And as luck would have it, this Lord of Gold-Mountain Shire had a blood feud with this newly risen great lord.
Even if the Lord of Gold-Mountain Shire wanted to surrender, no good would come of it for him.
He could only stake everything on building these 3,000 T5 interstellar warships, forging an elite fleet, turning the tide on the battlefield and defeating the other side.
So the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group's escort this time was very important.
So long as the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group could get this shipment to the Lord of Gold-Mountain Shire in time, the Lord of Gold-Mountain Shire could strike back from the brink!
Zhao Chen nodded in understanding.
"So this escort of ours is bound to be attacked, isn't it?" Zhao Chen murmured.
Lilith nodded. "It's nine chances in ten. That's when we show our value before that Huaya Nini, and so get the chance to win over her sister, Huaya Lanlan."
"Understood." Zhao Chen said with a smile, "Doesn't this count as a hero saving a beauty?"
Lilith looked at Zhao Chen teasingly. "What, does Your Majesty want her to repay him with her hand too?"
Ahem.
Zhao Chen had not expected that a passing remark would dig a pit for himself.
"I wonder how things are going on Charlotte's side."
……
Before long
the Villain-Envoy Mercenary Legion Fleet received the order to set out from Huaya Nini, the head of this interstellar transport convoy.
As required, they would split into ten interstellar transport fleets, setting out in turn, keeping a certain distance apart.
Zhao Chen could understand the arrangement.
If Zhao Chen's reckoning was right,
this interstellar transport fleet had grown in size most likely because the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group meant to make sure the order was filled.
What was being escorted here was not only 3,000 sets of T5 interstellar warship core parts; the number should be about 5,000 sets.
That way, though the cost of escort rose greatly, if they were attacked,
so long as over half of these ten interstellar transport fleets reached the destination safely and delivered the goods, the order would be filled.
That way, though a batch of goods would be lost,
by the reckoning of the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group's professionals, they would likely not lose money even so.
For with an interstellar shipping order like this, the price of the shipping in some ways rivaled even the price of the goods.
After all, in a situation like this, the value of the goods no longer mattered; whether a thing was dear or cheap, its value showed only if it could be shipped in.
If it could not be shipped in, even a real interstellar warship would be of no use at all to the owner of the goods, the Lord of Gold-Mountain Shire.
So the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group's thinking could be understood too.
First, Zhao Chen saw a kind of cross-universe travel device:
a flower, slowly opening.
"So that's the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes' core technology. The Flower-Fairy Gate." Zhao Chen watched the scene before him with interest.
The Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes, who handled cross-universe interstellar trade, naturally had to have cross-universe travel technology of their own.
Cross-universe star gates had been built between some universes, true.
But those existed only between some powerful interstellar universes, under unified order.
Chaotic interstellar universes like those, without unified governments, naturally had no cross-universe star gates; even their own star-gate networks were in great disorder.
Because of the long years of war, star gates cost a great deal to build and a great deal to keep up.
Once you had built a star gate, how could you be sure it would not be seized by the enemy and used by them?
Back to the matter at hand.
Zhao Chen looked at the Flower-Fairy Gate before him.
As far as he knew, it was a reusable cross-universe travel device of the T6 technology grade,
one of the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes' very few T6 technologies.
As for its source, it was said the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes, at enormous cost, had traded a T6 interstellar civilization for part of its T6 star-gate technology, added technology scraped together from everywhere,
and, with the help of several technology institutes, had in the end developed this T6 Flower-Fairy Gate technology of their own.
It was also one of the very few technology products the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes made themselves.
But whether because of some prior agreement or not, the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes never sold this product outside.
Mind you, a T6 Flower-Fairy Gate, a reusable one-way star-gate deployment technology, would be in demand beyond all supply on the market.
And this T6 Flower-Fairy Gate had some drawbacks too.
The biggest problem, for instance, was that it took too long to start: nearly half an hour in a safe environment to start up fully.
On this point the "White Jade" in Zhao Chen's hands was far quicker.
But considering the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes did not use it for surprise attacks, efficiency here mattered less.
There was another problem: the place it jumped to had to be spatially quite stable.
That meant that within a universe, the jump points they could choose from were very few.
To give an example: the Owl Dragon Empire's "White Jade" technology might have ten thousand possible jump points in a universe,
but the Flower-Fairy Federal Tribes' Flower-Fairy Gate had only a hundred.
That greatly raised the risk and the cost of shipping.
For spatial stability was usually bound up with the spatial environment.
If the space happened to be a star system, and that star system was heavily reshaped by technology, that usually meant its spatial stability would be lower.
A barren, or rather untouched, star-system environment greatly raised spatial stability.
That too was why Zhao Chen's Emperor's Guard Fleet had come out in a dead star system before.
After passing through this "Flower-Fairy Gate," nearly two days went by.
At last Zhao Chen's fleet reached its destination.
The destination was the same pitch-black universe as ever.
"Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 6 has completed its universe jump: 31,120 interstellar transports. Arrived safely: 29,313."[1]
Over here Zhao Chen heard what Lilith was discussing with the head of the interstellar transport fleet.
A single cross-universe voyage had cost two thousand interstellar transports.
No need to think to know they were the T1 and T2 interstellar transports clinging to the T4 and T5 interstellar transports.
Cross-universe travel looked safe, but in truth it made certain demands on interstellar warships too.
Those T1 and T2 interstellar transports had been taking a risk.
And most unluckily, these two thousand interstellar transports had been laid to rest forever in the turbulent space between universes.
Zhao Chen's Emperor's Guard Fleet had naturally all arrived safely.
"Villain-Envoy received. Rest in place for ten minutes. At the same time, contact the other transport fleets; whether or not you reach them afterward, advance at once toward the target star system as planned," Lilith answered.
The brief exchange ended.
Lilith had another word with Xiong Xiangxiang, telling her to see to security.
There was no need to say much on that; Xiong Xiangxiang had already gone into combat condition, and the Emperor's Guard Fleet had set up a combat zone all around, guarding Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 6.
The ten minutes soon passed.
But Zhao Chen and Lilith ran into a problem.
In these ten minutes they had reached six interstellar transport fleets; besides theirs, three were unaccounted for.
In truth Zhao Chen and the others had expected this long before.
But as luck would have it, one of those they could not reach was precisely Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 1, the one Huaya Nini was in.
That set Zhao Chen and Lilith a hard problem.
Being unable to reach Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 1 now most probably meant one thing: they had, as luck would have it, been attacked, which kept them from contacting the outside.
If so, it was a situation neither Zhao Chen nor Lilith wanted to see.
Mind you, Lilith's plan had never been about completing this interstellar trade deal.
It was about making contact with the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group.
This Huaya Nini naturally mattered a great deal.
"What do we do now?" Zhao Chen looked at Lilith, who was in charge of this plan.
Lilith thought a moment, and said gravely, "We can't leave Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 1 to its fate; from the start our aim has been to show our value in front of Huaya Nini. If anything happens to Huaya Nini, or she even dies, our plan will suffer badly."
"Then what are you going to arrange next?"
Lilith brought up a star map, the star map of the target universe the Bailan Interstellar Trade Group had given them for this escort task.
"Setting out from here, barring accidents, we can reach Gold-Mountain Shire within fifteen hours. And we can split our forces in two. One part of the interstellar fleet goes on escorting the interstellar transport fleet. The other part tries to find Huaya Nini's Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 1," Lilith put forward her idea.
Zhao Chen nodded. "Then we'll do as you say."
Then Lilith made the arrangements.
But seeing the number of interstellar warships escorting them shrink, the head of Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 6 anxiously contacted Lilith,
demanding to know why some of their interstellar warships had left.
Lilith's explanation was that this part of the interstellar warships had been damaged in the universe voyage just now, and needed to stop here to rest and refit.
An excuse like that was rather lame.
But the Flower-Fairy in charge could only agree helplessly; though likely she would file a complaint against them once the task was over.
But to Zhao Chen and Lilith, naturally, that did not matter.
Their aim had never been this interstellar shipping task to begin with.
Zhao Chen and Lilith had guessed right.
Huaya Nini really had run into big trouble now.
The Bailan Interstellar Transport Fleet No. 1 she was in had been ambushed!