Chapter 84 Star Region Tournament First Match (Ten) (Second Update)
"...Disconnected?!" In the Qiehua team's lounge, all the team members frowned as they watched the light screen in front of them suddenly go out.
"How strange." Designer Saori shook her head. "Is the signal being jammed? The equipment for the Star Navigation Competition should be the best... Could this be a deliberate design?"
"It must have been an emergency," Observer Leon shouted. "It can't have been a deliberate scheme! How could anyone deliberately prevent people from watching the live broadcast?! Show me the colors! It's such a tense moment!"
Limelight: "They're in the virtual mines."
She stood up from the sofa, frowning. "To ensure the smooth running of the competition, the organizing committee must have conducted energy monitoring within the virtual mining area to ensure that the energy field is stable. There haven't been any unusual mineral growth outbreaks recently..."
Several people looked at each other.
They are a civilian exploration team, but because of their strong strength, they have traveled to many places, including the unsafe star area outside the southwest star area.
"Maze Star is located at the junction of the Central Star Region and the Free Star Region," Captain Qiehua whispered. "The Black Tide's energy was abnormal recently, and Maze Star must have been significantly affected."
"Could it be... there are some black tide creatures sneaking in from underground..."
"Anything that can affect the communication signal must be a big one that is difficult to deal with!"
If Mingyu could hear the discussion of the Qiehua team, he would definitely agree with their conclusion.
It's a big one.
A big, creepy guy.
It was millions of times larger than the black tideworms he had seen in the wild resource area of the Maze Star!
"Pull it up! Brother Mu!——" Mingyu shouted loudly, "Quick!——"
The bright blue mental power quickly gathered upwards, and the silver starship was pulled upwards.
And from the sea of lava below, closely following the silver starship, were thick and long tentacles that almost filled half of the mountain pass.
“Bang!”
The black tentacles swung towards the starship, but were avoided by Mu Baixing, and then hit the mountain walls on both sides.
With just this one blow, the red rocks peeled off and collapsed downwards.
Lava sank downward, and a high, sharp flapping of wings echoed from below. A massive black insect, nearly a hundred meters tall, soared upward from the mountain pass, its segmented belly bulging and its mouth moving as if swallowing. Red-black magma clung to its body, yet it couldn't damage its hard, jet-black shell. Its abdomen was completely encased in a carapace, and a horizontal red pattern was forming on its surface.
"Black tideworm... the queen." Red-haired muttered, "Why... is it so big...? Where are its workers? I never thought there would be such a big one... and alone..."
"The queen escaped from the crackdown." Mu Boxing frowned and said, "She was probably on the verge of death, but she happened to run into the lava giant."
"It devoured the juvenile lava giant and is undergoing secondary development."
The queen's body was rising from the lava below.
Mingyu moved along with its movements.
The size of this queen insect was even larger than Mingyu had initially imagined. Black tide energy emanated from under its wings, forming thick black smoke that covered the sky.
"Our starship has a coating on the outside that isolates the black tide energy," Ming Yu whispered. "The black tide energy emitted by the queen is very strong and is still increasing. With just the coating, we can sail within this energy for about ten minutes."
"A-Lu, can you reconnect the line and report to the competition committee?" Red Hair called out, "Hurry and tell them something big has happened here!"
"Communication is down!" Green Hat responded quickly, "I tried to communicate with the organizing committee the second I saw it."
"That's right," Mingyu murmured. "The golden treasure chests have already entered the collection chamber, but the competition system has not responded yet."
“I don’t know if only nearby signals are affected… or if the entire mine area has lost communication signals.”
"We should be able to leave, right?" Large flakes of snow also appeared on the starship detector. Red Hair gave up the instrument screen, stuck his head out and rubbed his eyes to look outside.
The queen's tentacles swung wildly as the starship moved. In front of it, the silver starship looked more like a small insect.
"With the loss of signal connection, the organizing committee should be aware of the anomaly soon. The mining area is not far from Maze City One, and the guards of Maze City One should be able to discover the clues quickly..." Mingyu's eyes shifted to its abdomen as he spoke, "But... it seems too late."
As the queen insect breathed, the underside of its abdomen opened and closed. It was a vertical crack running downwards, and when it opened, it revealed a cascading, surging blackness. There were countless densely packed black larvae, swaying their tentacles and limbs within.
They are growing inside the mother insect's body at a very fast rate, and their size is rapidly increasing with each opening and closing.
It seems like they will come out in droves at any moment.
"The queen insect has been watching us the whole time! She must be using us as material to raise her larvae. How can we, with just a few of us, fill their gaps?" Red Hair whispered, "I don't think there's enough to go around..."
"The larvae are growing very fast, and they'll give birth in about a minute." Mingyu watched the queen's movements, feeling a little nauseous. He exhaled and said calmly, "Even if the queen is watching us, it's not impossible for us to escape if we want..."
"But if we let these bugs out again, we'll be in trouble."
Having witnessed the chaos among the residents of Border Space City after being affected by the Black Tide energy, and having experienced the situation where Black Tide insects broke out of the body of Sun Nian, the pilot of the Third Legion, Mingyu's vigilance against Black Tide creatures has increased several levels compared to before.
After leaving the capital planet, he truly realized how dangerous the surrounding human star region was.
"The combat effectiveness of the black tide bugs isn't particularly high, relying primarily on their mouthparts to attack. The problem is that they grow and reproduce quickly, making them prone to parasitizing other organisms. With hundreds of these larvae emerging, if we try to eliminate them once they're born, there's no telling how many more will be left behind."
"Will the Labyrinth Star Guards be effective?" Ming Yu said angrily. "If not, report it to the military! If too many planetary creatures are parasitized, we could accidentally have another X7 Star Sea accident..."
At the same time, the executive officer of Maze Star was in urgent communication with the organizing committee of the Star Navigation Competition. Facing the questioning of the organizing committee, he was sweating profusely.
Because he was afraid that the Star Navigation Competition would withdraw its decision to use the virtual mining area of Maze Star as the competition venue, he had not reported the special situation of the discovery of the black tide creatures on Maze Star until the signal was suddenly interrupted and the patrol ship deployed by the Star Navigation Competition Organizing Committee outside the mining area took off and sailed towards the area where the signal was lost.
The executive officer realized that the matter of the black tide insects could no longer be concealed, so he had to reveal everything. He quickly stated, "The guards have done their utmost to eliminate them..."
"Is this a small matter?!" The person in charge of the Star Navigation Competition Organizing Committee was furious. "Order your guards to take off now! I'll report this to the military and have them search Maze Planet!"
"What should we do with the participating teams?" a member of the organizing committee said. "We can only contact some of the teams... There's no signal communication within twenty miles of the golden treasure chest. We can only ask the teams outside to evacuate, but we can't warn the teams around the treasure chest not to advance toward the accident site."
The situation is tricky.
"Someone seems to be coming from behind?" Red Hair looked back in the star map.
Apparently, there were other teams that hadn't received any warning and were heading towards the location of the golden treasure chest.
Mingyu's mental power then glanced back and he cursed softly.
"It's Lieyang." He whispered.
Red Hair: "...They are not going to fire at us now..."
Mingyu sneered.
"The distance is not enough." He said, "I guess Lieyang doesn't dare to come over!"
The black starship was suspended in the distance, parked at the boundary of the diffuse black tide energy, and retreated as the black tide energy spread.
Of course, Feren and Mingyan came here to snipe the colorful ones and grab the golden treasure chest.
They didn't receive any system-related notifications, but they did find a few Star Beast treasure chests while wandering around searching. They were luckier than the Rangers, as the fragments they found happened to connect, allowing them to piece together the location of the golden treasure chest.
As the team with the highest points, the colorful team must be sailing towards the location of the golden treasure chest.
However, before they could find any trace of the colorful creature, they suddenly lost contact with the Star Navigation Competition system. Unsure if this was another Star Navigation Competition incident, the two continued sailing forward instead of returning.
Then they finally saw the colorful world, but the situation was not as simple as they had thought.
Black tidewater bug.
Although they had received a lot of training in fighting against black tideworms in the military academy, they had never seen such a large queen!
"What the hell?" Inside the starship, Feren frowned in disgust. "Why is there such a disgusting thing in this mining area..."
"Feren." Mingyan also frowned. "Stand back. The queen's energy level is still increasing..."
Phelan glanced at him.
"We're about to graduate from the military academy and join the Third Legion," said Feren, reluctantly. "Are we just going to watch the Black Tide creatures run away like that?"
"That's a queen bug evolving towards S-rank, not an ordinary black tide bug. We can't take it down on our own," Ming Yan said rationally. "We've also lost communication with the Star Navigation Competition. Who knows what will happen after the starship crashes? Although it seems the virtual mining area equipment is still functioning normally, with no module disconnection warnings, what if something goes wrong? We don't have any backup right now..."
Feren frowned.
"I'm a 2S-level awakened human." He argued, "You too..."
"Look at its belly," Mingyan interrupted. "It'll churn out hundreds of larvae in under a minute! Each one will be at least B-rank, and you won't have enough time to escape! The concentration of Kuroshio energy is already very high! Our starship isn't in top shape right now! Engine No. 2 was damaged while trying to escape the pursuers, and its power is at 40%. We've also depleted nearly half our mental energy."
Ming Yan: "Think about Sun Nian, who was parasitized and died by the black tide bugs in the resource area!"
Feren fell silent.
"I don't know if the Star Navigation Competition Organizing Committee knows about the situation here," Ming Yan said. "We need to seek help from outside. The signal here is being jammed. While the queen insect isn't noticing us... turn around quickly!"
Red Hair: "They turned around!"
Mingyu was not surprised.
"They'll go notify the Star Navigation Competition Organizing Committee and Labyrinth Star, and hopefully prevent other starships from entering," Ming Yu said coldly. "It's not like they've made no contribution at all."
But the queen in front of him had devoured the energy of the lava giant, and not only had she undergone a secondary development, but she was also about to give birth because of the sufficient energy.
"We're still getting a good deal." Despite the critical situation, the designer couldn't help but think outside the box. "What level of juvenile Lava Giants did the organizing committee have to have fed the Queen so well?! It seems this golden treasure chest wasn't easy to get."
Colorful hair: "..."
"Let's not talk about the treasure chest right now, Brother Lu?" Red Hair shouted, "Are we leaving or not? Even if Lieyang goes back to get help, he won't be back in time before the queen gives birth!"
Even though he'd lived in the Outer Harbor for years, Red Hair had never seen a Black Tide Queen this large. Knowing the terrifying nature of Black Tide creatures, he said nervously, "LU, you just said we could escape! Going it alone doesn't seem like a good bet! Should we just turn around and run?!"
"No." Mingyu answered in a low voice, and Mu Baixing's cold voice sounded together with his, right beside Mingyu's ear.
Mingyu looked up at him.
Mu Baixing frowned, his expression indifferent and sharp.
His aura became heavy, bringing out a suffocating sense of oppression that was rarely seen around Mingyu. It was obvious that he was extremely disgusted with these black tide bugs.
"Mingyu." Mu Baixing tilted his head. "In an emergency, we can make an exception?"
Golden light emanated from the secondary gun barrel, its charge now ready for fire. The light within it flickered, its intensity rising and falling as its mental energy grew and weakened.
Mu Boxing: "If we upgrade to 3S, the situation we saw in the last qualifying match will only occur."
Mingyu: “…”
This means that he will only vomit blood, and will not fall into a coma or be on the verge of death like when he was resisting Feren's mental power in the wild mining area.
"But you're recuperating now." The designer didn't give in and said to him, "The doctor said you need to rest well for at least two weeks, and it's not over yet...Brother Mu."
"Look, there's so much black tide energy around us." He leaned forward in the limited space of the restraint and said to Mu Baixing seriously, "You have to let me be a hero for once."
Mingyu: "I told you that you only need to be my energy replenisher this time!"
The starship's main gun barrel rose upward as he spoke.
"You're right next to me now, and we're sitting side by side." Mingyu looked at Mu Baixing and discussed with him with a smile, "If my mental domain is overloaded in the mining area, just take off your helmet and call an ambulance for me?"
He was talking about a real-life scenario.
Mu Baixing's expression changed, and just as he was about to speak, a high-pitched buzzing sound came from the main gun barrel.
"You're not the only one who can burst out mental power! I saw you use it so handsomely and you must have practiced it secretly!" Mingyu raised his voice and shouted: "Hold on tight! Brother Mu!——"
He pressed the operating light screen with one hand.
Bright blue mental power flowed along the pipeline into the heart of the starship, was pumped out with great force, and then poured into the gun barrel, spraying out upward at high speed.
The energy load of the slender barrel was not high, but when the spiritual force thread swirled and rose into the sky, and came into contact with the black tide—
Then it suddenly absorbed a large amount of black energy!
This was no longer the case during the second qualifying match when a few bright blue filaments were floating in the black tide energy.
The endless flow of spiritual power transformed into a cloud that was extremely gorgeous, dazzling... but also terrifying in shape.
Those were bright blue tornado clouds that were stacked up, spreading outward, and coiling up in circles, almost occupying the sky.
Mingyu sucked the thick black color in, and a blue flash like lightning appeared in the cloud.
"Brother Mu——!" The designer shouted, enduring the negative pain of absorbing the black tide's energy, "Lend me your mental power! Quick!——"
Mu Baixing pursed his lips, his expression cold, and his fingers were already pressing down slightly on the operating panel.
In fact, there was no need for him to shout, as golden light had already flashed from the secondary gun muzzle.
Mu Baixing almost wanted to ignore Mingyu's wishes, and also burst out his mental power to directly fire at the queen insect with the secondary gun muzzle.
However, the golden color that suddenly brightened eventually dimmed and returned to its original dark brightness.
Mu Baixing finally gave up.
Because Mingyu asked him not to move.
Therefore, although the golden mental power poured out from the secondary gun muzzle, it did not rush towards the queen insect, but merged into the bright blue energy tide.
The expression on Mu Baixing's face was terrifyingly cold, and his mental power was released outward without restraint, like golden lightning that mixed into the clouds, was entangled and absorbed, and was annihilated in the terrifying blue without any resistance.
"squeak--!"
The queen insect felt threatened and spread its twelve black wings, shaking rapidly.
Its huge body is extremely flexible, and it can appear dozens of meters away at a speed that is difficult to capture with the naked eye, as if it can move instantly.
The sand on the surface was picked up by the fluctuating energy wind, and rumbling thunder was heard from the tornado, drowning out the sound of the giant queen insect's wings flapping.
The bright blue clouds wrapped in golden lightning are not easy to get rid of.
Its opening suddenly expanded outward, and in a split second, it sucked the giant queen insect in!
The strange phenomenon at this moment could be clearly seen from dozens or hundreds of stars away.
"Beep—Star Navigation Competition System Alarm—All teams, please evacuate!"
In the distance, inside every starship that was still able to receive signals, a series of warning prompts were issued on the light screen.
In the live broadcast room, the plush rabbit looked at the light screens in front of it, which were flashing with snowflakes but still not extinguished. His whole body was stiff and speechless.
His eyes were fixed on the ranger's light screen.
Among these starships, except for the Fiery Sun that was heading outward, the Ranger was the closest to the scene of the incident.
Mulan had an expressionless face as she passed by the scorching sun that was sailing rapidly outward.
The highly extensible mental power after the resonance between Vincent and Yang Haoyuan has told them what happened in the distance.
"The Black Tide Queen." Vincent whispered, "What do Mingyu and the others want to do?"
"It must be a big fight!" Yang Haoyuan said nervously, "How can a single starship of theirs defeat such a massive queen... Mulian! Go and take a look!"
Cui Xiaoduo: “Let’s go and take a look!”
Mulan had a blank expression on her face and had already turned the starship.
After receiving the system prompt, the gray starship did not evacuate immediately like others. Instead, it turned around and faced the scene of the incident, displaying a signal banner that read "Stand by for support at any time."
The camera following them flashed snowflakes more and more frequently, but still intermittently recorded the horrifying vision at the end of the sky.
In the distance of the sky, large tracts of black energy were sucked in by the bright blue energy cloud.
The huge black tide queen spread its terrifying multi-faceted black wings, and dense black poured out from its abdomen. The sharp insect chirping almost pierced the eardrums of the audience in front of the live broadcast.
The plush rabbit couldn't help but fold its ears tightly, but the sound disappeared the next second.
Because the bright blue tornado cloud swallowed up the mother insect and the newly born larvae.
Vincent and Yang Haoyuan: "..."
“Oh my god…” The two observers quickly gathered their mental energy and shouted, “No, no, no! Stop supporting Mulan!! Land now! — Quick!!!”
Their shouts were almost panic-stricken.
Cui Xiaoduo didn't know what kind of scene they saw in their mental vision, but he had never heard the two observers so panicked.
The little squirrel was stiff all over, his eyes fixed on the scene outside the window.
Mulan followed the observer's instructions, and the gray starship suddenly dropped in altitude, approaching the ground at a high speed as if it was falling.
At the last second, the gray starship's lift engines erupted with sparks, and it instantly slowed to a stop and landed. Cui Xiaoduo, the squirrel, was nearly thrown from his harness. However, he couldn't focus on steadying himself. An instinctive sense of impending danger made him cover his ears with his paws.
Inside the starship, they vaguely felt the ground shaking.
An explosion far beyond anyone's imagination is about to occur.
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