A rare trace of relief appeared in Mrs. Mu’s eyes. Her son, who had never paid any mind to females before, finally seemed to be experiencing the stirrings of a young man’s heart, showing a new gentleness.

"Alright," she said. "I’ll make sure your father finds her."

Mu Tangfeng made his calls, and Ye Ming and the others were not about to be outdone.

Ye Ming contacted his mother directly. She was the dean of the Capital School.

He had graduated from that same school, where much of what he knew about females had been taught in his mother’s class. As such, he had grown accustomed to calling her "Teacher" at school.

Jiang Xia also informed his parents. As one of the Imperial City’s Four Great Families, the Jiang Family was famous for its mercenaries. They ran a mercenary corporation, and all of its members could be dispatched to help find Shi Lan.

Yan Huoshui notified the old man, Lu Dinfeng. When Lu Dinfeng and his wife heard the news, he found himself thrilled. He had long found retired life dull, and now that something urgent had come up, he eagerly led a portion of his household guards to set out with the Jiang Family’s mercenaries.

In the past, the dean would never have allowed him to mobilize forces personally. But since it was a rare request from her own son—and for such an important female—she didn’t stand in the way.

And so, what began as a simple search for a missing female—a task for the Space-Time Battleship Patrol Soldiers—unwittingly expanded. The top powers of the Capital had gathered, and a dense fleet of spaceships and teleportation teams surged toward Red Flame Star, approaching like an encroaching storm cloud.

In the span of just over an hour, Shi Lan had no idea her disappearance would cause such an uproar. She had expected Jiang Yan and the Space-Time Battleship to be looking for her, but she never imagined that even the men from the prison would learn of it, and that all these different factions would end up converging.

She sat on the chair, her hands and feet bound. After so long, her limbs ached and her body was growing numb from the lack of circulation.

She frowned and couldn’t help but ask, "Could you loosen the ropes a little? They’re too tight."

The man in the black trench coat scoffed. "Miss, I hope you understand that you’re a captive. Captives don’t have rights."

"But you’re about to throw me to the Insect Clan. Can’t you at least let me be a little more comfortable before I die?"

Perhaps it was because she knew he wasn’t going to kill her himself, or perhaps it was because a solution was already forming in her mind, but Shi Lan’s mood shifted from initial tension to cynical resignation.

"HAHAHA, you’ve got some nerve for a female. You do have a point."

The man in the black trench coat chuckled again. He set the ship to autopilot and walked over to Shi Lan.

Shi Lan shot him a sideways glance before lowering her head again, staring meekly at her feet.

Perhaps thinking about how the poor little female was about to die, the man in the black trench coat didn’t mind her scrutiny. A pleasant smile fixed on his lips, and in a rare moment of kindness, he loosened her ropes slightly.

"Since you’re so interesting, I’ll let you have a more comfortable death."

With that, he returned to the pilot’s seat. They were only a few minutes from their destination.

The next few minutes passed quickly. The Teleportation Spaceship descended slowly toward the planet. When they were about a dozen meters from the ground, he squinted at the towering members of the Insect Clan in the distance, then mercilessly dragged Shi Lan to the hatch and shoved her out.

"Bye-bye, little female..."

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. He gave her a little wave, then quickly shut the spaceship’s hatch and departed.

Her hands and feet were finally free, but Shi Lan had no time to celebrate. She felt the wind, sharp as a knife, scrape across her cheeks. She squinted at the rapidly approaching ground and the Insect Clan stampeding toward her from a distance. ’That man is truly ruthless,’ she thought. ’Even if the insects don’t eat me, a fall from this height will smash me to bits.’

’Luckily, I have Xiao Du.’

She immediately tried to channel her spiritual power. At the last possible second, just a meter above the ground, she transformed into a green mushroom and landed softly.

The force of the impact caused the mushroom to bounce twice on the ground, then tumble and roll for several rotations before coming to a stop against a pile of putrid garbage.

At that exact moment, a dozen or so members of the Insect Clan descended from afar.

It was safe to say Shi Lan had never experienced anything so terrifyingly intense. Not even her car accident had been as frightening as this.

The insects, some as tall as multi-story buildings, surrounded her like small mountain peaks. They were bizarrely shaped—some had countless legs, others resembled mutated spiders covered in dense compound eyes, and still others had sacs hanging from their chests, filled with translucent, basketball-sized egg clusters.

Shi Lan had never seen anything so disgusting. She was so terrified she didn’t dare to breathe, and her mushroom form remained frozen in place.

Fortunately, her mushroom form was small, and she had rolled into a crevice in the trash, leaving her relatively well-hidden.

The insects seemed confused as to why the scent of fresh meat had suddenly vanished. They circled the spot where Shi Lan had landed a dozen times before finally departing, seemingly unsatisfied.

Shi Lan didn’t even have time to sigh in relief. Just then, a small, one-meter-tall centipede curiously extended two antennae into the garbage crevice. The tips came within a fist’s breadth of her. Shi Lan instinctively rolled deeper into the trash as the antennae curled around a broken tin can beside her.

The small centipede sniffed the can, stuffed it into its mouth, chewed a couple of times, and then spat out the metal. Satisfied, it burrowed back into the dirt.

Shi Lan didn’t dare move, but she had immediately sent her location to Jiang Yan. Knowing that Levito was one of He Hanshi’s men, she sent it to him as well.

Fortunately, the chips in this era were implanted in the flesh of one’s wrist, so they wouldn’t be lost even when a Beastman underwent Beastification.

Shi Lan saw that she had numerous messages on her communicator, but her current position wasn’t safe enough. Her transformation time was also limited, so after sending her coordinates, she had no time to reply.

She looked at the location address. Just as the surrounding trash heaps suggested, this was the Garbage Star.

’But that made a certain amount of sense,’ she thought. Since the Garbage Star was uninhabited, it had been the first planet the Insect Clan conquered. All the abandoned refuse here had become their snacks.

For more than a decade, almost no one had set foot on the Garbage Star. It was the Insect Clan’s main stronghold, and since some of them could fly through wormholes to other planets, the risks were immeasurable.

The more Shi Lan considered her situation, the colder her heart grew. That man in the black trench coat was truly vicious.

She had assumed he was taking her to some ordinary Insect Clan nest, not that he would dump her on the desolate, uninhabited Garbage Star, which was absolutely teeming with them.

But this was no time to dwell on that. Shi Lan peeked outside. After confirming there were no more insects, she cautiously began to roll her mushroom form forward to explore.

The Garbage Star had long been unsuitable for human life. Even setting aside the Insect Clan, the pollution was severe. The air was thick with toxic gases and contaminants that could poison anyone who breathed it.

She was safe for now, while transformed, but in thirty minutes, she would be facing certain death.

’Thankfully, there was still a sliver of hope.’

Shi Lan stared at the navigation on her chip. She had just used a smart diagnostic tool and found an abandoned building one kilometer away. It was once a temporary lodging for the Garbage Star’s administrative staff; there might be something inside she could use for protection.

Shi Lan couldn’t help but feel grateful that the chip was an integrated personal device. If it had been an old-fashioned phone, it would have been smashed or lost in the fall. Then she would have been truly helpless.

She collected her thoughts and looked ahead. The surrounding area was a desolate wasteland where not even a blade of grass grew. Without the cover of the garbage piles, the open, barren patch of land made her feel exposed, and she couldn’t help but speed up.