Chapter One: A New Beginning (Part One)

After that, Kuangchi activated the Soft Bone Technique from the Mad Dragon Manual and, snakelike, slipped out of the escape pod following the man who called himself the Phantom Thief. Staring at the battered remains of the pod, which was now little more than a lump of scrap metal, even Kuangchi’s face paled. The exterior of the escape pod looked as though it had been scorched and melted, pitted with holes of every size. Usually thick-skinned, Kuangchi couldn’t help but sigh at his own luck—he had managed to survive such a disaster.

The middle-aged man who called himself the Phantom Thief walked over to Kuangchi and, surprisingly, was only a little taller than him. He patted Kuangchi on the shoulder and said, "You’re one lucky kid. If I hadn’t found this strange thing, you’d probably have ended up drifting through the cosmos as nothing more than cosmic dust. I chased it for seven days before it finally crashed into a meteorite. Only then did I bring it back from the rock. Now, who exactly are you? Where did you come from, to have such an escape pod? Are you some prince or heir of a nation?"

Over the past few days, Kuangchi had come to feel a sort of kinship with this man called the Phantom Thief. After some deliberation, he decided to tell the truth—after all, his identity wasn’t anything that needed to be kept secret.

Upon hearing Kuangchi’s introduction, the Phantom Thief eventually pulled up a starmap from his miniature computer, locating the location of the Caro Empire. As they gazed at the map together, both fell silent. If one were to divide the human-controlled territories into north and south, with the Caro Empire as the southernmost point, then Kuangchi was now at the very northern tip of the human-inhabited galaxy.

After a long while, the Phantom Thief finally spoke. "Fatty, you’re finished. You can forget about going home in this lifetime. If you want to get back from here, unless you pass through the six stargates controlled by the Three Great Nations, you could run through the universe for three hundred years and still never reach the Caro Empire."

Kuangchi hurriedly said, "Then I’ll just find a way to pass through those six stargates."

Stargates were peculiar phenomena in the universe, sometimes called space-jump gates. They resembled black holes but lacked their destructive power. Anything entering a stargate would mysteriously emerge from another corresponding stargate elsewhere, enabling long-distance travel—an interspatial leap. As for how stargates formed and their exact principles, research was still ongoing. Humanity referred to it as the principle of space folding, but the details remained unknown.

The Phantom Thief looked at Kuangchi as if he were an idiot. "Look at yourself. Do you have any proof of your identity? Don’t you know the rules? Stargates only open to a nation’s own citizens, and only those with status and rank at that. Ordinary people have no right to pass through stargates."

Kuangchi interjected, "For those of the Kuang family, the Battle Dragon is our proof of identity."

"Stop, stop, stop," the Phantom Thief snapped impatiently. "You think you’re still in the Caro Empire? Outside of it, who cares who the Kuang family is? Yes, maybe your family produced a Warlord thousands of years ago, but that’s ancient history. Ordinary folks like us wouldn’t know, and even if they did, what if someone coveted your family’s cultivation techniques? You wouldn’t even know how you died."

Kuangchi could only sigh, his spirits deflated.

For several days, Kuangchi lived with the Phantom Thief in his lair hidden in a forest on a desolate planet, drifting through life like a walking corpse. Eventually, the Phantom Thief could no longer stand it and came over, dissatisfied. "What’s with you? I said it would be difficult to go home, not impossible."

Kuangchi replied offhandedly, "How could I go back? There are six stargates, and I can’t pass them."

The Phantom Thief pointed to himself, grinning. "Who am I? I’m the Phantom Thief. There are always ships going through the stargates, right? All you have to do is sneak aboard one of the ships that has permission, and you’ll make it through."

Kuangchi was stunned, almost excited, but then remembered the stargate entrance security checks and shook his head. "Don’t you know the universe uses total-ship death-ray scans at stargates to prevent alien organisms from passing through and messing up other planets’ ecosystems?"

The Phantom Thief replied, "Aren’t there protective suits that can shield you from death-rays? We just need to get one." Kuangchi finally snapped out of his daze and nodded vigorously, but then realized another problem. "But where would we buy one? I hear they’re not cheap."

The Phantom Thief smiled. "I know a place. The only thing is—the money."

"Money is no problem," Kuangchi said immediately. "If I can just get home, I’ll pay you double."

The Phantom Thief thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don’t take IOUs. But I can teach you how to make money. Buy it yourself." With a sly grin, he left Kuangchi pondering.

At that moment, Kuangchi couldn’t care less and nodded his agreement.

For the next half year, Kuangchi followed the Phantom Thief into the business of stealing from passing cargo ships. In this, he couldn’t help but admire his mentor. The Phantom Thief had designed and built a special spider-shaped craft for thefts in asteroid fields. The ship’s dozen or so long legs would fold in, making it appear from the outside as nothing more than a small asteroid—too small for cargo ships’ radar systems to detect, or, if detected, too insignificant to warrant concern. Even if it collided with a ship, it would do no damage. When a transport passed by, the spider craft would extend its legs and attach itself to the hull. The Phantom Thief would then find a way to disable the ship’s computer surveillance of the cargo bay, quickly cut a hole into the ship, and remove the most valuable items—there was only so much space in the little spider ship, after all. Finally, he’d roughly patch the hole, completing the heist and often leaving the victim clueless as to when or where the loss had occurred. This reputation was the source of the Phantom Thief’s notorious fame, and his greatest pride.

Whenever the subject came up, Kuangchi always wondered why this little old man hadn’t become a scientist instead of a lone galactic thief. Whenever he asked, the Phantom Thief would either change the subject or refuse to answer at all.