After the Iron Ore successfully set sail.

Because of the conversation he had with his boss before, Chen Ming planned to follow his boss's advice and try to get in touch with the Whispering Stone more often in his daily life.

Maybe in the future I'll be able to rely directly on psychic energy fluctuations to activate the area effect of the spirit stone like the boss did.

Although the activation effect of Whispering seems to be a bit strange, it will cause the activator himself to be affected by Whispering.

But there must be a way to solve this problem, otherwise the boss wouldn't have mentioned the concept of psychic weapons.

The boss's "gentle" spiritual stone is definitely not as suitable as Chen Ming's "whisper" as a weapon.

So Chen Ming came to the engine room while the spaceship was still halfway there and Old Wu was playing with Xiao Shi.

However, when Chen Ming took out the Whispering Spirit Stone sealed in the tin can.

He suddenly discovered that the Whispering Stone, which had been sealed, had undergone some unexpected changes.

The most obvious thing is that the twisted black patterns on the stone have all turned into a dark red pattern that looks like solidified blood.

Moreover, these changed patterns are more distorted than before, and people will feel obviously uncomfortable when looking at them with the naked eye.

After actually getting close to the spiritual stone, Chen Ming could directly feel the irritating whispering without even touching it.

Realizing that something was wrong, Chen Ming immediately turned around and put on thick heavy protective clothing.

He approached cautiously, and after feeling the range of influence of the Whispering Stone's whispering had increased, he carefully extended a finger and pressed it.

Just when Chen Ming touched the spiritual stone, a whisper that was stronger and more irrepressible than ever before sounded in his ears.

If touching the spiritual stone before was like a madman whispering in Chen Ming's ear, then now it was like a group of madmen were stuffed into Chen Ming's head, telling him their delirium.

The strong whisper stimulated Chen Ming's brain, causing him to let go of his hand immediately.

The whispers faded away, but Chen Ming's brows remained furrowed.

He didn't just hear the crazy whispers just now, he also saw something in the whispers, something visible to the naked eye.

It looked like a person was being shot dead with a gun pointed at his head.

The gun itself and the person holding the gun were very blurry, but the appearance of the person who was killed was very clear.

A middle-aged man with a mustache, fair complexion, thin build, and about 1.75 meters tall.

He was wearing a more formal work outfit, which looked like it was padded with fleece and was very warm.

In addition, this person's pockets are slightly bulging.

At the moment he fell to the ground dead, a thumb-sized stone rolled out of his pocket.

Although Chen Ming couldn't see the specific shape of the stone or the pattern on it.

But he was sure.

This is also a spiritual stone.

Although this scene is extremely real.

But Chen Ming still couldn't be sure whether this was an illusion caused by the whispering.

After thinking about it, he opened the panel and took a look.

What he didn't expect was that the spiritual stone on the panel actually changed.

The original [Spirit Stone (Whisper)] became [Spirit Stone (Falsehood)]. The change in name alone made people feel even more uncomfortable.

However, after disassembling the spiritual stone, what is obtained is still the original 16 grams of spiritual energy, without any change.

Chen Ming shook his head to get rid of the aftermath of the whispering in his mind, thinking about whether there was any reasonable explanation that could explain the sudden changes in the Whispering Stone.

After thinking about it for a while, Chen Ming felt that the most likely cause of the current situation was probably the bodies in the coffins.

The appearance of these corpses is the most obvious situation on the Iron Ore spacecraft in recent times, and the one most likely to be related to the changes in the Whispering Stone.

But no matter what the truth is, it is impossible for Chen Ming, a half-baked person in psychic power, to come to a correct conclusion.

Old Wu, an ordinary person, definitely doesn't know about this.

Although Xiaoshi seems to be sensitive to psychic powers, he is just a hamster and can't do anything.

If Chen Ming wanted to know the answer, the only person he could turn to was his boss for help.

But now the Iron Ore is in the hyperspace channel, and there are no large signal adapters in the surrounding space stations or colonies to use, so there is no way to connect to the star network.

There is no way to contact the boss.

Fortunately, after the Whispering Stone turned into the Falsehood Stone, apart from the abnormalities when making contact, the only other thing that happened was that the range of influence of the whispering only increased slightly.

As long as the stone is placed in the corner of the engine compartment, it will not affect other parts of the spacecraft.

Chen Ming also spent some time observing it and confirmed that the impact range of this stone would not continue to expand.

There shouldn't be any problem contacting the boss after arriving at the star field's capital galaxy.

Besides, Chen Ming will only be away for two days at most this time, so we can talk about it after he returns.

Chen Ming doesn't need any more time.

Of course, to be on the safe side, Chen Ming finally threw the Whispering Stone directly onto the Mule level.

Stay away from the coffin, stay away from the Iron Ore, stay away from Gamma B, and stay away from Chen Ming himself.

From the space station to the dark cemetery, from entering the hyperspace channel to exiting the hyperspace channel, including the time for acceleration in the middle, it only takes less than one minute.

It took Chen Ming more than six hours to get from the Dark Cemetery to the galaxy where the Star Domain Government was located.

And as Chen Ming's spaceship approached the capital of the star region, many other spaceships passing by appeared around the waterway.

Most of them were caravan ships, but there were also some that looked like bounty hunters' ships, and Chen Ming even saw some military ships.

So much so that his modified Gladiator seems a little inconspicuous.

But this is also good news for Chen Ming.

Before Chen Ming controlled the spacecraft to jump out of the hyperspace channel and head for the galaxy, he turned on the spacecraft transponder in advance.

To avoid being spotted and troubled by the patrol as soon as you enter.

The four spaceships quickly jumped out of the hyperspace channel and arrived at the capital of the star region, the edge of the galaxy of the RJW star system.

Here, Chen Ming can have a clear view of the situation inside the galaxy.

This is a system with seven planets.

It orbits a yellow dwarf star called RJW at the center of the galaxy.

The seven planets from the inside to the outside of the galaxy are two hot planets close to the star.

A barren, earth-brown-looking planet.

One planet is half covered in white, and in the other half, except for the equatorial part where some green can be seen, the rest is also white.

This planet is where the star region's capital colony is located.

Further out is a planet with crimson flames.

On the outermost are a gas giant and an ice giant.

The sensors of the Iron Ore showed that there was a space station of different shapes and functions built in the orbit around these planets.

And in every space station and on the surface of every planet, a large number of spacecraft are taking off and landing at every moment.

At the same time, there are more flying out of the galaxy.

This scene was even more devastating than the one in Yuhui's colony.

In addition to these, they can show signs of development and vitality within the galaxy.

What attracted Chen Ming's attention most in the entire galaxy was the star gate, the crystallization of human technology built on the orbit of the fourth planet in the galaxy.

This is the capital of the Galo star field where Chen Ming is currently.

Here, Chen Ming seemed to be able to see a glimpse of the prosperous star field.

Chen Ming turned off the automatic driving and manually controlled the Iron Ore and took the other three ships closer to the space station on the white habitable planet in the galaxy.

He had done a little homework before.

The functions of the outer space stations surrounding the colony planet and the space stations on Yuhui's side are basically the same.

It was a small branch of a colony.

Complete some simple tasks here, or provide some supplies to passing spacecraft.

It saves people from having to land on the planet for trivial matters, saving time.

However, this doesn't work well for things like pirate bounties.

Chen Ming still has to go to the surface of the planet and go to a professional government agency to carry out follow-up operations.

If the Iron Ore had not been modified with militarized systems, it would have only needed to apply to land directly.

But now, the several armed spacecraft that Chen Ming brought can only temporarily dock in the space station.

He can travel between the space station and the surface by himself via the space elevator or the public personnel transport ships provided by the space station.

Otherwise, if you violate the rules and directly enter the planet's atmosphere, the heavy defense array weapons deployed on the surface will be no joke.

As several spaceships controlled by Chen Ming gradually approached the space station in orbit of the white planet.

Chen Ming took the initiative to send an entry request to the space station.

Then the communication from the space station came.

After the call was connected, a gentle female voice sounded in the communication channel: "Hello, please explain your purpose so that we can register your spacecraft."

"Submit a bounty."

"Okay, your identity and purpose have been recorded. Please follow the signal light and enter the dock."

In less than a few minutes, Chen Ming successfully parked all four ships in the dock of the space station.

The two maps were quickly sent over the space station's network.

A map of the space station and a map of the surface.

The places where Chen Ming needs to go to pay the bounty are specially marked on it, which is very user-friendly.

Like before, Chen Ming stuffed the small stone into his protective suit helmet and took it off the Iron Ore.

Looking at the surroundings, the architectural style is somewhat different from that of the pirate space station.

Chen Ming looked at it more with some interest, but as he looked at it, he suddenly thought of a very realistic problem.

"With your current wealth, do you still care about this little mooring fee?"

"Oh, yes."

Chen Ming nodded and followed the instructions on the map to the location of the space elevator connecting the space station and the surface of the planet.

After waiting for a few minutes and passing security check, he boarded this thing that he had only seen in science fiction movies.

As the elevator descended, Chen Ming could even see through the transparent porthole next to it that the planet's almost flat surface was getting closer and closer.

While passing through the atmosphere, Chen Ming could even see the heavy snow falling outside.

This is the reason why the planet looks white.

Protective clothing can keep you warm in space environments, so it's no problem for humans to withstand low temperatures that are acceptable to them.

At this time, Old Wu suddenly said like a tour guide: "Although this planet has snow all year round, the temperature at the equator is above 20 degrees Celsius for four months a year, so it is also considered a habitable planet."

"Normally there wouldn't be colonies built on this type of planet. After all, there are many good habitable planets. But the other planets in the galaxy are too good."

Chen Ming heard Old Wu's chatter and recalled the situation of Yu Hui's colony. After comparing the development gap between the two sides, he asked with great interest, "How good is it?"

Old Wu suddenly seemed to be getting excited and said, "The two planets at the innermost part of the galaxy contain a large amount of common metal resources and high-level metal resources."

"Being close to a star results in a very hot environment, and without an atmosphere, there is no need to worry about pollution, which gives us a unique advantage when building industrial smelting equipment."

"The two outermost giant planets, a gas giant and an ice giant, can provide a large amount of rare isotopes such as deuterium that can be used in industry."

"Although the remaining two planets are relatively ordinary, they also have resources worth developing."

"That barren planet was once a habitable planet, and the rock layers inside contain a large number of fossils that can be studied."

"That planet with drastic geological changes and volcanoes everywhere is not worth developing, but the galaxy patrol headquarters is built on it."

Chen Ming also asked in confusion: "The Galaxy Patrol Headquarters is built in such a harsh environment?"

"Yes. In fact, most galaxy governments that can afford to build patrol headquarters will choose to build them on volcanic planets within the galaxy if possible."

"I haven't heard much about this. Why is that?"

Old Wu smiled at Chen Ming and said, "Hey, I don't know either."

"In short, because of the relationship with those other planets, the star region government was finally located on the only habitable planet in the galaxy."

"This galaxy is simply a perfect galaxy template. It can almost achieve self-sufficiency in supply just by relying on the galaxy itself."

"You probably won't find a galaxy like this within a few thousand light years."

Chen Ming now turned his attention back from the heavy snow to his surroundings and asked, "How do you know so clearly?"

Old Wu shook the terminal in his hand with some pride and said, "Just checked."

“…”

The space elevator successfully reached the ground after a while.

Because the planet's climate is somewhat cold, most of the inhabited buildings are built on the equator.

The space elevator just goes directly to the equator and is not too far from the star domain government.

With the help of a transport robot carrying the coffin, Chen Ming and Lao Wu quickly arrived at the government building.

Although it looked like it was getting dark outside, government departments continued to work.

According to Imperial regulations, regardless of the local time, all government working hours must be based on Earth standard time.

Anyway, with the level of human technology, when it gets dark the worst that can happen is we just need to add some more lighting.

Similarly, relying on technical means, the room can be made as dark as night during the day without affecting people's normal rest.

Such unified planning facilitates the flow of people between galaxies.

There are security checks at the entrance to the government park, just like at the space elevator.

The person in charge of the inspection was the same as the person in charge of the security check of the space elevator. It seemed as if he didn't see what was lying in the coffin at all, and he just let Chen Ming go.

He even pointed out to Chen Ming where he was going next, the government’s police department.

Only the guard in charge of letting people pass clearly received the news that they were allowed to pass, and seemed to want to say something, but was immediately stopped by Old Wu who stuffed something into his hand.

Chen Ming and Lao Wu still successfully carried the coffin into the government park and came to a separate small building next to the government building.

This is the Colony's Security Headquarters.

When I walked in, there were several service windows next to me, but they were all empty and no one wanted to do any business.

Chen Ming walked forward and tapped on the glass gently.

The clerk who was processing the documents raised his head and noticed the transport robot behind Chen Ming and the coffins on it. He said, "Hello, do you need to confirm the bounty?"

"right."

"OK."

After receiving Chen Ming's affirmative answer, the clerk picked up a terminal from the side, tapped on it a few times, and showed it to Chen Ming.

"Please scan with your terminal, register your identity, and then prepare the necessary materials. Combat records and videos, spacecraft wreckage, and other physical objects will all be fine."

"Please also state the person you want to claim the bounty from."

Chen Ming recalled the information he had written down before and said, "A pirate nicknamed Ascaris, whose real name should be Liu Kang, with a bounty of 22 million, and his three subordinates."

"We don't have the battle footage or the wreckage of the spacecraft, but we have brought the bodies with us."

Chen Ming reached out and patted the metal coffin behind him.

After all, the battle videos and records would expose his afterglow ship, and things like spaceship wreckage have basically become materials.

The Mule-class destroyers are still useful to Chen Ming and cannot be handed over. Moreover, they have been repaired and have no value as evidence.

There was a hint of surprise in the clerk's eyes. Twenty-two million pirates is not a big number, but it is not small either. It still has some weight.

He continued typing on the computer in front of him and said, "It's okay if you only bring the body. Please wait a moment."

The clerk quickly printed out a paper form and handed it to Chen Ming.

All the information just mentioned is recorded above.

"Please take this to the white building next to you. Someone will guide you after you enter."

"Um."

When walking out of the Security Bureau, Chen Ming suddenly found that he seemed to see a familiar figure flash by in the distance and disappear outside the gate of the government park.

Chen Ming narrowed his eyes and tried to take a closer look, but the figure seemed to have disappeared out of thin air.

He frowned slightly and ignored the man, thinking that he might have seen it wrong.

Chen Ming continued to follow the direction given by the clerk and found the white building that looked like a laboratory.

As soon as Chen Ming and Old Wu entered, a researcher in a white coat came up to greet them. He said to Chen Ming with a smile on his face, "Hello, Mr. Mu. This is the pirate you want to hand over, right? Can we open it and confirm it?"

"no problem."

Chen Ming asked the transport robot to place several coffins flat on the ground, and reached out and pressed the corner of one of the coffins.

The coffin lid opened automatically, revealing the corpse of the pirate leader, who was no longer in human form.

Fortunately, the metal coffin given by the boss was thoughtfully equipped with a small refrigeration device to prevent the corpse from rotting, otherwise the situation Chen Ming saw now might be even worse.

Chen Ming couldn't help but whisper to Old Wu beside him: "The boss looks quite angry."

Old Wu also whispered, "You spent a lot of money and connections to build a colony that is still in the development stage, and suddenly someone took away your supplies. You're angry too."

The researcher used the terminal to carefully examine the corpse for a long time before he could barely recognize that the person in the coffin was the same person as the one on the bounty list.

He put away the terminal and said to Chen Ming as if he was reciting a formula: "No problem, Mr. Mu, then we will take the body away."

The researcher didn't seem to have too many doubts. After all, Chen Ming and Lao Wu had registered their identities along the way, and they would have to come in person to claim the bounty.

If you try to cheat the bounty by using fake things instead of real ones, the final outcome will be jail.

"We will conduct DNA tests on them and contact you when the results come out. We expect to give you a reply within one working day."

"As long as the verification is OK, you can go to the place where you did the business before to collect the reward."

"The reward money does not need to be taxed. If you are short of money when you claim it, you can go directly to the relevant department in the building to file a complaint."

After the researcher finished speaking, he immediately summoned a humanoid transport robot in their company, which was obviously more advanced than Chen Ming's spider-shaped transport robot, and took the coffins away together.

Chen Ming couldn't help but look at the robot a few more times. He was basically certain that this robot was not only capable of carrying things, but also had no shortage of combat power.

This is the good thing about the government.

Chen Ming is just envious now, but he doesn't have any special ideas.

After leaving the government park, Old Wu, who had been a little depressed, suddenly seemed to be resurrected. He asked Chen Ming excitedly, "We still have one day, let's go have some fun?"

Chen Ming thought about Lao Wu's suggestion. He indeed had not had a complete rest for a long time.

It's nice to relax for a day.

So Chen Ming did not refuse and answered: "Then you can choose a place."

"I said, OK."

Old Wu thought for a moment and said, "I know a place that you might be interested in."

"Where?"

"black market."

Half an hour later.

Chen Ming and Lao Wu took the bus and arrived at the black market that Lao Wu mentioned.

Originally, Old Wu wanted to take a public spaceship, but because Chen Ming wanted to see more of the city covered in heavy snow, they finally took the bus here.

Although the black market that Old Wu mentioned was called a black market, Chen Ming only discovered what it was after he arrived there.

The black market is a commercial street that looks very prosperous.

Outside, you can see guards without ID badges maintaining order.

It is basically similar to an ordinary commercial street, except that the shops inside are mostly large stores with large storefronts.

(End of this chapter)