Dr. Gu Qinghe tapped his stylus against the glowing three-dimensional holographic map of the Emerald Nebula.
A jagged red boundary line encircled three hundred shattered asteroids, pulsing with bright crimson hazard runes.
“The Blood-Tax Chamber strip-mined the entire grazing belt,” Dr. Gu said, his voice flat with cold fury. “Void Star-Whales eat high-density cosmic kelp. The kelp absorbs ambient starlight and converts it into pure, unadulterated life-force. But two months ago, corporate mining barges from the central sectors dredged every single natural bed. They crushed the roots to extract fuel oil for luxury private yachts.”
Su Wan stepped closer to the tactical holotable, studying the sensor readouts. Her brows drew together in sharp disgust as she flipped through the regional shipping manifests.
“So the whales were lured into this trap by pure hunger,” Su Wan said. “Young Master Huan didn’t track them through navigational skill. His poacher syndicate set up floating bait buoys laced with synthetic kelp pheromones. The starving herd followed the false scent right into thirty heavy harpoon nets.”
“Precisely,” Dr. Gu said, adjusting his glasses. “A mature star-whale needs ten tons of spiritual greens every single cycle just to maintain internal buoyancy. The young calves need double that amount to sustain their growth plates. This nursery has been starving for weeks. Without an immediate feeding, half the herd will sink into the lower gravity wells within forty-eight hours.”
