Free Web NovelThe little prince had gone missing.
For the Saint Clan, this was absolutely the kind of incident that qualified as a major crisis.
The moment the news spread, fierce rage linked every Saint Clan together. Crimson bloodlust flooded their eyes, and nearly every Saint Clan on Dark Tower Star seemed to go mad.
Countless warships blanketed the sky above Dark Tower Star in a dense mass, while shrill alarms rang through every region below.
The instant Wen Yuzhi’s disappearance was discovered, Mond led the guards in a complete search of the palace from top to bottom.
He hoped it was only a misunderstanding. Perhaps the little prince had simply stepped away because of something.
But they searched every corner, every room. They turned the entire palace upside down and still found no sign of the cub.
Instead, Mond found Wen Yuzhi’s light-brain not far from the woods.
It had been discarded beneath a tree, which only confirmed that the cub had been taken.
Someone had infiltrated the palace and stolen their treasure!
At that moment, the fury of the entire Saint Clan could no longer be suppressed. The whole Ninth Star Sector went on high alert, and even the outer ring of Styx crocodiles was stirred into unrest.
And just as the Saint Clan was growing more and more enraged over the little prince’s disappearance, deep in the sea of stars, a warship was silently hidden among an asteroid field.
It was a very dangerous thing to do.
A single careless mistake and the warship could collide with the drifting asteroids around it. Compared to those asteroids, the small warship was no different from an egg. Crashing into them would be like throwing an egg at a rock.
But by the same token, a vast asteroid field could also interfere with the magnetic field, providing the perfect cover for a warship to remain hidden there without being detected.
No one would likely imagine that a warship would use an asteroid field to conceal itself in the depths of the star sea.
No one knew how much time had passed before a cloaked figure suddenly appeared aboard the warship out of thin air, carrying a young boy in their arms.
The moment the figure landed, the body swayed. Then the figure dropped to one knee and vomited a large mouthful of blood.
But no one on the warship even spared that person a glance. They had clearly been waiting for some time, and the instant the figure appeared, they carefully lifted the young boy out of those arms.
“Get him into the hibernation pod.”
“Check his physical condition. Make sure nothing’s wrong.”
“What about his temperature? Is it normal?”
The entire warship instantly sprang into motion, but everyone gathered around the young boy who had been brought back. The cloaked person, meanwhile, was neglected and forgotten off to the side.
Not a single person stepped forward to show concern, even though that person was injured.
And yet the cloaked figure seemed not to care about that at all. Pulling a blue injector from a pouch carried close to the body, the figure pressed it into the body.
As the drug entered the bloodstream, the condition gradually stabilized.
Seeming unaffected by the noisy bustle all around, the figure rose expressionlessly, apparently preparing to leave.
But just as the figure reached the door, a low, tearful murmur suddenly came from behind.
“Dad...”
The young boy who had been brought back seemed to sense the unease on instinct. Even in unconsciousness, Wen Yuzhi let out a blurred little whisper in his sleep.
And it was that single sound that made the figure, just about to leave, stop in place.
...
Cold...
Wen Yuzhi felt terribly cold.
It was as if his entire body had been submerged in some kind of freezing liquid.
The low temperature had left his body stiff.
Wen Yuzhi struggled to open his eyes, and what met them was a sheet of cold white metal.
In his panic, he had no idea what button he touched, but the metal in front of him slowly opened to either side.
Only then did Wen Yuzhi realize that he was lying inside a hibernation pod.
And around him...
Strange instruments, a strange environment... everything felt utterly unfamiliar to Wen Yuzhi.
Where was this?
His newly awakened mind was still sluggish, but Wen Yuzhi still remembered that he had been sitting in the shade under a tree. Someone had struck him from behind and knocked him out.
So had someone brought him here?
Thinking that, Wen Yuzhi tried to sit up inside the hibernation pod.
Icy liquid slid off his body, and only then did he realize that he had just been soaked in some kind of fluid.
That fluid was probably why he had felt so cold.
His clothes had also been changed. Someone had put him in a white robe, and the material did not seem to fear water. Even though he had just come out of liquid, the robe itself was dry.
Wen Yuzhi checked himself over, and very quickly discovered that his light-brain, his jewelry, even the elastic band that had tied up his hair, had all disappeared.
In other words, aside from this one robe, he had nothing left on him.
It seemed [N O V E L I G H T] anything that might carry location coordinates had already been dealt with in advance.
Wen Yuzhi pressed his lips together and climbed out.
There were no soft, thick blankets spread across the metal floor here. The instant his feet touched it, the cold bit straight into him.
Enduring the chill, Wen Yuzhi looked around.
He could not understand any of the large stack of instruments, but he did notice that the hibernation pod he had just been lying in had been set to low-temperature hibernation mode. The liquid inside was cryofluid.
This had probably been done by the person who kidnapped him. The purpose... was likely to keep him asleep the entire time.
They simply had not expected Wen Yuzhi to wake up partway through.
This was a room that looked very much like a laboratory.
The people who had kidnapped him also did not seem to have noticed that he was awake. Or perhaps they simply believed that after being soaked in cryofluid, there was no way Wen Yuzhi could wake up so quickly.
In any case, from what he could tell at the moment, aside from him, there was no second living creature in the room.
Wen Yuzhi checked and found that the room’s door was locked. Most likely, it required the other party’s biometric information to open.
That was probably why they were not worried about him waking up.
After all, even if he did wake up, with a heavy metal door blocking him, there was no way he could leave. And if he tried to damage the door, something like an alarm would probably go off.
What was this place?
Who had locked him up here?
Just as Wen Yuzhi lowered his head and thought, he sharply caught the faint sound of approaching footsteps near the door.
The soundproofing in this room was actually excellent. Thick metal was enough to block out all noise.
If it had been before, Wen Yuzhi would never have been able to hear anything happening outside. But perhaps because he had grown a little, as his mental power rose, Wen Yuzhi could feel that his physical abilities and all five senses had strengthened.
Even through that much metal, he could still hear the sounds outside.
The footsteps were coming this way. Clearly, someone was about to enter.
Wen Yuzhi made a split-second decision and lay back down in the hibernation pod. He closed his eyes and pretended he still had not awakened.
Beep—
“A-level clearance. Entry permitted.”
A cold electronic voice rang out.
The next moment, the door seemed to open.
Two sets of footsteps entered the room, one after the other.
One of them came straight to the hibernation pod. Through the observation window on top, that person saw the silver-haired young boy still lying inside, asleep.
The owner of the other set of footsteps walked around the room.
“I didn’t find anything unusual. He probably hasn’t woken up.”
It was a woman’s voice.
She was checking the state of the room.
Wen Yuzhi’s heart tightened. He thought how lucky it was that, because he could not understand those instruments, he had not rashly touched anything in the room. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Otherwise, given how cautious these two were, they might very well have noticed from changes in the instruments that he had already woken up.
Just then, the person standing beside the hibernation pod also spoke. “You’re too tense. We mixed the cryofluid ourselves. This dosage is enough to keep him asleep until we get back. What are you worried about?”
It was clearly a man’s voice.
The woman’s voice coldly rebuked him. “This is a royal-blood Saint Clan!”
“So what if it’s royal blood? Haven’t we handled plenty of Saint Clan before? He’s just an underage cub, and besides, it’s not like we haven’t—”
Before the man could finish, the woman cut in. “Enough! There’s nothing wrong with being careful. These Saint Clan are not as easy to deal with as you think. Even a juvenile royal blood is no exception. Since orders came down from above to bring him back, then during this period, absolutely nothing can happen to him.”
“All right, all right. You’re A-rank. I’ll listen to you.”
Hearing the man voluntarily lower his stance, the other woman’s tone also softened.
“Come help finish the data first.”
With that, the two of them headed toward the other side of the room.
And when they turned around, neither of them noticed that beneath the hibernation pod there was a butterfly crouched there.
Wen Yuzhi had clearly left it there just now. It was a butterfly formed from a strand of his mental power.
At that moment, the butterfly carefully poked out its body. Through it, Wen Yuzhi could clearly see that the people who had entered the room were a man and a woman, both wearing white lab coats.
Wen Yuzhi thought for a moment, then controlled the butterfly to quietly approach the pair. In the end, he chose to hide it inside the man’s pocket.
From the earlier conversation, it was obvious that the woman was more vigilant, while the man was much more careless.
Hiding the butterfly in the man’s pocket made it less likely to be discovered.
Sure enough, he noticed nothing. A butterfly weighed almost nothing at all, let alone one that was so mild and harmless. It drew no attention from either of them.
When they left, they brought the butterfly out with them.
And through that butterfly hidden in the pocket, Wen Yuzhi could use it as his own eyes, making it easier for him to observe what was happening outside.
This place seemed to be inside a warship.
From the layout of some of the corridors and cabins, Wen Yuzhi felt a vague sense of familiarity.
And when the two of them passed a porthole and he saw the vast, silent starry sky outside, Wen Yuzhi became even more certain that he was aboard a warship.
He just did not know whether this warship was still in the Ninth Star Sector...
Thinking of how suddenly he had been taken away, Yiluo and Feier were definitely panicking by now. And Mond, Dad, and the others... he did not know whether they had gotten word yet that he had gone missing...
Wen Yuzhi’s mood suddenly sank.
But he did not let himself stay negative for long. The current situation would not allow it.
At this point, he had to figure out who had kidnapped him and what these people wanted. Only then could he come up with a plan to escape.
Once he had sorted that out, Wen Yuzhi adjusted his mindset and continued quietly observing the situation aboard the warship.
That woman seemed to hold fairly high status.
Quite a few people they met along the way took the initiative to greet her.
Some of those people were also wearing white lab coats, while others were wrapped in combat gear.
Seven... eight...
Wen Yuzhi silently kept count.
Before long, the two entered another room.
Seeing the translucent pale-blue light screen above it, Wen Yuzhi recognized it as the command room.
Sure enough, several people were seated at the control stations inside.
The woman asked, “How much longer before we’re out of this asteroid field?”
Someone answered, “Another day.”
“Too slow. We need to get back as soon as possible... go call Bai Yi over.”
“No. Bai Yi has been overusing his mental power lately. The injectors kept on him are already empty. If we force him to use it again, I’m worried...”
The speaker did not finish that thought, but it was enough to make the woman who had suggested it change her mind.
Still, she emphasized, “Keep checking the inhibitor on him at all times. The moment there’s any sign of damage, replace it immediately.”
“Yes!”
No one present had any objection to that order.
...Bai Yi?
Was that a person’s name? Or a code name?
Wen Yuzhi felt a little curious and mentally noted the name down as well.
Afterward, he stayed there and listened for a while longer, but those people did not say anything else useful.
The people at the control stations were all focused on piloting the warship around the asteroids rushing toward them, while the woman was watching the starry sky outside with concern in her eyes.
No one was paying attention here.
So Wen Yuzhi quietly guided the butterfly out of the pocket.
Taking advantage of the fact that no one noticed him, Wen Yuzhi came up with a very bold plan.
He was going to search the entire warship first.
If he had guessed correctly, then this warship should not be very large. He had just taken a look at the control stations, and both the command room and the scale of the controls fit the size of a light warship.
That meant the area he needed to search was not too big. As long as he was careful and avoided people, he probably would not be discovered.
With that thought, Wen Yuzhi immediately started moving.
He memorized the location of the command room, then chose a direction and went forward.
Wen Yuzhi had no way of knowing the exact layout of the warship, so all he could do was choose paths where there were fewer people.
This corridor clearly did not see much traffic. It was very quiet.
And the farther in he went, the more obvious that silence became.
Maybe because it was too quiet, Wen Yuzhi felt as if the air here carried an indescribable oppression.
Then all of a sudden, he heard a roar.
It sounded like a wild beast bellowing.
Bang, bang, bang—
Something was slamming heavily against a door panel.
Whatever it was, it was incredibly strong. Even the metal door was shaking from the impact.
That sound... was coming from behind the door?
Following the sound, Wen Yuzhi looked toward the place where the disturbance was coming from.
