This is really not mechanical ascension-Chapter 231 - 130: The Secret of the Torch_2

"Your Grace..." Guyate couldn’t help but speak, only to be interrupted.

"Even if Sain is guilty, it should be dealt with by our Sela Civilization!" he said sternly, "Notify Blue Star, and have them give us an explanation!"

Guyate felt somewhat relieved; with Duke Bai Ye present, they had a dependable leader, after all.

...

Meanwhile, on the twenty-third docking route, an old, red-and-blue painted interstellar ship with welded metal patches all over its surface was approaching.

A broadcast resounded within the cabin—

"Greetings, this is Jingnan-Hustar Star Port—Docking Route Number Twenty-three. In accordance with the ’Blue Star Safety Protection Regulations,’ we need to perform an identity check and a full ship inspection. Please secure your valuables."

"Repeat..."

The workers in the cabin exchanged concerned glances.

The cabin door opened, and the inspection team was already in place. Five persons, equipped with various instruments: metal detectors, particle resonators, sonar radiation devices...

"Hello, Hustar Star Port, Inspection Team 142 at your service. I am the captain—Xu Heng." He briefly introduced himself, then smiled and said:

"Please proceed below for identity verification. Once the check is complete, you can take your luggage and other items down."

"Captain Xu." The man dressed as a captain stepped forward, his skin darkened and his smile apologetic, "Could we wait a bit? The people meeting us haven’t arrived yet."

Xu Heng frowned involuntarily, becoming much less polite, "What does your people not arriving have to do with the identity check? Go down and wait."

"This..." The captain’s face showed discomfort, and he discreetly glanced in a certain direction, speaking in a low voice, "Captain Xu, the arrangements have been made... "

"What arrangements? With whom?" Xu Heng frowned and raised his voice, "What do you mean by that?"

The captain cursed inwardly and was hesitating when a faint sound came from outside the cabin.

"It should be this one, seems like this one..." As the voice drew nearer, a stranger approached, with both parties turning to look at him.

"Xu, Xu... Xu Heng?" The newcomer was naturally Li Ming, recalling for a moment uncertainly before calling out.

"It’s me." Xu Heng’s brow furrowed slightly, only to hear the other person say, "This ship enjoys privilege number nine, and according to regulations, it should be inspected even more thoroughly."

"Privilege number nine?" Xu Heng’s heart skipped a beat, staring intently at the stranger before him, who was unfamiliar and never before seen, but he still smiled, "Understood. Rest assured, the inspection will be meticulous."

He then directed his subordinates, "You guys, take these crew members for some tea."

His subordinates caught on, "Yes, Captain."

Seeing this, the captain’s face finally relaxed, his nod barely perceptible, and then he walked out one after another. fгeewёbnoѵel_cσm

Only he and Xu Heng remained in the cabin, and the latter hesitated, "You are...?"

"Don’t worry about who I am, didn’t your superiors tell you?" Li Ming said casually.

"They did, they did." Xu Heng nodded hurriedly, "According to procedure, the inspection time should be no less than half an hour."

"Yes, follow the procedure." Li Ming nodded, "You stay here for a while; I’m going to check inside."

"Sure, sure." Xu Heng nodded repeatedly, finding a random spot to sit down and pass the time, while also pondering what was going on.

Li Ming gave him a quick glance, then swiftly moved to the cockpit, found the main panel, pulled out a connection cable, took out his smart terminal, and began to acquire the highest level of access.

A series of data pop-ups appeared, and Li Ming worked for a while, a progress window appearing, but the speed was very slow. He frowned, "Such a strong firewall?"

Surprised, he noticed that although the ship appeared shabby, its internal configuration was far from low.

After a moment of thought, his finger touched the smart terminal, activated the "Computation Terminal" feature, turning it into a server array to provide computational power support, his body starting to heat up quickly.

But the progress bar began to climb swiftly, increasing in speed by several times over.

It took a full twelve minutes for him to finally gain complete high-level access to the seemingly decrepit ship.

The old routine, first pull the surveillance footage, then the flight log, while opening the interior blueprints, and finally lock down the subordinate cabins.

"A huge batch of interstellar precious metals, I want to see just how big it really is." The files were still transferring, but Li Ming didn’t waste any time and headed to the subordinate cabin.

He had just sat down on the creaky metal stairs and lifted the black velvet cloth covering them, four alloy boxes were neatly stacked together.

Pulling out his ion sword, he hesitated for a moment, looked around, and discovered that these boxes were not locked at all.

"That makes sense, locked or not, it’s all the same." He gave it some thought, put away the ion sword, and opened one of the boxes, revealing neatly arranged black metal blocks.

"Black ones?" Li Ming’s eyebrows slightly raised, he took out a block and examined it closely, it didn’t appear to be anything special.

He then searched on the Star Web, but found no corresponding information.

Things not found on the Star Web usually meant one of two possibilities: either it truly never appeared before, or it had been blocked.

He was more inclined to believe the latter.

"This is no damn interstellar precious metal." Li Ming’s expression darkened.

A civilization like Blue Star had no right to block any information on the Star Web, it must have been the Yitelan Civilization that had done it.

Clearly, Torch hadn’t told Chen Yan the whole truth either; this stuff was definitely not ordinary.

He tried to extract, and indeed could draw out metal energy, with a not low average content.

He soon finished extracting; the black metal block contained close to a thousand points of metal energy, which didn’t seem like much.

But as he checked, there were over three hundred blocks just in this one box, amounting to more than three hundred thousand points of metal energy.

The four boxes together could easily contain no less than one million two hundred thousand points of metal energy.

After a quick calculation, Li Ming’s heart started pounding.

The treasures in the underground laboratory were waiting hungrily; with such a large sum of metal energy right in front of him, only a fool wouldn’t take it.

"I’ve got it set for today; no one can stop me." Li Ming rubbed his hands together, all set to begin, when he heard Xu Heng calling for him.

"What’s up?" He climbed up from below to see Xu Heng looking anxious, "There’s trouble, a big incident happened."

"A Sela person died in this star port, and it’s said it wasn’t just any ordinary person; the whole star port is now locked down, and all ships and people that have entered are required to stay here."

"A Sela person died?" Li Ming feigned surprise.

"Yes." Xu Heng was quite uneasy, after all, helping someone out with favours could become more troublesome the longer it was delayed, and if found out, the big shot might be fine but he would be done for.

"Where were the people from the cabin taken?" Li Ming asked.

"The interrogation hall; they should still be in the interrogation room. Under the current circumstances, they’ll probably stay there until it’s confirmed there’s no issue." Xu Heng explained, trying to reassure Li Ming and perhaps himself:

"However, their time of arrival at the port was too late to be connected to the death of that Sela person. The problem shouldn’t be serious, but they’ll likely have to stay for a few hours."

"Oh, I see. Then go ahead and get busy, with this sort of incident there must be a need for helping hands." Li Ming pondered for a moment and then told him.

"This..." Xu Heng hesitated, still afraid that this incident might lead to some problems being discovered with the ship.

"Don’t worry, I’ll stay here; if anything happens, you won’t be the one in the most trouble." Li Ming reassured, and Xu Heng finally breathed a sigh of relief and hurried off.

"This is just perfect, the longer it drags on, the better." Li Ming smirked, thought for a moment, then opened his computation terminal and contacted Chen Jinglong.

"Dean, a Sela person died in this star port?" Although he hadn’t noticed Chen Jinglong just before, he knew that he must have been in the star port as well.

"Hmm, Sain died here." Chen Jinglong responded quickly.

After waiting for a moment, Li Ming typed out calmly, "What!? Sain is dead?"

"What happened? How could he die here?"

"Don’t know, still investigating. How about your side?" Chen Jinglong asked.

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