RUMBLE—HSSSSSS!
Three thousand jagged black-iron dreadnoughts fanned out across the western rim of the Central Void, blocking the starlight like a swarm of giant iron cockroaches.
Every single ship in the armada was crusted with thick, greasy black soot, dried bloodstains, and strange purple barnacles that oozed a foul-smelling dark-matter mist.
Even from fifty miles away, the stench rolling off the three thousand warships was so strong that Big Tubby and the Void Whales immediately clamped their flippers over their noses, let out muffled “Wooo-mph!” groans, and swam behind the Command Star-Train!
“Ugh! What is that awful smell?!”
On the observation deck of the Command Train, Hong Ling pinched her nose with both fingers and squinted through watering eyes at the enemy fleet. “Young Master! Even when Old Yellow ate those fermented desert cabbages back in the earlier era, his burps didn’t smell half as bad as those ships! Did they fly here out of a cosmic outhouse?!”
Beside her, Governor Lin of the Star-Dock Galaxy and old Master Gu of the Rust-Belt Galaxy turned pale and trembled.
“Lord Pei, be careful!” Master Gu warned urgently. “That is the vanguard armada of the Abyssal Devourer Sect! They control twelve dark galaxies in the western sector! They are a terrifying cult of dark-matter cultivators who believe that supermassive black holes are hungry gods that will one day swallow the whole universe!”
