Chapter 1130 - 320: Assault
The call Chen Ming dialed was picked up very quickly.
After Bai Quan connected, he asked in confusion, "What’s going on?"
As far as he knew, Chen Ming had been hanging around the Spiritual Ability Research Institute these past two days; he couldn’t understand what could possibly need him when it came to Spiritual Energy-related matters.
But what Chen Ming wanted to talk to him about wasn’t the Spiritual Ability Research Institute.
"There was a bit of an accident. My fleet was attacked by the Mechanical Race."
"They made a lot of preparations in advance—locked down the Teleportation Engines, sealed off Superspace, and by sacrificing a large number of Mechanical Race units, they damaged the ship hulls and snatched a batch of my cargo."
Hearing this, Bai Quan was no longer puzzled, but he was very surprised: "The Mechanical Race actually managed to rob you?"
"If the power gap between fleets is too big, even with Spiritual Energy I can’t hold it. Like, if a Main Ship can blast one of my Cruisers into nothing with a single shot—no matter how good I am at repairing, if the ship is gone what the hell am I supposed to fix?"
"This time it’s also on me. I didn’t consider that somewhere so far from the Empire would still have Mechanical Race around. I figured the support I could provide from my side would arrive in at most five minutes, so I didn’t assign too many ships to the Escort Fleet."
"So when the Mechanical Race came for the ambush, I wasn’t able to set up proper defensive measures."
Bai Quan asked, "It was outside the Empire, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then that’s not strange. Outside the Empire, the Mechanical Race can pop up anywhere. They just prefer to cluster together into a Star Realm, it’s not like there aren’t any scattered ones."
"How big is your specific loss?"
"Mainly a batch of Energy Crystal Crabs."
"Energy Crystal Crabs!"
Bai Quan’s speech rate spiked for a moment.
He’d thought it was cargo Chen Ming was sending out for his own use that got robbed by the Mechanical Race—just some basic supplies, and if they were gone, they were gone.
But it turned out it was the Energy Crystal Crabs Chen Ming was transporting into the Empire that got taken by the Mechanical Race. That was a whole different problem.
"Why would the Mechanical Race go after this batch of goods? It can’t be that there was an intel leak, right?"
"I don’t know the exact reason either."
Chen Ming said, "But I can be sure the Mechanical Race came to attack my fleet with a very clear purpose. They acted extremely decisively, just to seize the cargo, and they knew this shipment was mine."
"Because when they were attacking, they were obviously targeting certain weaknesses in my Spiritual Energy, and after they grabbed the cargo, they just retreated immediately."
"They retreated?"
Bai Quan’s question was exactly the point Chen Ming had been puzzled by earlier.
Because for the Mechanical Race, seeing a passing Empire ship and robbing it is perfectly normal.
But usually, after the robbery—or even before it—the Mechanical Race will choose to first wipe out all the ships and everyone on them.
Why didn’t they keep up the pursuit, why didn’t they exterminate them, why did they let the fleet go?
Unless... the Mechanical Race judged that doing so would fail.
Bai Quan reconfirmed the specific situation with Chen Ming.
He learned that the Mechanical Race had even left while Chen Ming’s ships were still drifting, trapped in a Superspace cloud—they bolted the moment they got the cargo, without the slightest hesitation.
Obviously they knew Chen Ming’s reinforcements were already on the way; if they stalled even a little, they’d be pinned down.
Precisely because of that, Chen Ming could be sure the Mechanical Race definitely knew this fleet was his.
Strictly speaking, Chen Ming had crossed paths with the Mechanical Race several times before, even though he had never once revealed his true body.
But he had definitely left some very bold, heavy strokes in the Mechanical Race’s database.
So them recognizing that these were Chen Ming’s ships was normal.
Because of that, Bai Quan didn’t press any further questions, but the incident itself was already a serious problem.
"If the Mechanical Race also has the technology to cultivate Energy Crystal Crabs, then the loss of these crabs might lead to the Mechanical Race gaining Energy Crystal Technology as well."
The key is the number of Energy Crystal Crabs the Mechanical Race seized, and their level of technology.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how advanced the Mechanical Race’s tech is, but judging from those mechanized Spiritual Creatures, it’s definitely not low.
So once the number of lost Energy Crystal Crabs passes a certain threshold, the Mechanical Race really might be able to breed a new population.
"Roughly how many Energy Crystal Crabs did you lose?"
"A few thousand."
"A few thousand..."
A few thousand is a very ambiguous number, sitting right on the boundary between being enough and not enough to successfully cultivate.
After all, a population needs a base number to be viable; if the numbers are too small, there’s absolutely no way to breed a new group.
Even with cloning technology it doesn’t work—if a population has too few genetic samples, sooner or later it turns into a dead, stagnant group.
But a few thousand... that number gave Bai Quan a bit of a headache for a moment.
"Actually, things haven’t yet reached the point where there’s no way to salvage them."
"Because as long as there’s no intel leak inside the Empire, the Mechanical Race probably doesn’t know exactly what cargo I was transporting—at least not for now."
"They’ll need time to figure out what this batch is for, which means I still have a chance to take it back."
"And I’ve already confirmed that the Mechanical Race definitely has a temporary base somewhere nearby. They’re bound to send the stolen Energy Crystal Crabs there."
"My idea is to destroy that Mechanical Race base and seize the goods back."
"But I have to ask your opinion first, so my actions don’t cause the Empire and the Mechanical Race to go to war ahead of schedule."
After the situation was explained clearly, Bai Quan also realized this was a decision that had to be made in a short time frame.
It definitely hadn’t been long since Chen Ming’s cargo was stolen; if they move fast enough, the Mechanical Race might not even have time to investigate the actual function of the Energy Crystal Crabs.