"I was once an assassin. I received an order I couldn't refuse, and the target was none other than the Viscount. The assassination mission naturally failed. With my limited skills, I wasn't even fit to carry his shoes. Yet, not only did he spare my life, he took me in, and from that day on, he trusted me unconditionally, always willing to promote me."

"Earlier, some things happened in the upper echelons, which are top secret, and I won't tell you. But I want you to know that I still believe in him, and that's how I came to hold this position now. Many years ago, when I was still struggling bitterly for a place as a Citizen, I never thought that one day I would become an Army Chief commanding four hundred thousand reconnaissance ships and overseeing four million people."

"Regardless of how others view the Viscount, I only know that his kindness to me is as heavy as a mountain. So I cannot fail his trust. Yet, I always feel ashamed, because whenever I look back on the past, I feel that I've never achieved anything worthy of repaying the Viscount's kindness."

"That's why I came here. I, Ding Canghai, must accomplish something truly significant here, because I've had enough of being like a useless parasite, purely dependent on him. I long for a future day when he can remember me and think to himself, 'Ding Canghai, this guy... not bad.'"

"Do you understand?"

...

An hour and a half passed, and the reconnaissance ship, gradually decelerating, finally passed through the ring-shaped asteroid field and silently attached itself to the dark side of a massive asteroid comparable to the Source Star Large Moon.

Inside the Armor, Xiao Wu was making the final preparations before the Mecha launch.

Considering the intense gravity on C1915 and the relatively thin atmosphere, even with preemptive deceleration, the Engineering Mecha was bound to encounter strong impact during descent. Xiao Wu had already initiated the infusion of cushioning deep-sea fluid in advance.

With a slight tremor within the reconnaissance ship, the Engineering Mecha was ejected, drifting towards the gigantic C1915.

Subsequently, the reconnaissance ship began to change shape, undergoing a series of structural transformations to become a small base station.

The high-power array-type Ghost Particle Communicator was fully activated, spreading a network of information flows rapidly.

Nearly four hundred thousand reconnaissance ships within a range of 8.3 billion kilometers linked into this local-area network, intertwining into a massive network structure.

A vast amount of information began to flow from each reconnaissance ship back to this base station, where it was encrypted at fixed points and sent far from the base through a vertically converged information stream.

Six hours later, Xiao Wu successfully established a small base station on C1915. As the lava slowly surged, it swayed gently, resembling a lone leaf on a lake.

One automated octopus-like machine after another, equipped with independent computational abilities, slipped down from the channels inside the support feet of the oversized Engineering Mecha, first landing on the ground and then using specially calibrated Anti-gravity Engines to float lightly into the thin atmosphere, diving into the swirling yellow sand.

Next, these machines, humorously dubbed "octopuses" by the Reconnoitre, would tirelessly transport samples from the celestial surface to the ground-based small base station led by the Engineering Mecha.

Meanwhile, Ding Canghai had already moved to the small processing cabin at the rear of the reconnaissance ship.

He had just received a brand new design from Sun Ai and was planning to, along with several others, rapidly assemble a geothermal radiation self-powered Screw Rock Excavator using the existing machinery and components.

The star C1915 was overly massive, with a radius reaching eleven thousand kilometers, the largest celestial body that the Reconnaissance Corps' five-army flotilla of 2 million reconnaissance ships had ever encountered in the Tenglong Nebula. Its surface magma layer was mainly composed of highly durable high-temperature mixed alloy rock, apart from some crevices underneath.

The original excavator's capabilities were inadequate for this situation. Even the Empire's Screw Rock Excavator didn't suffice. It required disassembly and improvement of the Screw Rock Excavator before adding the geothermal radiation power device to continuously drill inwards and penetrate the Star Core.

After two days of effort by everyone, the improved Screw Rock Excavator finally passed theoretical validation.

The best pilot, Lieutenant Xiaowang, sat in the cockpit, controlling the machine as it was launched towards the surface of C1915.

The external medium engines intermittently fired, directing the excavator across C1915's thin atmospheric layer over twenty thousand kilometers, like a skipping stone, towards a deep valley.

During this time, Xiao Wu had already utilized the base station's resonance scan to construct an approximate structure of the 2000-kilometer-deep sub-surface region of C1915 and made theoretical predictions about the deeper structures.

The site where Xiaowang's excavator was headed was precisely the location of a large crevice potentially leading directly to the Star Core.

Upon receiving a success landing message from Xiaowang, Ding Canghai let out a long breath, his gaze turning back to the space network formed by the Third Army's reconnaissance ships.

He exhaled deeply, silently grateful that the past two days had proceeded smoothly without any incidents.

Suddenly, his pupils contracted sharply.

A piercing alarm sounded within the Third Army's command system.

His gaze abruptly shifted to the upper left corner of the Star Map.

Two seconds earlier, a reconnaissance ship on that side abruptly lost contact without warning.

Before losing contact, the reconnaissance ship hadn't issued any warning signals.