Chapter 304: Infiltration

After ending the communication with Erin, Yu Sheng stopped resting and continued moving along the "outer wall" of this Gao Ta.

Now that he was no longer holding that large tail in his arms, his movements became much easier; the only inconvenience was that he had to be careful at all times, planning every grip point in advance for each step, and he could not use too much force while moving, or there would be a risk of detaching from the tower and falling into the void of space.

Not being tethered by a safety rope while performing an EVA on a space station was probably exactly this feeling; once he truly let go and drifted far away, he couldn't think of how to "swim" back in a vacuum under zero gravity, and at that point, he would probably just have to open a door to go home.

However, perhaps he could first leave a "coordinate" on the shell of this tower? Although this thing might currently be in motion (with no reference points, Yu Sheng couldn't judge whether it was flying), if he used the tower beneath his feet as the reference origin when recording the coordinates, he should still be able to open a door and return then...

As various thoughts turned in Yu Sheng's mind, after crossing a metal protruding structure of unknown purpose, he stopped once again.

He took out his new "bloodletting knife"—made from the fingertip blade of the Artificial Saintess, tough and infinitely sharp—and sliced a cut on his palm.

Blood gushed out directly, accompanied by wisps of red mist, boiling in the vacuum environment.

Yu Sheng was startled at first, but soon felt this scene was quite interesting—fortunately, he hadn't forgotten why he was drawing blood; he immediately focused his spirit to control the gushing fresh blood, letting it slowly float onto the nearby shell of the Gao Ta.

Before the wound healed rapidly, that boiling blood had silently merged into the Gao Ta.

Yu Sheng slightly closed his eyes, perceiving the information his blood was conveying to him.

He "saw" some blurry structures; this Gao Ta was conveying its own secrets to him: beneath the thick "armor" that looked like rock but was actually an alloy shell lay a complex network of pipes, circuits, cavities, corridors, and many technological gadgets Yu Sheng couldn't even guess at.

The range he could see now was very limited, and within this limited range, he was trying to find a path to infiltrate the tower's body.

Wherever the blood penetrated was a path, but Yu Sheng had to find a "safer" landing point for himself—he wasn't afraid of death, but he was afraid of dying too miserably; after finally penetrating this far, to go in and immediately get chopped to pieces by cultists with a single "ah" would be a huge loss of face, and later Erin would nag about this matter until next month...

Since there was no suitable infiltration point nearby, Yu Sheng moved along the shell for another distance, repeated the same trick near a chain connecting to an auxiliary facility, and bestowed blood upon the tower once more.

After three consecutive times, he finally stopped near an armor connection point, a pleased expression appearing on his face.

Below here was a "safe passage"; there was no living presence near the passage, and several routes led to deeper areas.

Yu Sheng pressed his hand onto that thick and cold alloy armor without hesitation.

The armor was very thick, and beneath it were several layers of protection, buffering, and sensing structures, but the door Yu Sheng wanted to open wasn't one that simply "cut through" these thick layers; rather, it formed a short-range teleportation channel, using the blood that had already penetrated as a link; the span of this channel was sufficient to cross all structures on the Gao Ta's outer shell and bypass any damage alarm systems that might exist beneath the armor layer.

Yu Sheng didn't know much about spaceships, but he guessed this ship definitely had a similar alarm system to ensure that once something penetrated the armor, the people inside could know immediately—he was attempting infiltration this time, so the later the exposure, the better.

The "door" quickly took shape.

Yu Sheng gently turned the "handle," quietly pulling open the illusory grand door that suddenly materialized on the Gao Ta's outer shell—

"I'm coming in..."

"Can't find him! Drones are in position; no one detected outside."

"'Knight' is searching near Hatch Three; nothing here either."

"Sensors show no reaction either—external monitors remain offline; when will this subsystem be fixed?!"

The "Sage" sat in the center of the control hall, listening to the reports and conversations coming from around him with a gloomy face.

A tense atmosphere shrouded the entire hall, but at least all the staff had regained their composure; now everyone was doing what they should be doing, yet the Sage could clearly feel that some unease was growing and strengthening in everyone's hearts once again.

Because they couldn't find that "monster" moving on the outer shell of the Pillar of Order.

If that guy was indeed the culprit behind the previous failure of the concealment shield and the jump failure, then the current situation was undoubtedly terrible—seeing a space tourist "hanging a ticket" in the void of space was certainly a terrifying thing, but when he vanished in the blink of an eye, it became a horror on another level...

"Could it be some kind of mass hallucination?" Finally, someone cautiously voiced a possibility everyone hoped for, "We hastily exited the jump state earlier, which would cause great stimulation to the nervous system; there are documented cases of mass hallucinations under such circumstances."

"Are you referring to the 'Ruby' incident of Saint Era 1882? That ship, after a failed jump, docked in space four light-seconds away from Xinggang; the crew walked out of the ship without wearing any protection—they thought they had safely arrived home."

"Maybe, I mean, what if..."

"Enough," a member of the Hidden Order interrupted this meaningless conversation, "Rather than comforting ourselves with mass hallucinations, I'd rather believe that guy has already drilled inside!"

Upon hearing this, the entire hall fell silent in an instant.

And as if specifically to pierce this silence, a few seconds later, a Hidden Order member guarding a console suddenly broke the silence.

"R-report! An intruder detected on the outer corridor of the core area... he really has drilled inside!"

The "Sage," dressed in white robes, heard this and suddenly stood up; while those around him looked shocked and doubtful, a slight smile appeared on his face instead.

"Excellent—find him, eliminate him!"

Yu Sheng felt a bit lost.

He had entered this tower, only to discover that the structure inside was like a maze, with intersections and nonsensical rooms everywhere; the good news was that there was gravity inside, so he could finally walk with his feet firmly on the ground, but the bad news was that gravity in some areas was clearly malfunctioning, causing him to suddenly "fall" to the side as he walked, making it even harder to figure out up, down, left, and right.

However, he felt this wasn't a big problem.

Because he didn't know the way inside anyway; whether he was lost or not made no difference; moving around here relied mainly on using blood to activate x-ray vision and on immense confidence.

After spinning around in a few corridors for a moment, he stopped in an uninhabited corner, then rummaged in his pocket and took out his mobile phone.

Unlocked, screen lit up, entered the Border Communication interface.

Yu Sheng was certain that this seemingly ordinary "mobile phone" was absolutely stuffed with the Special Bureau's black technology; setting aside everything else, the fact that this thing had stayed with him in the space environment for so long and still operated with such smoothness meant it couldn't possibly use ordinary "civilian parts."

Of course, the phone not being damaged in the space environment wasn't the most outrageous thing; the most outrageous thing was that when he took this thing out, he found it had a signal.

There! Was! A! Signal!

Yu Sheng had originally planned to just casually take some photos of the surroundings and open a small door to surprise Bai Liqing, but upon seeing the full signal bars on his phone, he was shocked; then, after swiping down the status bar to take a look, he noticed the service provider suffix behind the signal had changed from "Jiecheng Communications" to "Star Alliance Communications," with a note behind it stating "Currently using the Interstellar Joint Channel, additional fees may apply"...

This made him immediately marvel, but it didn't delay him from getting down to business—after marveling for a moment, he quickly took a series of clicks around the surroundings, simultaneously opened the phone's environmental data monitoring function, and then sent a message to Bai Liqing: "Guess where I am?"

Shortly after, he received a reply from Bai Liqing, which started directly with a string of question marks: "??? You've already entered that Gao Ta?!"

Yu Sheng was a bit surprised: "Ah, you know about this?"

"I received a report saying you were launched by Hu Li's tail, then disappeared into the thick fog of Mist City along with that strange Gao Ta," Bai Liqing replied quickly—she could now quite skillfully and calmly arrange words into such magical sentences, "I just called you a few times, but you didn't answer."

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng quickly checked his phone's call log, and indeed saw several missed incoming calls, all from Bai Liqing.

He was a bit confused because he didn't remember the phone ringing at all, but just a moment later he realized what happened and messaged to explain to the other party: "Ah, it might be because I was in a vacuum environment just now, so I didn't hear it—and I was busy looking for the way, so I didn't notice the phone vibrating."

Bai Liqing sent another string of question marks from her end.

Yu Sheng felt it was hard to explain the entire process of him hanging a ticket outside a spaceship and drilling in through a door opened on the spaceship's hull in just a few words, so he only vaguely replied: "The environment here is a bit complex; I'll explain it to you later."

After sending the message, he looked again at the healed wound on his hand, took the bloodletting knife out of his pocket, and sliced another line on his palm.

Blood oozed from the wound, as if possessing an independent life, slowly floating and covering the nearby walls and floor, then penetrating inside within a few seconds.

After confirming the blood had fully seeped in, Sheng Cai continued walking forward.

Along this journey, stopping and starting as he went, he had been doing this the entire time.

(End of this chapter)