Actually, when the first snowflake appeared, the signals between Earth and space were cut off, and everyone's screens showed only static.

The authorities quickly released an explanation, saying that this accident was caused by the impact of a solar storm. Since the sudden magnetic storm and the broken signals were almost seamlessly connected, no one suspected...

This was not true.

Of course this was not true.

The truth was, the first communication failure was man-made, with the purpose of ensuring that the ordinary people on Earth, and the alien spies mixed among the ordinary people, would only hear what they were supposed to hear.

Yang Ning's seemingly incomprehensible order was in fact only conveyed to the Trojan Horse No. 1 flagship and escort ships, while the ground knew nothing about it.

However, the journalists on the escort ships who were cut off from all contact with the outside world were still anxious.

"Why uninstall the curvature drive?"

"Can the command staff please explain the intent of the order!"

"How can there be such an inexplicable order?"

"Who is the commander? Come out and explain what exactly is going on?"

The clamor was overwhelming, like a flock of five hundred geese...

If only Jiang Jin were still alive, Ye Wenlin thought, then he wouldn't have to endure this ordeal.

Ye Wenlin was upset, so he did something rather unkind with a serious and solemn face. He first secretly cleared his throat, then without warning, he pushed the loudspeaker to the maximum volume. Several close-range reporters all felt the deafening sound waves, and the cameras let out a "beep--" scream of agony. The dazed crowd, dizzy and disoriented, covered their ears in pain, completely unaware of what he had said.

"Input the curvature drive's 30-minute self-destruct program after separation, start unloading."

After saying that, Captain Ye straightened his collar in front of the stunned photographers and cameras, put on his hat, and with a look of "what are you looking at, executing orders from superiors is my duty" on his face, he turned and entered the main control room, acting like a big shot and not accepting interviews.

The reaction on the main ship was no slower than that on the escort ships. After hearing it, Zhang Liping clicked his tongue lightly and said, "Oh my, that's fierce, I bet this time it's a big move."

Then he switched to Mandarin and concisely simplified the order to: "Unload!"

The professional soldiers did not utter a single word of doubt. Immediately, the curvature drives, the fastest on Earth and representing the first step of mankind's conquest of space-time, were all unloaded, becoming a pile of space junk, and successfully self-destructed 30 seconds after leaving the ship, like the darkest flowers blooming in the darkest places.

Fu Luo was holding her precious reader, a palm-sized interactive reader that could be converted into a notebook for the user to take notes at any time.

She quickened her pace to catch up with Zhang Liping. Before she could speak, the other party lowered his voice and said to her first, "What, you want to know what the colonel's order means? Alas, to be honest with you, little sister, I don't know either. When we're out there, those silver boys at the General Staff Office have to work their asses off. Next time if you stay, you'll know. A letter from the General Staff Office has to last until the end of the mission. You can't even drink saliva when you're thirsty and exhausted. If there's even a fart's worth of change in the data, the orders have to change with it. In special cases, maybe even the mission objectives will change along with it--"

The ambitious and studious Fu Luo quickly took notes on her reader, as devoutly as if she had received a golden rule.

"We dispatched personnel do not participate in the discussion of the current mission, so as not to interfere with the execution of orders by personal judgment. 'Don't ask why, just execute' is the first principle of our Second Department." The dark and sturdy Zhang Liping spoke with a hint of roughness, but this sentence was almost resounding.

...But soon, his bit of momentum deflated. Zhang Liping watched Fu Luo write frantically, his pointy-chinned monkey face beginning to turn red in the darkness. He casually scratched his hair, "It's just that little bit of stuff, anyone who's been around long enough knows it. I say, can you not admire me so much? You're making me quite embarrassed..."

Time passed minute by minute. As the fleet pushed forward, the other side still did not respond to any signals from the Earth side. Fu Luo and the others received the latest order from the General Staff Office, requiring them to release the stealth reconnaissance ships before the main ship traveled to a distance of 70 firing range units from the target.

At that moment, a certain desire inexplicably arose in Fu Luo's heart. She didn't want to stay in this main ship with two outer shells anymore. She wanted to personally see what the enemy looked like up close.

Fu Luo knew that the General Staff Office had a high vantage point and was not a place where a rookie who had never seen a real battlefield could stay by rote memorization of theories and simulation training. She couldn't drag down the General Staff Office. Now that she had finally come to space, she didn't want to be someone who only talked about military affairs on paper.

Perhaps some people, no matter how measured and polite they appear, are still restless in their bones. Fu Luo had a strong drive to act. As soon as she thought of it, she expressed it.

"Reporting," she said.

Yang Ning: "Hmm?"

"I request to board the reconnaissance ship, I guarantee the completion of the mission. Please rest assured!"

Zhang Liping stumbled and almost fell, looking at his new colleague in disbelief.

Yang Ning pondered for a moment, "How's your low-altitude mech operation level, and small warship level?"

Fu Luo: "All excellent!"

Yang Ning: "What about reconnaissance theory?"

Fu Luo: "I can recite from page 1 to page 368."

Everyone who heard this sentence at the General Staff Office had a blank expression and was silent as the grave.

However, Yang Ning seemed to show a hint of a smile, but it was fleeting. On such an occasion, he quickly became serious, "Your safety cannot be guaranteed in this reconnaissance mission. Aren't you afraid of death?"

Fu Luo: "Reporting to the leader, what's the point of going to space if you're afraid of death?"

Perhaps after she grows for another twenty or thirty years and is tempered by time to develop some shrewdness, she will find Yang Ning to be a very sinister person. However, at this time, Fu Luo is still at the stage of mental development where she would help count the money for someone who sold her out. When encountering something like being thrown into an S-level mission twenty minutes after enlisting, she is actually very grateful to Yang Ning.

In her view, this is not a mission full of uncertainties and extremely high risk, but rather Colonel Yang giving her a precious opportunity to grow.

Yang Ning approved it.

After ending this communication, he turned his head and said to Dong Jialing with hidden meaning, "Did you hear that? If you're afraid of dying, why go to heaven?"

Dong Jialing was speechless.

Yang Ning suddenly lowered his head and smiled, "This is the calm sea without startling waves, the carefree voice of an innocent child."

It wasn't until he had sent Fu Luo all the way to the reconnaissance ship that Zhang Liping finally spoke, "My daughter is two and a half years old this year, and has already grown to one meter tall."

Fu Luo was stunned for a moment, not quite grasping what her senior meant.

The veteran sighed with a vicissitudes tone, "When I go back, I'll have to tell my wife to have the aunties press down on our daughter's head more, don't let her grow too tall. Otherwise, with high blood pressure and insufficient cerebral blood supply, she'll be prone to lacking sense in the future."

"..." Fu Luo thought for a moment. Out of respect, she cautiously confirmed, "Lacking sense refers to me?"

Zhang Liping waved his hand helplessly, "You're worrying me to death. Go quickly, and come back alive."

The stealth reconnaissance ships, covered by the huge shadow of the main ship, dispersed like light smoke according to the established plan, without even the people on the escort ships noticing.

The reconnaissance ships had preset routes in the early stage and did not require manual operation - quite coincidentally, this time, her reconnaissance ship number was again No. 4.

Fu Luo finally had the opportunity to take a first-hand look at the vast universe, but all she could see was a piece of darkness, occasionally with small floating objects brushing past her, which did not make one feel any familiarity, because they could all be fatal.

The universe, this is a place that cannot be described. As a tiny carbon-based creature, she felt that her field of vision was incredibly narrow, to the point that even when in it, what she witnessed was only a tiny dark spot the size of a sesame seed or mung bean in the vast universe, like a blind person touching an elephant.

Due to the risk of developing "cosmic horror" from long flights, every student in the Space Combat Forces had to undergo rigorous psychological training for this, but the vast difference between the fake goods simulated on the ground and the real universe was always an insurmountable gap beyond human power.

Ye Wenlin had told her before that although the number of space drifters was small, they were very dangerous. Even a small group of bandits, if not handled properly, could cause irreversible destructive consequences.

Because once the cradle planet where intelligent life first originated is lost, the blow to their psyche is devastating, enough to completely change a person and turn them into a group of thoroughly doomed outlaws.

Fu Luo suddenly thought, aren't the humans of the other star system space drifters in another sense?

And every space soldier who independently rides a warship and carries out missions at the edge of darkness is like a group of dutiful guards staying at the edge of darkness, always defending the ignorant Eden behind them.

The ignorant... Earth Eden.

These space ethics issues only flashed through her mind, and soon, the yellow warning issued by the reconnaissance ship pulled her attention back, "Alert, locked onto by unknown rays."

Fu Luo instantly entered a highly tense state, but her breathing remained steady - in space, oxygen is the most critical thing, and one must always be careful not to enter a state of high oxygen consumption at any time.

At this time, the electronic map showed that she had already entered the safe range of sixty units of the enemy's range.

She pressed the communicator by her ear and said softly, "No. 4 encountered unknown ray lock-on, judged to be yellow."

In the space system, the warning signals were derived from the weather warnings of ancient times, and were divided into four levels according to the degree of danger: blue, yellow, orange, and red. Yellow unknown rays generally had a certain degree of aggressiveness, but the aggressiveness was not high, and it was still mainly defensive.

The implanted communication device quickly transmitted the echoes of other reconnaissance ships.

"No. 3 encountered unknown ray lock-on, judged to be yellow."

"No. 16 encountered unknown ray lock-on, judged to be yellow."

"No. 8..."

It was as if the other side had opened a huge net and instantly caught all twenty or so reconnaissance ships in it.

It should be known that sixty times the cosmic range unit is definitely not a distance where one can count the other party's eyelashes clearly by setting up a telescope. Outside sixty times the cosmic ray unit, the probability of capturing an invisible reconnaissance ship less than five meters long is the same as capturing a cold virus a kilometer away - it's mathematically a small probability event.

Not to mention being locked onto all at the same time.

Too strange - this was what everyone thought.

The activity of sunspots became more and more intense, and even the ear communicators began to have noise.

Amidst the noise, Yang Ning said unhurriedly, "Activate the D-type path and escape the enemy's lock-on at full speed."

The D-type path is the fastest way for a stealth reconnaissance ship to escape the other party's scanning rays. Experimental results show that as long as luck is not too bad, outside thirty times the range distance, the probability of a locked-on stealth reconnaissance ship escaping is as high as 99.7%.

However, that yellow ray followed like a shadow and could not be shaken off no matter what. The other party seemed to be able to predict the route of the reconnaissance ship that had almost become an afterimage.

Fu Luo almost suspected that there was a problem with the early warning system on the reconnaissance ship.