Yes, no matter what, that yellow-level beam seemed to stick like a stubborn band-aid that couldn't be shaken off.

Before long, a pilot's voice came through the communication device on Fu Luo's ear: "Commander, the other side seems to have some kind of plot. Should we continue the mission?"

There was a three-second pause on Yang Ning's end, and then Fu Luo heard the voice that was starting to become familiar: "No, continue, full speed ahead."

It seemed like their side also had some kind of scheme in the works - although she didn't know why, Fu Luo could sense this implication, and still felt a sense of reassurance.

She thought her baseless sense of reassurance was quite baffling, so she had to admit that what Zhang Liping said made some sense - she was probably indeed a bit foolish.

At the General Staff Office, Yang Ning quickly switched the communication link with the Trojan Horse No. 1 and its escort ships, and sped up his speech: "Get ready, be prepared for a surprise attack by the enemy--"

Almost at the instant he opened his mouth, Ye Wenlin on the escort ship had already issued the emergency evasion order.

At that moment, all the flashing lights and all the cameras malfunctioned at the same time. Only the precarious military camera on the Trojan Horse No. 1 main ship captured this scene...

The Trojan Horse No. 1 didn't have time to shed its disguised shell, but under Zhang Liping's instinctive reaction, it had already deployed a huge anti-missile protective shield. The violent impact in the silent vacuum was like a thrilling silent movie. The protective shield and the long-range missiles ground against each other in a deadly entanglement, and the resulting shock wave made it impossible to look at directly.

All the fools who didn't have time to close their eyes truly experienced what it meant to be "blinded by the flash".

The dark universe was as bright as day, and countless tiny unidentified floating objects were swept out by the overwhelming shock wave, almost forming a frightening vortex.

Inside the space fortress, the General Staff Office staff, still in shock, received an internal phone call.

Major General Chen Zhong personally called to inquire, "Can the Trojan Horse No. 1's defense system hold up for now?"

Yang Ning: "It looks like it can for now."

Chen Zhong: "Good, push the footage of the attack to the ground."

Yang Ning: "Yes."

He knew that tonight's main course had arrived.

Yang Ning relayed the orders from above and shifted his gaze to another star electronic map, a very large map with only a few lonely little bright spots representing their mosquito-like stealth reconnaissance ships in the universe. Yang Ning's eyes fell on the reconnaissance ship marked as No. 4.

The action route on the map showed that she was taking turns trying various paths, meticulously attempting to shake off that unidentified beam.

"Am I being a bit too much?" he thought to himself, as if the girl's fearless expression was right in front of his eyes.

And that reconnaissance theory memorized from page one to page three hundred and sixty-eight... Yang Ning shook his head lightly, shaking all irrelevant thoughts out of his brain, but he felt that if something really happened to this D-level new recruit who had just reported for duty during the mission, he would definitely regret it.

But... that would be a matter for later.

Soon, the signal was transmitted to the ground.

Due to the long signal interruption, the hosts of major live broadcasts had to insert commentary and other related content to maintain viewership. They didn't expect that after a full hour of disconnected signal, the reconnected signal would bring them such a scene.

The main ship of the peace talk fleet was attacked, shocking the world.

Only China's CCTV network channel did not broadcast this thrilling scene that shocked the world. It quietly began to air a seemingly inconspicuous research results release program.

At first, it didn't attract much attention, but soon, like a pebble thrown into a river, it started creating large ripples.

Ten minutes later, the live broadcast address of the program was forwarded more than a million times by netizens, rising out of the blue to replace the hot topic of "peace talk fleet attacked" and squeezing to the top headlines of major social networking sites.

The title of this science popularization program was neither hot nor cold, simply called: The Infinite Possibilities of Cosmic Rays.

It sounded like a cliché from the last century.

The specially invited expert started with the common polyostotic disease of humans in the other star system, claiming that their research institute was fortunate to obtain the remains of two star humans from the other star system and extracted DNA for research.

All kinds of obscure terms made even the well-educated public feel dizzy. Fortunately, the host was very professional. Every few sentences, he would naturally interject and summarize for the audience in non-professional language to ensure effective information delivery.

Host: "So you mean, due to cosmic rays, humans in the other star system have developed a 24th pair of chromosomes, right? Well, dear audience friends, as we all know, human genetic genes are contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, which means that humans in the other star system who have been exposed to cosmic rays actually have one more pair of chromosomes than us. Teacher, what does this indicate?"

The expert interlocked his fingers: "Actually, the 24th pair of chromosomes contains very little information and, for some reason unknown to us at this time, is extremely unstable and prone to genetic mutations. Some fragments are even unable to complete RNA transcription. This makes humans in the other star system very similar to humans on Earth, but there is one thing that cannot be ignored. Whether or not the 24th pair of chromosomes can show its presence, it has already caused reproductive isolation between the two types of humans."

The host widened his eyes and followed up: "Ah, yes! I remember when I was a kid, my school teacher taught in class that reproductive isolation is one of the important criteria for determining whether they belong to the same species. So you mean, humans in the other star system and we humans on Earth are no longer considered the same species?"

The expert's expression was calm, but he dropped a bombshell: "Humans in the other star system have fled Earth for nearly two hundred years. For such a long time, the two sides have not been living separately in two cities, two provinces, two countries... but two star systems. Our modern history diverged from theirs for a full one hundred and sixty years. Spiritually speaking, the day they left Earth, for us, they were no longer human - and now the research evidence shows that, as it turns out, they are no longer human even physically."

A great uproar was stirred up on the Earth's internet.

If humans in the other star system were defined as true "aliens", then this would not be a conflict of whether two types of humans should unite or not, but an invasion war.

An invasion war started by "aliens" from the other star system.

While their side repeatedly made concessions and sought peace talks, the space invaders responded with long-range missiles.

"Next, I will present a piece of 'evidence' that will allow the audience to have a more intuitive sense of this." The expert on the TV continued.

As he spoke, a dozen armed special forces from the Security Department rushed into the studio, escorting what appeared to be a boy under ten years old.

The boy seemed to be covered in something from head to toe, emitting an eerie glow under the studio lights.

"This 'child', named Hu Yang, was born in southern China in 2199 - in other words, he is already 230 years old this year. He was born before the war, so his birth records should still be in Earth's household registration system. Interested viewers can go and check."

"160 years ago, the nearly 70-year-old middle-aged Hu Yang fled Earth with other refugees to another star system. On the way, they encountered a meteor shower and nearly perished when their ship was destroyed. When forced to do a spacewalk due to insufficient protective equipment, a small meteorite fragment with high concentrations of cosmic rays pierced his spacesuit and embedded in his left shoulder. After being rescued, he found that under the effects of cosmic radiation, his body had shrunk to the appearance of his childhood self and remained that way for over a hundred years. Three years ago, while wandering the stars, he was captured by our military."

"Everyone, look, this is our non-human neighbor."

Everything seemed to have an explanation now. The other star system was scarce in resources, even their stars were artificial energy stations. Their artificial biological systems were so fragile that any small break would cause the entire collapse - how could it compare to Earth, where even as species after species of animals went extinct, humans still lived very well?

For many years, the humans of the other star system had been creating a diversion to conceal their true intentions.

They had clearly sharpened their knives, coming for the fat piece of meat that was Earth.

On the public comment platform below the program, comments flashed by rapidly-

"Peace talks? Talk my ass!"

"Damn aliens."

"These damned alien invaders won't agree to peace talks at all, they're here to wipe us out!"

While the ground was in an uproar, the Trojan Horse No. 1 was under even more intense attack.

"If I were you, I'd peel off the shell and prepare to counterattack." In the short-range communication, Zhang Liping heard the voice of Captain Ye from the escort ship.

Zhao Youxuan's special forces had a relatively independent relationship with the Space Combat Third Department. Occasionally their missions intersected, but the opportunities were few. If it weren't for the fear of shaming people from the Second Department's General Staff Office, Zhang Liping might have asked for an autograph from General Zhao, who completed humanity's first jump.

Suddenly hearing Ye Wenlin's voice, Zhang Liping was stunned for a moment.

"He's right." Yang Ning's voice cut in from the General Staff Office's remote monitoring: "Cut off the camera, peel off the Trojan Horse No. 1's disguise shell, advance, and equip long-range missiles."

Zhang Liping gritted his teeth and carried out the order - he implemented the Second Department's absolute principle, but didn't really think it was right in his heart.

First, although the Trojan Horse No. 1 was powerful, it was a lone force with limited energy. If all the energy was put into the protective shield, it might hold out longer.

Second, their more than 20 patrol ships were still in front, wouldn't this risk friendly fire?

But Ye Wenlin dragged out his voice and lazily asked, "Colonel Yang, do we fools charging at the front have reinforcements?"

Yang Ning answered without hesitation, "Yes."

That's good - Ye Wenlin laughed lightly. On the surface, this was a political show and frontline probing mission hidden under the guise of peace talks, killing two birds with one stone.

And the other side, under these circumstances, obviously wanted to turn the tables and stage a double-cross.

The humans of the other star system probably planned to leisurely wait in place to capture the small Earth ships and obtain the core technology of the curvature drive - this was the real reason why Yang Ning cut off contact with the ground midway and ordered everyone to uninstall the curvature drives.

And if the enemy, despite their incomplete information, could lock onto the Earth patrol ships, their priority would be to capture them intact, not destroy them.

So if the Earth side launched a counterattack, there would be no qualms about accidentally injuring their own people.

As for afterwards, whether the patrol ships could smoothly bring back first-hand intelligence depended first on the pilots' on-the-spot abilities, and second... on the contest of firepower strength between the two sides at the security boundary.

S-level reconnaissance mission?

Don't joke, this was clearly the first step to all-out war.

The hiding escort ships shed their disguises at the same time, revealing a row of small assault ships commonly used by elite troops.

This "peace talk" fleet turned into a vanguard in the blink of an eye.

Three minutes later, overlapping "request to establish contact" notifications sounded on the Trojan Horse No. 1.

"American Allied Forces requests to establish terminal contact."

"European Union requests to establish terminal contact."

"South American Republics..."

The large fleets of various countries that had silently departed from Earth Alliance's space fortresses had quickly gathered while everyone's eyes were focused on the Trojan Horse No. 1, and were rapidly approaching.

"I now hand over control of the vanguard to Captain Ye." After saying this, Yang Ning decisively cut off communication.

The reporters on the escort ships—no, small warships—only now realized that they had become a smokescreen in this elaborate fishing expedition. Some were calm, some wailed, some felt they had contributed to this long-planned campaign, and some resented the military for disregarding human rights to this extent.

Ye Wenlin did not heed their myriad reactions, nor did he cater to the psychological endurance of the weak ordinary citizens. He bluntly took over control of the vanguard and said with domineering charisma, "Trojan Horse No. 1, activate protective shield, open heavy weapons valve, we'll blast a way through!"