Chapter 160: The Hauler

Words : 1439 Updated : Sep 23rd, 2025

Xiao Yu had been closely monitoring the situation on Satellite 3B. Seeing that his defensive arrangements had withstood the Swarm’s most intense initial onslaught, he finally began to relax. Had his defenses failed to hold, Xiao Yu would’ve had no choice but to detonate the hydrogen bombs and obliterate the moon entirely. The resulting fragments would have swept across the Aquila three system, and the consequences would’ve been unpredictable. In any case, such chaos would have thrown the entire war into turmoil—something Xiao Yu wanted to avoid. In total, the Aquila three system contained over one hundred moons with masses exceeding five trillion tons. Of those, Xiao Yu planned to “dispose of” eighty-nine. Their masses and volumes were simply too small to justify defending. To prevent the Swarm Queen from having the chance to consume them, Xiao Yu intended to remove them from the equation entirely. His returning fleet had already caught up to the Swarm force that had attacked his main base, engaging them in fierce combat in space. Without support from the Swarm Queen, these bugs were no match for the Hebei and Yanjing. Their ranks were shredded as if made of paper. By the time they reached Planet two, fewer than one billion bugs remained—and under the pincer attack from the planet’s defense installations and Xiao Yu’s fleet, they were swiftly wiped out. The current strategic picture was clear: Xiao Yu had the capacity to launch long-range raids and plant a nail in the Swarm’s heart, while the Swarm Queen did not. Its long-range strike teams lacked resupply capabilities. Xiao Yu, by contrast, could establish bases wherever he went and replenish resources on the fly. Moreover, the Swarm had another fatal weakness—it had no flagship-class units. There was nothing akin to the Hebei or Yanjing in its arsenal. Without such core units, the Swarm’s long-range operations were doomed to fail. In Xiao Yu’s view, that over ten billion-bug expedition wasn’t so much an attack as it was a mass suicide. Xiao Yu’s fleet safely returned to the Planet two system. There, he conducted a full resupply and loaded up every bit of production from the nine major bases—robots, ultra-miniature starships, mining equipment—and once again set off toward the Planet three system. This time, in addition to the usual supplies, Xiao Yu also brought along numerous large engines. These engines would be used to deal with those small, indefensible moons he couldn’t allow the Swarm Queen to have. The round trip took more than half a month. In that span of time, over ten billion Swarm bugs had perished on Satellite 3B. Everything had gone according to Xiao Yu’s expectations. Not only had the defensive forces on the moon held out, but they had grown stronger amid the war. The robot production lines and ultra-miniature starship factories were running at full speed. Not only could they replenish combat losses, but they were now producing specialized assault fleets to hunt down fuel-collection bugs on Planet three’s surface. Under the Supercomputing Center’s coordination, scenes like this became increasingly common: A massive fuel-collecting Swarm bug went about its task quietly, unaware of danger. Suddenly, a starship would appear seemingly out of nowhere and open fire without warning. These ambushes resulted in devastating losses among the fuel bugs, reducing the Swarm Queen’s fuel collection capacity by at least sixty percent. At first, the Swarm Queen deployed escort bugs to protect the fuel collectors. But Xiao Yu’s attacks were too unpredictable. Eventually, the Swarm Queen began evolving the fuel-collection bugs themselves, granting them some combat ability. At the same time, it dispatched strike groups to harass Xiao Yu’s fuel-collection vessels. Thus, beyond the two main battlefronts, the fuel collection front had become a third theater of conflict. Though smaller in scale, its intensity and brutality were no less severe. Both sides struggled to harvest the fusion fuel they so desperately needed. Amid the dark void of space, the massive bulk of Planet three loomed in the distance. Xiao Yu’s fleet, now entering Swarm territory again, began to experience constant harassment. He ignored these minor skirmishes and pushed steadily toward his next objective. It was a small moon with a mass of about fifty trillion tons. Irregular in shape, it measured approximately 30 kilometers by 20 kilometers by 15 kilometers. Its orbit lay just over 100,000 kilometers from the Swarm Queen’s own, though fortunately, at the current stage of orbital progression, they were not approaching each other. On the surface of this moon, Swarm bugs were still actively collecting minerals. Xiao Yu showed no mercy—he launched a full scorched-earth assault and cleared the moon completely. Following standard protocol, his fleet established a protective perimeter to keep all Swarm out, and then dispatched a team of robots to begin installing the massive engines he had brought. Xiao Yu had already completed a 3D model of the moon, identifying every optimal stress point. The several thousand engines were installed precisely on those points. Technically, these engines could be called planetary engines, though compared to the colossal units Xiao Yu had once installed on Tianyuan A, they were modest. Even combined, these thousands of engines probably didn’t match a single one of those giants. But for this moon’s small mass, their thrust was sufficient. After three days of installation, everything was ready. Xiao Yu gave the launch order. Instantly, the tails of several thousand engines flared with bright blue flames, like ribbons fluttering in the void. Under this synchronized thrust, the moon’s orbital velocity around Planet three gradually increased. Five hours later, it achieved escape velocity. The moon broke free from Planet three’s gravity and began its lonely journey into deep space. In fact, the acceleration provided would not only allow it to escape Planet three—it would even break free of the Aquila three star’s gravitational pull. It would travel ever outward, and if nothing interfered, it would arrive near another red giant in the Aquila Nebula in several tens of thousands of years, eventually entering its orbit. The reason for this was to eliminate any future risk of gravitational perturbation that might lead it to collide with the Arrow Beast homeworld. In a chaotic stellar system, absolute precision wasn’t always possible. If the moon remained, there was a 0.09% chance it could impact the Arrow Beast world. Watching the tiny moon recede into the distance under engine power, Xiao Yu noticed the Swarm Queen growing increasingly agitated. It had realized Xiao Yu’s intent. Xiao Yu saw its spawn production rate increase once more—but this time, the bugs did not swarm toward him. Instead, they dispersed, flying toward the various moons of the Planet three system. “Starting to guard those moons now? It’s useless.” Xiao Yu smiled coldly in his mind. “The Hebei might not be able to approach your body, but getting close to a moon? That’s easy.” This was Xiao Yu’s entire plan: to seize control of all resources within reach of the Swarm Queen. Whatever he could take, he would take. Whatever he couldn’t take, he’d haul away. The goal was to leave the Swarm Queen with nothing but the moon already inside her belly—and no more. Then, he would launch wave after wave of attacks, forcing the Queen to continuously produce spawn, until it completely depleted its resources and could no longer make any more. At that point, it would be finished. Xiao Yu would send it off with a hydrogen bomb. “So what if you understand my plan? I know you possess sufficient intelligence, and I never intended to hide it from you. But I’m curious—how will you respond? Will you run?” Xiao Yu pondered calmly as he approached the next small moon. “It doesn’t have a speed advantage over my fleet. If it tries to escape, I can catch up easily. Out in deep space, without access to gas giants for fuel, it won’t last long. Its only real hope was to leave last time and never come back. If that happened, I’d be forced to guard against the chance of it returning to strike the Arrow Beast homeworld, and I’d have to hunt it across space, which would put me at a disadvantage. But... you came back. So now—just accept your fate.” To Xiao Yu, this massive creature capable of devouring celestial bodies was already doomed. After “relocating” the second small moon, Xiao Yu directed his fleet to the next hydrostatic equilibrium satellite—Satellite 3C—and began its conversion. Of the more than one hundred substantial moons in the system, Xiao Yu would remove eighty-nine and seize full control over the remaining twelve.

Chapter 160: The Hauler

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