Chapter 174: Cremation

About 1,580,000 lightyears away from the capital ring was a desolate asteroid belt.

Xia Fei hid Vampire behind one of the asteroids as he sat smoking a cigarette on the command deck while waiting.

Soon, his communicator’s indicator lights flashed then started blinking. Xia Fei used the same method to turn on and off his communicator without answering, sending a signal to the other party, instead.

This method of communication by making the indicator lights blink rhythmically, varying in frequency and duration, was called the westminster code. It could only be used in short-distance communication. Given how transmissions were not safe in the universe, a randomly broadcasted signal could very easily be intercepted by other parties, unless a specific encryption method was involved; otherwise, there was a high chance of being found by an advanced signal scanner.

This place was not that far from the tightly defended capital ring, so just in case, Xia Fei decided to use such an ancient code to communicate with the other.

Soon, an Amarrian Crusader-class frigate silently appeared beside Vampire. Both parties coincidentally opened their docking bridges, connecting the two ships together.

Getting up to his feet, Xia Fei made his way over to the side of the bridge and leaned by a corner. At this time, dark-skinned man in his forties walked in carrying two individuals from that Crusader-class frigate and approached Xia Fei.

*Crash!*

The man dropped the two individuals carelessly to the ground. “I’ve brought the people as you requested. Boss Thuram sends his regards.”

Xia Fei nodded. “I’ll be sure to thank Uncle Thuram when I return. Tell him Xia Fei owes him a favor.”

The dark-skinned man nodded heavily and pulled out a package from his spatial ring, handing it to him. “The boss wanted me to pass this to you. He also told me to tell you to be careful on your journey. Word on the ground is that things are becoming more and more dire at where you’re heading.”

Xia Fei opened the package and took a few glances at its content, his eyes glistening.

Inside the package were a combat suit of decent craftsmanship and a sharp dagger. It was actually quite difficult to determine the quality of these items, but from the feel of them when he reached in to touch both and from the heft of the objects, Xia Fei could tell that either of these was sure to be fairly expensive.

The dark-skinned man swept his gaze across Xia Fei’s ship, his eyebrows knitting slightly, though he did not say a word in the end.

The interior of Vampire was extremely messy, with various machinery and equipment strewn all over the place in a disorderly fashion. Anyone would get a headache seeing this, for the resulting mess made the ship hardly inhabitable, even more so for a long voyage.

“If there’s nothing else, I’ll be taking my leave now,” the man said.

“Wait a minute.”

Xia Fei swiped a finger on his spatial ring and pulled out two pouches of five spices seeds and two tins of Biluochun tea.

“These are but a small token; please hand them to Uncle Thuram.”

The man nodded before striding back to his ship.

Phantom was laughing raucously from the side. “The man gave you a full combat suit and a well-made dagger, and you sent some seeds with tea leaves in return. You’re really something, alright.”

Xia Fei pouted. “People like them don’t have a lack of valuables. What I’m doing is called extending a meaningful gift of courtesy; don’t you know?”

This was how things were sometimes; the higher someone was, the more they would be less concerned with rare delicacies. Like how an emperor that occasionally eat a pickle or two could be shocked, believing what he was tasting to be the world’s most delicious food, Qin Mang had precisely been tickled by the little gifts Xia Fei had given him, and the latter was simply doing the same to Thuram.

The two individuals on the ground were bound very tightly with a fish-line like nanofiber thread. Their mouths were taped up, and they were both breaking out in a cold sweat. Their eyes stared daggers at Xia Fei as they kept making muffled noises.

These two were none other than Barty and Zhou Yuqing.

The investigation had already uncovered that Zhou Yuqing’s child was not even Barty’s but a botched fake—a failed clone.

In the high-tech Pan-Human Alliance, it was not difficult to obtain someone’s DNA and make a clone from it. It was just that cloning and robot technologies were both extremely taboo within the Alliance, so not many would dare to go against the law and create clones.

The Plumagers had really put in plenty of effort on this, using Barty’s twisted heart to create an extremely mentally handicapped child.

Xia Fei ignored these two. He headed to the command deck and opened the package Thuram had given him, taking out the dagger and combat suit from within.

The combat suit was very peculiar; normally, there would be a mark of the company and the name of the product at the back of any combat suit produced, yet this one lacked any of these. It seemed that the same applied to the dagger, for Xia Fei could not locate any trace of name anywhere on it.

“Strange… These are quality products. Why would they not have any names?” Xia Fei curiously wondered aloud.

Phantom laughed. “These might quite possibly be custom-made for the Adjudicator Union.”

“Custom made?”

“Yeah. Many organizations out there will custom-make weapons and combat uniforms for their members in order to improve the combat strength of their forces. Usually, there is a certain competitive edge to these custom-made things as the materials used to create them are surely top-notch. These two were clearly made using excellent materials, so they’ll eventually come in handy if you keep them.

Xia Fei thought about this for a moment. “Even if they were custom-made, they should at least clarify the use of them and which companies produced these. Who cares about them leaving their names on these?”

“It’s not that simple. Any custom-made equipment often has its unique functions. If the enemy finds out which company made which customized weapon, they can demand to get an exact copy from the manufacturer, and that’ll leak confidential information, effectively defeating the purpose for the creation of such equipment. Besides, there’s a good chance that these weren’t made by any external company but were secretly forged by the Union’s craftsmen themselves. Comparing this handcrafted equipment to one found on the market, the former is still far more exquisite than the latter. After all, there are plenty of secret techniques that are only known by select people,” Phantom explained.

Xia Fei nodded. Thuram had really been generous this time, giving him two secret items from the Union. He truly lived up to his position as the head quartermaster of the weapon and equipment department; he was essentially holding onto a mountain of gold.

As for just what use these items had, Xia Fei could only wait until later to find out. At the end of the day, combat equipment like this would only demonstrate its worth when used in actual combat; moreover, he was sending Barty and Zhou Yuqing on their way right now. They had no other fate but to die.

Vampire quickly set off to its next destination, heading toward a planet that Xia Fei had already chosen prior. It would be the gravesite of this couple.

…

This was a nameless planet, which had a large, active volcano spewing lava that flowed freely, its fiery red magma reflected in the dark night sky.

Xia Fei peered down through the porthole. The unending flames surged, and he could even feel the heat coming from the volcano’s mouth through the tritanium alloy plating of his ship.

“This isn’t a bad place. Throwing the two of them down will ensure that not even their ashes remain, and even if some of their carbon molecules manage to survive, they will all end up being mixed into the lava, ultimately becoming no more than a lump of rock,” Phantom said.

…

Xia Fei nodded as he strode into the ship.

Knowing that their death was upon them, Barty and Zhou Yuqing kept struggling against their restraints, letting out a miserable and unpleasant wail from their noses as if they were livestocks about to be slaughtered.

Zhou Yuqing looked at Xia Fei with an alluring gaze, hoping to seduce him with her mature, womanly charms. It was a last-minute attempt to save her life.

A gentle push of his finger and Xia Fei opened the isolation compartment.

He lifted Zhou Yuqing with one arm and, with a heave, tossed her straight into the compartment like a pigskin.

*Crunch!*

The sound of skull cracking could be heard. Zhou Yuqing let out a grunt as large beads of sweat began to streak profusely down her forehead.

Barty jumped out of his skin as he witnessed this scene. Xia Fei did not even give Zhou Yuqing any chance of chicanery, already treating her like a dead person.

Xia fei crouched and tore off the tape covering Barty’s mouth. Because the tape had been there for an extended time, Barty’s beard also got torn away, roots and all, with that one move of his; the corners of his mouth immediately turned bloody red.

“Argh!” Barty shut his eyes and yelled painfully.

“You’re still Avril’s second uncle, after all, so do you have anything you wish to say before you die?” Xia Fei asked.

“Please, Xia Fei. I don’t want to die! I’ve never done anything wrong to Avril at all; please let me go!”

Barty was shouting hysterically. Xia Fei had heard plenty of such pleas and cries from people who were about to die, so he was entirely unperturbed by Barty’s struggles. Xia Fei had heard plenty of distraught crying and begging many times worse than Barty’s, so nothing from this display of fear toward death could change his mind.

“You need to die, understand?” Xia Fei emotionlessly stated.

Barty kept shaking his head, unable to understand or accept what Xia Fei was saying.

“Okay, I’ll tell you everything about what’s going on before you die. This is all for Avril. If it were just me, you’d already be dead,” Xia Fei said.

Xia Fei used some choice words to describe his disgust toward Barty, that were it not for the blood this middle-aged man shared with Avril, Xia Fei would not have cared to waste his breath on him.

Xia Fei very patiently stated the reason for this, starting from Zhou Yuqing’s plot to murder Avril all the way to his nefarious deeds in Bliss Club. Barty’s face grew paler by the minute, knowing full well that he could die many times over whichever of his evil deeds saw the light of day.

“I’m Avril’s uncle. My death will cause her to be sad.” Barty played his last trump card.

Xia Fei chuckled. “It is precisely because of this relationship that you must die. Anyone who threatens Avril must die. What of you being her uncle? Even if you’re her father, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.”

Barty was stunned. Xia Fei did not sound as if he was joking when he said that. It was at this moment when he seemed to see Xia Fei smile at him like a demon. He had not imagined that Xia Fei’s heart could actually be so vicious.

“Aside from those in my circle, I don’t care for anyone else,” Xia Fei coldly remarked. This statement was as good as the nail in his coffin, leaving no room for doubts that he would be dying today.

Xia Fei lifted Barty, and rather than tossing him like what he did to Zhou Yuqing, he gently put him in the isolation compartment.

He turned a deaf ear to all the other’s cries, and this was not because he had a heart that was harder than steel but that this was one such matter where there was no room for negotiation.

Closing the doors to the compartment, Xia Fei pushed another button and the outer doors of his ship opened, dropping these two figures into the flowing lava.

A single small flame instantly rose upon contact, but it very quickly resumed normalcy.

Sealing the isolation compartment again, Xia Fei made his way back to the command deck and piloted Vampire toward a planet called Fissure. There was an Adjudicator’s hangar there, where a Vexor-class battlecruiser was docked and waiting for him.

“Congratulations. You’re finally gotten hold of a battlecruiser.” Phantom laughed.

Xia Fei nodded slightly. It was most definitely a qualitative upgrade, jumping from a frigate to a battlecruiser, and it was something that he had also been looking forward to as well.

Adjusting the auto-pilot, Xia Fei’s finger brushed his spatial ring and pulled out a box of cigarettes. Because there was no air inside, the spatial ring had become the best place to store cigarettes, not going bad even if a thousand years passed.

All of a sudden, Xia Fei realized that the golden ball was shining once more.