After nearly a day, Bian reached where the hostages were held captive, a natural satellite right beside a planet belonging to the shura.
"Keeping them in a moon is very clever, the first thing the alliance would suspect would be planets and spaceships, definitely not the moons orbiting the planet."
Even Bian himself thought they would be kept in one large spacecraft drifting through the sea of stars.
The stealth of the Black Cruiser was unmatched. Although Bian didn't know what security measures the shura must have put up, his ship had no problem getting very close to the moon.
"How do I get into it now?"
Bian questioned quietly for a second. A form of identification would have been needed at specific entry points to gain access to the interior of the moon.
He couldn't just brute force his way in for two reasons. Firstly, they were very close to a planet and the likelihood of there being a fourth-ranked Shura on this planet was very high.
Secondly, what if he damaged some sort of life system that was keeping the hostages alive?
Even if he got in, Bian was also concerned about how he would take the hostages away. If his estimations were correct, it wouldn't just be a handful of people he would meet here.
He might have to report this location back to the alliance.
"Let's see what's going on first."
Shua!
The Black Cruiser opened up and Bian jumped to the surface of the moon with a light hop.
Just as his feet were about to land though, the surface of the moon seemed to ripple as Bian fell directly into the moon.
Terraslip!
Expanding his dongxuan sense, Bian could 'see' the entirety of the moon including the large space on the inside.
Hundreds of people were kept in cages like farm animals with a few bots moving about, seemingly feeding or disinfecting some people.
"Not a single Shura in sight, this security is really lax."
Bian shook his head in disappointment. Although they could reach the moon in a couple of minutes, it didn't give them the right to be so lax.
Still what could Bian do, he couldn't fit all these people in the Black Cruiser and it wasn't like he could tie a chain to attach the Cruiser to the moon right?
"Hmm, that could actually work!"
Bian jolted as his mind spun.
Well not the entire moon, but the inner structure was much, much smaller and completely airtight.
With the power of the Black Cruiser he could pull them away to the alliance territory in a few days.
Plus the Black Cruiser couldn't be tracked and the structure hidden in the moon was made to specifically avoid tracking.
Once he literally left the sights of the planet patrollers, he would be untraceable.
Bian had a plan of action, but he was unsure of how to dig out the structure.
How not to cause a commotion while doing it?
Wait, since a commotion was unavoidable, why not beat the drum on one side and attack from the other side.
"The Black Cruiser is quite fast. I could draw the tiger away from the mountain and easily deal with any rodents that come scurrying forward."
Bian wasn't impatient but he was also frugal with his time. He had to get back to the sanctuaries sooner rather than later.
Previously, he had gathered enough crystals to power up the Black Cruiser for a long time without the use of weapons and even with the strongest blast which he used to destroy the previous Shura ship, he could fire over a thousand of those with the amount of purple crystals he had gathered.
This shura planet had more than one moon, and after scouting all six of them, Bian discovered that only this one had hostages.
It was either the shura were very confident or very foolish for placing all their eggs in one basket.
Bian flew the Black Cruiser to a far enough distance and fired at one of the five other moons.
While these weren't used to hold hostages, there were still other operations going on within bases stationed on these moons.
A purple laser beam shot out from a part of the vast space and before the Shura on the moon could react—
Boom!
The moon was blown to smithereens!
As if worried that the message wasn't clear, Bian shot another beam at another moon, with the first shot destabilising the celestial body and the second shot blowing it up.
Haha
Bian couldn't help but laugh when he saw the moons blowing up.
He quickly covered his mouth with his hands though and adjusted his posture.
How could a refined gentleman like himself take pride in such mindless destruction. He wasn't Tyrant who liked to use brute force.
"I have to be more careful, can't become unhinged."
Bian didn't know if it was due to stress or he just naturally liked blowing stuff up. He was knocked out of his inner monologues when several ships left the planet and headed in his general direction.
He even saw four figures rise up from the planet and head towards where the Black Cruiser shot from.
"That's enough of that, time to leave."
Avoiding the ships was still manageable but Bian couldn't allow himself to be spotted by those figures.
As he retreated he shot another of those deadly purple beams towards one of the figures.
Sadly, the Fourth-ranked Shura was too nimble to be hit by such an attack.
Even the surrounding ships didn't seem to be normal, as they easily manoeuvred around his shot.
Bian wasn't discouraged. They couldn't spot him due to the stealth capabilities of the Black Cruiser, as long as he maintained a certain distance they could only move in his general direction.
He put the engine on full throttle and kept firing as he was retreating.
One hour, two hours... twenty-four hours.
Having shot more than a hundred beams, Bian had managed to destroy twenty ships out of the fleet pursuing him.
"They should be getting wary by now, baiting them won't be as efficient."
His adversaries weren't dumb, even they should start to catch on that something was wrong.
Bian decisively stopped his attacks and circled around back to that moon that held the hostages.
The Black Cruiser at full throttle was incredibly fast and in a couple of hours, he was back where he started.
Before he began removing the hidden compartment from the moon, he thoroughly scanned each and every part with the Dongxuan Sutra.
"One explosive and one failsafe to disable the life support!"
The explosive was easy enough to deal with, but the failsafe was a program embedded into the structure, dealing with it would be more tricky.
Nevertheless, Bian wasn't alone in this endeavour.
The Black Cruiser couldn't hack into technology, but it wasn't a non-sentient piece of technology. It was a specialised crystalliser ship.
With its help Bian discovered that even if the life support was disconnected, he could always connect the systems to the Black Cruiser to start and maintain it at the cost of the Cruisers energy.
"Well let's start!"
The Black Cruiser released a smaller less lethal purple beam which resonated loudly even in the vacuum of space.
Slowly, a structure was being carved out of the moon.
...
"WHO IS IT!!"
Pah!
"Stop shouting."
The elderly purple-horned female shura smacked the hot-blooded male purple-horned shura who was three times her size.
Despite his huge body and brutish nature, the bigger shura could only scratch the back of his neck and mutter in dismay.
"Haven't you found who was attacking after so long?" She calmly asked the hundreds of ship operators who were all around them.
"Madam, the stealth of the opponent's ship is truly unmatched. The few times we spotted him, the trackers malfunctioned and lost track of him!"
The leader of the planetary defense, a gold-horned third-ranked shura could only lower his head as he responded.
"Are you telling me that a stealth ship possesses the same destructive capabilities as our greatest warframes?"
The thought was simply ridiculous!
Couldn't the owner of the stealth ship easily make his way to key sectors and blow them up while they slept and they would have no way to find him.
Although the beam wouldn't outright kill a fourth-ranked shura, it wouldn't leave them unscathed either.
"Madam this is bad!"
Suddenly the panicked voice of the commander sounded from her device.
"What is it?" The Madam asked with some irritation clearly audible in her voice.
"The ship, it's already back and it's carving out the hostages from the Cellar!"
Humph!
The Madam scoffed.
This fellow actually went back but instead of attacking their defenceless planet he went to rescue some meaningless hostages.
'Well if he had attacked the planet, stealth or no stealth he wouldn't leave there alive.'
She smiled darkly as she recalled the reason the four of them convened on this backwards planet.
It was to discuss the fate of another fourth-ranked Shura. This time a gold-horned elite fighter who disobeyed and severely injured his superior.
Normally the death penalty would have been issued immediately, but this particular shura was unmatched with the sword and it would be an absolute waste to kill him without first passing on his sword style.
"Connect to Reaver!"
The Madam spoke to her device and after a second, a slender figure appeared on the other side.
He was bound in chains and his eyes had a certain dullness to them.
"Reaver, consider this your good fortune. You have a chance to keep on living!"
The Madam did not speak in her usual slow tone, but she also did not talk too fast.
A glimmer of hope seemed to spark in Reaver's eyes and he looked at the hologram with vigour.
"What do I have to do?"
The Madam smiled and answered.
"There's a certain figure who is trying to rescue some hostages hidden in the third lunar moon. Kill him if you can, and if not, stall him one way or the other until we get back."
"It shall be done!"
A smile broke out on Reaver's face.
Pang!
With a simple flex, all the chains around him snapped with one of the chains dicing the shura who was holding his device for him in half.
Reaver picked up the bloodied device and ended the call before stuffing it away and then opening his palm.
A slender black two-handed blade burst through the wall and flew into his palm.
"Rejoice my blade, you will get to taste the blood you have been craving for so long... hahaha!"
With maniacal laughter he jumped through the ceiling and flew straight to the moon.
Meanwhile the Madam had a frown on her face when she saw how Reaver had broken free and killed a soldier in the process.
"Too wasteful."
She shook her head and signalled the ships to return at full speed.
"Why not just blow up the moon?"
The bulky shura asked her.
The other two shura on the left and right looked at him in confusion and said simultaneously.
"Wouldn't it be a waste to lose such precious stealth mechanics."
"The ship would simply fly away once the hostages are gone."
Clearly one of them thought the ship would survive the explosion while the other thought it wouldn't.
One thing they could both agree on though, was that blowing up the hostages wouldn't be beneficial.
Looking at her grandson who was still confused, the Madam could only sigh and speed up even more.