I handed over to another world

His hand touched the cold, sticky spacesuit, and then the skin beneath it—hard as crystal, yet strangely elastic.

Just as his fingertips were about to touch the faint green signal light—the unfocused purple flames in the cocoon suddenly reignited!
More violent and venomous than before, a terrifying force surged through Li Rui's arm!
"Roar--!"

A silent mental scream pierced through the protective suit and violently impacted Li Rui's brain!
At the same time, the hand of the "person" inside the cocoon, covered by crystals, gripped Li Rui's wrist tightly like an iron clamp, the immense force almost crushing his protective suit and bones!
"team leader!"

Lin Han and Wang Zhe shouted in shock at the same time!
Li Rui groaned as a sharp pain shot through his wrist, but he gritted his teeth and swiftly drew his tactical dagger from his waist with his other hand!

Instead of stabbing the enemy, he stabbed his own arm that was being held—hitting the weak connection point at the joint of the protective suit!
He's going to use the most extreme method to escape!
"Fuck!"

The dagger sliced ​​through the protective suit, sending sparks flying and triggering an alarm!

"Warning! The protective layer on the left forearm is severely damaged! The risk of environmental contaminants seeping in is extremely high!"

The piercing alarm blared inside Li Rui's helmet, drowning out the excruciating pain in his wrist bones, but he succeeded.

The moment the protective suit was slashed open by the dagger, the immense force lost its support. The amethyst-covered claw failed to completely crush his arm, but left several deep, bone-revealing horrific cuts on his forearm. Blood instantly stained the torn lining and the gaping hole in the protective suit!

The excruciating pain made Li Rui's vision go black, but with his iron will, he forcibly steadied his body and jerked backward!
"team leader!"

Lin Han's pulse gun roared again, this time aiming at the arm that was grabbing Li Rui! The lowest power pulse ray hit the wrist joint covered by crystals precisely.

"puff!"

The crystal shattered and flew everywhere. The monster let out a silent howl of pain and instinctively loosened its grip.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Li Rui managed to escape completely, staggering back a few steps, the intense pain making him almost unable to stand.

At the tear in the damaged protective suit, dark purple environmental residue, as if alive, was trying to seep inward along the bloodstains!
"Lin Han! Quick! Sealant!"

Li Rui's voice was hoarse from the pain.

Lin Han reacted extremely quickly, throwing away the pulse gun and pulling out a tube of high-pressure quick-setting sealing foam from the emergency kit at his waist, then spraying it onto the crack in Li Rui's arm.

The hissing white foam rapidly expanded and solidified, temporarily sealing the crack and preventing the direct invasion of pollutants, but it also tightly wrapped the wound, and blood quickly seeped into the white foam.

"Captain! How are you?!"

Wang Zhe shouted anxiously at the door. He dared not stop suppressing the firepower. The gap in the cocoon was slowly healing. The monster inside was even more ferocious because of the injury to its wrist. It frantically tore at the cocoon wall and was about to break free completely!
"I can't die!"

Li Rui gritted his teeth, cold sweat soaking through his lining. "Ella! What about the anchor signal?!"

"The green...the green dot is still flashing! But it's very faint! The will of corruption...is launching a frantic counterattack! It's going to...it's going to completely devour the last bit of humanity!"

Ella's voice was choked with sobs.

Li Rui glanced at the faint green dot that was faintly visible on the chest of the mad monster, then at his own bloodied and temporarily sealed arm, and then at the glaring warnings on the helmet display: "Energy Remaining 15%" and "Island Stability: Critical".

He knew time was running out.

"I can't take him with me..."

Li Rui's voice was low and pained, but carried an undeniable determination: "Wang Zhe! Maximum power! Bombard the gap in the cocoon! Lin Han! Give me a high-explosive grenade! Delay for 5 seconds!"

"team leader?!"

Lin Han stared at him in shock, instantly understanding his intention—not to save people, but to completely destroy them!
"Execute the order! Quickly! Before it fully emerges! This is the only way we can give him... and humanity, a release!"

Li Rui roared, raising his still-mobile right hand and aiming the pulse gun at the opening in the cocoon, suppressing what was about to gush out.

Wang Zhe gritted his teeth and pushed the pulse gun power to its limit!
A thick beam of energy, twisting the air, slammed into the gap, blasting the purple matter that was trying to heal open even wider!
The monster inside roared, and half of its shoulder, covered in crystals, and its hideous head had already emerged!

Lin Han trembled, but his movements were not hesitant at all. He quickly adjusted a disc-shaped high-explosive grenade to a 5-second delay and threw it hard into the gap torn open by Wang Zhe's firepower. The grenade then rolled precisely to the feet of the monster inside the cocoon!
"Withdraw! Full speed ahead, evacuate the isolation ward!"

Li Rui roared, turned around, and, enduring the excruciating pain in his left arm, staggered toward the door!

Lin Han followed closely behind, and Wang Zhe immediately stopped shooting, turned around and ran away!
The three of them practically tumbled and crawled out of the isolation chamber!

"Wang Zhe! Close the door!"

Li Rui roared.

Wang Zhe lunged at the hatch control panel and slammed down the emergency locking button!
The heavy, round hatch began to slowly close with a grating metallic scraping sound, and just as it was about to shut—BOOM!!!

A deep, muffled bang came from behind the door, and the entire wreckage structure shook violently!
Blinding purple-white light spilled wildly from the crack in the door, and a powerful shockwave slammed into the closing hatch, producing a deafening crash!
The heavy metal hatch groaned under the strain, and even bulged out a huge bulge!

"Lie down!"

Li Rui tackled Lin Han and Wang Zhe to the ground!
"Oh!"

The hatch ultimately withstood the impact, but scorching air and thick, purple smoke containing crystal fragments spewed out from the gaps in the door!
Inside the isolation chamber, only violent energy fluctuations and the hissing sound of burning remained.

That pulsating cocoon, that struggling monster, and even that last faint glimmer of humanity, were all utterly destroyed and purified by the internal explosion of the high-explosive grenade and the chain reaction of the strong entropy field.

The tremors subsided, the light faded, leaving only the deathly silence and the scorching sounds of intense heat emanating from inside the hatch.

“Target…signal…disappeared…”

Ella's voice, filled with deep weariness and sorrow, confirmed the result.

Li Rui struggled to get up from the ground, the excruciating pain in his left arm making his vision go black.

At the tear in the damaged protective suit, the white sealant had been stained dark red, and there were faint purple streaks trying to spread along the edges.

"Captain! Your arm!"

Lin Han and Wang Zhe stared at the wound in horror.

"Get out of here first!"

Li Rui's face was deathly pale, but his voice was unusually firm, "The energy is almost depleted! The 'Island' could collapse at any moment! Return to the 'Raven' by the same route! Quickly!"

The three of them, supporting each other, stumbled and ran through the twisted passage covered in purple ash.

The passageway, which felt oppressive and sticky when we arrived, now seems incredibly long.

Each vibration brought excruciating pain to my left arm, and the energy alarm on the protective suit grew increasingly urgent, like a death knell.

"Island stability...10%...9%..."

Wang Zhe's voice was filled with despair. Finally, the entrance to the passage they had cut open appeared ahead, and Ella stood anxiously guarding the landing hatch of the "Raven."

"Come up quickly!"

Ai La made a move.

The three practically pounced into the landing module.

As soon as the hatch closed, Li Rui could no longer hold on. He slid down against the cabin wall and sat on the ground, panting heavily. Blood dripped continuously from his torn protective suit.

On the helmet display, the energy reading had turned a glaring red: "7%".

"Raven! Disengage immediately! Return to mothership at full speed!"

Li Rui used his last bit of strength to give the order.

The Raven's engines roared under overload, and it broke free from the traction beam, transforming into a streak of dark blue light as it sped toward the mothership.

Behind them, the wreckage of the "Earth" that had been cleared by the singularity bomb and then revisited by them, was like a huge, silent scar in the cosmic graveyard, gradually disappearing into the darkness.

Inside the cabin, Lin Han and Wang Zhe hurriedly helped Li Rui remove his damaged protective suit, revealing a bloody, mangled wound with eerie purple edges.

Ella knelt beside him, her hands resting lightly on Li Rui's forehead, her eyes tightly closed, her pale face covered in sweat, trying to use her senses to soothe his violently fluctuating mind and suppress the possible contamination that had already invaded.

"Hold on, Captain! We're almost there!"

Lin Han's voice was trembling with tears.

Li Rui leaned against the cold cabin wall, his vision blurry, the intense pain and blood loss making his consciousness begin to waver.

The last thing he saw was the deep worry in Ella's huge black eyes, and the vast, seemingly eternally gazing space outside the window.

They might find out soon what exactly happened on the Houtu...

Like a wounded bird returning home, the "Raven" stumbled and fell back to its mother ship, the "Candle Dragon".

As soon as the docking hatch closed, the medical team, which had been waiting, rushed in and quickly transferred the almost exhausted Li Rui to the highest-level isolation medical ward.

The strange purple glow emanating from the wound on his arm, and the potential for deeper contamination, made everyone's hearts sink.

Zhou Kerui and Chen Lin's holographic projections arrived outside the medical observation room immediately. Through the thick observation window, they watched the doctors nervously treating the wound and connecting various monitoring instruments.

Lin Han, Wang Zhe, and Ella were taken to the analysis room next to the deep-sea laboratory.

Their protective suits were carefully removed for thorough disinfection and residue analysis.

The three were exhausted and their spirits were shaken to varying degrees, especially Ella, whose face turned as pale as a sheet from the echoes of chaos and pain she sensed.

"Task report, detailed explanation."

Zhou Kerui's voice carried an undeniable seriousness, but deep in her eyes was a hint of barely perceptible lingering fear.

Lin Han, as the core of the technical team, mustered his spirits and began his report: "...encountered a highly contaminated individual inside the isolation chamber...attempted contact failed...the target is highly aggressive and contaminated...Captain Li Rui damaged his protective suit while trying to escape, resulting in injury...ultimately forced to use a high-explosive grenade to destroy it..."

He skipped over the details of Li Rui trying to grasp the signal anchor point; that was too heavy a topic.

"We...did not find any surviving crew members."

Wang Zhe's voice was low and filled with a deep sense of defeat, "The entire interior of the wreckage... was covered by that dark purple residue... deathly still..."

"but!"

Suddenly, Lin Han remembered something and carefully took out a palm-sized black metal cube covered with burn marks and impact marks from a specially designed anti-interference storage compartment on the outer layer of the equipment bag he had removed.

It looked extremely sturdy, with complex physical locks at the interfaces. "During the evacuation tunnel, I scanned a severely damaged bridge data node compartment... the bulkhead was almost melted, but this thing... the Houtu's black box, was stuck under a pile of twisted alloy and purple residue. Its outer shell has an extremely strong coating that resists physical impact and energy interference, and it actually... survived!"

Zhou Kerui and Chen Lin's eyes immediately focused on the small black box, which might be the key to solving all the mysteries!

"Analyze immediately! Highest privileges! Transmit synchronously to the command center!"

Chen Lin's voice was resolute.

The analysis room instantly sprang into action.

Lin Han skillfully connected the black box to a dedicated, multi-layered physically isolated data reading device.

Ella was also asked to stay by her side, as her perception might be able to detect the remaining mental imprints beyond the data.

On the screen, the data stream began to be read and decoded with difficulty.

The information recorded by the black box is multimodal: ship status data, surveillance video footage of key areas, bridge audio recordings, and crew biometric logs.

Initial data snippets show that everything was normal when the Houtu spacecraft entered the UDF-7243 gravitational lensing anomaly region for routine exploration.

Captain Li Zheng's voice was calm and powerful: "...Confirmed to have entered the designated coordinates."

"Initiating the 'Candle Dragon' core scanning protocol, preparing to conduct in-depth mapping of the anomalous gravitational wave source..."

Immediately afterwards, the data stream showed its first obvious abnormal fluctuation.

The following is a display of a recording segment.

Three hours and 17 minutes after entering the anomalous region, Dr. Zhang Wei, the chief scientist in the command center, excitedly pointed to a distorted area on the holographic star map and exclaimed, "...Incredible energy readings! The spatial curvature index exceeds the theoretical value! This is not just gravitational lensing! It's more like...a 'thin film' leading to an unknown dimension! Activate the zero-point field pulsation probe! We need more direct data!"

At this moment, everyone could clearly hear some audio in the background—a faint, high-frequency noise, like fingernails scraping glass, came from the background, and there seemed to be extremely brief, barely perceptible purple flashes at the edge of the surveillance screen.

At this moment, Dr. Zhang Wei in the video frowned and rubbed her temples: "Strange... tinnitus?"

Five hours and two minutes after entering the abnormal area, the average heart rate of all crew members increased slightly, cortisol levels rose abnormally, and some sensitive instruments reported "unexplained random errors in the logic circuit".

The data stream fed back by the zero-point field pulsation probe began to contain unresolved garbled characters, interspersed with highly irregular and non-standard mathematical symbols.

At this time, the text version of the bridge log of the black box shows: "...zero-point probe data is abnormal. Preliminary analysis points to strong subspace background noise interference. It is recommended to suspend the probe and start the normal passive scanning mode."

By this time, the researchers aboard the Houtu had realized the problem and began attempting to salvage the vessel. (End of Chapter)