【Host: Seraphine】

  【Physical Strength: 384 Star】

  【Soul: 384 Star】

  “Hm...”

  Seraphine murmured to herself, “It’s about time I left Earth.”

  Her gaze shifted to the small group standing respectfully before her, heads bowed.

  Kael. Vale. Yvienne. Serena. Selene.

  “I’ve called you here today to entrust you with several matters.”

  Her voice was steady, measured. “I will be departing for a time. The length of my absence is uncertain.”

  “Leave?!”

  The group instantly lifted their heads, startled, trading uneasy glances with one another.

  Seraphine ignored their reactions. Turning her eyes to Vale, she said:

  “Your talent is unremarkable, yet you’ve managed to cultivate to the fourth layer of Aether Domain. Hm. That much pleases me.”

  Overjoyed, Vale dropped to his knees, pressing his forehead to the ground in fervent gratitude.

  Seraphine’s attention then shifted to Yvienne and Serena.

  Both had stepped into the Mystic Aperture realm.

  Though their talent was likewise ordinary, their proximity to Sapphire’s cultivation vault ensured they never lacked for techniques.

  By Seraphine’s judgment, these two women—utterly loyal to her and secretly harboring affection—would, at their present pace, reach Martial Saint within a few decades.

  As for Kael—he had already completed the Three Steps and stood only half a step away from the Martial Saint realm. He was Earth’s second-strongest, surpassed by none save Seraphine herself.

  And who held first place beneath her? The 3.0 version, Selene.

  That fact still stung Kael bitterly.

  He had challenged Selene again and again, and each time, he had been defeated.

  Yet each defeat honed him further. With every failure his realm rose higher, sharpening his edge.

  On reflection, Seraphine knew the truth: this hot-blooded youth’s talent was terrifying.

  From the Evershield Body realm to his present stage had taken him scarcely any time at all.

  Once he stepped into Martial Saint—once he broke through to the Transcendent level—he would have the power to surpass Selene at last.

  Speaking of the Transcendent…

  Having cross-referenced the Milky Way’s combat standards, Seraphine had already devised and refined a martial saint’s path: the 《Earthbless Codex》.

  And as for the 《Skyroot Codex》?

  That method truly granted exaggerated attribute increases—yet its entry barrier was equally overwhelming.

  By Seraphine’s estimate, outside of herself, few in existence would ever be able to cultivate it.

  The 《Earthbless Codex》, however, had a far lower threshold. Any Grand Martial Master could cultivate it, relying simply on absorbing external Ether.

  After a brief moment of thought, Seraphine’s eyes gleamed. She projected her Divine Will outward, imprinting a portion of the cultivation method directly into their minds.

  At the same time, she spoke aloud:

  “What I’ve just imparted to you is the 《Earthbless Codex》—a method extremely compatible with Ether.”

  “Earthbless?” The group exchanged puzzled glances.

  “That’s correct.”

  Her voice was calm, deliberate. “The entry threshold is minimal. As long as one reaches Kael’s level, continuous absorption of Ether can naturally drive steady breakthroughs, realm after realm.”

  “The 《Earthbless Codex》 builds upon one’s own foundation, endlessly drawing in external Ether.”

  Long ago, Ether activity in the Solar System Sector had been feeble.

  It was precisely the torment of that stifling, low-Ether environment that had driven Seraphine to pour all her strength into creating the 《Skyroot Codex》.

  Its Nine Heavens Gate system was terrifying in scope: with every gate opened, Physical Strength and Soul attributes multiplied dozens of times over their existing values.

  Once fully cultivated, attributes and combat power would erupt, magnified by billions of times compared to before.

  The gap between before and after cultivation could only be likened to the difference between two entirely separate species.

  But the threshold for the 《Skyroot Codex》 was abnormally high—so high as to border on the impossible.

  The very first step demanded that a practitioner possess high-dimensional sensory organs—organs utterly inaccessible to low-dimensional lifeforms. Only through such perception could one touch and absorb pure high-dimensional energy that existed beyond three-dimensional reality.

  For any ordinary being bound within three-dimensional space, such a requirement was nothing short of absurd.

  Seraphine, however, was the exception.

  With the Eye of True Revelation, Chaos Calculation, and the Real Number Channel, she alone could spontaneously evolve high-dimensional perception.

  Each of these three powers was indispensable; without any one of them, the cultivation path would collapse.

  Even then, the Real Number Channel’s opening consumed an unfathomable amount of energy.

  Only the System’s infinite reserves could sustain it—otherwise, even if all the matter in the Solar System were annihilated and converted into raw energy, it still would not suffice to pry open the Real Number Channel.

  At the same time, drawing upon that kind of high-dimensional energy required at least celestial-level Physical Strength and Soul. Without such a foundation, the practitioner would perish instantly—body and soul annihilated.

  It would not be a simple death, but a collapse from matter itself down to the level of information, reducing even the planet beneath her to catastrophic ruin.

  By contrast, the 《Earthbless Codex》 Seraphine later devised carried a threshold far, far lower.

  No innate talent was required. No insurmountable barriers barred the way.

  As long as one completed the Three Steps, then followed the method’s prescribed path of Ether absorption, cultivation could continue without end.

  Of course, this was only possible because the Solar System’s Ether activity had since multiplied tens of thousands of times compared to when Seraphine first created the 《Skyroot Codex》. It had now reached the so-called High-Ether Sector level. Without that rise, the 《Earthbless Codex》 would never have been feasible.

  The key node for energy circulation within the body—the acupuncture points—was redesigned by Seraphine. In her system, practitioners only needed to perform an energy-layer sublimation according to the method’s principles, then merge the concepts of Imaginary Space and Dimensional Pocket to open illusory energy chambers within all 108 acupuncture points.

  This design shattered the natural capacity limit of the points, enabling smooth ascension into the next major realm.

  A martial artist who stepped into the Martial Saint realm was already several times stronger than Vuron.

  At that level, one also gained the ability to inflict widespread destruction on the surrounding environment.

  Through mastery of Ether, a Martial Saint could unleash devastating area attacks—both in sheer scale and raw quality—capable of annihilating an entire city in moments.

  By Seraphine’s reckoning, that alone placed them squarely within the combat power standards of Transcendent Stage One.

  Yet in her design and simulations, the structure of the 《Earthbless Codex》 diverged from the 《Skyroot Codex》.

  Where the Skyroot path’s Martial Saint Great Realm consisted of Nine Heavens Gates, the Earthbless system contained ten stages.

  With each stage, Physical Strength and Soul attributes multiplied several times over. But the precise values differed for every practitioner, and the manifestations of those values differed still further.

  Take Kael, for instance.

  A cultivation prodigy, yes—but even more, a combat genius. He could turn a fraction of his strength into tenfold effect.

  Seraphine estimated that upon reaching the early Martial Saint stage, his inherent Physical Strength and Soul would stabilize around a million.

  Though that figure alone fell short of pulverizing a mountain, the speed, force, and kinetic energy derived from his movements would be terrifying beyond measure.

  More crucial still: Kael possessed unmatched mastery in the breadth, depth, and precision of Ether control.

  With the inexhaustible blessing of Ether, even a simple punch, a kick, or a single blade stroke would transform into a divine technique—an outright spell.

  Thus, the moment Kael first entered Martial Saint, his projected combat strength would already touch Transcendent Stage Two—perhaps even Stage Three.

  In terms of destructive capacity, this meant a single punch that could pierce Earth’s atmosphere… or a single kick that could shatter a hundred miles of land.

  And in Seraphine’s eyes, this was nothing unusual at all.

  Aside from a few rare systems, most evolutionary paths followed a simple truth: geniuses always advanced further, faster, and with greater returns than mediocrities.

  According to the Milky Way’s combat power standards, the Transcendent scale—from Stage One to Stage Ten—marked differences so vast that the gap between each stage was at least a tenfold.

  Each advancement meant a tenfold increase in destructive capacity. The 《Earthbless Codex》 could roughly align with this framework.

  Note well:

  The Milky Way combat power system was strictly 【result-oriented】. It measured only the raw destructive effect a being could unleash upon the outside world. It never analyzed specific Physical Strength or Soul values, nor did it account for evolutionary stages themselves.

  Time passed in silence.

  Soon, Seraphine had transmitted the entire framework of the 《Earthbless Codex》—its evolutionary system, cultivation sequence, and supporting principles—directly into the minds of the few assembled before her. Then she said:

  “I am departing for the wormhole at the edge of the Solar System. I will not be on Earth, nor in Emberlight… for some time. You must safeguard it well.”

  They nodded silently. Though their eyes betrayed deep reluctance, they spoke no words.

  For they knew: before their Sovereign, a divine being, no counsel could dissuade her, and no mortal tongue dared to question her intent. Silence was all that remained.

  Seraphine cast them one indifferent glance—then vanished from the Imperial Palace.

  In the next instant, she reappeared a hundred thousand meters above Emberlight.

  She lowered her head, and with a single thought, extended her awareness.

  Every river, every mountain chain, every forest—every single human being—came into flawless clarity beneath Seraphine’s gaze.

  Her brows knit faintly as she spoke in a low, resonant tone:

  “I feel it still—that premonition. When I return to Emberlight… an eternity may have passed.”

  She lingered in the sky for a long while, hesitation flickering across her divine bearing. Then, at last, she extended a single slender finger and pointed toward the empire’s Eastern Sea.

  Hum—

  In an instant, the boundless blue waters thousands of miles away erupted. The ocean surged and roared as hundreds of colossal streams of seawater burst upward, spearing into the sky.

  They climbed higher and higher, until at last the torrents converged at the very vault of heaven, tens of thousands of meters above the surface.

  As they merged, their volume reached a critical point. With a deafening roar, the vast, island-sized mass of seawater—ten thousand meters across and weighing trillions of tons—began to collapse and condense.

  Its form shifted violently, colors rippling, shapes warping.

  And then—

  A faceless giant emerged. A hundred meters tall, clad in massive armor, its body radiating golden light.

  The instant it was born, the giant thundered downward, plunging toward the endless Eastern Sea.

  Its mass alone was so overwhelming that as it fell, the surrounding atmosphere trembled with shockwaves and spiraling vortexes.

  But before it struck the sea, when it was still a thousand meters above the waves, the giant suddenly halted.

  There it hung motionless, before folding its legs beneath it, seated cross-legged in the very sky.

  Bathed in sunlight, the colossal figure—gilded in shimmering light—loomed above the Eastern Sea, radiating majesty and divinity alike.

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  Seraphine’s lips curved slightly as she whispered:

  “Hm… Transcendent Stage Ten.”

  Seraphine, thousands of miles away, nodded slightly.

  “Enough to guard my homeland.”

  That giant was no ordinary construct. It was an intelligent combat puppet, albeit in a degenerated state, forged by her through the fusion of clone techniques, Mercury Race technology, Ether-Crystalline science, and mastery over the four fundamental forces.

  Its power was terrifying—roughly on par with Boros from the fantasy work One-Punch Man.

  Seraphine gave it only one command: protect Emberlight.

  “The matter is settled.” With a flick of her sleeve, she murmured, “Let’s go.”

  Swish—

  With a single step, she vanished from Earth.

  Moments later, a million kilometers away, her figure reappeared. She condensed a warp bubble once more, and as space twisted violently around her, her form blinked out, surging toward the edge of the Solar System at ten thousand times the speed of light.

  The birth of any star begins within a dense cloud of nebula gas.

  That cloud drifts and swirls, gradually condensing into a primordial star—a blazing protostar.

  Enshrouded by vast nebulae, this young star evolves over millions of years, until it forms a stable structure like the Solar System today.

  Once its structure stabilizes, the star enters its prime, radiating energy with vigor. Planets trace steady orbits around it, forming the disk of a complete stellar system.

  Yet the nebula that bore the star does not vanish.

  At the star’s birth, it is the cradle.

  At the star’s death, it becomes the shroud.

  Just like the Oort Cloud.

  Now, Seraphine, encased within her warp bubble and annihilating everything in her path, finally traversed trillions of kilometers and arrived at the Solar System’s edge—a boundless and turbulent frontier littered with countless frozen comets.

  She lingered only briefly to take in the view. Then, aligning herself with the memories stolen from the Mercury Race crew, she accelerated in a precise direction.

  Her purpose here was simple: to find the wormhole—and enter it.

  She wanted to see what lay beyond the Solar System. And while at it, she would confirm the truth of the so-called Milky Way Tyrant that had left those captains and their crew trembling in terror.

  If it could be subdued, she would bend it to her will.

  If not, she would erase it.

  The Solar System could not afford to harbor such a menace.

  From the fat captain’s memories, this wormhole was unlike any other. It contained not one twisted region, but multiple layers of distortion. Not a single opening, but hundreds… thousands… perhaps more.

  Its very structure defied everything the Mercury Civilization knew of cosmic bodies and natural phenomena.

  But the fat captain’s fleet had no chance to study it, nor the ability.

  They had stumbled upon it by accident, driven into a cosmic dust cloud while fleeing an enemy civilization’s fleet.

  Their vessels were not built for war—mere survey ships with little weaponry, and fewer than ten Transcendent beings aboard. Against an enemy fleet ten times their size and specialized in combat, they stood no chance. They fled in desperation, until fate hurled them into the wormhole.

  And within one of its distorted regions, they had encountered the slumbering Milky Way Tyrant.

  “Found it!”

  Standing atop the frozen surface of a comet carved with vast grooves and crater-pocked scars, Seraphine fixed her gaze on the void ahead.

  From the vantage of an ordinary mortal, that “ahead” would appear as nothing but endless blackness.

  In fact, not only forward, but behind, above, below, left, and right—everywhere was absolute dark, devoid of the faintest glimmer.

  This place lay far too distant, at the true fringe of the Solar System, far beyond the reach of even the Sun’s faintest rays.

  Yet within Seraphine’s sight, one hundred thousand kilometers away, a point of light pulsed faintly—flickering, vanishing, reappearing.

  It was veiled behind shattered meteor belts and cloaked in drifting ice-dust clouds, each veil smothering its glow, burying it deeper into the black.

  Swish—

  Space folded upon itself. With a single step, Seraphine crossed the hundred-thousand-kilometer gulf and arrived near the anomaly—near the wormhole.

  Only face-to-face with it could she truly perceive its strangeness, its majesty.

  Though light must still travel along the shortest path across a curved manifold, in Seraphine’s perception the wormhole presented itself in three-dimensional spacetime as a flawless sphere set into the dim universe.

  Its diameter appeared only a few hundred meters, yet its boundary was hazy, indistinct—like a mirage pressed against reality.

  Her Divine Will tasted the truth: dimensional warping, fluctuating, curling upon itself in constant flux.

  The sphere’s actual size could never be fixed from afar; only by drawing near could its real span be known.

  To Seraphine’s eyes, the sphere’s core was absolute void.

  From that inner darkness outward, encircling the sphere’s heart, rippled concentric rings of cosmic panoramas bent into toroidal shapes.

  The closer the view moved toward the edge of the sphere, the more violently those cosmic rings compressed—until, at the very boundary where the wormhole blurred into the universe beyond, the scenery twisted, shattered, and lost all recognizable form.

  And the rings themselves glowed—not with ordinary starlight, but with eruptions of high-energy photons, bursting in torrents, one corona after another.

  The nearer to the edge, the denser and hotter the photon tide became, flooding space with fierce radiation and temperatures surging past ten thousand degrees Celsius.

  Any starship without unthinkable hull strength would vaporize the instant it entered. Any lifeform beneath the Transcendent would be reduced to cinders.

  But such hazards were meaningless to Seraphine.

  She advanced—stepping into the wormhole’s outer perimeter.

  It was here that she discovered the paradox: the closer she moved to the wormhole’s center, the more the wormhole itself seemed to expand—space stretching, dilating, unfolding against her approach.

  Though her senses told her she was scarcely a hundred kilometers away, even at ten percent the speed of light the journey took several seconds.

  And with every heartbeat of distance closed, the central void of the wormhole grew larger, swallowing more of the twisted outer rings until its black dominion nearly consumed them whole.

  The compression matched the distance traveled, unfolding in a precise, predictable relation.

  Step by step, the darkness conquered the sphere.

  Until at last the wormhole itself resolved into a perfect three-dimensional black sphere, ten kilometers in diameter—into which Seraphine now fully entered.

  Hum—

  As Seraphine stepped into the wormhole, she felt as though she had crossed into another universe—one vaster and more “real” than the cosmos she had left behind.

  From a visual perspective, her eyes beheld only two things: the immense, circular, abyssal tunnel of the wormhole yawning ahead—both infinite and finite, larger than infinity yet smaller than the eye could grasp—and all around her, an endless star-strewn firmament.

  Countless stars, nebulae, and clustered galaxies flared in cascades of purple, blue, and white brilliance. They erupted ceaselessly, filling every direction—above, below, left, right—as though the universe itself had enfolded her within its radiant embrace.

  The radiation woven into those lights was fierce beyond reckoning. Seraphine concluded that no being below the Transcendent tier could endure it. The moment such a creature stepped inside, its very genes and flesh would collapse, its soul and mind shredded by torrents of ultra-high-frequency, multi-spectrum radiation.

  And yet, despite the illusion of reality, she suspected these stars were not genuine—only “graphics” painted upon the tunnel walls. Each shimmering light was, in truth, an image transmitted from unfathomable corners of the boundless universe, projected across distances that could never be measured.

  Still, confronted with such a spectacle, Seraphine could not help herself. She clapped her hands lightly and exclaimed with a smile:

  “Beautiful.”

  She moved forward.

  The instant her footfall landed, the heavens shifted.

  Swish—

  The infinite starfield around her twisted violently, whirling at impossible speed. Stars rotated, dazzling and chaotic, as if the cosmos itself danced in rhythm with her step.

  For a moment it felt as though she truly strode across the living universe—every stride commanding the stars to spin in wild procession.

  “Oh?”

  Seraphine paused in mild surprise. And with her stillness, the vast universe above, below, and all around froze into silence.

  “Interesting.”

  She took another step.

  Again, the cosmic vault ignited, spinning in a storm of motion, the stars whirling madly around her as their axis.

  Admiring the spectacle, Seraphine abandoned hesitation and surged forward.

  In an instant, the stars around her elongated into a radiant corridor, countless points of starlight spiraling into a tunnel that blazed around her as she flew.

  Within that rapid flight, a thought stirred. She extended more than a dozen wisps of Divine Will toward the spinning “walls” of light, probing what substance might truly compose them.

  But the moment her Divine Will reached outward, it faltered. Instead of advancing, each strand was trapped, spinning uselessly in place—or even flung back toward her.

  Her eyes narrowed. Withdrawing the failed tendrils, she redirected them forward and backward along the tunnel. There, they flowed unhindered, moving freely in both directions without the slightest obstruction.

  “Only forward and backward?” Her voice was thoughtful, edged with intrigue. “So… this is a unique property of the wormhole’s inner tunnel?”

  Seraphine, gliding at sub-light velocity, narrowed her focus in puzzlement. Extending her senses, she probed the architecture and hidden laws of the surrounding space.

  With the combined clarity of the Eye of True Revelation and the inexhaustible processing of Chaos Calculation, the answer soon revealed itself.

  Bang!

  Her attempt to open a warp bubble failed instantly. Seraphine lifted her gaze to the swirling cosmos and murmured:

  “So that’s it… This space recognizes only two directional attributes: 【forward】 and 【backward】. And its underlying fabric is wholly unlike the external universe—it cannot sustain warp travel.”

  A soft laugh escaped her lips. “Oh well. Then let’s stay calm and move forward.”

  Her form shimmered and flickered across time, propelling her rapidly toward the looming Black Abyss.

  Then—unexpectedly—a faint stream of matter drifted across her path, carrying with it the subtle tremor of life.

  “What’s this?”

  A thought stirred, and Seraphine reached out. With a single mental hook, she drew in a fist-sized cluster of the drifting substance.

  Through microscopic vision, the truth unfolded: within that clump were over a million minuscule, oval-shaped organisms, each one writhing in desperation as it devoured the photon streams coursing through the wormhole’s interior.

  Understanding dawned at once.

  “Ah… cosmic energy-absorbing bacteria.”

  She knew them well.

  Buried in the memories she had plundered from the Mercury Race crew, this lifeform was infamous. These microorganisms, the cosmic energy-absorbing bacteria, were counted among the Six Great Scourges of the Milky Way—infamous on the same level as the Milky Way Overlord itself.

  Spread across every arm of the galaxy, they were perhaps the most successful lifeform of all, measured by the sheer variety and number of their offspring.

  And at the same time, they were the most loathed.

  For these bacteria, once fully developed, required no nutrients, no atmosphere, no soil. Energy alone was enough. As long as power flowed—photons, plasma, stellar winds—they could live, thrive, and multiply.

  Their method of reproduction was as simple as it was terrifying.

  They propagate by broadcasting their hereditary traits at light-speed in all directions, like a cosmic radio station, transmitting through a specific frequency of gravitational waves.

  Wherever such signals reach—be it cosmic dust clouds, comets, or asteroids—any region of matter dense enough to respond will mysteriously and autonomously coalesce, giving rise to entire swarms of energy-absorbing bacterial larvae.

  This reproduction method was so astonishing that countless civilizations sought to unravel it, hoping to exploit some fragment of its genetic makeup, or to engineer viral weapons capable of wiping them out.

  But every attempt failed.

  The researchers discovered the bacteria possessed no fixed, physical genetic structure at all. Its heredity did not resemble DNA, RNA, or even known crystalline codes of matter—it was as if the species existed more like a natural phenomenon than a living organism.

  And so, the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy could only remain helpless.

  Yet one must not be deceived by their microscopic size.

  Their resilience far surpassed even Earth’s cockroaches and tardigrades.

  They wielded regenerative powers bordering on the absurd, thriving in environments of crushing pressure, searing heat, overwhelming magnetic fields, intense radiation, and gravitational accelerations that would pulverize other organisms instantly.

  At will, they could even unfold a membrane hundreds of times larger than their own surface area, riding stellar radiation pressure as propulsion to embark on interstellar journeys spanning tens of thousands of years.

  More disturbingly, under certain conditions, these bacteria could evolve into parasitic energy-absorbing beasts—larger, more efficient, and far deadlier.

  These parasites possessed an uncanny sensitivity to energy signatures and an absorption ability that ignored all physical barriers.

  They would latch onto the hulls of passing starships like a malignant growth, feeding ceaselessly through meters of reinforced alloy, draining power cells and reactors alike. To a ship, the infestation was like a cosmic form of psoriasis: unsightly, relentless, and crippling.

  If no starship—a “premium” energy source—was available, they would enter a state of endless dormancy, riding their fragile membranes on stellar light pressure, drifting across the void for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, waiting for their next host.

  Thus, technologically mature civilizations shared only one consensus regarding this organism: disgust.

  They could not be harnessed. They could not be eradicated.

  Left unchecked, they would cripple starship efficiency across centuries of voyages. The only solution was periodic cleansing—just as sailors on ancient Earth scraped barnacles from the hulls of their ships.

  For a low-level interstellar civilization, first contact with these creatures is nothing short of catastrophic.

  Their primitive spacecraft—still dependent on fossil-fuel propulsion—stand no chance. The drain inflicted by these organisms cripples every system, and such civilizations have neither the technology nor the methods to resist, much less exterminate them.

  And yet, the bacteria are not entirely without weaknesses.

  Lacking active flight organs and possessing bodies of loose, low-density tissue, once they fall into a planet’s gravity well, they are doomed. On the surface, unable to escape, they perish quickly.

  Indeed, on Earth, pilots who reported seeing “angel hair”—wispy, translucent filaments drifting in the atmosphere—were in fact observing the remains of such creatures, their bodies decayed after accidentally plunging planetward.

  But this flaw alone does not justify their infamous reputation. It is not the bacteria themselves that earn them a place among the Six Great Scourges of the Milky Way—it is what they become.

  The bacteria evolve into parasitic energy-absorbing beasts.

  And those parasitic beasts, in turn, evolve further into Iron Energy Monsters.

  Even the weakest Energy Monster possesses the ability to absorb, store, and weaponize energy on a scale surpassing Sebastian Shaw—the Black King of X-Men: First Class.

  Worse still, Energy Monsters are mindless. They cannot be influenced by mental, spiritual, or soul-based skills of any kind.

  They operate purely by instinct—gathering in swarms, descending upon fleets, and tearing through the energy reserves of entire armadas.

  Unlike their microbial ancestors, they do not fear gravity. They can plunge freely onto planetary surfaces, devouring the energy of every object they touch until entire cities, even continents, are reduced to cold, lifeless husks.

  At their peak evolution, Energy Monsters transcend once more, becoming Solar Squids—overlord-class titans dwelling in the hearts of stars.

  These are the true vampires of the cosmos.

  They roam the void in packs, hunting suns as prey.

  When they swarm upon a star, they drink deep, their hunger so voracious that a stellar lifespan of billions of years is reduced by millions—tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of years.

  For any civilization bound to such a star, this is nothing less than extinction.

  Seraphine’s eyes narrowed slightly as she studied the drifting organisms in her palm.

  “A troublesome and dangerous species,” she murmured. “And truly… very strange.”

  With a flicker of Divine Will, Seraphine dissected the cluster of organisms again and again, inside and out. Their anatomy was infuriatingly simple, exactly as described in the fat captain’s memory—yet nowhere could she uncover the principle by which mere cosmic dust could coalesce into living form.

  Shaking her head, she casually unraveled the colony, scattering it back into countless atoms, and drifted forward through the wormhole.

  She soon realized the tunnel was not a straight corridor at all, but an irregular passage that twisted and veered without rhythm.

  Its inner walls gleamed like a river of galaxies, studded with innumerable dark turn-offs—bifurcations of varying size, some only a few dozen meters across, others spanning hundreds. Each disappeared into shadow, their destinations unknown.

  She noticed something curious: the wormhole’s properties changed only when these branching corridors appeared. Space itself no longer offered the binary choice of forward or back, but now revealed hidden paths—unmarked turnings carved into the walls of the tunnel.

  According to the fat captain’s memories, their fleet had once fled desperately through this labyrinth, logging more than a thousand bifurcations along the way.

  In truth, they had merely stumbled through one of the larger openings. The full scale of this hive-like structure was immeasurable; no one knew how many branches it contained, or where any of them might lead.

  And in a universe 13.7 billion years old, surely the Mercury fleet had not been the first to wander here.

  The Milky Way Tyrant—one of the six great scourges—had slipped into this wormhole long ago, and had lain dormant ever since.

  Countless other beings must have entered at different times in distant ages.

  Where were they now? Which passage had they chosen? Had they emerged safely on the other side, or perished soundlessly in some lightless branch?

  Seraphine did not know.

  In just the short distance she had flown, Seraphine had already passed dozens of bifurcations of varying size along the wormhole’s inner wall.

  Given the tunnel’s immense length, the number of branches could never be limited to the mere thousand or so in the fat captain’s memory.

  There might be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions.

  None had ever been fully explored—lying dormant through countless ages within the layered, abyssal fabric of spacetime.

  No one knew when they had formed. No one knew why.

  Nor how many strange sights or relics were hidden within.

  Like the tiny energy-absorbing bacteria.

  Living and dying, generation after generation, inside their sealed pocket worlds.

  Until, millions or tens of millions of years later, when the wormhole finally collapsed, they too would vanish with it.

  At that thought, Seraphine raised her eyes, her expression briefly distant.

  Once, on Earth, had she not also been a small, fragile human?

  In some obscure corner of the world, drifting like duckweed upon the currents of time, her fate rising and falling with the tide.

  Perhaps, left to that path, she would have perished from illness, or from disaster, whether natural or man-made.

  But fortune had turned.

  She had transmigrated.

  And she possessed the Infinite Attributes System.

  She, Seraphine, had escaped the sorrow of ordinary fate, escaped the brief span of mere decades allotted to mortals.

  She would keep advancing, endlessly climbing stronger and stronger.

  Whatever enemies or trials appeared in the future… one day, they would be nothing more than idle talk.

  “Besides life and death, nothing else in this world is truly great.”

  Her lips curved into a smile. A sudden lightness surged through her, and her speed of flight leapt twofold.

  Just then, a faint ripple of information abruptly brushed across her senses.

  “What’s this?”

  Seraphine stiffened in surprise, her head snapping to the right.

  That was where the signal had come from—a quiet spacetime bifurcation, scarcely more than three meters wide.

  Bifurcations themselves were nothing rare; she had passed countless along her way.

  But this one was different. At its entrance, jammed tight as if wedged by fate itself, stood a weathered, broken, tablet-like slab.

  The slab, forged from some unknown material, rose more than three meters high and stretched over a meter across.

  Its surface was etched with sprawling, intricate designs—complex, worn, almost erased by time. Yet even blurred and fragmented, the patterns radiated a strange aesthetic grace.

  “What is this… hidden so deep within the wormhole?”

  Her curiosity stirred. Seraphine extended her Divine Will, sweeping across the mysterious slab.

  At once, a torrent of fragmented information crashed into her mind.

  At the forefront of it appeared a 3D stereoscopic projection—a constantly rotating glyph of blazing light, battered with scars, grooves, and mottled cracks.

  That single broken text alone carried an extended message:

  【……Latecomer, welcome to Houiste Federation Experiment Site 137. Observer—Saknussim sends you greetings……】