Super Mothership
Although Red Dragon admired Nie Yun's ambition, he still kindly offered a word of caution.
The Pirate King was a figure who existed only in legends within the Shattered Star Domain. Even when one or two exceptionally powerful pirates occasionally rose to prominence, they were quickly suppressed through joint action by the other pirate factions.
Even outside forces would forcibly intervene at critical moments, preventing the pirate factions of the Shattered Star Domain from growing too powerful and threatening everyone's interests.
Due to its complicated geographical and historical circumstances, this place had practically become the Woolf Empire's equivalent of the “Middle East.” Nie Yun's chances of becoming Pirate King were hardly any better than those of Al-Qaeda unifying the Middle East.
“Who says you two are the only ones supporting me?” Nie Yun gave a mysterious smile.
The two men simultaneously looked confused.
Besides us… who else are you planning to drag into this mess?
…
Meanwhile, in another star domain.
“Captain Ghost? What brings you here?”
The Maniac looked at Nie Yun's mechanical avatar standing before him, then glanced at the Ghost Pirates' fleet sailing alongside his own in the distance.
Instead of taking his spoils and running off, why has this guy gone out of his way to find me?
He's brought only this small fleet, and he's come alone. Isn't he afraid I'll rob him blind?
As it turned out, after helping Gemini reclaim the wormhole, Nie Yun hadn't hurried to rejoin the main force. Taking advantage of his superior speed, he had instead caught up from behind with the Maniacs' raiding fleet, which was currently returning home.
Nie Yun glanced around. Various defensive weapons concealed within the metal bulkheads had already been charged, clearly prepared in case he suddenly launched an attack.
However, Nie Yun paid them no attention. He hadn't come here to play Jing Ke and assassinate the King of Qin.
He turned toward the Maniac, directing all the detection instruments on his body at him and scanning him frantically.
This was his first face-to-face encounter with this great pirate.
Aside from the crisscrossing scars covering his body, which gave him quite an imposing appearance…
Well! The thing that impressed Nie Yun most was that enormous, gleaming bald head.
“You… probably don't have much longer to live!”
As soon as Nie Yun opened his mouth, he resorted to the classic tactics of the School of Diplomacy: making a shocking statement right out of the gate.
The entire room fell silent for a moment…
“What?!”
“Damn it! Are you here to provoke us?!”
“Bastard! How dare you curse our boss! Let's tear him apart!”
Before the Maniac could even respond, his surrounding subordinates had already reacted. One after another, they turned red in the face and raised their weapons.
It was clear that although the Maniac himself was notoriously fierce, his subordinates genuinely respected and supported him. Otherwise, he would never have been able to build such a massive force.
“Everyone, shut up!”
A thunderous roar rang through the room. The Maniac's pirates immediately fell silent, turning toward their leader in surprise.
The Maniac stared at Nie Yun, his expression uncertain.
“You've probably already noticed something yourself, haven't you? That's right. Your body is almost at its limit.”
Nie Yun's words left the surrounding subordinates exchanging bewildered glances.
Naturally, they refused to believe such absurd nonsense. However, the Maniac's strange silence made the atmosphere inexplicably oppressive.
“You're talking nonsense! Our boss is as strong and vigorous as ever! He beat the crap out of a whole bunch of us during today's sparring session. He's obviously gotten stronger! What do you mean his body is at its limit? Stop spreading fear with your baseless claims!”
Finally, one of the Maniac's most loyal subordinates couldn't hold back his anger.
Big Brother Maniac was his idol. He could take on ten opponents at once without breaking a sweat! How could someone so young suddenly be nearing the end of his life?
“Heh! Strong and vigorous? Growing stronger? That's nothing more than a raging fire burning through its fuel—a final burst of vitality before death!”
Nie Yun remained calm and composed. He was practically one stroke of his beard away from pretending to be a legendary physician.
He looked at the silent Maniac with an expression that suggested everything was already under his control.
“Everyone, leave us!”
The Maniac waved his hand, his expression unreadable.
Only after his subordinates, each wearing a different expression, had left the cabin did the Maniac finally raise his head and look at Nie Yun.
“You… what exactly do you know?”
“Heh! During our last battle, did you use that desperate-situation drug that stimulates your latent potential?”
The Maniac looked at him and finally nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
“I imagine this wasn't your first time taking it. After each use, once your body recovered, did you feel that your combat strength had increased dramatically?”
“…Yes.”
“And alongside that increase in combat strength, did you feel unusually excited and energetic, as though you had an inexhaustible supply of energy?”
“Yes!”
“But while your combat strength kept increasing, your hair kept falling out day by day. You became stronger, but you also became balder?”
“…”
“All right, that's a rather awkward question and probably difficult to answer. We can skip it.
Anyway, every time you use the desperate-situation drug, you gain certain benefits, but you also pay a price for them.
I'd guess that the cells throughout your entire body are currently aging at an alarming rate. Your internal organs are probably the first to begin failing, and you're also experiencing frequent headaches, aren't you?”
“You… how do you know that?” The Maniac stared at Nie Yun in astonishment.
The earlier things could be overlooked. They weren't exactly secrets. But he had never even told his closest confidants about his physical condition, yet this man had described it with astonishing accuracy!
And before today, Nie Yun had never even met him in person. At most, they had seen each other during a few remote meetings.
“Heh! There's no need to be surprised. This is a special technique I learned from an ancient divine physician of an alien civilization. It's called ‘Inspection, Auscultation, Inquiry, and Palpation.’ The very first time I saw you, I already knew something was wrong with your body.”
Nie Yun shamelessly boasted.
The Maniac: “…”
I don't believe a word of that!
I've heard of Inspection, Auscultation, Inquiry, and Palpation, but I've never heard of anyone diagnosing organ failure through a screen!
Naturally, the truth wasn't nearly as mystical as Nie Yun made it sound.
His ability to identify the Maniac's physical condition was due not only to Codename's excellent intelligence-gathering work but also to their brief encounter during the previous battle.
Of course… one could also describe it as a group beating.
During that “close-range” encounter, Nie Yun had clearly sensed the Maniac's extremely chaotic and unstable fluctuations in mental power!
Seeing him in person today had once again confirmed Nie Yun's suspicions.
Simply put, the desperate-situation drug was a kind of “stimulant” that temporarily increased mental power by stimulating the human body. Its effects were extremely obvious, but the price was that it consumed the user's lifespan and potential for mental development.
This was also why users of the desperate-situation drug either died or were left crippled.
As someone who possessed technology related to mental power, Nie Yun's Cloud Research Institute naturally had its own research projects aimed at increasing mental power.
For example, the biologist Zhou Dong was currently working on a universal drug capable of increasing human mental power. It had been named the “Psionic Potion.”
The Water of Life was simply too rare. Mass-producing and distributing it on a large scale was completely unrealistic in the short term, so finding a substitute was essential.
With the Water of Life and the Immortals serving as two excellent research samples, their research was progressing fairly quickly. The Psionic Potion had already reached its ninth-generation series, designated “YN-09.”
Of course, every series had failed without exception. Either the effects were unstable or the side effects were too severe. Zhou Dong had personally rejected every one of them.
However, these research efforts hadn't been entirely fruitless.
For instance, the “YN-07” series had effects remarkably similar to those of the desperate-situation drug.
Both temporarily stimulated mental power to skyrocket, and both consumed the user's lifespan. Their users either died or were left crippled…
The technological development paths of two civilizations had unexpectedly converged through a strange coincidence!
Nie Yun even suspected that this desperate-situation drug might have been developed in much the same way as their own research: a defective product produced during the Woolf Empire's Imperial Family experiments with mental-power technology.
With research data on a similar drug, combined with intelligence about the Maniac and his abnormal life-energy fluctuations, Nie Yun finally had enough confidence to tell him:
“Your days are numbered!”
Although Nie Yun didn't know what made the Maniac so special, it was obvious that he possessed a much higher “drug tolerance” than ordinary people.
Not only could he withstand the desperate-situation drug's enormous side effects and survive, but he had also gained considerable benefits from it.
Even so, the desperate-situation drug was an imperfect enhancement drug with enormous flaws. The hidden damage caused by taking it repeatedly was gradually dragging the Maniac toward the abyss.
The aftereffects of his abnormally increased mental power manifested as frequent headaches.
And the more powerful the Maniac's mental strength became, the more it resembled a candle burning with an increasingly vigorous flame. Before long, the candle itself would be completely consumed.
In other words, he was exchanging his lifespan for power!
The consequences were premature organ failure and a drastic reduction in the number of times his cells could divide. All of this meant that the Maniac's remaining lifespan was rapidly shrinking!
“That's right! I can indeed vaguely sense that I probably don't have much longer to live…”
After his initial shock, the Maniac straightforwardly admitted that Nie Yun's assessment was correct.
His expression was calm. There was no panic or fear whatsoever.
He had tried numerous methods to slow down his body's abnormal aging, but every attempt had failed without exception. Meanwhile, his headaches had become increasingly severe, to the point that they were now almost unbearable.
Clearly, he had been expecting this day for quite some time.
“I don't know where you learned all this, but if you think you can take advantage of my impending death to come here and pick over my belongings, then you've made a mistake!”
The Maniac's gaze once again turned fierce, filled with the burning determination of someone prepared to fight until his very last breath.
Nie Yun shook his head.
Clearly, the abnormal increase in mental power was much like taking a powerful drug. The excess mental energy constantly needed an outlet, subtly influencing the Maniac's personality.
This was probably one of the reasons behind his obsession with fighting. The Maniac himself, however, didn't seem to have noticed it.
“I'm not here to plunder your inheritance. What if I told you… I could help you? Would you believe me?”
“Help me?”
Thinking of the other party's mysterious background, the Maniac's heart skipped a beat.
Could it be… that he really has a way to extend my lifespan?
“How can you help me?” The Maniac's voice carried a hint of hope.
After all, as long as he was alive, he could continue enjoying the thrill of battle!
“Heh! To be honest, my greatest expertise is human body modification. I can offer all sorts of high-quality, affordable transformation packages, such as ‘Brain in a Vat,’ ‘Full Mechanical Conversion,’ ‘Ultimate Beastification,’ and ‘Cthulhu-Style Deluxe Edition.’ There's even the highly avant-garde ‘Vegetative Person Conversion’…”
“Enough!”
The Maniac interrupted Nie Yun, who was still enthusiastically droning on with his sales pitch. His face had turned completely dark.
I still want to remain human, damn it!
“Ahem! It seems these high-quality, affordable projects aren't particularly interesting to Commander Maniac. In that case, allow me to introduce my most prized and treasured product!”
As he spoke, Nie Yun opened his chest cavity and carefully took out a glass test tube.
With a slight movement, the emerald-green liquid inside slowly swirled. Enchanting specks of light continuously appeared and disappeared within it…
“Gulp!”
The Maniac swallowed hard.
An instinctive desire took hold of him. His gaze seemed glued to the dreamlike potion, and he could no longer look away.
“You want it? If you want it, just say so! How am I supposed to know you want it if you don't tell me? Even though you're looking at me with such sincerity, you still have to tell me what you want.
Hmm! Do you really want it?”
The Maniac: “…”
Mechanical Bug: “…” (╮（╯▽╰）╭)
TL Note- Negotiation....
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