“Understood!”
“Turning now!”
“Wait! Lin Zhen, my ship has a problem… The display shows the engine has suddenly shut down!”
“The engine shut off in a situation like this?”
Lin Zhen frowned. “Didn’t I say before that we should turn off the curvature engine as soon as we enter the ancient battlefield?”
“It was turned off ages ago. It’s the regular electric propulsion engine that’s malfunctioning now!” The voice on the other end of the comm was a bit panicked.
Losing a power source in the ancient battlefield was extremely dangerous, especially since up ahead of them was an expanding Dimensional Foil.
“Can you fix it?” Lin Zhen asked.
“I’m trying!”
All battle camp trainees knew basic engine repair, so they could usually handle common engine faults.
But this time, the engine failure seemed particularly strange. The whole crew was sweating buckets as they tried everything, but they couldn’t even locate the source of the problem.
Seeing this, Lin Zhen thought for a moment and said,
“Ship Six, stop where you are. I’ll come pick you up. Board my ship and I’ll help you with the repairs. Kāng Zhì of Ship Two, you take over command for now. Drop marker beacons along the way, and I’ll regroup with you after.”
“Why not just stop and wait until the repairs are done?” suggested Kāng Zhì, the captain of Ship Two.
They had prepared for this kind of scenario before departure.
For example, if Lin Zhen was unable to command for a time, there was an agreed process for someone else to take over.
Kāng Zhì was the one nominated for that role.
Still, in a dangerous environment like the ancient battlefield, leaving someone alone on a ship that might not even be repairable seemed far too risky.
“Hmm, that’s true, but the mission is urgent. If the whole fleet stays to wait, we might miss the opportunity if something comes up.”
Lin Zhen pondered. “How about this: let the nearest Ship Seven stay behind and wait for me. If I really can’t fix it, I’ll just board Ship Seven and come meet up with you all.”
“That could work.” Kāng Zhì considered for a moment and found no issues, so he agreed to Lin Zhen’s proposal.
***
Soon after, the lead Ship One separated from the fleet, circled around to the side of Ship Six, and docked.
After taking Ship Six’s crew aboard Ship One, Lin Zhen took over Ship Six alone, using its remaining inertia to leave the fleet along with Ship Seven, docking beside the wreckage of a massive battleship for repairs.
He watched as the decoy fleet skirted the two-dimensional foil and slowly vanished behind the shipwreck.
The corners of the young man’s lips lifted slightly.
“You have a villain’s smile too, don’t you?”
“Oh, that’s the smile of a man whose plan has come together.”
“So the engine failure on Ship Six was Lin Zhen’s doing, no wonder it couldn’t be fixed.”
“2333, truly devious, Prison Lin.”
Just as the comments said.
Other than the encounter with the two-dimensional foil, everything happening now was exactly within Lin Zhen’s calculations.
Even Kāng Zhì’s reaction was within expectations.
The ancient battlefield could block signals.
Which meant the battle camp couldn’t monitor what happened inside in real time.
At most, they could review the ship’s recorder afterwards to see what he’d done in there.
Kāng Zhì’s words would help dispel any suspicion the battle camp might have.
After all, if Lin Zhen really wanted to pull something, he wouldn’t accept having another ship nearby to act as a lookout.
“So far, the plan has gone smoothly. Next, I just need to find a warp engine!”
Lin Zhen clenched his fist, tightened his grip on the engine room, pretended to check things for a while, and then contacted Ship Seven.
“No good. The engine on this ship has a fractured core generator. It might be battle damage from before. I need a specific alloy to repair it.”
“What should we do, then?”
“That alloy isn’t rare. With all the wrecks around here, I should be able to find some.”
Lin Zhen pressed the comm button. After saying this, he waited nervously for a reply.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
Time stretched endlessly at this moment, until finally, accompanied by a faint buzz of static, the answer he wanted came through.
“Is that so? Alright, seems like that’s the only option. By the way, do you want us to go with you?”
Hearing that, Lin Zhen secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
He’d been worried they’d suggest something like “If you can’t fix it, just give up.”
“That’s fine.” He pressed the button. “But I’ll just be searching in the nearby wrecks. You’d be better off staying in the ship to cover me. If something does happen, you’ll be able to escape faster.”
“Alright then, be careful– beep!”
The comms were cut. Lin Zhen took a deep breath, slipped his exosuit armor over his Star Energy Battle Suit, and went to the ship’s rear compartment to board the small auxiliary craft for EVA operations.
Though it was called a “ship,” it was more like a flattened motorcycle, with front and rear wheels set level.
The design allowed altitude to be adjusted directly via the fore and aft engines.
As for why it was designed like a motorcycle, maybe it was just the designer’s personal taste.
Vroom!
With the engine’s roar, Lin Zhen opened the rear hatch and piloted the little craft out into the ancient battlefield.
He flew to the side of Ship Seven, waved through the porthole at the students inside, then turned away, and headed straight into the wreck of the giant battleship, passing through it to the other side.
“Ghost Rider in the interstellar age, huh?”
“Yeah, looks just like it—just with a cockpit added.”
He scanned his surroundings.
Lin Zhen picked out a cigar-shaped small ship.
This kind of ship was probably used by Cyborgs or Psychics, to let them enter and leave the battlefield at will for support.
So the internal fittings were usually quite high-end; it should have both positive and negative warp engines.
Coming up to the ship, Lin Zhen extended his right hand toward it from a distance, eyes closed.
[Metal Reconstruction] activated!
Thanks to Yun Ruoxi’s personal guidance that night, his grasp of ability control had leveled up.
After a few days of solo practice, now he could barely sense the metal inside the ship from a distance using his power.
Thus, he could determine if there was a positive-negative warp engine within.
And right now, his luck was good—or rather, his judgment was right.
His ability sensed signs of a warp engine inside.
Lin Zhen held back his excitement, parked on the ship’s roof, and used his power to melt a small hole in the hull.
He left his little craft and jumped in.
Thud!
Lin Zhen landed in a half-squat, activating the magnetic attachment on the soles of his exosuit armor, anchoring himself firmly to the alloy surface.
Step by step, he followed his senses deeper into the ship.
The ship’s exterior showed no signs of damage, yet here it was, abandoned on the battlefield.
Lin Zhen guessed that maybe the owner had left and suffered some misfortune.
That meant he might just get his hands on a fully intact warp engine.