Chi Yao had his hands behind his back, secretly activating the terminal’s scanning function.

Chen Bingfeng grabbed his own shoulder, twisted it, and violently snapped his dislocated arm back into place.

He got up and attacked Chi Yao again.

“You can try and see if it’s my decision!” Chen Bingfeng gritted his teeth, his attacks ruthless. “But before you get lost, you must complete this report for me!”

If a third person had been present, they would have certainly noticed something was wrong.

An attack of Chen Bingfeng’s intensity would have likely killed an ordinary person in one move.

This didn’t look like disciplining a subordinate at all; it was with killing intent.

Chi Yao’s mood grew increasingly irritable.

What he hated most was dealing with self-righteous old men like this.

Chen Bingfeng’s fists kept missing, and he too became heated, his attacks growing more ferocious.

[100% scan complete—Generating holographic proportional model—Model saved.]

His objective achieved, Chi Yao couldn’t be bothered to grapple with him any longer.

Seeing Chen Bingfeng’s leg kick towards his neck, he slightly sidestepped and punched him in the eye socket. With lightning speed, he grabbed his opponent’s neck and swiftly threw him to the ground.

A lieutenant general’s combat prowess was laughably weak in front of Chi Yao.

“Cough, cough, cough—!” A sharp pain shot through Chen Bingfeng’s back. He curled up, taking a long while to recover.

Chi Yao kicked his chin with the tip of his shoe and said unhurriedly, “I don’t like people dictating my decisions.”

“Jing Xi!”

His pride trampled, Chen Bingfeng grabbed his foot to launch a counterattack.

But Chi Yao was faster. He retracted his foot and then stomped down hard again.

“Ugh! Cough, cough, cough—!”

Chen Bingfeng’s chest was stomped on hard, and he couldn’t stop coughing. “What on earth do you want?!”

His eyes were filled with anger and a clear warning.

Chi Yao: “That’s what I should be asking you. What’s hidden in Cetus?”

A flash appeared in Chen Bingfeng’s eyes, and his right hand made a gesture.

But before he could summon the guards, he suddenly heard a ‘crack’ and a sharp pain shot through his hand.

Chi Yao stomped on it, and Chen Bingfeng’s fingers immediately twisted and deformed.

“Let go!”

Chen Bingfeng writhed on the ground in pain, his clothes and hair disheveled, his lieutenant general’s dignity long gone.

“If the lieutenant general can’t remember, I don’t mind helping you. We have all the time in the world.”

Chi Yao wiped the bottom of his shoe on the carpet, as if to clean off something dirty, and walked away nonchalantly.

Hearing the door close, Chen Bingfeng let out an angry roar. He clutched his broken fingers, his face ashen.

He ignored the injury and stumbled into the inner rest area, making a communication call.

A holographic projection soon appeared before him.

Chen Bingfeng lowered his voice. “The matter in Cetus has been exposed!”

“Impossible,” the person in the projection said with their back turned, their voice old. “Those who could have discovered it are either already one of us or dead.”

Chen Bingfeng gritted his teeth. “But Jing Xi mentioned Cetus, and he didn’t look like he knew nothing!”

The person in the projection frowned and turned their head to look behind them. “Jing Xi?”

Meanwhile, Jing Xi watched as the spaceship’s coordinates moved further and further away from the imperial capital star.

He spent half an hour inspecting the entire star pirate group, which could only be summarized as a chaotic mess.

Everyone was very lax. The rest areas were filled with people shouting loudly. Almost every rest cabin had people gambling in groups, drinking and playing finger-guessing games, and singing karaoke like wailing ghosts.

Even the personnel on duty had no discipline to speak of, huddling together to smoke and chat, the air thick with smoke.

He couldn’t stand being in such a place for even a day.

The only consolation was that there was a big dog to pet.

Unfortunately, for some reason, the big dog had become withdrawn.

Jing Xi tried to use Chi Yao’s terminal to search online for information about the “X” mark.

This terminal had no personal information bound to it, and the system version was very different from the normal one. It must have been obtained through illegal channels.

It wasn’t out of the question that some brainless star pirates would get such a mark to look cool.

But his intuition told him that the one on Chi Yao’s arm was very problematic.

Besides the mark, Chi Yao’s body was almost free of scars, which meant he wasn’t someone who liked to have scars on his body.

But this mark remained. It was unlikely that it didn’t have some special meaning.

A knock sounded on the door, and Li Yuan entered.

“Boss, we are preparing to land.”

Land? Jing Xi glanced at the location on the map without changing his expression. They had reached the border.

“I’ll be right there.”

Li Yuan nodded. His peripheral vision caught Yin Wei lying against the wall. He whistled in that direction. “Let’s go, Brother Li will take you to chew on some meat bones.”

The dog, which had been still for two hours, twitched its ears and reluctantly got up.

As it passed Jing Xi, it gave him a very mournful look, looking particularly wronged.

Jing Xi: “…”

The spaceship landed on a small planet.

Jing Xi had read the data; it was a fourth-class planet.

Habitable planets were classified from one to three, from best to worst, based on natural resources and size.

Fourth-class planets, on the other hand, were originally developed into habitable planets but had reverted to uninhabited areas due to natural disasters, mutant beast invasions, or other reasons.

The cabin door opened, revealing a wide landing pad. The ground was severely cracked and full of potholes, with no flat areas.

The hall looked grand and magnificent, but two of its four corners were damaged and had collapsed. There were also several large pits on the outer wall, likely made by beasts, which were now covered by mutant plants, looking quite old.

Just as they landed, people from another spaceship quickly walked over.

“Boss, are you okay?!”

Hearing the urgent question, Jing Xi looked over.

Before him was a fair-skinned young alpha who looked to be in his early thirties. He had slightly curly brown hair, black pants, long boots, and a military green top, looking sharp and capable.

If he wasn’t mistaken, this should be Extreme Shadow’s vice-captain, Fang Liang, who was Chi Yao’s right-hand man.

This person rarely appeared but had become a key observation target for the military due to his strong support abilities.

Many believed that Extreme Shadow’s rampant dominance, apart from Chi Yao’s reckless personality and strength, was also due to Fang Liang’s significant role.

What surprised Jing Xi wasn’t how good-looking he was, but his military demeanor.

This person had a clear and bright aura, completely different from the style of the other people in the star pirate group.

Jing Xi felt that he shouldn’t be in a star pirate group, but in the military.

“I’m fine,” Jing Xi said.

A hovercar in the air flew over the station hall and landed in front of them.

Fang Liang opened the car door for Jing Xi to get in and drove towards their residence.

Jing Xi rested his chin on his hand and looked out the window.

From the towering buildings everywhere, it was not difficult to see that this place was at least a second-class planet in its heyday.

But now, it was full of damage and collapses. The vines of mutant plants covered the outer walls and ground, giving it a very post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

Seeing one spot, Jing Xi frowned. “What are they doing over there?”

Hearing this, Fang Liang looked outside.

On top of a tall building, a group of people wearing neck and leg shackles were fighting each other.

Fang Liang retracted his gaze, unfazed. “Killing.”

Li Yuan was leaning against the window, watching with great interest.

“Why are these things killing each other again?”

Fang Liang: “It’s almost the first of the month.”

Li Yuan shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Damn it, they were once colleagues. To live a better life, they’ll sell out anyone.”

Fang Liang: “From the looks of it, it’s not going to end until at least half of them are dead.”

The two of them discussed it nonchalantly, with no regard for human life.

Jing Xi: “What’s going on?”

Li Yuan turned to look at him, smiling slyly. “You forgot again? We threw this group in last month. Isn’t it fun to watch them fight?”

Jing Xi’s face darkened.

He had thought Extreme Shadow only dared to commit robbery, but he didn’t expect them to also capture people and watch them fight for entertainment.

They were rotten to the core.

Jing Xi: “Stop the car.”

Fang Liang thought he had become interested and was going to add fuel to the fire, so he immediately landed on the spot.

There were sixty to seventy people fighting.

By the time Jing Xi arrived, four or five were already dead.

Blood flowed on the ground, the smell thick in the air.

Someone raised a twenty-meter-long spike, about to stab it into another person’s neck, but was kicked in the wrist by a massive force.

“Ah—!” The spike fell to the ground, and he screamed in pain.

Seeing the newcomer, his pupils quaked, and he instantly retreated more than ten meters.

Jing Xi: “All of you, stop.”

Hearing the voice, the others also looked over.

Seeing it was Chi Yao, they all looked as if they had seen a ghost and quickly retreated several meters.

Li Yuan and Fang Liang leaned against the car side by side.

Getting too close at a time like this would inevitably get them splattered with blood, and they would be chased and scolded by Chunqin again when they got back.

But the boss was different. No one dared to say anything even if he threw away a set of clothes every day.

“The boss actually told them to stop?” Li Yuan was clueless. “Could it be that he’s thought of some new perverted way to play?”

Fang Liang took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

“Doesn’t look like it. Look, the boss is making them line up and is reasoning with them. His expression is quite serious.”

Li Yuan: “Is he playing the ‘persuade with reason’ game this time?”

Over there, Jing Xi’s face was cold.

Perhaps these people were ordinary civilians, or perhaps they were evil robbers. Before he could figure out their origins, Jing Xi couldn’t order their release.

But he also couldn’t just stand by and watch them kill each other.

“Fighting won’t solve any problems. Huddling together for warmth and distributing resources reasonably is the only way to survive in a harsh environment—”

But he didn’t know which sentence had provoked them. The crowd began to stir, and they fought even more fiercely than before.

The scene descended into greater chaos.

Seeing them lost in a frenzy of killing, Jing Xi casually broke off a spike from a giant mutant cactus nearby and threw it.

The spike grazed the neck of the person fighting most fiercely and flew past, firmly embedding itself halfway into the wall behind.

His gaze swept over everyone present, his voice very cold.

“I said stop. Didn’t you hear me?”

A single sentence, not too heavy, not too light, successfully made everyone stop.

Watching this scene, Li Yuan and Fang Liang: “…”

Persuade with reason—my ass.

__

Author’s note:
Jing Xi: Chi Yao is such a pervert, playing this kind of game!
Later—
Jing Xi: My husband is also cute when he goes crazy.