Upon learning that the other side might have been bluffing, General Knight felt his vision darken.
He steadied himself against the command console, swaying for several seconds before regaining his balance.
"You're saying..."
His voice was hoarse, tinged with disbelief.
"They used a weapon that couldn't fire to successfully intimidate us?"
The adjutant remained silent.
Knight continued, each word seeming to be forced through gritted teeth.
"They made us choose to flee instead of counterattacking immediately?"
"And while we were running, they kept wearing us down."
"Directly destroying five hundred of our warships?"
The adjutant opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but no words came out.
Though he was extremely reluctant to admit it, the facts seemed to be exactly that.
That strange ship had only fired once and never moved again.
And they, the proud Imperial Duke-class Fleet with twelve hundred warships, had been terrified by that single shot.
They had panicked.
Lost their composure.
And needlessly lost five hundred ships.
Knight leaned on the command console, his face terrifyingly grim.
Silence lasted for over ten seconds.
Then the adjutant spoke, his voice very soft.
"Commander... what do we do now?"
He paused, his gaze falling on the still-burning Imperial wreckage displayed on the tactical screen.
"Even if we go all out and fight them..."
"The outcome is uncertain."
"After all, we still have nearly seven hundred warships left. Less than four hundred are combat-ready."
Knight abruptly raised his head.
In his eyes, the despair was being replaced by a near-mad determination.
Four hundred ships.
Even with heavy losses, even with low morale, even after being played for fools.
He still had four hundred.
And the enemy only had a little over two hundred warships.
Fight.
Even if they couldn't win, they would tear a piece of flesh from them.
General Knight straightened his back, took a deep breath, and his voice exploded across the bridge.
"Relay orders..."
"All ships, turn around!"
"Target: the enemy main fleet!"
"Free fire! Fight them to the death!"
The orders were quickly transmitted.
The remaining seven hundred warships of the Blood Locust Fleet began slowly adjusting their course.
The ships that had been scattering in panic moments ago now regrouped, aiming their gun muzzles at the Federation main fleet ahead.
Their engines' tail flames reignited.
The charging glow of their main cannons began to flicker.
They were preparing to launch their final, desperate charge.
However.
At that very moment.
A sharp alarm sound erupted within the bridge of the Iron Blood Sovereignty.
The sound was piercing, urgent, carrying an ominous foreboding.
The sensor supervisor jerked his head up, staring at his screen, his pupils instantly contracting to pinpoints.
His voice changed pitch, filled with uncontrollable horror.
"Reporting, Commander!!"
"The rear!"
"Detecting massive high-energy reactions in the rear!!"
General Knight whirled around.
On the screen, in the airspace behind the Blood Locust Fleet.
That T4-class Federation Fleet, which should have been fleeing, was now pouring out from the shadow on the other side of Danube Star, closing in on their rear at extremely high speed.
Over two hundred ships.
And still increasing.
Knight's body swayed.
His lips moved, emitting a hoarse whisper he himself could barely hear.
"This..."
"This damn..."
The adjutant stood beside him, his face deathly pale.
Half an hour later.
The Blood Locust Fleet was completely annihilated.
This airspace had been utterly transformed.
The once empty starry expanse was now filled with the densely packed wreckage of warships.
Fragments of Imperial Starships drifted and spun slowly in the vacuum, some still burning, others already cooled into twisted lumps of metal.
Shattered hulls, melted turrets, scattered armor plates, and those unrecognizable debris fragments formed a river of death stretching for a million kilometers.
Occasionally, escape pods drifted out from the wreckage, but most had already lost their life signals.
Those who hadn't managed to escape in time had remained forever in this starry expanse, together with their warships.
Bridge of the Flagship Kunlun Mountain - Modified.
Compared to the silent ruins outside the viewports, the atmosphere inside the bridge was a completely different world.
Zhuang Zhixuan leaned against the control console, letting out a long sigh, her face wearing a look of relief as if she had just survived a disaster.
She glanced around, looking at her similarly relaxed colleagues, and the corners of her mouth unconsciously lifted slightly.
"We won."
She said softly, as if confirming something.
A staff officer beside her nodded heavily, his voice filled with suppressed excitement.
"We won."
"We won."
Intermittent reports of victory from various ships came through the communication channel.
Message after message came back, each word confirming the same fact.
That once ferocious Blood Locust Fleet, with its three thousand warships, no longer existed.
Zhuang Zhixuan took a deep breath and turned to look at the people behind her.
The staff officers, communications officers, sensor operators—their faces were now all lit up with unconcealable smiles.
Some leaned back in their chairs, breathing heavily; some high-fived each other in celebration.
Others just sat there blankly, staring at the dense wreckage on the screens, as if confirming they weren't dreaming.
Facing twelve hundred Imperial warships with less than four hundred of their own.
Although the enemy had been weakened, they still outnumbered them three to one.
And they had won.
Such a battle record would be enough to be written into textbooks in any era.
For each of them, this campaign would become a significant highlight of their military careers.
No matter how many years passed, they could always stand tall and say:
I was there in that battle.
My commander, with less than four hundred ships, destroyed twelve hundred enemy warships.
Zhuang Zhixuan's gaze slowly lifted.
Everyone was doing the same thing.
The staff officers who had just been celebrating with each other, the officers slumped in their chairs catching their breath, the operators staring blankly at their screens.
At this moment, their eyes all turned, as if by agreement, in the same direction.
The very front of the bridge.
That young figure standing with his back to them, before the command console.
Qin Bei Wang.
He stood there quietly, motionless.
The four stars on his epaulettes gleamed with a faint, cold light under the dim illumination.
The back of his uniform remained perfectly straight, showing no signs of post-battle fatigue or excitement.
Everyone looked at him.
At this young man who, from the beginning of the battle until now, had hardly shown any emotion.
Those suffocating decisions.
Dividing forces for ambush, using gravitational slingshots to turn around, strategic weapon deterrence, Tier 4 fleet flanking maneuvers, fighter craft harassment, psychological tactics.
Each one was like dancing on the edge of a blade, with no room for the slightest error.
And he, one after another, got them all right.
It wasn't luck.
It was calculation.
The kind of almost ruthless calculation that anticipated every move the enemy would make, accounted for every variable on the battlefield.
That feeling of toying with the enemy Fleet at will.
It left those of us carrying out the orders both in awe and with a faint, lingering chill.
This person was truly terrifying.
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