Under the navigation of three space gates, more and more fleets that belonged to the four families jumped over in an organized way, blocking and suppressing the reformists like an iron wall. Tremendous ultra-huge engineering warships that carried infrastructural resources had jumped over too. Seven days after the battle began, there was even a whole space fortress that appeared at the Empyreal Terminus Sectors after six hours!
Receiving the support of sufficient resources, the fleets were gathered into solid battle formations, and the army of nobles pressed forward unstoppably one footstep after another.
The Empyreal Terminus Sector was the heart of the Imperium after all. Countless defense lines in space had been constructed and strengthened in the past thousand years. Almost every solid planet, satellite, and stable asteroid had been set up with abundant bases and cubic defense bases. Even though the four families had the absolute advantage in combat ability, they were not in a hurry to break the core of the Empyreal Terminus Sector—the capital.
They pressed forward step by step, clearing every obstacle on the way to the capital planet and conquering all the fortresses and bases in space. After every defense base was conquered, they would immediately dispatch their own fleets to garrison it. A lot of materials were also shipped over to start heated construction works.
It was a war of a hundred Sectors versus one. The four families boasted enough time and resources to play a crushing game without taking the slightest risk.
On the twentieth day of the battle in the capital, the No. 5 planet closest to the capital planet was occupied by the four families, turning into the best platform for them to attack the capital planet.
It meant that the hands of death that grabbed the throat of the reformists had been completely closed.
The final attack was about to begin.
Faced with the aggressive, dominating performance of the four families, the reformists were naturally unwilling to wait to be killed.
The Deep Sea Fleet and the Imperial Guards organized a few counterattacks, only to be blocked by the four families’ dense battle formation, solid defense, and overwhelming troops.
Even though the warriors of the reformists had the courage and combat ability to defeat multiple times more enemies, it was useless when they were faced with the enemies that significantly outnumbered them.
There were simply too many enemies, and they were too formidable!
One month after the battle started, the greatest problem that the reformists were faced with was in fact not the competition on the battlefield but the full blockage of communication. It was barely possible for them to reach out to the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and the Astounding Thunder Fleet, the other two main forces in the Seven Seas Space Zone at the edge of the cosmos.
The Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors represented the strength of countless warlords and the capitals of the Imperium.
The Astounding Thunder Fleet, on the other hand, could be used to win the support of the expedition army that was still keeping neutral.
The two main forces were the only hope for the reformists, however dim.
However, it was very difficult for two worlds tens of thousands of lightyears away from each other to communicate. Their real-time communication depended on the “Hyperspace Communication Bases” established at the edge of the space zones, which allowed information and data to also jump through the four-dimensional before they were delivered to the recipient.
If the messages were sent in regular ways, they could only be received after ten thousand years even if they were kept at the speed of light, which would’ve been pointless.
However, the dozens of “Hyperspace Communication Bases” that the reformists set up at the edge of the Empyreal Terminus Sector had all been discovered, occupied, or destroyed by the ace fleets of the four families.
In the meantime, the four families had projected powerful interferences to the whole space zone. They unleashed twisting radiations and spiritual waves incessantly to disrupt the secret communication bases that very likely existed.
As a result, the capital was enshrouded in a heavy fog and blocked from the outside world—mainly the Seven Seas Space Zone. It was barely possible to learn the updates from the Seven Seas Space Zone or to command Lei Chenghu or Jin Yuyan to take appropriate reactions.
With the weak strength of the Deep Sea Fleet and the Imperial Guards, it was an impossible mission to block the information blockade of the ace fleets of the four families.
It was true that they had hidden a few mobile secret communication bases at a certain point in the vast space. There were also quite a few powerful communication ships in the complicated stone belts that had yet to be discovered by the enemy.
However, both the secret communication bases and the communication ships would release tremendous information waves once activated, which would immediately be detected by the ace fleets of the four families. They would be destroyed very soon.
According to the evaluation of the leaders of the Imperial Guards, every mobile secret communication base would be discovered and destroyed by the enemy half an hour after it was activated at most.
The communication ships were faster and had better survival abilities. Starting from the moment they released the first information wave, they could persist about an hour before they were destroyed.
However, the super-remote communication units accommodated on the communication ships were not as powerful, and the information to be transmitted was highly limited.
In other words, the real-time communication between the capital and the Seven Seas Space Zone could last half an hour to one hour at best. Also, each communication session would cost one mobile secret communication base or a valuable communication ship.
Therefore, as long as there were no particularly significant military affairs, the capital and the Seven Seas Space Zone would not turn on the real-time communication channel every day. Instead, they communicated in a more primitive way, which was the communication boats.
The communication boats were a small rapid starship no more than fifty meters long. They did not accommodate any attack magical equipment but were loaded with storage chips.
Every day, the highest commanders in the capital and the Seven Seas Space Zone would save the latest data in the command chain as well as the orders and requests into the storage chips in the boats. Then, the most reliable officers would be sent out to protect them. Through the supermassive teleportation arrays similar to the “cosmic slingshot” and the four-dimensional jump devices on board, they could be delivered to the target Sector directly.
Up until so far, several space gates were still controlled by the reformists on the two ends, allowing him to maintain the communication of personnel and resources to a minimal degree. The landing points of the boats were relatively accurate and would not be too far away from the space gates.
Also, every boat was loaded with the most advanced stealth device. Their size and mass were very small. In the vast space, they were but grains of dust and could barely be detected by the enemy.
Even if they were detected and captured by the enemy, every boat had been set with triple self-destruction facilities. The officer in charge needed to input a security code every five minutes, or all the data would be wiped out in ten seconds. It was definitely safe and secure.
While the efficiency of interaction with the boats was terribly low, the amount of information that each boat could carry was more than what could be transmitted wirelessly for three days and three nights. There was no need to worry that the network might be compromised by the enemy either. The reliability and security of communication were greatly improved.
Therefore, boats became the main means of communication between the capital and the Seven Seas Space Zone. Dozens of boats traveled between the two places every day.
The information was gradually grasped by the ace fleets of the four families.
They were unwilling to be stabbed in the back by the Astounding Thunder Fleet or the garrison fleets under the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors when they launched an attack on the capital planet.
Therefore, after checking the capital, it became their main focus to scan and destroy the boats.
The four families mobilized countless cyberwarfare ships and scout ships to perform the most thorough blockade and scan in the area near the capital planet, not leaving out the slightest space ripple. The moment they sensed space ripples, they would immediately deploy the best rapid response troops to stop the stranger from entering the defense circle of the capital planet.
The Imperial Guards and the Deep Sea Fleet, who had fallen back into the orbit of the capital planet, showed astonishing courage at this moment. They marched out without a care in order to protect the boats that had just jumped to the Empyreal Terminus Sector. They were determined to get the updates from the Seven Seas Space Zone despite the heavy casualties.
The fierce battle today happened exactly because of that.
Three boats from the Seven Seas Space Zone appeared in the space not far away from the capital planet without a sound like inconspicuous loaches. However, they immediately raised the attention of the predators that were lurking nearby.
The starships of the predators unleashed the most dazzling brilliance. Like sharks baring their shining teeth, they lunged at the three tiny loaches aggressively.
The three loaches fled toward the capital planet in panic, but they were caught by a second team of predators, which had arrived from another direction, before they entered the orbit defense circle of the capital planet. Right when the three loaches were about to be torn into shreds by the two groups of sharks, the daring teams of the Deep Sea Fleet and the Imperial Guards marched out and pierced into the sharks like a hundred fast swordfish.
The three loaches took the opportunity to rush toward the capital planet, only to be hit by the cannons of the predators. One of the boats disintegrated on the spot into brilliant fireworks, and the other two boats were riddled with holes and no better than remains. Unable to maintain their flight, they were caught by the gravity of the capital planet and fell to the surface of the capital planet crookedly.
The sharks finally got rid of the swordfish and bit the tails of the other two loaches, raining their firepower on them. The two boats were shaking and sparkling so hard that they seemed to be falling apart in the next second.
Right then, thousands of dazzling lines of fire interweaved into an impenetrable net, covering the sharks overwhelmingly, because they had pressed too forward and approached the orbit defense ring of the capital planet without them realizing it.
No matter how magnificent the ace fleets of the four families were, they were still not enough to compete with the defense arrays of a whole planet that was the heart of the Imperium in terms of firepower.
The few sharks in the lead were immediately ripped into shreds, and the rest of the sharks dispersed, retreating to a safe distance at full speed, before they finally turned around and looked at the two loaches diving into the atmosphere of the capital planet, turning into two clusters of furiously-burning fireballs in the air, and landing on the vast ocean of the capital planet.