Ren Zhong wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, finally feeling relieved, with a look of having narrowly escaped disaster.

After a long while, he muttered, "Beautiful! Just a little more and I would have capsized. This Mother Empress Ship is indeed meaningful, not only granting war merits but also covering for me."

Logically, after the sublimators achieved victory on the frontal battlefield, this Mother Empress Ship could have retired with honor, returning to the sublimators’ territory to enjoy glory and advancement. It could be promoted to at least a second-class Mother Empress.

But for a long-living Mother Empress Ship, fifteen years is merely a blink of an eye.

It wasn’t satisfied with these achievements and instead kept its eyes on the resources of Source Star.

Because it discovered that the development level of the Source Star Colony was astonishingly good.

This small colony unveiled quite a few restricted Empire technologies, especially controllable nuclear fusion.

It decided to wait.

It didn’t choose to attack directly because if the humans of Source Star relied on their ground fortresses and shrank back into the atmosphere, its attack would become quite difficult. The humans of Source Star could defend their stronghold and resist for many years, and might even attract reinforcements from the Empire.

Moreover, under the close illumination of the star, units like Critical Poison Sting, which primarily rely on invisibility, wouldn’t have much of an advantage.

Taking all into account, attacking prematurely wasn’t worthwhile.

Rather than making a thankless effort, it would be better to wait to ambush the returning fleet. After all, as per the Tracer Colonization Fleet’s usual practice, the real essence is in the returning fleet; everything else is just details and extras.

Therefore, the best ambush point was the Tenglong Nebula.

Thus, the Mother Empress Ship halted its monitoring of Source Star, quietly retreating to the Tenglong Nebula to lie in wait and gradually dispatched small reconnaissance life forms, such as the tiny space tardigrades, as scouts, encompassing the exploration routes and trading routes within the Tenglong Nebula—leaving no stone unturned.

Ten years ago, when chaos erupted within Source Star, it also received the "final signal" from the Tracer.

In this piece of information, it was pleasantly surprised to find that the colonization fleet had lost three thousand Frozen Soldiers and nearly six thousand starship juveniles, severely reducing its military strength.

It believed this battle was unimaginably easy and planned to make a quick score and leave. By achieving another merit, perhaps it could even vie for the position of a first-class Mother Empress, becoming one of the highest ancestors of the sublimators. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Its plan was flawless and exquisite, yet in the end, it failed.

Ren Zhong thought for two minutes and said, "Quietly move all neural core cells near the nuclear fusion reactor to shine for a while, erasing the Mother Empress Ship’s memory."

Sun Ai asked in confusion, "Why? I spent so much effort sorting this out, it’s somewhat of an achievement."

Ren Zhong shook his head with a smile, "Since the Mechanical Empire has already suffered a major setback on the frontal battlefield, it will learn from its mistakes and actively chase down these technical gaps or look for ways to avoid interference. How the sublimators developed their new technology is no longer important, it does us no good to keep it. Source Star cannot have anything extraordinary, once it catches the Empire’s interest, this so-called credit will become my death warrant."

Sun Ai sighed, "Alright, whatever you say."

"After destroying the information, you can send the battle report of the Mother Empress Ship to the Empire to request accolades on my behalf. Be sure to emphasize that I developed the unstable folding jump technology with my genius mind. That’s also an achievement. If I can secure a hereditary Earl title, it would greatly benefit us."

...

Once again awakened unexpectedly from his comfortable cryo-sleep, Nanxiang Marquis Liu An stared blankly at the battle report and a conscription order from the Empire’s high command.

What on earth?

The C-level Tracer Return Fleet annihilated a fourth-class Mother Empress!

The one who served as the return fleet’s commander, this low-level colonist named Ren Zhong, actually continued advancing technology on the journey back, developed fold jump technology that doesn’t require stable subspace orbit, and used this technology to advance near the Mother Empress Ship, then inflicted heavy damage with a Three-Phase Bomb, before detonating a star to directly kill the fourth-class Mother Empress!

This person also formulated a wealth of strategies to counter invisible units and information flow interference!

He even got hold of a pile of complete Mother Empress Ship Giant Reproductive Cells, attempting to parse this genetic treasure trove?

"My military merit... sigh, if only I had known... what a headache..."

Liu An let out a long sigh, regretting not doing so sooner.