the Pet Center. Governor Su deployed this exact methodology to instantly erase their squads from the surface.”
“Our orbital clean-up sweeps later recovered a cluster of frozen corpses drifting along the satellite trash-collection trajectories. They had been cleanly ejected from the atmosphere.”
Zhong Huihui blinked, her jaw dropping. “What?! The Pet Center was targeted by military syndicates?!”
“…I didn’t hear a single rumor about this!”
It turned out her employer had quietly shielded her life from an absolute slaughterhouse more times than she could count!
“If the historical data matches, then Lin Yue’s hypothesis is structurally sound,” Uncle Lan said, a massive wave of relief washing over his chest. “Thank goodness.”
“Everyone, relax. Governor Su never takes a gamble unless her victory metrics are at one hundred percent. She likely utilized a localized spatial distortion to isolate the vanguard, and now she’s preparing to neutralize them in a controlled environment.”
“Our only duty right now is to wait for the clearance notification.”
Xia Xiyao sat frozen in her seat, her mind completely short-circuiting. No, are these people seriously going to accept an absolute spatial displacement capability this casually?!
That wasn’t a standard defensive shield—that was absolute, sovereign spatial manipulation! And space, along with time, was classified as one of the ultimate, untamable cosmic laws of the universe.
In modern warfare, only high-tier Zerg brain-beasts could naturally warp space to execute tactical jumps, and even then, it was a biological talent limited to elite sub-strains.
Yet, this outer-rim planetary governor possessed a spatial manipulation capability that entirely outclassed the evolutionary traits of the Zerg hive mind!
Wait…
A sudden, world-altering realization struck her mind, causing her scalp to tingle, her breathing turning shallow and frantic.
If this spatial barrier is bound to the planet’s infrastructure… then as long as Governor Su is breathing, it is mathematically impossible for the Zerg to execute a successful surface invasion on this world!
The moment an invading force crosses the atmosphere, they are instantly thrown back into the void!
This is an absolutely safe, invincible planet.
The words echoed like thunder inside Xia Xiyao’s mind. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a sudden dizziness washed over her.
An un-invadable safe haven. Not even the supreme military high command on the capital worlds dared to claim their fortresses were invincible! No faction in the known galaxy possessed a secure zone this absolute!
She didn’t dare calculate what would happen if the galaxy’s ultra-wealthy dynasties and high-ranking military commanders discovered this coordinate. The core-world oligarchs would lose their absolute sanity trying to purchase a square meter of land on this rock! The immigration traffic would break the galactic transit grid!
What would the real estate value look like? It wouldn’t even be a question of money anymore; they would trade entire star systems for residency.
In an era defined by constant Zerg incursions, collapsing front lines, and systemic planetary decay, absolute physical safety was the rarest, most expensive luxury in existence.
And yet, right now, anyone who filed a standard civilian application on the public network was being casually cleared for residency by Governor Su.
But the galaxy was completely blind to the truth.
She clutched her racing heart, her head spinning with the sheer weight of the secret. She hadn’t just secured a pet contract; she had personally embedded herself at the right hand of a cosmic sovereign!
Suddenly, an ambitious thought flashed through her mind. What if I convince my entire lineage to liquidate their core-world assets and move our ancestral estate to this planet?
The transport shuttle smoothly entered the flight path for the primary Pet Center hub, the automated thrusters firing to prepare for landing.
“By the way,” Shu Can interrupted the silence, leaning over the cockpit partition. “Executive Chu, can we pull up the orbital satellite feed to track the current status of the Zerg?”
“Negative,” Chu Feng shook his head grimly, tapping the diagnostic console. “The systemic feedback loop is entirely dead. The automated alerts I dispatched to the regional command are still bottlenecked in the queue. If my analysis is correct, the Zerg vanguard deployed a specialized bio-signal dampening field that has permanently locked down our local quantum routing.”
“Not only are our external communication lines choked, but the localized transmission nodes across the entire planet are completely blind. In other words, if our squads separate right now, we will lose all ability to coordinate or contact one another.”
As he spoke, he initiated a standard video link to Su Wudeng’s terminal, displaying the dead connection line to the cabin. “See? The network protocol is completely unresponsive, the transmission won’t even process—”
Click.
The black screen suddenly dissolved, rendering the crystal-clear, high-definition image of Su Wudeng. She offered a casual wave to the camera. “Hey, guys!”
Chu Feng: “???”
Didn’t my instruments just confirm a total systemic signal lockdown by the Zerg?! How is the governor’s private communication link completely unaffected by a mythic-tier dampening field?!
Su Wudeng cleared her throat, her tone turning slightly apologetic. “To keep a long story short, I’ve currently launched a scout shuttle into orbit to execute a pursuit vector against the vanguard. But I just checked my fuel metrics, and it looks like my current energy reserves aren’t sufficient to clear a return trajectory…”
“…Uh, any chance someone can dispatch a rescue rig? Help?”
Everyone: “…”
You are truly a legend!
Launching a baseline civilian scout shuttle to hunt down an elite Zerg vanguard in deep space!
Ordinary forces flee for their lives the second a Zerg shadow touches their radar, but you’re treating an elite legion like runaway prey!
The primary issue wasn’t even her courage—it was her hardware choice! Factions deploy capital-class military dreadnoughts and armored battleships to engage the Zerg in orbit. And you? You’re flying a standard aerodynamic shuttle! That vehicle was engineered for local atmospheric transport, not orbital naval warfare!
Suddenly, the video feed on Su Wudeng’s side shuddered violently, her speech accelerating as telemetry alerts flashed behind her. “My sensory arrays have locked onto their residual bio-signatures. I need to terminate the call to manage my flight path. Hurry up and get an automated cruiser out to my coordinates! Otherwise, I’m genuinely going to burn through my fuel and drop out of orbit!”
Fortunately, Su Wudeng left the video feed active, allowing Chu Feng to rapidly extrapolate her exact orbital coordinates by analyzing the background telemetry streaming through the frame.
He slammed the thrusters into maximum overdrive, diverting the shuttle toward the primary military hangar to fire up a heavy battleship to retrieve his reckless planetary master.
Back at the Pet Center, the remaining cohort huddled around the main display console, their fingers intertwined as they stared at the live feed, praying desperately.
“Please let her be safe!”
Low Planetary Orbit.
Following the exact bio-energetic vector mapped out by Yingying and Amber, Su Wudeng’s scout shuttle closed the distance, rapidly picking up the physical trails of the Zerg vanguard.
She immediately opened her system interface, expending a significant block of Hope Value to materialize two sets of customized, high-tier pet combat armors, seamlessly equipping them onto her companions.
The primary utility of the specialized gear was the total generation of localized oxygen and an independent micro-gravity field, bolstered by heavy kinetic defense plating and atmospheric propulsion nodes, allowing her land-bound pets to maneuver with absolute freedom in a vacuum.
“The target coordinates are locked,” Yingying purred, her silver fur bristling beneath her clear visor. “Master, remain within the secure perimeter of the cabin. Await our clearance.”
“Understood!” Su Wudeng engaged the manual lock overrides, opening the primary airlock hatch. “Keep your defensive metrics green, you two! No reckless maneuvers!”
“Woof! Woof!”Â
“Ying-ying!”
Amber and Yingying barked their confirmations, launching themselves out of the depressurized hatch with immense kinetic force.
After taking a few fluid bounds through the zero-gravity field to calibrate their armor’s propulsion nodes, they locked onto their targets and accelerated toward the drifting Zerg bio-vessels like twin streaks of light.
Su Wudeng monitored their vectors through the shuttle’s high-fidelity optical scanners, routing the raw video feed straight to the secure communication loop connected to the Pet Center. For the newborn Husky pups and Snow Crystal kittens watching from the hangar, this was a priceless, real-time masterclass in high-tier familiar warfare.
The pets closed the gap within seconds. Sensing the incoming threat, the Zerg vanguard instantly counter-attacked, their massive chitinous hulls twisting as they executed localized spatial warps to materialize directly on Yingying and Amber’s flanks, their gargantuan mandibles unhinging to swallow the intruders whole.
But before their jaws could snap shut, a blinding explosion of frost blades detonated across the void!
Countless micro-crystalline ice blades erupted from Yingying’s armor array, sweeping across the sector like a cataclysmic arctic blizzard.
The smoky gray pupils of the snow leopard instantly transformed into a deep, sapphire blue. The ambient temperature of the surrounding vacuum plummeted to absolute zero in a fraction of a millisecond. Solar radiation froze, cosmic dust crystallized, and a dense network of sub-zero ice sheets encased the Zerg hulls, locking their mobility loops.
Then came the shatter sequence.
An agonizing, telepathic wail tore through the network as millions of razor-sharp frost blades systematically pierced the Zerg’s armored carapaces. There was no physical evasion possible against a localized blizzard; the blades punched through their dense chitin, leaving a horrific trail of ruptured flesh and freezing biological fluid.
A concentrated volley of ice spikes targeted the lead beast’s open unhinged jaws, completely shredding its delicate interior mouthparts.
The blinding agony caused the leviathan to thrash hysterically, its hive-mind coordination collapsing.
Simultaneously, the heavy, metallic greatsword mounted to Amber’s mechanical harness let out a high-frequency hum. The husky launched himself forward with explosive speed, the blade unsheathing itself automatically! It transformed into a blinding streak of silver light, severing the vacuum with a sharp, kinetic shriek.
Amber tore through the Zerg formation like a bolt of cosmic lightning. His blade art was a display of absolute, unstoppable kinetic force, systematically cleaving through the monsters’ primary muscle clusters one after another.
Dark, toxic blood sprayed into the void, accompanied by a shower of severed tentacles and shattered limbs. The organic fluid floated through the vacuum, radiating a putrid, decaying frequency.
The absolute zero chill of the alpine frost and the devastating, unyielding cutting edge of the husky’s metal sword completely dominated the orbital battlefield.
Vanguard Beast Three, who had been lagging a step behind due to its massive structural weight, froze. “…”
Holy mother of the hive!
How can these two land-bound organisms possess a combat output this apocalyptic?!
Their strike velocity and raw destructive metrics completely defied every data model programmed into its hive-mind intelligence!
The logical core of its insect brain began to shriek in sheer terror. Their kinetic velocity outclasses a saber-toothed warlord!
It recognized the distinct, terrifying aura—it matches the exact combat profile of that legendary Iron-Eating Beast that systematically wiped our forward legions on the front lines!
A single, desperate command overrode its entire consciousness: Flee! Flee! Flee!
It didn’t dare hesitate for another microsecond. Utilizing the chaotic window where Beast One and Beast Two were sacrificing their lifespans to bottleneck the leopard, it executed a hard pivot to escape.
Its gargantuan hull twisted violently, activating its internal warp core to fold the surrounding space. It vanished from the sector instantly.
A second later, its signature reappeared thousands of kilometers away, preparing to lock in a consecutive jump to enter slipspace.
“Oh no!” Su Wudeng gasped, reviewing the tracking monitors. “The lead beast is executing an escape vector because it realizes it’s outmatched!”
“Stop him! We cannot permit that monster to map our system coordinates back to the hive!”
But Amber and Yingying were currently deep in the execution phase of their respective targets, completely tied down by the desperate, suicidal defensive maneuvers of the remaining two beasts. They physically lacked the positioning to intercept a long-range warp signature.
Beast Three expanded its speed metrics to absolute maximum, its form turning semi-translucent as it reached the outer boundary of the shuttle’s long-range monitoring array.
The monster cast a venomous, telepathic glance back at the planet. You miserable, insignificant humans… enjoy your fleeting survival!
It let out a sharp, grating shriek into the psychic net.
It is only a matter of time before the full might of the Zerg swarms returns to grind this entire coordinate into cosmic ash!
Beast Three was consumed by a burning, humiliated rage. It had arrived expecting an effortless buffet, only to be physically dismantled, forced to flee like vermin while its binary brothers were slaughtered before its eyes.
I will return with a super-swarm! I will personally tear that human target apart molecule by molecule and digest her essence!
The leviathan turned its hull, its warp drives humming as it locked into the final slipspace coordinate.
But just as the space-fold initialized, a colossal, shadow-cloaked figure dropped out of warp directly into its path, a massive paw swinging down with the weight of a collapsing moon!
BOOM!
“Who exactly were you planning on digesting?”
Hearing that booming, lazy voice ripple through its telepathic receivers, Beast Three’s internal organs practically ruptured from sheer terror. It whipped its primary optical clusters upward, only to find a monolithic, staggeringly oppressive silver-plated silhouette standing right over its hull.
Before it could even initialize a defensive posture, a second, earth-shattering palm strike slammed into its cranium. The raw kinetic impact sent the gargantuan leviathan spinning uncontrollably through the void, its armored shell fracturing as it rolled across the vacuum.
Aihua advanced through the zero-gravity field with slow, terrifyingly measured strides, her dark eyes projecting an absolute, unadulterated bloodlust.
She extended a single, massive alloy claw, clamping down on Beast Three’s main torso like a vice, pinning its entire mass in place.
She raised her opposite claw, balling it into a heavy fist before driving it directly into the center of the monster’s face plate. BANG!
“State your intentions!”
“Who did you say you were going to eat?!”
Beast Three’s mandibles were completely pulverized by the impact, dark green blood spraying wildly into space as it let out a pathetic, garbled whimper.
No… I miscalculated… I harvest no targets… Mercy! I refuse to expire here!
Aihua’s claw tightened, her voice dripping with pure ice. “Silence.”
Three consecutive, thunderous palm strikes rained down on the leviathan’s skull, completely fracturing its neural core before it could even utter another psychic frequency.
Beast Three’s massive frame trembled violently, a final, despairing realization illuminating its fading consciousness. It’s over… our entire vanguard is wiped…
They had been intercepted by the absolute executioner of the trenches—the legendary Iron-Eating Beast!
The monster whose territory spanned across the bloodiest campaigns of the 7th Vanguard, whose claws had crushed the strongest generals of their hive mind!
How… how could we possibly survive a confrontation against her?
But right at the precipice of its death, a final, horrifying truth clicked within its brain as it processed Aihua’s words. Did she say… sister?
Fear, absolute and paralyzing, dissolved its remaining thoughts.
What sister? …That human target on the surface?! The human governor is the biological sibling of this apocalyptic, war-forged Iron-Eating Beast?!
Impossible! This is a statistical anomaly! It’s impossible!
This time—completely, definitively—it was over.
Aihua’s alloy claw suddenly clenched with explosive force. With a deafening, kinetic crunch, Beast Three’s massive, starship-sized hull was crushed into a compact ball of warped chitin and iron, its life spark permanently extinguished.
Back inside the shuttle, Su Wudeng stared at the optical monitor, her heart hammering against her ribs like a drum. Watching that staggeringly familiar, heavily armored silhouette manifest on her screen—the companion she had missed with every fiber of her being for months—a massive, overwhelming wave of pure joy rushed through her spirit.
She couldn’t contain herself, shouting at the screen with everything she had:
“Aihua!”
“My beautiful Aihua!”
She understood perfectly well that the sound waves inside her sealed cabin couldn’t bridge the vacuum to reach her familiar’s ears. But the exact millisecond the words left her lips, Aihua seemed to register the frequency through their soul link.
The giant panda raised her heavy, silver-plated head in surprise, her warm gaze locking onto the tiny civilian scout shuttle drifting in the distance.
Simultaneously, a final, massive frost blade tore clean through the core of the second Zerg beast. The monster’s gargantuan hull froze solid in an instant, before shattering into millions of glittering, harmless ice shards that dissolved into the void.
Amber executed a flawless, graceful landing along a floating piece of space debris, his greatsword returning to its mechanical sheath with a smooth, metallic ring as the first Zerg beast split cleanly into two halves, its biological signature flatlining.
The crisis was entirely neutralized. Not a single bug remained.
