Sky-cracking Rider

The small flying ship, with a maximum rated capacity of 500 people, carrying Chen Fei and his group, slowly lifted vertically from the embarkation bridge beside Base 1's spaceport, accelerating at a height of 100 meters off the ground, heading directly north.

The new elemental annihilation bomb definitely cannot be tested on Blue Star, and releasing its power near Base 1 on Emerald Star is even less advisable. The former could unnecessarily attract the attention of the sovereignties, while the latter could potentially cause some degree of damage to Base 1, as there are resource extraction points near the base, and railroads and highways crisscross, linking the distant branches under construction and the future base's direction.

The test site chosen is 2500 kilometers directly north of Base 1, and the small flying ship is expected to arrive in an hour.

The biggest problem currently facing Emerald Star is not the pervasive nuclear radiation pollution but the explosively proliferating mutant species population.

Mutants, originally from Blue Star, are products of nuclear pollution. Under the influence of radiation, DNA fragments continuously collapse and recombine. Although, most of the time, the result of broken genes leads only to death, miracles—the greatest phenomenon of life itself—often occur.

Mutants that survive the rigorous selection process tend to adapt to nuclear pollution environments, even using radiation as a catalyst for self-evolution. Mutants with gene sequences artificially edited by Blue Star sovereignties are particularly remarkable in this aspect.

If such mutants appear on Blue Star without countermeasures, they could pose a threat comparable to disasters caused by parasitic species.

However, on Emerald Star, the only ones suffering are the parasitic species' "seed nests" used for nurturing biological combat weapons and innumerable monster swarms.

The constant star's light is obscured by thick nuclear radiation clouds, the temperature within the atmosphere near the ground sharply drops to an average of around minus 30 degrees Celsius. The nuclear winter triggered by multiple Tsar Plus super nuclear weapons has nearly swept over the entire Emerald Star.

Continuous gray snow almost covers most of the surface, only sparing the north and south poles, where the aurora and the starry sky can barely be seen.

The small flying ship dares only to fly beneath the thick cloud layer, not above, for fear of relentless strikes from the parasitic species' biological space motherships.

The core members of the Elemental Annihilation Weapon R&D Team visiting here for the first time curiously observe the thick dark clouds outside the porthole, with the outside temperature averaging minus thirty degrees Celsius,

imagine if this scene occurred on Blue Star, sending chills down their spines. The head of the Elemental Annihilation Weapon Development Team finally withdrew his gaze from the monotonous view outside the porthole and asked Chen Fei, "Captain, when will the nuclear winter end?"

Whether it was the small flying ship now or Blue Star's giant battleship, or even the Airship Battle Group temporarily occupied by the Command Center, Chen Fei was unquestionably the captain. Whoever he wanted off the ship had to disembark.

"As soon as three years, as long as five years, there's still time!"

Chen Fei took a moment to glance at the construction progress of the branch base. It's more than half completed, with over five hundred resource extraction points. The industrial tech tree's completion rate is one percent, far from being finished, but once industrial construction gets going, in the absence of external interference and internal chaos, development speed will be geometric.

The industrial revolution of Blue Star Humans, beginning in modern history, achieved ten years' development comparable to a century, from walking to bicycles, then to electric scooters, to four-wheel vehicles, then high-speed rail, airplanes, supersonic planes, and space shuttles. The development speed will only increase until hitting the bottleneck of basic materials and processing technology.

Nuclear winters will not persist indefinitely; even pervasive radioactive isotopes will completely decay in three to five hundred years. Before the radioactive snow clouds, which cover almost the entire planet, dissipate, the AI "Adam" will likely already possess power strong enough to challenge the Biological Space Carrier Groups.

Chen Fei is not worried about this force threatening Blue Star because the "mode of transport" is fully in the hands of S-class Space Ability User Heseman Brown. Unless "Adam" can obtain a set of dimensional gate coordinates "Longinus," and rely on Chen Fei's Psi Skill to rapidly establish the Dimensional Gate, thwarted by Blue Star sovereignties, who never relent when fighting from home ground.

"There's not much time! Will your bases be ready?"

The Elemental Annihilation Weapon Development Team led by Mino Heaton is not the only team providing support for Chen Fei's actions. Louis Industries' technology repository is almost fully open to him, ready for him to take.

Even if Louis Industries doesn't have the technology, there are still ways to acquire it, as the interests involved in Emerald Star are sufficient to disregard patent laws.

Technology, materials, and AI management—the real-world construction process of "Colonizing Jade Star" is rapidly changing, with day-by-day developments.

"Even if it's not ready, there will be other plans. At worst, we'll break it into pieces."

Chen Fei focuses not only on Emerald Star's base expansion and parasitic species' movements but also on the reproductive condition of mutants scattered across the planet's surface.

The mutant species population closest to Base 1 is at least three thousand kilometers away. This buffer ensures that in the coming year, Chen Fei need not worry about the rapidly increasing number of mutants impacting his industrial developments.

Otherwise, if disorder happens, the situation becomes chaotic, which is what the initially seeded mutant embryos were intentionally positioned to avoid.

If, by the end of nuclear winter, the military strength amassed by the AI "Adam" still cannot counter the parasitic species' biological space motherships, then the mutants who have inundated Emerald Star will cause considerable headaches for them.

Unless another catastrophic ecological extinction is launched, Emerald Star's state will prevent parasitic species from quickly replenishing enough "seed nests" for producing sprawling biological combat weapons.

Uncertain if the extraterrestrial Sagali civilization has more tricks up its sleeve, Emerald Star is certainly ruined for the next centuries, and the situation will be different in hundreds of years.

Adam: Arrived at destination, 150 kilometers directly ahead, there is a shallow giant "seed nest," individual diameter 5 kilometers, depth 15 kilometers.

Adam: Biological reaction discovered on the ground, number 165975.

A three-dimensional holographic projection appeared inside the small flying ship, displaying the sky and ground conditions across a radius of 300 kilometers in conjunction with electronically released reconnaissance drones.

A figure emerges from the thick snow layer, gazing from the sky down upon the location of the giant "seed nest." It looks more like a lake unfrozen than anything else, its retaining warmth causing mist to rise from the surface, with living things occasionally emerging from the water.

This "seed nest" remains active.

The reconnaissance drone quickly captured a scene of hundreds of monsters fighting each other.