Chapter Sixteen: Leaving a Back Door

Blinding white streaks of light flashed across the heavens, crossing and weaving through the sky. Hot on their heels came waves of sound, rolling from the horizon and crashing down upon the earth. The thunderous sonic booms were mighty and resonant, as if they could swallow mountains and rivers whole.

Rumbles echoed continuously...

On the ground all around, flashes of white light would flare up from time to time.

Standing atop the mountain peak, Ye Han looked out as far as his eyes could see. In just half a day, he had counted 213 mushroom clouds with his own eyes. The city where he had descended had sprouted five such clouds before and after.

“Still talking about exams? My backside is about to be roasted!” Ye Han muttered irritably. In this city, the slaves had managed to evacuate in time, so there were no losses, but he couldn’t say the same for those scattered throughout the rest of the dynasty.

“Young master, the cave has been dug out,” the steward reported, approaching at that moment. According to Ye Han’s orders, after leaving the city the steward had organized the slaves and directed them into the mountains to dig out a cavern.

Nearly ten thousand slaves worked together. The main force was composed of fifth-rank warriors, with fourth rank assisting, third rank leveling the ground, and the first and second ranks hauling materials. In just half a day, they had carved out a massive cave in the mountain’s heart, big enough to house more than fifty thousand people.

The cavern rose ten meters high, and at its center was a circular hollow with a diameter of one hundred meters. Radiating from this center, ten tunnels had been dug, each three to five hundred meters long, with hundreds of stone chambers chiseled densely into the walls on either side of each passage.

“This will be my base for the early stage!” Ye Han followed the steward into the mountainside. Around the cavern, luminescent crystal stones were set into the rock, their soft glow illuminating the space. These were byproducts from spirit stone mining, and were quite common on Xiyuan Star.

“Are the stone chambers I asked for ready?” Ye Han turned to ask.

The steward hurriedly gestured, “They’re all prepared, young master, please follow me!”

Though he didn’t understand some of Ye Han’s peculiar requests, the steward had meticulously followed every instruction.

What met the eye was a small stone chamber of about twenty square meters, its inner walls packed with finger-wide slits, each one painstakingly cut out by the slaves, stroke by stroke.

Ye Han looked around, nodding in satisfaction.

“Alright, you may leave now,” he said without turning his head.

The steward responded respectfully and withdrew, closing the simple wooden door—crudely assembled from planks—behind him.

Each of these stone slits extended more than five meters deep; Ye Han had reserved them as slots for space gates. Once a space gate was inserted, it would appear from the outside as a straight, faintly glowing line.

“That's the preliminary work done!”

—

Ye Han opened the space gate wide, leaving a third of it exposed. The signal repeaters and base stations hadn’t been delivered yet—if he stuffed the whole thing into the crevice, Hanlan wouldn’t be able to send supplies through.

But come to think of it, there wasn’t much left on Hanlan’s side apart from the repeaters. Ye Han ruffled his hair in annoyance.

Compared to those bigwigs who planted mushroom clouds everywhere the moment they arrived, Ye Han felt more than a little awkward. Even without any arcane packages, Hanlan Star wasn’t much of a threat.

As Ye Han opened the space gate, a large number of people had already gathered by the gene blood pool on the other side, ready for action.

After Ye Han had returned Chen Xu and the others from their bubbles, a tense atmosphere had descended on Earth. Orders were issued swiftly from the upper echelons to every corner of the nation. Experts from all sectors were urgently assembled in the imperial capital, forming a massive think tank to provide all-out support for Chen Xu’s team.

Behind the scenes, several senior officials with real power rushed straight to the military camp to take personal command. All reserve supplies were made available without condition, and the domestic industrial structure was being reorganized according to official directives—preparing the country for possible war.

“Report! The observer relays that a new space gate has appeared beside the gene blood pool!”

“Deploy supplies—do whatever it takes to cooperate!”

“Yes, sir!”

—

Outside the imperial capital, in an underground nuclear bunker, Xu Hao and his team had long since made their preparations. With Yan Qiluo’s authorization, each of their helmets retained hundreds of observation ports. Through these, members of the think tank could use virtual helmets to instantly share data sent back from Xiyuan Star, providing Xu Hao’s group with real-time strategic support.

Although the ten clones were controlled by Xu Hao and his companions, every important move they made was the result of decisions from hundreds of experts.

—

On Hanlan Star, by the gene blood pool.

Yan Qiluo stood atop a chair in front of the central control panel, cheeks puffed out in indignation as she edited data.

“That scoundrel! How could he tell the Guardians about spanking me?!”

Earlier, some of the Guardians had come to inform her that Ye Han needed her to open the virtual helmet access ports and prepare the signal repeaters and base stations.

At first, Yan Qiluo hadn’t believed it. Only when the Guardians had whispered that Ye Han had spanked her bottom did she realize the truth. At that time, only members of the Yan clan had been present; those Guardians couldn’t possibly have known.

—

“The door outside the blood pool—it's definitely a portal to another world!” Yan Qiluo bit down on her tiny canine teeth, the keys clacking beneath her nimble fingers. The ponytail behind her swayed with every movement—adorable beyond words.

“No way!” Feeling extremely wronged, Yan Qiluo’s bright eyes darted, and her lips curled into a sly grin. “I have to leave a backdoor, just to see what tricks they’re up to!”

Even as she muttered to herself, her fingers danced over the controls twice as fast. On the one-meter console, thousands of keys were neatly arrayed. Yan Qiluo’s hands blurred into afterimages, the sound of pearl-like keystrokes filling the control room.

“I have to admit, there’s nothing quite like the tactile feel of a real keyboard... Yes, as the Guardians would say, it’s just so satisfying!”

Her rhythm on the console grew ever more pronounced, and soon Yan Qiluo was even wiggling her little bottom in time with her keystrokes.

—

Inside the cave, Ye Han gazed at the palm-sized signal repeaters, cleverly disguised as stones, and nodded in approval.

That girl Yan Qiluo might be a little sly, but he could always count on her to get the job done.

Each repeater could cover a radius of five hundred kilometers; just a few thousand would suffice for the entire Eastern Li Dynasty.

Now that he had entered Xiyuan Star in person, the pressure on his consciousness meant he could only cover a ten-kilometer radius. That is, each spatial leap he made could only span ten kilometers.

Time was short, and the task was heavy!

Cradling the repeaters, Ye Han shook his head ruefully, then immediately began making spatial jumps.

After four or five hours of hard work, he managed to scatter the repeaters throughout the kingdom.

During this period, the inscription on his chest sensed the locations of over sixty other examinees.

Ye Han didn’t linger.

Even if he wiped out examinees from the same faction, it would only double the number of lifeforms under the opposing camp—not worth the trouble.

It wasn’t that Ye Han was timid or afraid of a direct confrontation; rather, it simply wasn’t necessary.

At that point, he hadn’t finished deploying the repeaters, and the ten clones lost outside hadn’t been awakened yet. If he went looking for trouble now, he would only be making things harder for himself.