The medical bay of Sector 4 was overflowing. The smell of antiseptic and burnt ozone hung heavy in the air, a stark contrast to the sterile, recycled scent the citizens of Neo-Beiluo were used to.
Jiang Chen stood over the regeneration tank of General Han. The Space Marine's chest was open, robotic arms weaving synthetic muscle fibers back together where the Void Beast's acid had melted through his ceramite plating. Han was awake, staring at the ceiling with eyes that had seen too much.
"The kids are scared, Administrator," Han rumbled, his voice vibrating the glass of the tank. "They thought the Iron Legion was invincible. They saw us get chewed up."
"Good," Jiang Chen said, checking the bio-monitor. "Invincibility is a myth. Fear is a survival trait."
[SYSTEM ALERT: PROXIMITY WARNING.][TARGET: MATRIARCH (TIER 10).][STATUS: TRACKING.][VECTOR: MATCHING PLANETARY DRIFT.]
The Architect AI's voice cut through Jiang Chen's mind, cold and urgent.
"She's following us," Jiang Chen said, turning away from the tank.
"The Matriarch?" Ye Bai asked, stepping out of the shadows. The Grand Marshal looked grim. "We are in stealth mode. The Veil is active. How can she see us?"
"She doesn't see us, Ye Bai. She feels us," Jiang Chen walked to the nearest console, projecting the tactical map. A massive red dot was slowly closing the distance to the blue dot of Terra-Nova. "A planet has mass. Mass bends space-time. We are a heavy object moving through a fluid. We leave a wake."
[Analysis: Subject 'Matriarch' utilizes Gravitational Echolocation. She pulses the void with anti-qi and listens for the distortion. We cannot hide our weight.]
"If she catches us..." Ye Bai hesitated. "Can the Planetary Engines outrun her?"
"No," Jiang Chen said. "She moves by folding space. We move by pushing it. It's a race between a jet and a teleporting tiger."
He tapped the console.
"And we can't kill her. Our weapons barely scratched her children. A Tier 10 entity... her hide is likely dense enough to withstand a nuclear bombardment."
[Solution Proposed: Misdirection.][Blueprint Unlocked: The Gravitational Lure.]
The System displayed a schematic. It wasn't a weapon. It was a trash can.
"We can't hide our wake," Jiang Chen analyzed the blueprint. "But we can create a bigger one."
The construction of the Decoy took three days of frantic, terrified labor.
The entire planet held its breath. The "sun" was dimmed to minimum power to divert energy to the fabricators. In the darkness, the citizens whispered about the monster chasing them—the World Eater that was coming to finish the job.
In the orbital shipyard, Overseer Zhao directed the droids. They were stripping the engines off a derelict heavy hauler and welding them onto a massive, hollow sphere made of the scrap metal harvested from the nebula.
"Fill it up!" Zhao shouted. "Everything we have! The nuclear waste! The failed Qi batteries! The biological sludge!"
The Decoy was a dumpster fire of energy.
Inside the core, Emperor Xia and Ao Guang stood before a containment unit destined for the center of the Decoy.
"It needs to smell like a planet," Jiang Chen explained via hologram. "It needs a soul."
"So you want us to bleed into it," Xia sighed.
"Just a little. Your Qi signature is the 'flavor' she remembers from the Star Palace. We need to convince her that this ball of scrap is the juicy center of our civilization."
Xia and Ao Guang poured their essence into the containment unit. Gold Imperial Qi and Blue Dragon Qi swirled together, creating a beacon of spiritual deliciousness.
"And the filling?" Ao Guang asked, looking at the black canister Jiang Chen's droids were loading next to the essence.
"Dark Matter Concentrate," Jiang Chen said. "We harvested it from the Nebula. It's not an explosive. It's a gravitational singularity in a bottle. When the containment fails... it collapses inward with the weight of a dying star."
"A stomach ache," Xia realized.
"A cosmic case of indigestion," Jiang Chen corrected.
The Deployment
The Decoy was launched. It boosted away from Terra-Nova on a perpendicular vector, screaming its presence into the void. It broadcasted fake radio signals, leaked thermal radiation, and pulsed with the delicious scent of Emperor Xia's Qi.
"Cut the engines," Jiang Chen ordered in the bunker. "Total blackout. We drift."
The Planetary Engines died. The fusion suns in the cities turned off.
Billions of people sat in the dark. Mothers covered their children's mouths. The only light came from the emergency luminescence of the moss in the vertical farms.
They waited.
On the sensors, the massive red dot shifted.
The Matriarch had been following the subtle wake of the planet. But suddenly, a new, louder, tastier wake appeared to her left.
She paused. The hunger won.
The sensor shadow of the Matriarch turned. She accelerated toward the Decoy.
Through the external cameras, Jiang Chen watched.
She was magnificent and horrifying. A creature the size of a moon, undulating through the vacuum. Her skin was a mosaic of shifting constellations. Her maw opened, vast enough to swallow a continent.
She ignored Terra-Nova, which was floating silently in the dark like a cold rock. She went for the bright, noisy, tasty Decoy.
She didn't bite it. She enveloped it. Her body stretched around the metal sphere, swallowing it whole.
"She ate it," Ye Bai whispered in the dark command center.
"Wait for it," Jiang Chen watched the internal telemetry of the Decoy.
The Matriarch swallowed. The Decoy slid down her gullet, past the event horizon of her biological furnace. The acid in her stomach ate through the hull.
It breached the containment unit.
The Dark Matter Concentrate was exposed.
It didn't explode outward. It collapsed inward.
CRUNCH.
The Matriarch froze.
A ripple of distortion visibly twisted her body. Her stomach, which was designed to digest matter, was suddenly trying to digest a localized black hole. The singularity pulled her internal organs toward a single point of infinite density.
The Matriarch shrieked. It wasn't sound; it was a gravitational shockwave.
The space around her warped. She thrashed, vomiting pure energy as her biology fought the collapse. She curled into a ball, her echolocation organs scrambling as the singularity inside her disrupted her ability to sense gravity.
She was blind. She was in agony.
[Target Status: Incapacitated.][Damage Assessment: Internal Gravitational Trauma. Non-Lethal.][Regeneration: Active.]
"She's regenerating," Jiang Chen noted, seeing the beast's cells already fighting the singularity. "It won't kill her. But she's busy."
He slammed his hand on the master switch.
"Punch it."
The Planetary Engines of Terra-Nova roared to life at 120% capacity.
The sudden burst of acceleration pushed everyone into their seats. The planet shot away from the writhing monster, putting light-years between them and the beast before she could finish vomiting up the bomb.
The Aftermath
Hours later, the sensors confirmed the Matriarch had fallen behind, lost in the void, likely nursing a bruised ego and a torn stomach lining.
The lights in Neo-Beiluo flickered back on. A collective sigh of relief rose from the underworld.
Jiang Chen remained in the command chair, staring at the receding blip on the radar.
"That cost us 40% of our harvested Dark Matter," Jiang Chen said. "And it bought us maybe a month of lead time."
[System Analysis Complete.][Observation of Tier 10 Entity Biological Response recorded.][New Data Unlocked: Biological FTL Drive.]
"Biological FTL?" Jiang Chen asked.
[Affirmative. The Matriarch does not use engines. She folds space using a biological organ—the 'Void Gland'. If we can replicate this structure synthetically... Terra-Nova will not need to drift. We can Jump.]
Jiang Chen looked at the data. The System was learning. Every time they survived a predator, they learned how to mimic it.
"We need to get to the Galactic Meridian," Jiang Chen said. "Drifting at half light-speed is too slow. We are sitting ducks."
He turned to Ye Bai and Xia.
"We aren't hiding anymore. We are hunting for parts."
He pulled up the star map.
"System. Locate the nearest GCA Outpost. We need a Warp Drive. And since we can't build one yet... we're going to steal one."
Ye Bai looked at the map. "You want to raid a Cultivation Alliance base? That is an act of war."
"They tried to feed us to the bugs," Jiang Chen's mechanical eyes glowed red. "The war started a long time ago. It's time we fired the first shot."