The system handed me over to the state.

"A spot of light?"

The mermaid squinted, looking into the distance. The moment she saw the point of light the engineer had mentioned, she exclaimed in surprise, "That's not a point of light, that's... a spaceship? And a huge spaceship at that!"

"Holy crap! What a huge spaceship!"

The female engineer exclaimed in surprise as the huge rectangular spaceship burst out of the storm and passed directly over their three spaceships, heading towards the planet.

Watching the spaceship fly past their faces at close range, the pressure and impact left the nanoengineer with lingering fear.

"Turtle...is that a fellow traveler too?"

"I don't know, but the other side is heading towards the planet. Could it be related to the spaceships you sent down?"

The nanoengineer pondered for a moment, then shook his head, indicating he didn't know. "Never mind that, let's continue with the repairs. Hmm... should we leave space for magic runes or circuits in this area?"

"Uh-huh!"

The interior of the Nuwa-class warship.

"Wow! Are they crazy? They actually drove right through us! If they had deviated even slightly, our spaceship would be gone!"

The navigator cursed and yelled at the unidentified spaceship that had just flown by, while Su Xi calmly gave the order: "Scan the other spaceship immediately, I need to obtain their information!"

"Also, contact Bronya and the others!"

"Communications lost! We have lost all contact with Dr. Bronya, and we have just detected a small earthquake inside the planet!"

"Earthquake activity? Holy crap, what on earth are they doing down there?!"

Su Xi was speechless. What were they doing? Earthquake activity could cause small-scale earthquakes. Did the three of them detonate something underground?

Thinking of this, Su Xi felt a little helpless and shook her head. Oh well, never mind all that. She just didn't know where this spaceship came from, whether it was a fellow traveler or what the mermaids called a monitor.

........

"It seems we've made quite a commotion; it's getting a bit tough on them."

Bronya opened the communication and directly connected with Seele in the quantum space, instructing Seele to take Black Seele back to the ship via hyperspace teleportation. After Bronya caught up, she looked at the wary but daring-to-attack robots in front of her.

Indeed, capturing Ariwenie was the right choice. Looking at the steel gate in front of her, Bronya grabbed Ariwenie by the back of her collar like she was carrying a little fox and questioned, "What's behind that?"

"Energy core... All the energy of this facility comes from here, and the storms outside the planet are also maintained by this core."

"I'm warning you, you've violated the rules of the trial. If you destroy the trial checkpoints here, you'll never be able to participate in the trials here again for the rest of your lives!"

Bronya raised an eyebrow. "Rules? We didn't come here with any rules, and besides, who said we came here to participate in a trial?"

Aerith was stunned. "You...you're not a civilization participating in the trial, so why are you acting with the Mermaid Empire?! Are you all crazy?!"

Bronya smiled. "You know what? We came here this time because someone planned out the route for me and outlined what we had to do."

"Otherwise, why do you think we risked our lives to come in here?"

Bronya reached out and pinched Alysse Wendy's fox ears, causing the latter's face to flush rapidly. "You...you let go...my ears...are very sensitive!"

"That's pretty much what I thought... Open the door!"

"Impossible... I won't let you..."

Well, judging from this guy's appearance, he probably won't open the door. So, the heavily armed bunny stepped forward, inserted both hands directly into the metal door, and began to forcefully pry the door open to both sides. The metal door gradually began to move to both sides, but even when steam was emitted from the heat dissipation device on the bunny's back, the door was only opened a crack.

"This door is so hard, give me an hour and I'm sure I can open it."

"An hour is too long. Let's take our things here and then we can prepare to leave."

The little rabbit nodded, its hands quickly transforming into heavy weapons, and fired directly at the door in front of it, instantly blasting two large holes in the metal door. Bronya crawled through the holes and arrived inside the so-called energy core, looking at the golden core floating in the transparent metal chamber.

It's not a Herrscher core... This core's shape is somewhat like a cylindrical spiral, and its size definitely exceeds what a Herrscher core should be.

After careful examination, Bronya finally found one of the few differences between the object in front of her and the Herrscher core. No wonder... it wasn't the Herrscher core, but some other product that was extremely similar to the Herrscher core. Even the energy fluctuations were almost identical. Unfortunately, there was no Honkai energy inside.

"Looks like it's not a Herrscher core..."

Bronya reached out and placed her hand on the transparent metal chamber, but there was no reaction. The core did not react to her approach, in other words... it had no effect on her Herrscher core.

"What exactly is this energy core?"

Alyssa Wendy, who was brought in along, clutched her dislocated arm, which hadn't fully healed, and sneered, "This is a gift from the quantum realm! You quantum demons would never understand the value of such a thing!"

"And he's deadly poison to you all! You're lucky you're even standing here."

"Furthermore, I have already notified the fleet, and they will be back soon to punish you demons!"

Bronya frowned slightly. Was this the special ship the mermaids had mentioned, used to ensure the trial participants wouldn't die? Then they definitely needed to hurry.

Bronya then used constructive energy to create a pure energy container, directly shattering the glass chamber containing the core in front of her! She then placed the core into the container.

The room, now devoid of its core, immediately began to flicker with light before plunging into darkness, with only the golden core in Bronya's hand still emitting a faint golden glow.

Bronya grabbed Ariwenie's other arm and activated the hyperspace teleportation. In just a moment of disorientation, Ariwenie came to her senses and found that the scene around her had changed.

"Bronya, are you alright?"

Seele rushed over immediately and asked, but Bronya shook her head and pushed Alywendy to the ship's internal guards next to her, saying, "Lock her up and find a doctor to fix her arm."

"Understood, Doctor."

Ariwenty was dragged away by the crew inside the Nuwa ship. This fox girl didn't seem to have any special superpowers, and her physical strength wasn't as great as Bronya had imagined.

Hmm... Could it be that these orcs experienced a certain degree of physical weakening after entering space?

Considering that beast-eared girls, who should have very strong bodies, have become so frail, could it be that the advanced technology they've embraced in space has caused them to neglect the training of their own bodies?

Bronya thought it was possible.

"Bronya... what are you thinking about?"

"Ah, nothing. By the way, how's Hei hope?"

Bronya snapped out of her thoughts and asked, but Seele shook her head. "She's already asleep. There's nothing wrong with her body. The doctor checked her and said that rest is all she needs. They suspect it's some kind of psychological trauma."

"Mental state... Come to think of it, that light wave before... out of the three of us, only Hei hope was affected... You go and take care of her first, I'll go to the bridge to take care of some things."

Seele nodded to indicate that she understood, then turned and walked towards her dormitory room. Bronya went to the bridge, and as soon as she entered, she was stopped by Su Xi, "What were you doing down there?"

Bronya remained calm. "Did something happen?"

Su Xi rolled her eyes helplessly, "Don't you know what you did down there and what the consequences would be?"

Tell me about it.

"It's true... The planet's gravity has dropped drastically. In less than three hours, the gravitational pull that was forcibly holding us will disappear, and the surrounding pulse storms are also rapidly disappearing, as if the energy that sustains them has suddenly vanished."

"The Mermaid Queen said she had never seen such a sight before. According to calculations, the storm will dissipate within a day, the gravity will be reduced to the size of a normal planet, and we can easily leave this place."

"Are you still unwilling to talk about what you've done?"

Faced with Su Xi's questioning, Bronya shrugged and said innocently, "I just cut off the power to their underground facility, but that shouldn't be considered cheating, right?"

Su Xi was speechless. "I don't know if it counts as cheating... The mermaids' spaceship will take another 3 days to be repaired. There's no need to rush now. Let's see what that spaceship that seems to be the monitor wants to do."

As for the observers... I'm quite curious about just how big the gap is between advanced and low-level civilizations.

At least during the battle in the underground facility, Bronya could clearly feel that the power of the energy weapons in the hands of those robots was something that was difficult for Shenzhou's standard energy weapons to match. Moreover, compared to shield technology, Shenzhou's shield technology development was still too slow.

The shield is built up purely by its charge rate, a feat only a power engine, capable of drawing energy indefinitely, could accomplish.

If it were any other ordinary ship, they wouldn't dare to have such an idea. They would all just have one engine and allocate different power to different components of the ship.

This is a measure that most ships would take, but Shenzhou is different.

The power engines are mass-produced, and each different component has a different number of engines to provide sufficient energy. The shields are powered separately, the ships are powered separately, the weapon cannons are powered separately, and the Yamato cannon is also powered separately.

This is what makes the Shenzhou spacecraft special: an unrestricted energy supply. Even the most outrageous power engines can be mass-produced rapidly in Shenzhou without any restrictions.

But Bronya suspected that if they faced a special energy weapon, it might still be difficult for the enemy to penetrate their shields, because the intensity of the attack couldn't keep up with the shield's refresh rate.

However, the problem is that the enemy's energy weapons are powerful enough that they don't need to be depleted; it would be very easy for them to penetrate the enemy's shields and damage the ships themselves with a single blow.

Therefore, Bronya was very curious about how much of a gap there was between them and higher-level civilizations, and where exactly that gap lay.

How big do you think the gap is between us and advanced civilizations?

"I don't know, but is this advanced civilization you're talking about the one from the Space Association?"

"No, it's a truly advanced civilization, not one defined by the Cosmic Civilization Association, you know? After this exploration ended, I always felt that the advanced, intermediate, and low-level civilizations defined by the Cosmic Civilization Association were all a bit off."

Why must civilization be divided into three levels? What do these three levels represent? What is their practical significance?

When an advanced civilization helps a less advanced civilization, is it really just about helping?

Su Xi stared blankly at Bronya, then shrugged. "I... don't know. Let the higher-ups worry about this."

"captain!"

At this moment, the communications officer approached Su Xi with a tablet and said mysteriously, "Captain, we have received a communication request from an unknown signal. The other party requests a private call with you, rather than a public communication."

"Furthermore, I have located the source of the signal, which is the large spaceship that just flew by."

"Oh, it seems the trouble you've stirred up is starting to come knocking."

Su Xi said with a smile. Bronya looked slightly helpless. She knew, so it wasn't too surprising.

After taking the tablet and pressing the communication button, a man with fox ears appeared on the tablet. His crimson eyes stared intently at Su Xi and he said, "You did this, didn't you?"

"What are you talking about? Sir, we don't seem to know you."

Su Xi shook her head, feeling quite helpless. She didn't even know this fox-like man, so how could she know what he was talking about?

"The base beneath this planet, you did it, didn't you? You destroyed our base, killed two of our people, and now you want to escape responsibility?"

Su Xi was at a loss for words when Bronya reached out her hand and said, "Let me do it."

"Ok."

He handed the tablet to Bronya, who took it and said directly to the fox-man, "I did it. One of your men is still alive and is being held captive on our ship."

"We participated in this assessment, and you never told us the rules. The people who made us participate in this exam also didn't tell us there were any rules. Could it be that you made these rules yourselves?"

"you!"

The fox-man's expression turned irritable, and he looked like he was about to curse. Bronya added again, "According to the usual practice, that's indeed how to deal with a storm immediately, but no one has ever said that we can't eliminate the storm itself directly."

"Today's events were indeed a coincidence, but we arrived at your facilities after you attacked us first, which is why we began to retaliate."

"You should be glad that we still have the ability to defend against attacks from the robots in your underground facilities. If we were to become sitting ducks on the spot, believe me, our ships would not hesitate to open fire on you, and our civilization would be your enemy for generations to come."

Bronya's words drove the fox-man even crazier, and he clenched his teeth, "Are you... fooling me?"