Ahead, hexagonal explosion-proof airtight doors opened one after another, each thicker and heavier than the last. Each door panel was marked with the level of authority required to open it, and each door was separated by a considerable distance. Then, the lighting system activated. Within the illuminated corridor formed by the six sides of the twenty-one doors, a small figure stood in the middle, its expression fierce, like a highway robber.

"Who is that?"

"Luo, our eldest sister." Qin made way and stood at the door expressionlessly.

"Does she have any personal grudge against you?" Jiang Ling put her hand on the door frame and said while looking inside.

"I don't know about that. Maybe she came to see you?" Qin shook her head. "We just know each other's existence, but our department usually prohibits close contact between us. She joined the Executive Department after special education, and her security clearance is much higher than others."

"Telepathic communication?"

"Actually, most of the time we communicate online. My sisters don't have psychic abilities as strong as yours. As far as I know, not even my eldest sister has them."

"Oh, I think I understand." Jiang Ling pulled Lin Yi over the threshold and slowly walked into the depths.

The other side of the explosion-proof airtight door wasn't empty; on the contrary, it was filled with moving objects. It was simply that there were very few living people in the high-privilege area, making it seem relatively deserted. Just as Jiang Ling had seen before hibernation, the core area of ​​this world was largely occupied by automated machines. These complex, organized robots moved swiftly and silently along lines drawn on the walls and in the air, and even though most areas were dark, they couldn't go wrong.

Every time the two of them passed through a door, the other one behind it would close, as if someone was controlling everything invisibly.

As the distance closed, the expression of the little figure blocking the "passage" changed several times, finally settling on a cute, angry, and slightly tipsy look. She stopped Jiang Ling and the other two before they could slip away from her, then unleashed her strength without concealment, trying to gain an advantage in another direction.

"Luo, you are no match for me." Jiang Ling protected Lin Yi and easily blocked her attack.

Luo looked exactly like Jiang Ling, only several sizes smaller. She wore a custom-made, pure black exoskeleton, but no helmet. "How can we know if we don't try it?" Her hair spun in the windless air. As she finished speaking, the surrounding automated machines quickly cleared, and the explosion-proof airtight door temporarily closed.

"I thought this was just an ordinary trip - I don't want to fight!" Jiang Ling tried to ease the atmosphere.

"Then get out of here!" Luo's temper was quite bad. She took the initiative to attack, and the invisible attack instantly erupted with her as the center, quickly heading towards Jiang Ling.

Considering the structural safety of the core area, Jiang Ling remained undeterred, neutralizing Luo's telekinetic attacks one by one in multiple stages. During the tussle, she noticed that this attack form had significantly changed from her previous training. While still essentially concentrated psychic tentacles, its appearance had become more like bullets. These invisible bullets were extremely deadly to those unskilled in psychic sensitivity. It was no wonder Luo had gained an advantage in the psychic technology being vigorously developed by the Countermeasures Bureau—unfortunately, it was merely a trick.

It only took Luo a few seconds to use up all her "bullets". Looking at the indestructible barrier in front of her, her little face turned red.

"A total of 1,902 shots, I caught them all." Jiang Ling said indifferently.

Luo smiled, then panted and asked, "Whose gun has both odd and even bullets in its chamber?"

Jiang Ling was surprised and spared a little energy to look behind him. He saw that poor Lin Yi's head had been blown to pieces, and the fragments of the priceless precision instrument inside were flying everywhere in the air.

"Fuck, Lin Yi!" Jiang Ling yelled.

Fortunately, Lin Yi's voice soon emanated from its chest. "I'm fine! It's just a minor fatal injury."

"Hey, do you think it's possible for a bullet to turn on its own?" Luo revealed proudly - she felt that she "didn't have much time left."

In the distance, countless red and green laser beams shone over and focused on Luo's forehead.

Jiang Ling stretched out her right hand, fingers together, palm facing backward. "Luo, what on earth are you doing this for?"

She raised her arms in a gesture of surrender, but a smile remained on her face. Before she was taken away by the arrest machine, she weakly struggled, "Jiang Ling, remember this! I am not your replacement. I never was, and I never will be!"

The farce ended and the passage was open again.

Jiang Ling hugged Lin Yi's broken body, feeling uncomfortable.

There was no other reason. All this happened inexplicably, and she was the only one who was kept in the dark. The powerful force was like a fire stick without ammunition, with nowhere to vent.

Now she can only move forward - pushed forward by the wheel of history.

At the end, there was an empty spherical space. The hexagonal door closed after they passed through, and the walls began to glow. The soft white light made them invisible.

"You're here."

A familiar voice came from an unknown location. Jiang Ling looked around a few times but couldn't find the person who was speaking.

Then, holographic projection points of light emerged from the walls of the spherical space and gradually converged to the center, outlining a translucent three-dimensional model of the Endless Galaxy.

"This is the fleet command center." said "Lin Yi".

"I'm Li Wenjia." said the wall.

Jiang Ling let go of "Lin Yi", who then returned the souvenirs they had picked up along the way to her, and then floated to the vicinity of the three-dimensional model.

"I am Lin Ke." said the headless bionic body.

"You two, stop showing off your affection!" Jiang Ling sighed, holding his forehead. "Tell me, what's going on? Why are you making such a fuss?"

"Project Spark," said the wall.

"Maybe it should end early." Lin Ke said.

"what happened?"

"We brute-force hacked your bracelet," Lin Ke said, unfolding a rectangular screen of light in front of him. The screen showed the bracelet, its outer shell removed, resting flat on a sturdy-looking support frame. Countless cables, like blood vessels, were wound around it in a regular pattern, extending down the frame and connecting to a circle of sixty-four black cubes. "After the energy was injected, an event horizon with a radius of sixteen centimeters was generated in the center of the ring. This is very similar to observational data from Earth. We believe it's likely a gravitational singularity."

"The manufacturing technology for the ring is very advanced. We tested it many times without causing any damage, and we also collected sufficient data," Li Wenjia continued. "But when it came to manually reproducing it, we encountered a hurdle. And it was a difficult one to overcome."