Chapter 82: Coordinates of Stardust, the Doctor's Trap, and the Thornheart's Expedition

The shattered nebula pattern rotated slowly on the probe's screen, like a giant eye opening in the abyss of the cosmos. The phantom image of Ark Seven's wreckage, simulated by Thornsteel energy, hovered within it, its fissures savage, radiating an aura of deathly stillness and decay. That line of garbled, twisted text was like a curse, seared onto Lin Mo's retina — 【Ark Seven Core… Stardust Sea… Annihilation… Key】.

Wrench's fingers froze mid-air, his bean-sized eyes filled with terror: "B-Boss! It—it popped out on its own! I haven't finished parsing it yet! Th-this ghost thing is actively contacting us? Or… has the Doctor's trap been triggered?"

Lin Mo forcibly suppressed the searing pain and vertigo brought by the afterwaves of the brand on his right arm, and stepped up to the workbench in one stride. The star-chart coordinates on the screen were no longer incomplete; they had become unusually clear, pointing to a bizarre airspace named the "Stardust Sea," located far from the wasteland, above an unknown region deep within the Withered Forest. The phantom image of Ark Seven hung like a conspicuous signpost, nailed dead-center on the coordinates.

"It's not a trap being triggered." Lin Mo's voice was icy, carrying the chill of one who had seen through a conspiracy. "It's the Doctor 'inviting' us." He pointed at that line of garbled text. "'Key'… he's using the thing the Rotclaw has been hunting as bait! He knows we got the World Tree sapling, knows we need pure stardust! These coordinates are the final arena he's prepared for me and the Rotclaw!"

Copperbeard slammed his forging hammer heavily onto the ground, sparks flying in all directions: "Then we'll smash his arena to pieces! Doctor, Rotclaw, whatever — dare to stick out a claw, and we'll chop it off!"

"It's not that simple." Lin Mo's gaze swept over the unconscious Sister Ai Li and Xiang Lingna, swept over the withered World Tree sapling, and finally fell back on the dead-still phantom of the Ark on the screen. "The Stardust Sea… old-world archives mentioned it — a relatively calm zone within the inter-planar gap energy turbulence, but also full of unknown dangers. The Doctor chose that place; he must have a deeper scheme. And…" He paused, his tone heavy, "Sister Ai Li's contamination is only temporarily suppressed, and Xiang Lingna and the sapling are both severely overdrawn. The territory needs time to recover, and even more, it needs someone to hold the fort."

Copperbeard understood Lin Mo's concerns, his thick brows tightly furrowed: "You want to go alone? No way! Too dangerous! That ghost place is completely unfamiliar — the Doctor and Rotclaw must have laid a dragnet!"

"I have to go." Lin Mo's tone was resolute and decisive, carrying an unquestionable finality. "Pure stardust is the only hope for healing Sister Ai Li, suppressing the brand, and possibly even repairing the Sanctum Core. The power of the World Tree sapling has already proven it needs the force of high-purity order-creations like stardust to recover. This isn't just for now — it's for the future of the Thornheart!" The brand on his right arm seemed to sense his resolve, sending another searing pulse, like a silent urging and threat.

Wrench looked at the clear coordinates on the screen, then at Lin Mo's pale face; a flicker of struggle crossed his bean-sized eyes, and finally he gritted his teeth: "Boss, I'm going with you! This busted probe was tampered with by the Doctor, but the core Thornsteel energy circuit is something I modified myself! Strip out its active-signal function, and it can still work as a detector! In that ghost place, the Stardust Sea, you won't get a single step without my detector!"

Lin Mo looked at the burn-his-boats courage in Wrench's eyes, and nodded: "Good."

"Master Copperbeard," Lin Mo turned to the dwarf, "I'm entrusting the territory to you. Repair the bulwark, watch over Sister Ai Li and Xiang Lingna, guard the sapling and the Sanctum Core well. If I… don't come back, you are the Thornheart's next guardian."

Copperbeard's mechanical prosthetic eye flared with intense blue light, finally resolving into a heavy sigh; he thumped his chest hard: "Don't worry! As long as I still have one breath left, the territory stands! You… you come back alive!"

In the days that followed, the Thornheart entered its most tense state of war preparation. Copperbeard led all the craftsmen, beginning the final reinforcement of the bulwark — focusing on strengthening the energy shield core and installing more physical traps at key positions. Wrench, meanwhile, buried himself at his workbench, frantically disassembling and reassembling the "Abyss Probe," stripping out the backdoor programs the Doctor had preset, while using limited materials to rush-build crude but critical space-survival equipment — a sealed helmet (modified from an assault platform hatch cover), a rudimentary oxygen circulation device (relying on the special moss Xiang Lingna had cultivated), and most importantly, a short-range propulsion backpack driven by a Thornsteel energy core.

Lin Mo, meanwhile, sat cross-legged beside the ley-line fissure. He no longer tried to suppress the brand on his right arm; instead, he began consciously channeling the power of the ley-line energy and the Thornsteel Will, carefully stimulating it — like walking along a cliff's edge — attempting, before it detonated completely, to glimpse the operating trajectory and weakness of the Rotclaw's power. Each probe was like cutting a blade across his soul, bringing intense pain and the risk of momentary loss of control, but after each bout of pain, his understanding of that rotting power deepened by another fraction. The dark-purple glow on the crossguard sigil flickered in and out with his probing, like a coiled venomous snake.

At the same time, he sank his consciousness into the faint basic link with the Sanctum Core. Not presuming to ask for energy support, but like rifling through a dust-covered encyclopedia, he searched the vast, slumbering database of the core for every fragment of information about the "Stardust Sea," "pure stardust," and "Ark Seven." The information came in broken, interference-laden snatches, like groping through thick fog, but he still pieced together some key points: the spatial structure of the Stardust Sea was extremely unstable, with natural "stardust storms" occurring within, and pure stardust was only born at the storm's core; Ark Seven was not a combat fortress, but a deep-space exploration and research platform, whose core database might hold the most complete research records from the old world on the "Tide of Annihilation" and the "Source-Energy Matrix" (the Rotclaw's predecessor)… as well as an encrypted file mentioned many times with extremely high clearance — 【Project "Key": Feasibility Report on the Fusion of World Tree Origin and Ark Matrix】.

Dawn, three days later. The bulwark's gate slowly opened amid a heavy, rumbling roar.

Lin Mo and Wrench stood outside the gate. Lin Mo had changed into a set of simple armor pieced together from Thornsteel scales and an inner lining of purifying moss, with the modified short-range propulsion backpack on his back. "Ley-Line Arbiter" was strapped tightly to his back, the crossguard sigil temporarily shielded by a specially-made metal sheath mixed with Xiang Lingna's emerald sap. His face was still pale, but his gaze was sharp as an unsheathed blade.

Wrench, meanwhile, carried his massive probe case on his back; the case had been reinforced, fitted with extra propulsion nozzles, looking for all the world like a bloated metal turtle. A sealed helmet was clamped onto his head, condensation beading on the transparent visor, his bean-sized eyes full of tension and excitement.

Copperbeard stood inside the gate, silent refugee warriors behind him. Sister Ai Li and Xiang Lingna were still unconscious, settled beside the deepest ley-line fissure within the bulwark.

"Come back alive." Copperbeard's voice was low and forceful.

Lin Mo nodded, took one last look at his slumbering companions inside the bulwark and that single dot of emerald light, then whirled sharply: "Move out!"

The propulsion backpack spewed a tail flame woven of orange-red and blue-green, propelling the two of them skyward, streaking toward the unknown airspace deep within the Withered Forest — the Stardust Sea — guided by the star-chart coordinates! The wasteland wind howled past their ears, and the brand on Lin Mo's right arm, now far from the ley-line core, sent wave after wave of uneasy pulses, as if scenting the excitement of the hunt.

Just as their figures were about to vanish into the gray horizon—

Deep within the Thornheart territory, beside the ley-line fissure. At the tip of that withered World Tree sapling, that nearly extinguished emerald bud flickered once again — extremely faintly, yet with an unusual stubbornness. A thread of almost imperceptible consciousness fluctuation, carrying a probing meaning, followed some invisible connection, silently chasing after the direction Lin Mo had departed.

And deep within the Withered Forest, on a patch of scorched earth twisted by spatial turbulence. A micro-machine disguised as a radiation beetle, its compound eyes flashing red once, compressed and encrypted the image of Lin Mo and his companion's ascent, transforming it into an invisible signal that shot toward the direction of the Stardust Sea.

The Doctor's icy voice, as if rising from the depths of the void: 【Prey has entered the arena. Final annihilation program… synchronizing activation… countdown initiated…】