Then he whispered to no one in particular,
"Seventeen lives in stasis. One voice holding on. And a ship that's half dead. If this isn't a ghost, it's the closest thing I've ever seen."
He didn't call for backup.
Not yet.
But he didn't rest either.
Because if the Dreadlight really was what the man claimed… then this might be the last time Nexera ever had the upper hand.
Xu Qianghua stood there a moment longer, his thoughts quiet but far from calm. His eyes traced the ship's outline on the projection, the familiar broken shape drifting in orbit, patched with shadows and unreadable signals.
He had seen wrecks before—derelicts and trap corpses left behind by desperate fleets—but something about this one had refused to die properly.
The man inside, Juren… He didn't match the type of person they were expecting. He hadn't barked orders, hadn't even tried to lie.
