Everyone's playing Red Giant? I, Black Hole, devour everything!

Wang Heming is still patrolling the 15th star zone.

Suddenly, an unusual signal caught his attention.

"The gravitational field signal... something's not right."

Wang Heming discovered that the originally smooth curve on the gravitational wave monitoring system inside the observation chamber suddenly started to tremble, as if an invisible stone had been thrown into a calm lake.

"What is this?"

He subconsciously expanded the gravitational field outward by one ring.

A black hole with more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, while its gravitational field does not cover as wide an area as those of Kerr black holes, is still enough to cover an area of ​​billions of kilometers.

However, he detected nothing.

"Is it just my imagination?"

Wang Heming murmured something under his breath.

But that feeling didn't disappear.

On the contrary, as time went by, the feeling that something was wrong became stronger and stronger.

It was as if something was hiding somewhere he couldn't see, staring intently at him.

"No, it's definitely not an illusion."

Wang Heming took a deep breath and adjusted the precision of the gravitational field to the highest level.

However, even after he pushed the precision of the gravitational field to its limit, the detection results were still blank.

"How is that possible..."

For the first time, a sense of unease welled up in Wang Heming's heart.

Instead of continuing to expand the gravitational field, he forced himself to calm down.

"Professor Lin mentioned in class that if the gravitational field cannot detect any anomalies, but your intuition tells you something is wrong, there is only one possibility—"

"Their precision in controlling the gravitational field far surpasses yours."

"They can disguise gravitational wave signals as background noise from interstellar dust, making them completely undetectable to your detectors."

Thinking of this, Wang Heming felt a cold sweat break out on his back.

He knew what this meant.

An enemy capable of disguising gravitational wave signals to this extent could not possibly be an ordinary neutron star or red giant.

Only one type of celestial body possesses this level of concealment capability.

Quark Star.

Quark Planet in the Land of the Lighthouse.

At that very moment—

The alarm went off.

……

"Warning! Warning! Large amounts of unidentified gravitational signals detected on the outskirts of the 15th star sector!"

"Number—the number is being tallied—over two thousand have been confirmed! And it's still increasing!"

"Signal source not identified! Repeat, signal source not identified!"

The piercing alarm sounded like a commotion in the defense command center of the 15th sector.

The officer on duty jumped up from his seat, and a flood of red warning boxes appeared on the screen.

Commander Luo Yuanzheng's face turned pale instantly.

"Get me the detection data! Quickly!"

On the light screen, the star map of the fifteenth star sector was magnified.

In that once empty starry sky, one red dot after another began to appear, as if someone had poked countless pinholes in a black sheet of paper.

Each red dot represents a gravitational signal.

Two thousand.

Two thousand five hundred.

Three thousand.

"Three thousand...three thousand Quark Stars?"

Luo Yuanzheng's voice was trembling.

Although he had never seen Quark Star, he had already crammed a lot of knowledge in the past few days.

That is the most elite strategic strike force of the United States. Each Quark Star is an ace that the United States has cultivated with countless resources.

Unlike ordinary neutron stars, quark stars have higher density, more precise gravitational fields, and are more difficult to detect.

Unless it's a gravitational field of Lin Tian's caliber, Quark Star would be virtually impossible for anyone to detect if it wanted to hide.

And now, three thousand quark stars have quietly crept up to the very doorstep of the fifteenth star sector.

How did they manage to bypass the defenses and conduct reconnaissance?

What are they doing here?

Luo Yuanzheng didn't have time to think it through and immediately connected to the Black Hole Legion's encrypted communication.

"Fifteenth Sector Urgent Request for Assistance! Large Quark Star Squadron detected! Approximately 3,000 units! Request immediate support from the Black Hole Legion!"

However, there was no response from the other end of the communication.

A sharper alarm blared, drowning out all other sounds.

"Alert—Alert—Abnormal spatiotemporal fluctuations detected!"

"Target region: Coordinates xxx-xxx-xxx! The spatiotemporal structure of this region is undergoing drastic changes!"

"The level of quantum fluctuations has dropped dramatically!"

"The efficiency of gravitational wave propagation... is decreasing!"

Luo Yuanzheng stared intently at the few lines of data on the screen, feeling as if he had been struck by lightning.

……

"What's going on?!"

Wang Heming's expression changed completely in that instant.

He sensed it.

His gravitational field is losing its medium of propagation.

It's like someone who can swim freely in water suddenly discovering that the water around them is turning into ice at an extremely fast speed.

You can feel the pressure increasing on every inch of your skin, and you can feel your movements becoming more and more stiff, but you can't do anything.

"The extent of the gravitational field... is shrinking!"

Wang Heming practically shouted those words through gritted teeth.

His black hole's gravitational field could originally cover an area of ​​billions of kilometers.

But now, this area is shrinking inward at a visible rate.

Billions of kilometers.

One billion kilometers.

500 million kilometers.

One hundred million kilometers.

……

It's like the oil in a lamp being drained away little by little, the light gradually shrinking from illuminating the entire starry sky to only illuminating itself.

What terrified Wang Heming even more was that he didn't even know where the enemy had launched their attack from.

Throughout the entire process, he did not detect any gravitational wave signals from the enemy.

Those quark stars were like ghosts, hidden under the cover of the spacetime freezer, leaving no trace whatsoever.

"What on earth is this thing?!"

Cold sweat beaded on Wang Heming's forehead.

He desperately urged his black hole to expand its gravitational field again.

But no matter how hard he tried, it was all in vain.

The gravitational field is like being pressed firmly against the surface of the black hole by an invisible hand, unable to extend even a centimeter outwards.

This feeling is like being bound hand and foot and blindfolded.

You can sense danger around you, but you don't know where the danger is coming from.

You can hear footsteps in the darkness, but you can't see the person approaching you.

Wang Heming took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down.

"As Professor Lin once said, the most important quality for black hole observers is not the strength of the gravitational field, but the ability to remain calm under any circumstances."

"Calm down... I need to calm down..."

He repeated this sentence to himself over and over again.

But just then, an unfamiliar voice suddenly rang out from the public communication channel.

"The black hole observers of the 15th star sector of the Great Xia Kingdom, immediately cease all resistance and surrender without futile struggle."

"I am Major Jason of the U.S. Secret Service."

"You are now completely locked in by our time-space freezer! Your gravitational field has lost its propagation ability, and your black hole cannot move, cannot devour anything, and cannot send any distress signals."

"In other words, you're now a sitting duck."