Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 448 The Dead
In the command room of this special operation to attack the Nano Colossus.

The sentinel array once again sent back news that the Nano Colossus had been confirmed destroyed, and new Nano Colossus had not been replenished in a short time.

But the news of the nano fleet's abnormal behavior was also reported once again.

The actions of the Empire do seem to have affected the behavior of the survivors. They have changed their original plans and are moving in the direction of the Empire.

And the number of fleets affected is gradually increasing.

Originally, only a fleet of several hundred ships was affected, but in just the past few minutes, the number of affected fleets has increased by hundreds.

Heading straight towards the empire.

But soon news came from the sentinel array.

The number of affected fleets stopped increasing after reaching one-tenth of the total number of nano fleets, and the Queen's vehicle still did not move.

It was as if this was not an intervention from the Queen, but merely a counterattack against the destruction of the Colossus.

No one knows why this is the case, but it may not be a bad thing for the Empire.

However, there were still some people in the conference room who were feeling gloomy because of the bizarre operations of the survivors' fleet and the Queen's inaction.

This includes the Minister of Psychic Powers.

He couldn't understand it.

The Nanocolossus was destroyed, and the survivors' efforts to assimilate the planet and expand themselves came to a halt.

Under normal circumstances, the survivors would either carry out large-scale retaliation, using the opportunity to compensate for the expansion effect brought about by the demolished colossus, or find a way to directly solve the problem of expansion.

Under the premise that the only means of expansion for the Remnants at present seems to be the Colossus, the Queen chose to sit on the sidelines and only sent a small part of the fleet to the Empire.

The number of these fleets was not even comparable to the number of fleets sent by the Empire. At most, they were only equal to the fleets sent by the Empire to attract attention. In the end, both sides retreated.

Everyone knows that a fleet of this size can't cause any waves, so why did the Queen do this?
What traps are the survivors setting up? Or do they have some more special ideas?

Nobody knows.

What is known at present is that the nano fleet of the survivors has extremely strong self-repair capabilities, and they can perform long-distance jumps more frequently.

Therefore, this nano fleet is expected to arrive at the border of the empire in two days.

Perhaps it will take two days to understand what the Nano Fleet is going to do.

The empire will certainly not sit idly by in the next two days, not even now.

After the success of the Nano Colossus plan, the command center was still extremely busy, and everyone was paying attention to the development of another simultaneous plan.

Outside the star field occupied by Nano.

Another Imperial fleet is approaching the Nanostar Region.

The scale of this fleet is much larger than the fleet that ambushed the Nano Colossus. Not only does it have two Colossi at the same time, but it also has a large number of Zerg fleets escorting it from the edge.

This huge fleet is constantly jumping towards one side of the Nano Star Field.

The Minister of Psionics successfully borrowed the Colossus from Splendor, and also borrowed some Zerg fleets controlled by the Queen herself.

After approaching the Nano Star Field, the fleet lay in ambush, waiting for a suitable opportunity.

Soon the time came.

The joint fleet formed by several powerful imperial armies that had evacuated previously launched a counterattack after the evacuation.

A reverse raid, as if to take down all the galaxies previously occupied by the Nano Colossi in one fell swoop.

The nano fleet's attention was once again drawn to them.

No one and not even the survivors thought that the Imperial Fleet, having achieved its goal, would turn back. A large number of nano fleets were immediately dispatched to the galaxy where a new round of fighting broke out.

This is the opportunity.

The Colossus fleet, which had been waiting at the edge of the star field for a long time, immediately made its last jump in a short period of time.

Arrived within the nano-galaxy that served as the Colossus test target.

After the fleet with a crushing momentum cleared out the nano patrol fleet in the galaxy, a Colossus of Chen Ming and a Colossus belonging to the Empire each drove over a planet that had been assimilated by the nano.

Two different Colossus-class weapons, the Earth-shattering Star and the Neutron Annihilation, were activated at the same time.

Moreover, both colossi are blessed by the brilliant Chen Ming's spiritual power, which enhances their starting efficiency and output power to a certain extent.

However, Glory is obviously more experienced in the use of neutron annihilation, and the startup of this Colossus is obviously faster.

A flood of neutrons poured down from space.

It seems that it only takes a blink of an eye to completely destroy the nanoorganisms on the planet.

But before the neutron destruction was fully initiated, the nanomachines on the planet had already detected the danger.

The nanostorm covering the entire planet is becoming more intense. Countless nanomachines flowing on the earth have also joined the storm, like a layer of isolation net.
Near the location on the planet where the Colossus was locking onto it, the nano storm had almost condensed into a tsunami-like product.

The storm here is like a giant vortex in a nano ocean.

When the seemingly endless torrent of neutrons fell, the nanostorm completely swallowed up all the high-energy neutrons.

Even though doing so would cause damage to countless nanomachines, these machines are still doing their best to continuously capture these neutrons that would cause irreversible damage to everything on the planet.

Countless broken nanomachines were thrown out from the storm.

But countless new nanomachines have been reintegrated into the storm.

The output of neutron killing is decreasing, and those neutrons that were activated have been exhausted.

There were groans from the command center that was watching this scene.

Neutron killing is confirmed to be ineffective against nano planets.

Only the Chibaku Tensei, which is still in the process of starting up, still retains everyone's hope.

With the activation of the Earth-shattering Star, destructive energy rays directly hit the surface of the nano planet.

The energy beam that was supposed to penetrate the earth's crust and mantle and hit the earth's core was blocked at this moment.

The nanomachines still rushed towards the landing point of the Earth-shattering Star without worrying about their own damage.

The antimatter that supplies energy to the nanomachines is used to offset the energy of the Earth-shattering Star.

This makes the direct damage caused by the direct hit of the Earth-shattering Star much higher than normal.

But there was almost no effective damage to the planet itself.

Even the Earth-shattering Star cannot completely destroy the nano planet.

According to the reconnaissance of the Sentinel Array, the Nano Fleet has also returned to defend, and the Colossus, which has no normal combat capability, must retreat.

The operation failed.

At this time, there was no other sound in the command center of the two operations except the voice of command.

Such a result is really hard to accept.

The empire itself only set three goals.

Only two of the three goals can be advanced normally.

Of the two that could be advanced, only one was completed in the end.

Such a result might be okay at other times, but now, such a result will only make everyone extremely disappointed and desperate.

Aside from the Colossi, the Empire really only has Level 6 Psykers that have the power to destroy planets.

But now the empire's psychic powers must not be used at will, as they are all used to target the Queen.

The empire's course of action suddenly fell into a vicious cycle.

The Minister of Psychic Power, one of the planners of this operation, was also in the command center. After confirming the failure of the operation, he left early and quickly sent the news to those who were not present but needed to know the information.

They have to think about their next move.

Should we continue to rely on psychics to target the Queen as before, or should we choose a new plan?

The minister's mind was a little confused. He really didn't expect that the Colossus would not play any role at all when the Queen did not appear, making many of the previous plans and arrangements become useless.

He really couldn't think of what to do in a short period of time.

Just when he was at his wits' end.

His terminal suddenly received a call from his secretary.

After the call was connected, the secretary's anxious voice came over immediately: "Minister, I'm in trouble here."

"What trouble could be more troublesome than what we are facing now?"

The secretary said without hesitation: "Yes."

The minister was choked, but he was not angry: "What happened?"

"Our department's star system is not open to the public. If any spacecraft passes by without paying attention, we will ask them to leave."

"Well, then what?"

"There's a guy who's refusing to leave hyperspace. He says he must come in to see you."

"Wouldn't it be better to just drive them away?"

"He's an unregistered psyker, and...he says...he's the most wanted criminal the Empire has ever seen."

The minister immediately searched for this keyword in his mind.

If we were to talk about the most wanted criminal in the empire, he must be the one who single-handedly caused the empire's outer star regions to be severely strangled against pirates for nearly thirty years.

At the same time, he was also the initiator of the biggest scandal in the imperial army.

"Shi Qian..."

"He did say that his name was this, and his appearance does match that of the deceased Shi Qian. We wanted to test his genes, and he agreed, but it's still underway."

"I'll go back right away."

The minister's tone was a little difficult to fathom. After all, it was because of Shi Qian that the relationship between Wu An and the Empire became completely irreparable.

He quickly boarded the spaceship bound for his home star region, while at the same time, memories of the past kept flashing through his mind.

The cause of the conflict between Wu An and the Empire was actually just a trivial matter.

At that time, Wu Anman was running around the empire, looking for new talents with potential to train.

Finally, they found Shi Qian, who was still a young man at the time, on the pirate's head.

People who become pirates do so either because they are forced to do so by life or because they are humiliated.

Shi Qian is the former.

Wu An doesn't care much about identity, so there is no problem for him to find Shi Qian. It is easy to join the association after clearing his identity.

But Wu An was not in a hurry to do so.

He planned to put Shi Qian in a pirate environment to train him first.

This gray area is indeed better for training people than being in a safe place.

But Shi Qian's identity as a pirate brought him into conflict with the local military.

This was just a small matter.

With Wu An's identity placed above Shi Qian, this conflict was suppressed in minutes.

But there are always people who like to take advantage of their status to cause trouble, and Shi Qian is not the only one with a status background.

Once one party is shameless first, even Wu An can't solve the problem simply.

This ultimately led to a siege that required the use of capital ships.

Then the battleship was sunk by a seemingly ordinary Reaper torpedo, and Shi Qian also escaped during the encirclement.

Things are totally out of control.

Since then, Shi Qian has become the most wanted criminal in the empire.

On the one hand, there is the face of the military, and on the other hand, there is Shi Qian, who has already built up a fleet after struggling among pirates, and the Psychic Society that has a close relationship with Shi Qian. Even the Grand Archon cannot make a decision to keep the two sides fair.

We can only let it go and let Shi Qian and the army solve it themselves.

Such a decision is actually somewhat biased towards the military, but after all, the military is the foundation of the empire.

Wu An was naturally unhappy about this, but he had nothing to say about the decision.

He just kept trying to mediate.

But the results were not ideal.

When Wu An went to mediate, the military found a way to delay Wu An and launched a siege on Shi Qian, sending out two level 6 psychics at the same time, and only then was Shi Qian killed.

After that, Wu An also fled to a pirate space station in the fringe star field and almost cut off contact with the empire.

This can be regarded as a disguised confirmation of the authenticity of Shi Qian's death.

At least that was how it ended.

Judging from the current news, Shi Qian is not in any trouble at all.

This shouldn't be a conspiracy between the army and Wu An to deceive people and save face for the army.

After all, there was no need for Wu An to sever ties with the empire.

He definitely thought Shi Qian was really dead at that time.

But no one could have imagined that Shi Qian was still alive and even appeared again now.

The minister could think of only one reason for his sudden appearance.

Wu An's death.

He had the means to know about Wu An's death and came here after two days of preparation.

When he was still a level 4 psychic at most, he was able to destroy a capital ship. Now, decades later, even if he had been in hibernation for a long time, the power he possessed would definitely be even stronger.

He suddenly appeared, what on earth was he doing here?

Full of doubts.

The Minister quickly rushed back to the system of their Imperial Psionics Division.

In the galaxy's hyperspace channel, the Minister met the man who called himself Shi Qian.

He looks to be in his thirties, even older than Wu An.

His expression was calm, but seemed to contain some sorrow.

The first time he saw him, the minister was sure that the person in front of him was Shi Qian, who had been confirmed dead.

But he did not arrest Shi Qian as a wanted criminal.

At this time, any fighting force must be won over, except Zuo Jing.

So he immediately rearranged a shuttle and met Shi Qian alone.

(End of this chapter)