This ship is enormous; bear with it for a moment.

In reality, it was Lu Chen who severed the spaceship’s power supply lines.
To be precise, it was the flight control system, hacked by Lu Chen.
At present, the situation aboard the Salvation was as follows:
No system had detected a ship attack, nor had there been any sign of crew mutiny or the flight control system being hijacked. There was simply a power supply issue—nothing more.
Therefore, the thirty-six independent cabin sensor systems would not issue an evacuation order.
The keepers would await the captain’s command.
Captain Silva believed this was an emergency caused by the chief engineer’s mishandling, and so he naturally refrained from giving evacuation orders.
He immediately notified all crew through his wrist communicator.
“No sign of enemy attack. All hands, stand by!”
Then, he ordered the engineers:
“Forget about the monitoring malfunction in Cabin Seven. Return to the main compartment and fix the power supply immediately.”
“Yes, Captain!”
The armored guards and engineers left Cabin Seven at once, returning to the main compartment from outside the ship.
—And entering through the hatch with them were Lu Chen and Gloria!
Lu Chen and Gloria interlocked their fingers, embracing as one.
This allowed Lu Chen’s resonant spiritual energy to flow effortlessly into Gloria, extending the invisibility effect to her as well.
But the closeness of the embrace made the voluptuous succubus Gloria quite uncomfortable.
Or rather, it was not the kind of comfort she desired.
Before they even entered the hatch, she was already struggling to endure it.
Lu Chen discovered that, since mastering Universal Resonance and being constantly teased by Gloria, his willpower had grown considerable.
Ironically, it was Gloria—who usually disliked physical contact with men—whose body reacted most strongly…
Even in the cold vacuum, Lu Chen could keenly sense her heated blood, her heaving chest.
“So this is your so-called physical hacking method?”
“What else could it be?”
“Couldn’t you go in alone?”
“Captain Silva is a Level Thirty-Eight Arcanist, just like you. My Treasure Scavenger Armor can’t get in. Even if I sneaked into the captain’s office, I couldn’t kill him—I must bring you with me.”
“Then why not let me go in alone?”
“Though I’ve cut the ship’s power, there’s still manual lighting and various sensors. You couldn’t possibly infiltrate the captain’s office on your own.”
“You’re pressing against me, it’s unbearable.”
“You’re crushing my chest, but I haven’t said a word. Calm down, the hatch is about to open.”
“You’d better make a big profit this time, or I’ll make you pay for it when we get back!”
“Obviously! This ship is huge, just bear with it.”
Mr. Jiu Yilu—Lu Chen—was ready to physically hack his way to seizing the Salvation in one decisive move.
And the Hazard Guide remained utterly silent!
Soon, the main compartment hatch slid open.
The two slipped in, silent as shadows, a mere foot behind the guards and engineers.
The invisibility wasn’t flawless, but with the Salvation’s power system down, radar and lighting systems were offline. The helmsman could only maintain basic flight, minimal illumination, and hatch controls manually.
Moreover, Lu Chen had already hacked the radar system beforehand, making it even easier for the two to move unseen through the dim corridors.
By now, chaos reigned in the shadowy main compartment. The engineering team scrambled to repair the power system.
Eight guards donned exosuits and exited the ship, patrolling the hull as human radars to guard against attack.
The communications and information officers dashed to and fro, forced to deliver reports to the captain’s office in person.
As a result, the captain’s door stood open.
Silva commanded from his office, calm and collected. Though he sensed something amiss, he showed not a trace of panic.
Until the communications officer knocked again and entered—
With a creak, the door closed.
A chill prickled Silva’s brow. He turned to the communications officer, barking,
“Who told you to close the door?”
The officer blinked in confusion.
“I didn’t close it…”
In the gloom of the captain’s office, a sudden flash of cold light!
Gloria appeared behind Silva in a blink, and with a single stroke, severed the captain’s head.
The communications officer was dumbfounded.
Lu Chen ignored him, seizing the still-gushing, headless captain and using his right hand to manually throw the switch—
In an instant, the thirty-six cabins’ autonomous evacuation privileges were cut off, each one locked firmly to the ship’s chassis.
Only the captain himself could perform this step manually.
It was for offloading cargo safely at port, but also to prevent rogue keepers or slave uprisings from commandeering a cabin.
Once the thirty-six cabins were locked, everything else became simple.
The communications officer screamed and tried to flee, but Gloria’s blade cleaved him in two—door and all.
Lu Chen needn’t pretend any longer.
He restored power to the ship and announced his conquest of the Salvation.
Having seized the ship, he saw no reason to conceal his identity.
The scene in the captain’s office was broadcast to every corner of the vessel.
Lu Chen hoisted Silva’s lifeless head and declared to all:
“I am Lu Chen, leader of the Primeval Star Dome Expeditionary Group. Captain Silva is dead. This ship is now under my control. Leave your valuables and I will not harm anyone.”
The whole ship erupted in uproar!

And the crew moving nearby the captain’s office quickly confirmed the news.
Panic and screams spread as the crew scrambled in all directions.
Yet every hatch was sealed.
Two Level Thirty fighters, enraged, charged the captain’s office—only to be cut down by Gloria as easily as harvesting weeds.
Outside, two armored guards tried to escape, but were obliterated by the Leonin’s laser cannon.
The remaining six had no choice but to return to the ship.
In the main compartment and the bridge, nearly a hundred souls—including the keepers—knelt in unison.
One bold soul dared to ask Lu Chen,
“Captain Lu, do you know whose property this starliner is?”
Before Lu Chen could answer,
Gloria dispatched the questioner with a single stroke, blood splattering everywhere.
“Nonsense. Of course it’s mine!”
No one else dared utter a word; obediently, they handed over their valuables.
Afterwards, all were ejected from the Salvation, each bursting into a spherical airbag in the vacuum of space.
Their wrist communicators stripped away, their hope for rescue left to fate…
Lu Chen had spared them, partly to avoid wasting ammunition, and partly because Fang Company’s slave trade was a high-end operation—they did not abuse slaves.
They were more like the so-called righteous hunting guilds, forcibly seizing talent and manpower.
Whether they deserved to die…he would leave that to the will of Heaven.
Thus, the whole Salvation was left with only Lu Chen, Gloria, and over three hundred humanoid slaves.
Gloria sheathed her sword,
looked around at the vast starliner, all thirty-six cars firmly in her grasp.
In a blink, she cast aside her earlier embarrassment over the embrace with Lu Chen. Delighted, she cupped Lu Chen’s face in her hands and planted a big kiss on his forehead.
“Ha! I’ve struck it rich this time!”
Lu Chen ignored her, severing all communication between the Salvation and Fang Company, then shutting down the ship’s locator.
He then piloted the Salvation and the Leonin out of the area.
Once they reached a secluded, safe region of space,
Lu Chen finally relaxed.
After hijacking two Level Forty ships in quick succession, Lu Chen was certain that, with the Stealth Whale Pearl and the Fly Drones, the true strength of the Primeval Star Dome Expeditionary Group now slightly surpassed Level Forty!
Only then did Lu Chen and Gloria enter Cabin Seven.
The hatch opened.
Inside were only two capsule-like stasis pods.
Through the glass covers, Lu Chen could see two humanoid girls, about eleven or twelve years old.
Their figures were rather cute, but their faces were nearly disfigured, covered in terrible black blood-veins and fiery burn marks.
Their humanoid traits were obvious.
Both had horns, but not of the same kind.
One had an oversized face, her mouth split all the way to her jaw, reminiscent of a horned frog.
The other had a long snake’s tail and her neck was covered in scales.
A frog girl and a snake girl…
Lu Chen thought their animal traits were so pronounced that it might be a sign of genetic reversion.
Rather like the octopus-headed monsters, but far from reaching the perfect state of reversion—like Elina—who could freely shift between wolf and human form.
Moreover, the dense black blood veins on their faces suggested they were infected with Nether Toxin.
“The black dragon’s friends are more ordinary than I’d imagined,” Lu Chen sighed.
He had thought they might be rare reversion types like the black dragon, but now saw they were only ordinary humanoids.
Gloria, however, pursed her lips and didn’t miss the chance to tease Lu Chen.
“You’re even more ordinary than they are. You can’t even contract Nether Toxin, yet you became captain all the same.”
“….”
Lu Chen was left speechless.
He and Gloria carried the two stasis pods back to the Leonin to let Elina examine them.
In the Leonin’s cockpit,
Elina placed her hands over the stasis pods, carefully examining the girls’ condition.
“They’re both highly talented humanoid spirit tamers, each at Level Nineteen, adept at the cultivation and nurturing of plants.
They’re infected with Nether Toxin and show signs of unstable reversion, but the illness is currently stable—they won’t turn monstrous easily.
I suspect they believed the rumor that infecting oneself with the toxin would control the reversion process, restoring their humanoid form or fully transforming them into beasts. The result is their current state.”
Lu Chen suddenly thought of something.
“So, reversion is innate?”
Elina nodded.
“Yes. I could shift into wolf form when I was very young. The chieftain said reversion is likely a way for humanoids to resist the ever-thinning spiritual energy, restoring beast form to increase their ability to absorb it.”
Gloria was curious too. She glanced at the cat-cage airbag nearby and asked,
“Does infecting yourself with Nether Toxin speed up the process? Am I actually a cat, and now a succubus-cat?”
Elina pushed up her glasses and shook her head again.
“All the reference books I’ve seen call that a rumor. Generally, only the highly talented can revert, and such people are also more susceptible to Nether Toxin. It’s a coincidence, not causation.”
Lu Chen thought, reference books often copy each other—they’re not always accurate.
“What about those burn marks on their foreheads?”
Elina could only guess:
“Perhaps dragonfire… Maybe when their Nether Toxin flared out of control, the black dragon tried to purify it with dragonfire. It would have failed, of course, but at least suppressed the spread.”
Gloria’s fine brows furrowed in surprise.
“To use dragonfire to suppress Nether Toxin without harming them… This black dragon’s talent may be far beyond what we imagined!”
That’s what you call ‘not harmed’? Do you mean ‘not incinerated’?
Still, it did show the black dragon’s dragonfire was not only powerful, but also precise.
“It doesn’t matter, as long as they’re willing to pay me.”
Elina suggested,
“Their condition is stable enough, and this level of Nether Toxin is not infectious to me. Why don’t we wake them up and ask them some questions?”
Lu Chen was taken aback.
“Ask what?”
Elina replied, full of curiosity:
“About the black dragon, of course.”
Lu Chen had no choice but to agree.
“I’m not especially interested in the black dragon, but we should ask about payment, so we don’t waste energy taking them to the White Dew.”
He opened the stasis pods, and Elina woke the two humanoid girls.
They woke groggily, sat up, and looked around.
No longer the same starliner as before…
They regarded the three before them—gentle in countenance, almost like good people.
“Excuse me, are you friends of Godo? Were you sent to rescue us?”
“We’re infected with Nether Toxin—do you have protection? I’m afraid you’ll be infected, turn into nether fiends, and eat us.”
Such logic… surprisingly clear!
Lu Chen shook his head.
“No, we received your distress signal, hijacked the slave ship, and are taking you to the White Dew. You’d better really have two thousand spirit stones!”
The two girls looked a bit disappointed.
“So it’s not Godo… She… She fought the Imperial Army to let us escape.”
“Godo won’t die. Even if the empire catches her, she’ll just break out again like always!”
Lu Chen was stunned—was the black dragon a habitual escape artist?
“If the Godo you speak of is the black dragon, then congratulations—she’s already escaped.”
“Really?”
Delighted, four shrewd eyes suddenly became wary, fixing on Lu Chen.
“Wait, how do you know Godo can turn into a black dragon?”
Elina merely smiled and played them the black dragon’s video.
Lu Chen’s face grew stern.
“About Godo, you’d better be honest, or I won’t save you.”
The frog girl hurried to say,
“No lies, no lies. You should know, humanoid intelligence doesn’t allow us to lie.”
Lu Chen:
“….”
In his view, humanoids were only slightly less intelligent than humans—almost on the same level, really. They were just discriminated against and mocked as stupid.
They were certainly no more foolish than Gloria.
These two young girls were actually quite sharp.
The frog girl quickly introduced herself:
“My name is Maru-swallow, I’m a frog girl.
She’s Swallow-maru, a snake girl.
We’re humanoids from the Third Alliance of the Empire, living in the Ail Star System near the Pangu Corridor.
We grew up together, contracted Nether Toxin together, and have been seeking a cure in our home sector ever since.
Recently, we heard from a returning adventurer that Captain August from the August Expedition is an expert in curing Nether Toxin, so we decided to go find her.
We just found out that Lady August has retired and now runs a clinic on the White Dew.
Coincidentally, some time ago, Godo—who was imprisoned for arson—saw the Gerneka Beastmasters’ team rise in the latest Sky Ladder rankings. She got restless and planned to break out of prison and go adventuring, claiming someone in the universe was waiting for her—waiting for Godo.
After Godo’s escape, Swallow-maru and I hitched a ride on her ship to the White Dew, to find Lady August.”
Snake swallows frog, frog swallows snake—one named Maru-swallow, the other Swallow-maru. It sounded reasonable…
Still, the notion that someone was waiting for Godo was a bit strange; Lu Chen had only seen that phrase in a textbook from his previous life.
“So, only Godo broke out, not you two?”
Lu Chen pressed on.
The frog girl grinned, mouth splitting to her jaw:
“Of course. We’re upstanding imperial citizens—it was us who helped Godo escape!”
Her mouth split all the way to her chin…
Helping a prison break and calling herself upstanding—remarkable!
“Is Godo male or female?”
Lu Chen tossed out a crucial question.
To his surprise, the two girls looked troubled.
“We’re not sure. She sounds like a girl, but looks like a handsome boy.”
“Maybe she’s a girl who looks like a boy, or a boy who talks like a girl.”
“But since we’re girls and she likes playing with us, we’ve always thought of her as a girl.”