Chapter 552: The Hidden Vault Beneath the Scorching Sun Sea

Central region of the Scorching Sun Sand Sea.

At the heart of this colossal desert, the Song family had gathered. Even with just a rough estimate, the golden sand here had piled up to unimaginable depths—spanning billions of kilometers. The sheer scale was enough to make anyone nervous.

As their eleven battleships descended, they slipped through a shimmering barrier of illusion, invisible to the naked eye.

Once submerged in the illusion space, an entirely new scene unfolded before their eyes.

Sand still stretched endlessly in all directions, but what truly stood out was the enormous pit that opened up in the desert below—a massive, artificially carved chasm.

The mouth of this pit was several hundred kilometers across, leading straight down into the Great Pit beneath the earth, plunging tens of trillions of kilometers deep. The Hidden Vein clan had discovered high-grade casting materials from a colonized outpost on Dragon‑Spine Continent and used them here, while also buying multiple advanced Gnome War God Drillers from the ancient neutral city known as the City of Ancient Gnomes. After nearly two centuries of labor, the project was finally complete.

“Well done… the people below really went through hell for this!”

Looking at this perfectly constructed siphoning site—obviously built at staggering cost—the Song family’s direct lineage felt the weight of what it must have taken.

With a pit that deep, the further down you went, the greater the crushing pressure—especially with ever-shifting sand above. Even with the best materials, accidents were inevitable.

It was easy to imagine just how much the Hidden Vein clan had sacrificed to make this extraction site possible.

……

The eleven battleships dove deeper, swiftly gliding down the passage to the very bottom.

At the end, they entered an expansive, circular stone chamber—its radius spanned thousands of kilometers, while its ceiling soared tens of thousands high. Even with four dreadnoughts and seven battleships docked inside, there was still plenty of room.

In the very center, they’d left a weak spot in the planet’s core—the perfect place to siphon the Origin Core of the Red Star Continent.

Once everything was confirmed, chatter buzzed through the battleship comms again.

“Looks perfect. Let’s get started!”

At Song Wujian’s command, everyone sprang into action.

Song Shiyuan took the lead. The hatch on the Immovable Pluto slid open and two large transport vehicles rolled out, loaded to the brim. Touching down, their mechanical arms reconfigured, locking together to form a massive fusion reactor.

Once enough nuclear fuel was loaded in, the fusion reactor—sourced from a major chain under the Silverplate Kingdom’s Xianqin Consortium—roared to life.

Soon after, a shield of energy, on par with a peak sixth-tier barrier, shimmered into existence. The entire subterranean chamber was now wrapped in its protection.

But that was just the second safeguard, layered atop a combined illusion space already set up as the first defense. Next, over on Song Shixing’s flagship, a block of golden jade began to float out, glowing brightly.

“Xiaochi!”

Seeing the jade stone being extracted, Song Shiyuan called out without hesitation.

Song Chi instantly understood what needed to be done.

Whoosh—

The Heavenly Ruin’s hatch slid open and a miniaturized Starry Sky Dragon Shark shot out. Once clear of the battleship, it began to swell rapidly until it regained its colossal, peak form—stretching over ten thousand kilometers long.

At that same moment, the golden jade stone was tossed directly into the Dragon Shark’s waiting jaws.

Inside the Starry Sky Dragon Shark, powered by the Dominion Power, golden light burst from the core of the chamber—soon filling the entire space, then settling into a powerful web of illusions.

That golden jade wasn’t just any stone. It was the legendary Illusion Array Stone—a golden sanctum oddity acquired by Song Yiming from the Bodhi Inheritance Tower.

Although the Illusion Array Stone couldn’t be installed as a battleship component, it housed a powerful essence of illusion. When energized with Dominion Power inside the Dragon Shark, the entire underground chamber was infused with the Law of Illusions.

This meant that even if things got out of hand during the Origin Core extraction, no disturbance would break through until it overcame this entire illusion barrier.

This was the Song family’s third line of defense.

And they weren’t done yet. Through the comms channel, the Song family exchanged quick glances. A beat later, several battleships—Heavenly Ruin among them—simultaneously activated their space-sealing components.

Heavenly Ruin was among them.

Inside, with a thought, Song Chi triggered his level 70 Voidlock Skyseal Sigil. Instantly, a seamless field snapped into place around the chamber’s perimeter, forming a tight barrier.

The same happened with Song Shiyuan, Song Shixing, Song Tianhao, and the others—each activating their own sealing units in the pre-planned order.

Layer after layer of sealed space quickly enclosed the chamber.

Curiously, Song Wujian didn’t move at all.

Does Calm‑Sea Dragon‑Xiang not have sealing components?

Of course it did.

In fact, Calm‑Sea Dragon‑Xiang had the highest-grade spatial sealing unit present.

The legendary gold-rank Sky-Seal Prison.

This piece belonged to Tuoba Jun of the Tuoba Royal Clan from the Silverplate Kingdom. Song Wujian had already borrowed it once, back when they faced the Black Devourer King Beast. Now, he’d asked for it again to reduce the risks in extracting the Origin Core of Red Star Continent.

The reason it hadn’t been activated immediately wasn’t hesitation.

This would be the Song family’s first time siphoning a core from an eighth-level Floating-land. They knew the fallout would be massive, but when and how explosively it would hit—they had no way of pinpointing.

Plus, these spatial locks couldn’t stay active forever, and the cooldowns were long. The Song family agreed to wait on activating the gold-rank Sky-Seal Prison, saving it for when true chaos broke loose.

With the Illusion Array Stone powered by the Dragon Shark, and so many safeguards in place, even a sudden disruption couldn’t break through every layer at once. There was no need to worry about being too late with the Sky-Seal Prison.

After wrapping up their preparations, Song Wujian signaled to Song Shixing.

Receiving the cue, Song Shixing wasted no time. Calm-Sea Rising Dragon slid to the chamber’s core—the planet’s weak spot. Inside, a silver Origin Core Siphon, already loaded and primed, whirred to life.

A beam of silver shot out from Calm-Sea Rising Dragon, drilling straight into the weak point below.

A deep, thrumming hum echoed out.

With the link complete, everyone could feel it—subtle tremors ran across the chamber floor.

The Superdimensional Continent didn’t host a true Origin Will like most floating lands, but it still responded instinctively to an attempt on its Origin Core—a sort of primal rejection. Fortunately, since the Red Star Continent’s Origin Will was undeveloped and the extraction had only just begun, that resistance was still quite mild.

Battleship comms buzzed to life.

“Calm‑Sea Dragon‑Xiang. Song Wujian here. Shixing—how long do you estimate this will take?”

Everyone turned to focus on Song Shixing’s comm projection.

The answer would decide not just their own safety, but if Dragon‑Spine Continent could ascend before the civilizational war broke out, whether Calm‑Sea Dragon‑Xiang could reach the Star-Annihilator class, and even if Song Wujian’s Guiding Technique could advance—everything hinged on this.

If the extraction alone took decades, they’d never make it on time.

It wasn’t like securing a fragment of eighth-tier origin core would instantly let Dragon‑Spine make its move.

First off, Dragon‑Spine’s own origin core couldn’t absorb the eighth-level fragment immediately. That’d take its own time.

And even the upgrade to Seventh-Tier would need time.

Not to mention, after ascension, expanding the Floating-land’s territory also wouldn’t happen overnight.

If not for these sticking points, they’d never have let Calm-Sea Rising Dragon head the operation.

As one of four dreadnoughts, Calm-Sea Rising Dragon was a force no battleship could match. Should a swarm of exotics break in, its fighting power would be indispensable—of course, Song Chi and Song Yan’s flagships were exceptions.

But with it anchoring the core, no matter what happened, Calm-Sea Rising Dragon would be immobilized until the job was done. That meant losing a dreadnought’s firepower for the duration.

Everyone in the Song family recognized the risks, so why do it?

Simple—the advantages a dreadnought brought over a battleship here were undeniable.

A level 70 Origin Core Siphon on a dreadnought worked far better than on any battleship, both in extracting faster and boosting their odds of success.

That settled it. Calm-Sea Rising Dragon would take the lead.

All eyes on him, Song Shixing finally delivered an answer.

“We’re in luck. If we just want a small portion of the Origin Core, eight years should be enough!”

Eight years!

The others murmured among themselves, then nodded in agreement.

That timeframe was about what they’d hoped, and they felt confident in pulling it off.

Yes, extraction would take eight years—but that didn’t mean they’d be in an endless war with the exotics for the entire stretch.

If it truly dragged on that long, not even the Song family could hold the line—maybe not even the Changsun Family, with Yulong and their eighth-tier Torch Captains, could withstand the pressure.

There were plenty of eighth-tier exotics on the Red Star Continent.

By the Song family’s calculations, their defenses should mask the extraction for the first few years, but the final year would be the real struggle.

And in truth, that’s exactly how things went.

Time passed.

For three years, the underground chamber trembled but everything was hidden by the nuclear energy shield and the illusionary space cast by the Illusion Array Stone.

By the fourth year, the Red Star Continent’s resistance began to mount, amplifying the tremors through the chamber.

After that, the nuclear fusion reactor’s shield had to run in overload just to keep up with the quakes, and even then, Song Chi and the others had to use their sealing arrays in shifts.

By year six, the shaking grew truly intense—even the silver space seals started to fracture on occasion.

By year seven, multiple layers of barriers sometimes collapsed at once, letting shockwaves leak out. Thankfully, there was always another group ready with replacement components.

This disruption attracted several swarms of exotics, but not enough to cause serious trouble. The Song family wiped them out easily from aboard their warships.

But by the eighth year, the chaos escalated. The nuclear barrier failed completely, and Song Chi’s group could no longer split up—their sealing components couldn’t hold out if they tried shifting shifts.

Now, all silver and red sealed units were grouped together in one team, while Calm‑Sea Dragon‑Xiang’s golden Sky-Seal Prison stood alone as their final wall—barely balancing the strain.

By the halfway point of the eighth year, even that setup was on the verge of collapsing.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Deep within the central sand sea, massive dune ridges shot forward. Rising straight from the depths, they surged onward like living creatures, spreading wider than hundreds of meters—and from the sky, they looked just like a swarm of sand serpents, frantically converging toward a single point.

Above, nine battleships lay hidden in the void, cloaked from view.

“Based on our files, those things are the largest hunters in the Scorching Sun Desert—Sand Crocodiles. So, what’s the call?”

After uploading the Sand Crocodile data, Song Wujian opened up the tactical discussion.

According to the Hidden Vein, Sand Crocodiles were one of the Red Star Continent’s indigenous monsters—not brought in by a Superdimensional Portal.

Their gene rating was no joke—81 points, just making fifth rank on the Song family’s scale. They could rightfully be called children of the Sea of Stars.

With a deep affinity for the Earth Law, Sand Crocodiles were perfectly adapted to the sand, making them even deadlier underground.

Song Dingbang chimed in after reviewing the readings:

“Radar shows no sign of seventh-tier Sand Crocodiles. I say we deploy the Three-Eyed Clan Imperial Flagship and wipe them out fast. That’ll give the other exotics prowling the outer sand sea something to think about—buy us a little more peace!”

“Agreed. With only a few months left before Xingzu completes the extraction, we have to delay the exotics as long as possible!”

……

Seeing no one object, Song Wujian summoned the Three-Eyed Clan Imperial Flagship. With this dominator-class flagship from a top civilization firing at full force, every Sand Crocodile swarming up from all directions was exterminated without delay.

It helped that, along with the gold-class Death Calamity Star Cannon borrowed from the Doomstar Race, this flagship still boasted several of its own supercannons from the days of the Three-Eyed Clan. None of them could be taken lightly.