“I hadn’t expected that after I ‘crushed’ the Sentience Realm Hallway and brought it down, it would actually re-form, condense anew, and even open into this all-too-familiar region.”

  Amid the Solar System’s long cosmic dragon, Seraphine had already stepped through a node of two-world distortion, her figure poised with grace upon the endless violet clouds of Earth.

  Earlier, within the vast Symbolic Domain, the immense gravitational pressure of the Solar System’s entity had pushed the high-level hallway to the brink of collapse.

  As she advanced, fractures split ever wider across its surface, multiplying as she pressed on.

  At last, after Seraphine had raced nearly a thousand light-years, the hallway gave way completely, shattering apart.

  In a cataclysmic burst, it disintegrated into a storm of blazing stellar light that drenched tens of thousands of miles of void.

  Among the brilliance, phantom fragments of stars erupted like sparks. With but a thought, Seraphine gathered two or three tenths of them, storing the shards neatly within her Dimensional Pocket.

  Just as she prepared to cross the broken gap and continue her journey, a miracle unfolded.

  The brilliant white phantom light flooding the void for tens of thousands of miles—the very radiance released in the collapse—suddenly seemed to reverse in time. No sooner had she collected the phantom stellar shards than the light drew inward, re-coalescing in an instant.

  A new stretch of hallway sprouted from the very point of rupture, driving outward with violent force—extending at tens of millions of times the speed of light—until it vanished into the unfathomable deep, leaving only the blaze of its radiant terminus.

  Confronted with such a phenomenon, Seraphine, though taken aback, did not rush ahead. Instead, she hovered in place, lingering over the dazzling space-time corridor below, observing in silence for a long while.

  During her study, she mercilessly unleashed several more planet-annihilating energy waves, each strike savaging the main body of the hallway.

  She discovered that while such star-shattering assaults could indeed wound it physically, they could not halt its regeneration—its functions and structure both healed seamlessly, returning the whole corridor to its original state.

  This raised a troubling question.

  “If it can instantly recover after such devastation, then when—and why—did those abandoned segments scattered across the Milky Way, especially the one that once contained the Solar System, suffer such ruin? And why can they no longer restore themselves afterward?”

  Seraphine found no immediate answer, and so continued forward.

  But she did not follow her old course.

  Instead, curiosity drove her to step onto the new high-level hallway—reborn from the ruins of the old—hurtling at tens of millions of times the speed of light into the vast, uncharted depths of the Sentience Realm.

  After traversing several hundred light-years, she finally reached its end.

  And the terminus of this newly forged passage was a vast nebula, stretching dark blue and violet before her, tinged with familiarity.

  At a glance she knew it: this was, unexpectedly, the far side of the Oort Cloud Wormhole Marie had once spoken of—that dark-blue cylindrical nebula where the Alefen Colossus slumbered.

  The difference was stark. Here, in Prime space-time, the cosmic dust within the nebula was thicker, denser by far. And the Wormhole’s mouth lay nearer its very end.

  “Discrepancies between different space-times are only natural.”

  With that thought, Seraphine cast her gaze outward. In the far distance stretched pale-red cosmic dust, its hue washed even paler by the wan light of a dying red dwarf star burning weakly behind her. Intermingled within the haze shimmered faint soul fragments—imperceptible to ordinary mortals—swirling and drifting, carried endlessly toward the farthest reaches of the universe.

  “Since that space-time’s nebula concealed a slumbering Alefen Colossus… could something also be lurking here?

  Ah. So it seems.”

  Her eyes gleamed, flickering with light as her gaze stretched effortlessly across the cosmos, spanning millions of kilometers in an instant.

  At the very edge of her sight stood a space fortress—grotesque, meat-grinder in form—its bulk dwarfing even Ceres.

  “This is a Mercury Race 【Order Core】–class war fortress. Normally, these are only deployed deep within the Driphor Sector.”

  Pausing in thought, Seraphine nodded faintly. “I see. Then this must be the Dark Void Battlefield… the one preserved in the memories of those Mercury Race remnants back in Zciya City.”

  Her gaze swept the battlefield once more.

  “Hm. Vast. Labyrinthine. Indeed—perfect for slaughter. Perfect for death.”

  Her lips curved, almost tenderly. “Then let’s kill them all.”

  At that, she unfolded the Three Realms Domain.

  Buzz—

  A Divine Will of crushing immensity tore outward, piercing both material reality and the informational strata of the Sentience Realm.

  In the next instant, the Three Realms Domain surged outward at one hundred thousand times the speed of light, unfurling until it enveloped a sphere thirty billion kilometers wide.

  Within that boundless enclosure—vaster than the inner Solar System itself—every fluctuation of matter, energy, information, and dimension lay open before her, as clear as the palm of her hand.

  What could be observed could be controlled.

  With but a single thought, Seraphine could unravel all matter within those thirty billion kilometers, collapsing it into raw energy, forcibly drawn into the ever-present Dirac Sea. There it would dissolve, scattered into the background fabric of the universe, dissipating without a trace into the endless mortal realm.

  Yet she did not act. Instead, her gaze turned, cold and razor-sharp, toward a single point a million kilometers away.

  At that moment, the Mercury Race fortress fell into chaos.

  Terror swept its command decks—Akasone and Sadorgar among them—panic-stricken as the combat detection system screamed, then detonated in failure.

  And Grand Marshal Bahnka… the moment he was seized within the Three Realms Domain, he sensed it.

  A power impossibly vast, yet intricately fine. A power that lanced down to the subatomic, deeper still into the illusionary marrow of matter. A power that pulsed at impossible frequency, sweeping ceaselessly between the physical cosmos and the hidden depths of the Sentience Realm.

  It did not even try to veil itself.

  It simply enveloped all things—openly, majestically, inescapably.

  With every blink, Bahnka felt it—that mental power, like an endless neutrino flux, piercing through his body and soul countless times over.

  “What… what level of mental power is this?! Is this the same existence that just shattered the combat detector?!”

  “Why flaunt such power so openly? They could have cloaked themselves completely!”

  Utterly consumed by fear, Bahnka nonetheless tried to see—to parse the structure of this immeasurable, impossibly intricate force.

  But the instant he attempted to trace its flow, his mind was shredded into chaos by that being’s super-three-dimensional topology. His very soul lurched into a state of violent disarray.

  “This… this—how can a three-dimensional world possibly contain such a high-dimensional lattice?! And one expressed purely through mental power?!”

  The truth was merciless. Bahnka did not even possess the qualification to analyze it. He could only cower beneath it, a pitiful insect trembling in the grandeur of an existence beyond comprehension.

  The very next moment, the space within the Mercury Race war council chamber twisted violently—and swallowed Bahnka, Akasone, and Sadorgar whole.

  One million kilometers away.

  The three high-ranking Mercury commanders abruptly materialized out of thin air, their bodies frozen like statues before Seraphine.

  And the instant their eyes fell upon her, their brains recoiled, their souls convulsing in horror.

  For her form—her very face—was identical to the Earth lifeform catalogued in the three intelligence capsules sent back by Scout Ship 8164 to the Empire.

  Bahnka, suspended in the void, could not speak. The planetary-destroying energy locked within his body lay dormant, shackled. His withered eyes could only fix helplessly on Seraphine as a storm of emotion battered his mind—rage, terror, disbelief.

  How… how is this possible?! Over a thousand light-years away… how did a wretched lifeform from a Broken Civilization traverse such distance?! The Twelfth Prince—where is the Twelfth Prince?! His fleet went to Earth—what happened?! And why… why is she this powerful?! I am a Milky Way Overlord! An Overlord of the Milky Way! So why can I not resist at all?! Move, damn it—move, body!

  And just like Bahnka, Akasone and Sadorgar hung paralyzed in the void, eyes wide, their marrow of liquid mercury boiling furiously within them as they stared at Seraphine.

  A carbon-based lifeform—just a carbon-based lifeform! How can she wield such unfathomable might?! We… we are utterly powerless before her?! This… this is impossible!

  Not far away, Seraphine could clearly sense the surging waves of emotional data spilling from the three mercury-based lifeforms. Yet her expression remained unchanged—her gentle smile veiled a quiet, distant indifference.

  She had no intention of speaking with them, nor of wasting effort on taunts or hollow gestures. Instead, she simply unleashed her Divine Will, driving it mercilessly into their minds. Amidst their violent convulsions and shudders, she stripped them bare—every memory, every fragment of knowledge plundered without leaving the faintest trace.

  Her eyes flickered. And in the next breath, those three Mercury elites—terrifying in the eyes of mortals, one Milky Way Overlord Stage One and two Transcendent Stage Ten—crumbled into despair. Their bodies withered, fragment by fragment, until nothing remained but drifting ash.

  To Seraphine, the Mercury Race did not even qualify as slaves.

  Death was the only fate they owned.

  When the task was done, her Three Realms Domain had already been expanding for a full minute.

  Within that single minute, the Domain—manifesting as a flawless sphere in three-dimensional space-time, its curvature constantly diminishing—had driven its boundary outward at one hundred thousand times the speed of light each second, rapidly engulfing the entire Dark Void Battlefield.

  By now, its reach extended to a radius of 1.08 trillion kilometers.

  And within that boundless span, Seraphine uncovered the ancient relic remembered by Bahnka.

  A barren, frozen planet, its crust showing the marks of spatial condensation.

  Its distance: one hundred fifty billion kilometers.

  “Could this so-called ancient relic be tied to the Houiste Federation?”

  She considered using the Real Number Channel to bring that frozen world to her. Yet as her gaze fell on the endless purple Earth clouds around her, she felt the sluggish drag in the information flow—the unmistakable delay across the Three Realms Domain. Seraphine sighed within herself:

  “The transmission speed of the Three Realms Domain caps at only one hundred thousand times the speed of light. Beyond thirty billion kilometers, the lag becomes clear—and the farther the distance, the greater the delay.

  At one hundred fifty billion kilometers, the delay has already stretched to several seconds. Space-time coordinates shift in an instant. The Real Number Channel will not hold.”

  Shaking her head, she allowed space-time to ripple. The fabric of reality surged, folding as a Lorenz warp bubble closed fully around her form.

  From the void, streaks of negative energy spiraled forth, gathering before the warp bubble.

  And in the next instant, the bubble vanished—launched at a million times the speed of light.

  Half a second was all it took.

  The warp bubble, trailing bands of negative energy, seared across one hundred fifty billion kilometers of nebula, tore through swarms of comets, scorched and detonated countless starships—until it halted outside the planet where the relic of an ancient civilization lay buried.

  When Seraphine unfurled the warp bubble and calmly extended her Divine Will, it pierced through the planet’s crust, through its layered strata, and sank directly into the ancient relic at the core.

  Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of kilometers away—

  In deep space, the Brain Fortress, normally hypersensitive to shifts of energy and information, had been rattled since the descent of the Three Realms Domain. Now it erupted, releasing colossal telekinetic force fields from its north and south poles, fields strong enough to rend planets apart, desperate to grasp traces of this invading power.

  Inside the fortress’s core chamber, three high-ranking Agate Clan officials had fallen into utter chaos.

  Their race, naturally attuned to the tides of mental power and born with formidable soul strength, had been shaken to their Ashara itself by the Domain’s vast, layered resonance—unable to steady themselves.

  “This… this—is this the descent of the God of Mental Power?!” Palinon stammered in disbelief.

  “This force… this force is even more dreadful than a Milky Way Overlord!!” Kleron gasped, choking on his own breath.

  And Gemino, the strongest among them, was struck the hardest. His neural-network body spasmed uncontrollably, his voice spilling out in broken groans:

  “Ah… ah… whose mental power is this?! How… how can such strength exist?! How can it be so absolute?!”

  Then suddenly—

  All three felt it. That mental power, pure beyond measure and cruel in its rawness, tearing into their neural systems, unrestrained, beginning its plunder of their every memory.

  In this moment, Gemino and the other two felt as though they had become the very carbon-based ape-men whose brains they themselves had once cruelly drained.

  Other than helpless submission, no path of resistance existed.

  The dimensional gulf left them only one choice: to accept, in endless agony, the weight of a reality they could not resist.

  And even though these three neural-based beings could feel the unveiled complexity and crushing vastness of the Three Realms Domain, they could not truly see its complete form.

  Thus they trembled in silence, forced to wait in terror for the next turn of this super-three-dimensional mental power that bound all things around them.

  Like death row convicts awaiting execution, desperate, powerless, incapable of even arranging their final thoughts.

  A few minutes later, across the void—

  The barren planet, once thousands of kilometers in diameter, now lay more than half-collapsed.

  And the ancient relic at its heart, under Seraphine’s dimensional grasp, had been refined into a tiny “planet,” no larger than her palm—resting in the cradle of her mind.

  She tilted her head slightly, gazing at the miniature sphere.

  “So it’s a spatial dimension pocket,” she said aloud.

  Such a thing could also be called a domain pocket, or a cosmic pocket.

  If the real world as a whole is considered a single dimension, then a spatial dimension pocket exists as a partitioned segment of that dimension, manifested in another direction—distinct from a Dimensional Pocket or an Imaginary Space.

  Seraphine folded the relic planet into herself.

  And as she stood in the void, her eyes half-closed, the truth was clear:

  During those few minutes she spent parsing the ancient relic, the entire Dark Void Battlefield had already been consumed.

  Every piece of matter within a trillion-kilometer radius—dozens of millions of warships from both warring races, still locked in desperate combat; a dozen blazing protostars; hundreds of thousands of desolate, rocky worlds; hundreds of millions of wandering meteors and comets; and hundreds of trillions of tons of drifting nebula dust—

  All had fallen completely inside the Three Realms Domain.

  Among them, the intricate design data of tens of millions of starships—together with the knowledge and intelligence carried in the minds of hundreds of billions of sentient beings across both races—was transmitted in fragments, delayed yet relentless, converging from every direction into a boundless ocean of information.

  This sea of data, layered endlessly within the Divine Will network of the Three Realms Domain, awaited Seraphine’s command.

  Before this torrent—so vast it could unleash a catastrophic information storm on the surface of a cybernetically enhanced world—Seraphine did not waver.

  With a single thought, she drew it in and sealed it within her mind.

  In that instant, an endless cascade of knowledge erupted into her eyes.

  Details of the Mercury Race’s Sector map, its social order, cultural history, technological systems, Etheric Battleform manufacturing and upgrade techniques, the full scale of Mercury starship engineering and maintenance—from the smallest frigate to the grandest dreadnought—as well as intelligence on the interstellar hunter Yuro, all were sorted, classified, and etched into Seraphine’s mind.

  Simultaneously, the Agate Clan’s Sector map, their social structure, cultural legacy, arcane technologies, mental magic, soul armaments, the crafting and upgrading of mental weapons, starship design and maintenance, together with their research into the practical harnessing of mental power—all of it was stored seamlessly within her consciousness.

  By now, every piece of value, every “thing” within this Dark Void Battlefield had already been stripped bare by Seraphine, leaving not a trace behind.

  She opened her eyes slowly. In the clarity of her gaze, she looked out upon the violet Earth clouds around her and smiled.

  “Thus, you are of no use.”

  And with that, centered upon her, within a radius of thirty billion kilometers, gravitational nodes—tiny black holes—began to appear, one every tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

  Their total number surged into the tens of quintillions.

  These countless micro black holes, each a core of terrifying gravity, emerged like abyssal hollows carved into space-time itself, and at once began their endless frenzy—devouring all matter around them without limit.

  Cosmic dust, cosmic rays, shattered starship debris, broken meteorites—everything became a breakfast feast for the black holes.

  Under Seraphine’s supreme will, countless micro black holes burst forth each second from the void within the dark-blue star clouds, transforming into ravenous Tao Tie, devouring all matter in sight.

  Thus, this vast cluster of black holes, erupting suddenly in the heart of the Dark Void Battlefield, began expanding its dominion with frenzied hunger, ‘assisted’ by the Three Realms Domain.

  As they conquered and consumed space itself, everything nearby—starships and fighters, cosmic dust, meteors, and comets—was dragged in like strands of noodles, blazing with violent light and heat before vanishing almost entirely.

  Planets and protostars, with their far greater bulk and mass, were besieged by dozens, hundreds, even over a hundred micro black holes at once, plunging into them in a frenzy of consumption.

  In moments, these massive celestial bodies cracked, collapsed, and died.

  Amid ceaseless, thunderous detonations, they became fuel for the ever-growing swarm of black holes.

  Thousands of starships, carrying countless soldiers of the Mercury Race and Agate Clan, discovered black holes blooming suddenly within the surrounding nebula. Their weapons, unleashed in desperation, proved useless. One after another, they were dragged in and devoured, erased without a trace.

  Some ships, wretchedly unlucky, even had a black hole bloom inside their hulls. From within, it consumed all life, before gnawing outward through steel plating until nothing remained.

  Meanwhile, at the Agate Clan base hundreds of billions of kilometers away—

  After an instant of chaos, Gemino and his two companions quickly resolved to move the base and abandon the Dark Void Battlefield.

  For word had already spread: intelligence from the Sentience Realm radar confirmed an eruption of countless black holes across the front lines.

  They could not comprehend why such a catastrophe had occurred.

  But for survival’s sake, the three agreed on one thing: retreat first, ask questions later.

  Yet in that very moment—within the grand palace at the base’s heart—a micro black hole silently unfolded before their eyes.

  To ask a question: what is it like to face a black hole?

  Gemino: confusion, terror, despair—the raw urge to flee.

  Buzz—

  Within the stunned, near-catatonic mental vision of the three Agate Clan elites, the newborn black hole—with a Schwarzschild radius scarcely one millimeter—erupted the instant it appeared.

  In a single breath, it unleashed an unimaginably immense tidal force, ripping the three apart into infinite molecules and atoms, reducing them to fine dust that spiraled madly around the singularity. Gamma rays and short-wave radiation poured out in torrents, until nothing of them remained.

  When the three were annihilated, the planet followed.

  Under the black hole’s merciless tidal pull, the low-mass planet—the very foundation of the Agate Clan—collapsed from within.

  From its core outward, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of tons of matter groaned, collapsing inward, swirling in a frenzied rush toward the singularity.

  Crushed and superheated into torrents of molten matter, the rock belched vast floods of searing light and heat before being shredded into particles, stripped bare, and devoured whole.

  Next came the planet’s dense, stagnant underground, followed by the alloy frameworks buried deep within the mantle, fused with rigid chitin structures of alien design.

  All of it was taken. All of it became breakfast for the black hole.

  As the singularity swelled, the planet’s core vanished, half its subterranean strata were consumed, and then came the turn of the massive continental plates.

  Boom—rumble—rumble!!!

  Layer after layer of rock caved in. Fortress-like biomechanical frameworks collapsed into ruins.

  At last, the twin biomechanical brains at the north and south poles—the very heart of Agate intelligence—were left.

  Boom!!!!

  The colossal minds lashed out desperately, hurling their immense telekinetic force fields at the singularity.

  It was meaningless.

  Before the black hole’s tidal might, their power dissolved like dust in the wind.

  Screaming, the twin super-brains were drawn out, stretched into two thin ribbons of matter, before vanishing into the void.

  By then, the Brain Fortress and the planet beneath it had been erased, consumed to nothingness.

  And this same ruthless, unrelenting feast was now unfolding everywhere, across the Dark Void Battlefield—stretching trillions of square kilometers.

  After a short while, within the vast and boundless Dark Void Battlefield, nothing remained—save Seraphine’s true form and the Solar System entity looming not far behind her.

  All life had vanished.

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  Only countless black holes, great and small, spun and circled within the thinned-out nebula.

  At that moment, Seraphine raised her hand once more and gave a gentle clap.

  “Merge.”

  Buzz—

  In an instant, every black hole within a radius of thirty billion kilometers collapsed into nothingness.

  A heartbeat later, they reappeared, reduced countless times over, fused into a single core that shimmered between her outstretched fingers.

  No matter the size of the singularity, once it appeared upon Seraphine’s palm, its dimensions were compressed down to almost nothing—space itself reduced to a speck.

  And with her palm as the center of a vast circle, the process began.

  Every second, the circle’s diameter expanded by thirty billion kilometers. Every micro black hole caught within that boundary was instantly drawn into a warp bubble, then hurled at a million times the speed of light across the void, converging at last into her hand.

  Ten seconds. Half a minute. One minute. Two minutes…

  And then it was done.

  The vast battlefield where the Mercury Race and the Agate Clan had clashed for tens of thousands of years—the Dark Void Battlefield—was erased forever.

  In its place gaped only a colossal void, a “great pit” where existence itself had been scoured away.

  Within this emptiness, only Seraphine remained at the center, with the massive Solar System Entity stationed tens of millions of miles behind her.

  No other living thing endured.

  Only the faintest traces: sparse streams of high-energy particles, and a few scattered clouds of dark-blue interstellar dust.

  Everything—every relic, every memory of the battlefield—had been devoured, compressed, and transformed into a single, jet-black fragment of “substance.”

  A black hole.

  It hovered lightly on Seraphine’s palm.

  She delicately pinched the jet-black “substance” between her thumb and forefinger. Beyond the seemingly fragile veil—a trillion-mile layer of condensed, distorted space—it was secured with ease, then slipped casually into her Dimensional Pocket.

  If revealed in its true form, this black hole’s Schwarzschild radius would measure ten kilometers.

  Do not dismiss that “mere” ten.

  Consider: even if the Sun, with its million-kilometer diameter and mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth, were collapsed into a singularity, its Schwarzschild radius would span only three kilometers.

  Thus, wherever Seraphine chose to release this black hole—within any star system—it would spell an apocalyptic disaster, erasing civilization and life alike.

  Having finished, Seraphine lifted her gaze to the endless cosmos. The universe itself now seemed darker, stripped of the shielding glow once cast by the dark-blue star clouds.

  One more light-year in that direction lay the territory of the Mercury Empire.

  “Interstellar Hunter Yuro.”

  Seraphine’s lips curved in a quiet smile.

  “To possess five complete Keys of Heaven… you’ve been a faithful courier indeed.”

  The former Dark Void Battlefield was gone—buried beneath silence. In its place stretched a region of emptiness, spanning more than half a light-year in diameter, defined by its hollow matter density.

  At the center of this void, where existence thinned toward nothing, Seraphine sat alone.

  From her Dimensional Pocket, she drew out a small, spherical “planet.”

  “I can feel the gravity you conceal. Your heart must hold many secrets.”

  Through the trillion-mile veil of warped space, her slender fingers caressed the sphere. Her voice was soft:

  “Unveil yourself. Show me your true form.”

  Then, with a flick, she hurled the “planet” at sub-light velocity into the abyss of the boundless void.

  Whoosh—

  Driven by staggering kinetic energy, it streaked a million kilometers in seconds, a dark bullet plunging into the firmament.

  For a full minute it flew—covering seven billion kilometers—until, under Seraphine’s will, it halted.

  At once, it shone.

  Boom!!!

  Light shimmered across tens of millions of miles as the “planet” detonated with violent brilliance, expanding in a storm of radiance.

  In a single breath, the tiny sphere unfolded into a titanic, dark-gray cube—far larger than any star.

  In the boundless night, the cube—its sides more than two million kilometers long—turned slowly, its mass blotting out the void itself.

  On its glossy, gray surface, faint dark fissures could be seen, as though it had been meticulously carved into countless blocks.

  Each block—many of them larger than the Moon’s diameter—shifted ceaselessly, rising and falling, as if some grand mechanism were driving a process of continuous movement and reconstruction within.

  At a glance, the colossal alien relic resembled a gargantuan Rubik’s Cube, both mesmerizing and incomprehensibly wondrous.

  “Truly beautiful.”

  Amid extreme spatial distortion, Seraphine stepped upon a dazzling expanse of aura, suddenly appearing tens of thousands of miles outside the titanic Cube.

  At such proximity, she immediately sensed that this structure, which contained terrifying amounts of engineering and intricate operational design, was not simply a gigantic three-dimensional puzzle.

  That assumption was far too naive.

  Without even invoking her Divine Will—merely through her four-dimensional sight—Seraphine instantly discerned the truth: this massive construct, wrought by an unknown civilization, was a dynamic, ever-shifting super-three-dimensional topological mechanism, cycling seamlessly between three and four dimensions.

  The sheer number of “compartments” hidden within the Cube, their shifting trajectories, and their resting configurations were anything but simple to the naked eye.

  Yet for Seraphine, who had already ascended into the four-dimensional realm, this ancient Rubik’s Cube-like relic was transparent at a glance.

  Buzz—

  The Undying Oscillation erupted with colossal Divine Will, surging outward to envelop the relic tens of thousands of miles away, probing its essence down to the deepest layers of matter.

  In that instant, the Cube’s entire structural blueprint—from its outermost shell to its innermost core—unfolded fully within Seraphine’s mind.

  “Two million kilometers per side, containing 129,600 mobile chambers, each measuring eight thousand kilometers in length, width, and height. The central hub is a massive chamber, half a million kilometers in each dimension.

  Between these chambers lie partition layers of extreme energy, and through these layers, every compartment undergoes constant dimensional activity—ingenious, intricate, and ceaselessly complex.

  During this process, the Cube’s inner space drifts toward chaos, rendering it impossible to fix the position of any given chamber.

  This manifested on the surface of the Rubik’s Cube as cubic cells constantly rising and sinking.

  Moreover, the Cube’s entire outer shell, along with its hundreds of thousands of inner spaces, was primarily built from a triple-element composite—an engineered material that simulated nuclear molecules through Ether-Crystalline silicon, Ether-Crystalline tungsten, and Ether-Crystalline calcium."

  Seraphine shook her head with a soft laugh. “An engineering marvel. The way Crystalline elements are harnessed and transformed borders on the divine—truly fascinating.”

  With that, her Divine Will once again penetrated the Rubik’s Cube, selecting a contained space at random.

  Swish—

  In an instant, a boundless azure sky unfolded before her “eyes.”

  Below stretched an immense land where mountains rolled like waves, mists curled and drifted, and faint flocks of eagle-like birds and wild geese soared through clouds, crying leisurely as they passed.

  Through shifting veils of mist, far away between endless grasslands and vast mountain ranges, spread a lattice of sapphire ponds and winding rivers.

  Still farther—thousands of miles beyond—stood countless ancient cities, great and small, scattered in every direction.

  The smaller cities had low walls; within them, houses and buildings rarely exceeded three stories, scattered loosely across the ground. Between them, rubble paths cut crooked, twisting routes.

  The larger cities rose with imposing walls, banners fluttering high above. Inside, towering structures and grand buildings pressed close together, while broad and narrow stone roads bustled with people.

  At the heart of the greatest city loomed a majestic palace. From within came deep, resonant chimes, shaking the pearl-beaded curtains and stirring the ancient brocade drapes woven with splendor and weight of ages.

  Between these cities stretched wide wilderness, broken by cultivated fields and rustic villages where tiled roofs mingled with thatched cottages.

  At the centers where villages converged, larger, sprawling towns had sprung up, marked by more complex layouts and finer structures.

  It was worth noting that the intelligent beings dwelling here bore a sudden resemblance to Earth’s humans.

  Yet of course, it was resemblance only.

  Closer scrutiny revealed their internal organs, and even their very genetic foundations, to be profoundly different from Earth’s race.

  The difference was so vast it surpassed even that between humans and dinosaurs—an almost grotesque exaggeration.

  So much so that their outward similarity to humans might only be a strange coincidence.

  Moreover, the mental consciousness of these beings was shackled by a hidden power—a thought lock.

  Which meant they could never ignite the spark of wisdom, never launch an industrial revolution, never break free of the classical age.

  Swish—

  Seraphine suddenly appeared at the edge of the firmament.

  She cast her gaze at the illusory “Sun,” distant yet not so far, then shook her head, lifted her eyes, and with a single glance encompassed the entire cosmos of this world—its square sky, its round earth, a small realm eight thousand kilometers across from east to west, north to south.

  This world possessed its own sun, moon, and mountains, with a population numbering in the tens of millions.

  Its people could be divided into two great powers:

  The Plains Agrarian Dynasty.

  And the Grassland Nomadic Royal Court.

  Even more astonishing, this humanlike race had spawned its own evolutionary system.

  Though, of course, it was rudimentary in the extreme.

  At its core lay the ability to use a naturally evolved “tubular” network within the body to absorb external Ether, merging it with one’s own essence and vital energy to generate a force called true qi. This energy was stored in a small “space” within the lower abdomen, ready for use at any time.

  There were only four levels:

  — Level one: unable to project true qi outward, only circulating it within, granting slight enhancements to the body.

  — Level two: able to project true qi outward, with minor bodily enhancements.

  — Level three: able to project true qi outward on a large scale, with extensive bodily enhancements.

  — The final step: the so-called shattering of the void.

  This stage demanded the cultivator burn away vast amounts of lifespan and vital true qi in order to brush against and force open the gate to the upper realm.

  And that place of ascension—was none other than the colossal space at the very heart of the Rubik’s Cube.

  In the largest ancient city of this world, Seraphine stood quietly by the roadside. Passersby streamed past, yet not a single one seemed to see her.

  Quietly listening to the cries of hawkers around her, Seraphine shook her head with a faint chuckle:

  The myriad things of the mortal world mingle and cross. These unknown alien lifeforms truly live in ease and comfort, to the point of crafting such an enormous ‘goldfish bowl.’

  Indeed—

  In her eyes, all beings in this world were nothing more than “ornamental fish” drifting in a “fish tank.”

  Suddenly, two figures tore through the sky, clothes fluttering as swords and blades collided overhead.

  Bang!!

  A thunderous crash resounded, Ether surging in waves that rolled across every direction.

  Startled, the crowd erupted in screams, scattering frantically.

  What had been a bustling, lively street emptied in an instant.

  Within the high city walls, a young man with a sword lowered his head slightly, speaking in a solemn tone, his air that of a true master:

  “Danilog—twenty years gone, yet the power of your Godslayer Nine Forms remains undiminished.”

  “Spare me the chatter.”

  On the street below, a burly man with a great saber strapped to his back rose slowly to his feet, his hoarse voice carrying like gravel.

  “I never knew where you learned such a formidable sword art—enough to parry my blade.”

  “Ah, then I’ll enlighten you. This is the Thirty-Six Swords of Wind and Cloud—the very technique that reigned supreme a century ago…”

  Far away—

  “This world has endured for millions of years, yet it still lingers in the Classical Age. How vicious this thought lock must be, binding generation upon generation to sink forever in this narrow cage, condemned to be nothing more than pitiful ‘ornamental fish.’”

  Seraphine’s eyes flicked once toward the duel before she lost interest.

  Turning her gaze, she perceived the ‘partition layer’ that sealed the border between matter and space. Yet in her four-dimensional sight, it was as if it did not exist at all.

  In an instant, countless partitioned realms shimmered before her: some boundless oceans, some blazing infernos of lava, some glaciers spanning ten thousand miles, some shadowed by dense primeval forests, some jagged mountains of swords and music, some radiant seas of light and drifting clouds of dust—each unfurled in her vision.

  And within those realms thrived all manner of intelligent races, each dwelling in their own fragile classical societies.

  Just like all manner of “ornamental fish” drifting in a vast aquarium.

  “Judging by aquariums, this one passes the standard.”

  Seraphine was about to leave, preparing to enter another contained world, when a clear fluctuation rippled across space—tens of thousands of miles away.

  And the direction of that fluctuation pointed straight to… the Rubik’s Cube’s core.

  “What a coincidence. Hm. No need to wander aimlessly. I’ll head directly to the core and see what relics await there.”

  She hesitated for a breath, then her figure blurred and vanished.

  Tens of thousands of miles away—

  Deep within the endless grassland, a bronze-skinned man sat cross-legged in cultivation.

  His eyes closed, he thought to himself:

  To shatter the void demands twelve years of lifespan, and only a single chance. If I fail, there will never be another in this life. This time… I must succeed.

  Within a thousand meters around him stood grassland warriors clad in leather robes and tall hats.

  They whispered to each other:

  “This time, the Grassland Martial Emperor will surely shatter the void.”

  “Of course—His Majesty is number one beneath the heavens.”

  “Look! Dark clouds are gathering above!”

  The bronze-skinned man’s eyes suddenly snapped open. He gazed upward, suppressed the surge of emotion in his chest, and let out a calm, steady sigh:

  “After a century of bitter cultivation, today I, and I alone, shall shatter the void!”

  At once, he roused the profound true qi within, forcing it to resonate with the outer world, reaching toward the elusive “will of heaven” hidden in the ether.

  Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—

  Time passed.

  Under the brutal drain of both true qi and lifespan, his aura grew fragile, unsteady.

  Suddenly—

  Crack!

  The firmament darkened as black clouds rolled in, thunderbolts roaring in every direction.

  A gray vortex yawned open in the sky, hundreds of meters above his head.

  At the sight, the Martial Emperor’s weary, timeworn face broke into ecstatic joy. He threw back his head and laughed wildly:

  “Hahahaha! My path is complete!”

  The watching crowd erupted in cries:

  “I never thought the heavens could truly split open!”

  “By the spirits—I’ve only ever read of such things in ancient texts!”

  “Hahahaha! Once the Martial Emperor ascends, he will be a god!”

  The Martial Emperor’s laughter ceased. His gaze sharpened.

  With a single stomp, he shattered the earth beneath, collapsing the grasses and soil in a great circle.

  Then, surging into the sky, he pierced through layers of air, charging straight toward the gray vortex.

  But at that very instant, a figure appeared above the Martial Emperor—stepping into the vortex a heartbeat ahead of him.

  “Ah—wait! You can’t do this, you can’t! This isn’t right!”

  The Martial Emperor shrieked, his eyes blazing as he shot upward in fury. But it was already too late.

  Buzz—

  The space-time vortex collapsed the moment that figure entered, dissolving back into a calm, azure sky.

  The Martial Emperor, left raging and powerless in the empty heavens, let out one last howl before his vision went dark. Fainting amidst the blue sky and white clouds, he plummeted helplessly toward the grasslands below.

  The countless warriors who had gathered to witness the ritual were struck dumb with shock.

  The Martial Emperor had attempted to shatter the void… and failed?

  His ascension—stolen before their very eyes?

  The Celestial Realm consisted of nine layers.

  Each layer stretched a million miles across, and rose a hundred thousand miles in height.

  It hung above the 129,600 realms, vast and unattainable.

  The beings who dwelt here were regarded as immortals by those below.

  And in time, these so-called immortals began to believe it themselves.

  They divided into ranks and castes according to cultivation: Celestial Emperors and Celestial Lords, Celestial Generals and Celestial Soldiers.

  Thus the ages passed, order calcifying across the layers of heaven.

  In the first heaven—the dwelling place of the day-shift immortals—

  “Honestly, what’s the point of guarding this Celestial Gate?”

  A fat celestial soldier muttered, pouting as he turned to the grizzled veteran beside him.

  “Out of all the heavens and realms, there’s only one upper realm: the Celestial Realm. What enemies could there even be?”

  “What enemies?” The old soldier scratched his head. “Outer Realm Fiends, that’s what. Old legends say they’ll invade the Celestial Palace someday. That’s why soldiers and generals stand watch. But most of the time, all we do is welcome a few fresh ascendants. Anyway, no more chatter—I’m off duty.”

  With that, the old soldier strolled off, disappearing beyond the Celestial Gate.

  Left alone was the fat celestial soldier, newly assigned to guard the threshold.

  After a while—

  Clad in shimmering armor, his cultivation (by Earth’s measure) no higher than the Mystic Aperture Realm, the chubby soldier leaned lazily on his long spear.

  He eyed Seraphine curiously and asked:

  “Hey, pretty lady—where’d you ascend from?”

  Seraphine ignored him. Her eyes lifted instead, calmly sweeping across her new surroundings.

  Seeing this, the celestial soldier’s face darkened. He snapped, voice edged with anger:

  “Hey! Are you deaf? I asked where you came from—”

  “Found it. At the very top.”

  Seraphine withdrew her four-dimensional gaze, which had swept across a million-mile span in every direction. Then, under the soldier’s stunned stare, she calmly lifted a finger and pointed toward the highest sky.

  Boom!!!

  With a roar like the world overturning, a single divine ray burst from her fingertip, lancing upward through the Nine Heavens.

  Each layer of the Celestial Realm—every one spanning a million miles—shuddered as though struck by a colossal hammer a hundred thousand miles across. One after another, they split apart, exploding from their centers as titanic holes tens of thousands of miles wide ripped open.

  It wasn’t just one layer. The divine ray tore through all nine, piercing their hearts clean through, gouging open the heavens themselves.

  Within that vast range, countless so-called immortals—whether Mystic Aperture Realm martial artists, Phantom Armament cultivators, or Aether Domain adepts by Earth’s reckoning—were annihilated on the spot, their bodies erupting into mist without a sound.

  Even higher-tiered experts, along with Celestial Generals and Celestial Lords of the Martial Saint level, had no chance to resist. They were reduced to ash in an instant.

  And at the summit of the Ninth Heaven—where a tall, white-haired figure crowned with an imperial diadem ruled, his cultivation exalted to martial Divinitas—the Celestial Emperor himself, together with his Celestial Palace, was utterly erased.

  Yet in the very moment of his destruction, as the palace shattered, something impossible occurred. From that void emerged a rock coffin a thousand meters across, descending from a hundred thousand miles above, crashing downward with thunderous booms that shook what remained of heaven.

  The First Heaven of the Celestial Realm—where the daily-shift immortals guarded the Celestial Gate.

  “You… you… you…”

  The fat celestial soldier dropped heavily to the ground, his long spear clattering away. Eyes bulging, he stared at Seraphine, who was still pointing upward, and stammered through sobs:

  “You… are you… Your Excellency, could you be… the Grandmother of the Outer Realm Fiends?!”

  “Hm?”

  At that title, Seraphine’s blade-like brows drew together. Her gaze lowered faintly toward the terrified soldier.

  Before she could speak, he collapsed flat, forehead striking the ground as he kowtowed again and again, wailing incoherently:

  “The Celestial Realm is yours! Take whatever you wish! Grandmother Fiend—ah no! Grandmother God, spare me!”

  Somewhere in the vastness of the universe, Seraphine slowly opened her true eyes, twin beams of divine light flashing forth. She withdrew her phantom body—only a wisp of magical power and thought—that had been lodged in the Rubik’s Cube world’s core.

  As the phantom body faded, the thousand-meter stone coffin lodged in the shattered Nine Heavens of the Celestial Realm was drawn out as well. It pierced through layer after layer of barriers, until it appeared directly before her.

  At the same moment, the colossal Rubik’s Cube—two million kilometers in span, sprawling across tens of thousands of miles of void like a sky-propping wall—collapsed and compressed once again into a small “planet.” The cube drifted through the starry gulf, flew tens of thousands of miles into Seraphine’s outstretched palm, and was casually stowed into her Dimensional Pocket, another trophy among many.

  Meanwhile, the Mercury Race archaeological team, stranded in some obscure minor world, could only continue their misguided attempts at deciphering, exhausting themselves in futility.

  With these tasks finished, Seraphine’s gaze fell upon the immense stone coffin floating silently before her.

  This coffin measured 1100 meters in length, 730 meters in width, and 550 meters in height.

  Across both flanks of its rock-like body—and upon its massive lid—thousands upon thousands of three-dimensional spatial glyphs were carved, intertwined with countless complex 3D patterns.

  Beneath the clear starlight streaming from every direction, these runes and patterns seemed almost alive, leaping and unfurling in dazzling, ever-shifting forms.

  As their shapes transformed, the massive, ancient coffin—otherwise heavy and austere—was suffused with a strange, wondrous aura, tinged with an exotic brilliance.

  Yet Seraphine spared no thought for these outward displays.

  What mattered to her was the vast reservoir of information hidden within those spatial glyphs and patterns.

  Buzz—

  Within the super-structured Divine Will, infused by her four-dimensional Primordial Soul, each glyph ignited as though awakened, bursting into radiant brilliance and scattering countless shimmering particles of light.

  As those luminous particles streamed forth, they rapidly wove themselves together, coalescing into dense informational constructs—substantial data that Seraphine grasped and read in an instant.

  At once, she discerned the name of the coffin’s owner.

  It belonged to the ancient creator of Earth—Saknussim.

  This marked Seraphine’s second encounter with traces of this cosmic Sower from the unknown Houiste Federation—the first being within the Solar System’s Oort Cloud Wormhole.

  “The universe is boundless… and yet, so small.”

  “Across a gulf of more than a thousand light-years, to stumble upon this creator once again, here of all places…”

  She breathed out a quiet sigh. “Fate defies all words.”

  With that, Seraphine turned her gaze back to the coffin, continuing to parse the hidden knowledge encoded in the rest of its three-dimensional inscriptions.

  These three-dimensional inscriptions—clearly intended to be read from the perspective of a four-dimensional being—contained a staggering wealth of information.

  A mere few thousand glyphs carried an informational density nearly equivalent to 10^25 two-dimensional characters.

  Yet within this immense, oceanic archive of compressed knowledge, Saknussim offered no account of what befell him after departing the Solar System, nor did he reveal the true nature of the so-called 【Final Order】.

  Instead, he calmly set forth a truth, supported by meticulous experimental data and exhaustive research logs:

  That the Mercury Race and the Agate Clan—titans of the Golden Bough Civilization Zone—were both deliberately designed and subtly manipulated by him, their very existence shaped as artificial intelligent species.

  Seraphine, however, was not especially surprised. In truth, she had already anticipated it.

  Too many things had been far too coincidental.

  For instance, both races had emerged almost simultaneously on their respective homeworlds.

  The moment when each civilization embarked upon interstellar exploration also fell remarkably close, separated by no more than a few centuries.

  Even their peculiar biological structures—so abnormal as to be nearly impossible products of natural evolution—had “coincidentally” appeared in neighboring Sectors.

  And at the heart of it all lay the fusion point between Sectors: the Dark Void Battlefield, positioned precisely between the domains of the two races.

  There, under the merciless currents of time and the cold logic of civilization’s growth, these two inherently brutal, bloodthirsty species were almost destined to become mortal enemies—so much so that their ultimate development potential was effectively bound and restricted.

  Such a chain of coincidences left little doubt that some hidden hand had orchestrated elaborate designs for both races.

  Indeed, in the 《Dragonblood》, the author had already offered veiled hints regarding the true origins of the Mercury Empire.

  From the rigid three-tiered hierarchy of commoners, nobles, and royal bloodlines; to their inability to cultivate through ordinary means, relying instead on Etheric Battleforms—a kind of external augmentation—for evolution; to the remarkable fact that their entire Sector happened to contain ten ancient Black Technology gene-modification and fusion devices…

  Everything seemed deliberately arranged.

  All these signs pointed to the existence of some unseen creator working behind the veil.

  Now, Seraphine had confirmed it: the architect of the Mercury Race and the architect of the Aurora Clan were one and the same.

  Yes—Saknussim, from the so-called ancient Houiste Federation civilization.

  “Exactly.”

  Seated cross-legged upon the colossal coffin, chin propped in her hand, Seraphine reflected aloud:

  “The Mercury homeworld is so harsh, and yet it birthed the Mercury Race—powerful in both body and soul—while somehow failing to produce its own evolutionary system. That cannot be coincidence.

  Especially mercury as an element… even in a High-Ether environment, it can barely sustain life, let alone give rise to an advanced intelligent species capable of ruling a Sector spanning hundreds of light-years.”

  A memory surfaced.

  In the vast archive of Mercury memories she had seized from the Dark Void Battlefield, she had found clear records.

  Before the rise of the Mercury Race, their homeworld supported almost no complex life. At most, there had been a handful of primitive mercury-based bacteria and simple organisms.

  Even those had taken endless eons to evolve under the planet’s merciless conditions.

  So how could the Mercury Race—utterly lacking any ancestral lineage, any evolutionary kin—suddenly emerge in such a barren environment, one that had never given birth to complex life?

  To appear as though sprung directly from the ground… surely, even the Mercury Race themselves must have harbored doubts.

  If they had looked deeply into their own past—tracing the planet’s geological history, studying the evolutionary paths of lesser mercury-based organisms—they might have been able to roughly pinpoint the very year of their own engineered creation.

  In the records, Saknussim even laid out in painstaking detail his design philosophy for the Mercury Race, as well as the precise methods he employed to manipulate the mercury ring system at its deepest levels.

  In essence, by following the 《Mercury Race Evolution Chart》 step by step, one could re-create the Mercury Race under similar conditions.

  The Agate Clan—also the handiwork of the same architect—possessed a somewhat different evolutionary history and origin.

  Within the data of the 《Mercury Race Evolution Chart》, Seraphine observed that Saknussim’s method leaned far more heavily toward 【Evolution】 than 【Creation】.

  In other words, without intervention, the mercury planet itself might, given hundreds of millions or even billions of years, eventually evolve an intelligent species.

  It might not have reached the power of the Mercury Race, but at the very least, the potential for sentient life was present in the planet’s natural trajectory.

  By contrast—

  The 《Agate Clan Evolution Chart》 revealed that this Sower’s approach was reversed: a creation process weighted overwhelmingly toward 【Creation】, with only a token reliance on natural 【Evolution】.

  “This species…”

  Browsing through the exhaustive details of the Agate Clan, Seraphine could not help but murmur with a touch of feeling, “is a perfect slave race.”

  As the thought passed through her mind, the void before her rippled, fluctuating with a storm of fundamental particles, endlessly swirling into being.

  Her gaze sharpened—and in response, their numbers exploded, multiplying at an astonishing rate.

  Fueled by the system’s inexhaustible energy supply, Seraphine could afford to ignore consumption altogether, capable of forging any material she desired.

  And now, after fusing the unified force field of Celestial Arcana, it was like a tiger given wings.

  For once the underlying structure and essential principles of a physical substance were fully comprehended by her—imprinted and recorded within the Celestial Arcana framework—she could reproduce it endlessly, as if stamping its form into reality itself, using nothing more than her own Aether.

  Just like the countless black holes Seraphine had once conjured to engulf the entire Dark Void Battlefield—so too now, with nothing more than her will, could new creations be born in an instant.

  Even the whole of the Solar System, save for Root Spirituality itself, was now within her power to reproduce entirely.

  Buzz—

  In the vast emptiness, fluctuations multiplied without pause, as new companions joined the gathering storm.

  The swarm of fundamental particles grew denser and denser, until they swelled into a vast sea of matter.

  When their numbers reached a critical threshold, Seraphine’s will seized hold of them, commanding them to fuse—and in a cascade of brilliance, the particles knit themselves into complete atoms.

  Tens of millions of them.

  Hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium, calcium, vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, selenium, bromine, molybdenum, iodine… and so on—dozens of elemental kinds, each forged and summoned into being.

  And these elements, once formed, danced like spirited sprites, whirling and singing as they combined into great chains of proteins and macromolecules.

  Next, those proteins and macromolecules assembled, stacked, and interlaced—building towering strands of triple-helix genes.

  From there, neuronal cells bloomed: cell bodies, axons, synapses, dendrites—

  a storm of nervous tissue taking shape.

  At last, as those neuronal components converged, they fused into a luminous sphere, five to six meters across, an intricate lattice of light pulsing within.

  A neural network, gleaming in azure radiance.

  This was the juvenile form of the Agate Clan.

  Although the Agate Clan appears to resemble a “Brain,” in truth, they possess no brain at all.

  Or rather—every single neuron across their sprawling neural network functions as an independent computational unit.

  Consciousness, after all, does not require a brain to exist.

  Through long years of research in neuroscience and mental consciousness, Seraphine had already unraveled the mystery of sentience.

  The data was clear: what we call self-consciousness does not hinge on any specific brain structure.

  The true foundation of awareness lies in neural complexity.

  As long as the number of synaptic connections surpasses a critical threshold, consciousness inevitably arises.

  The shape of the nervous system, the material it is built from, whether composed of brain cells or brain-like tissues—such details are irrelevant.

  “An interesting creature,” Seraphine murmured with quiet amusement.

  She regarded the Agate juvenile—its form faintly swirling in the void—and smiled softly.

  “Without hands or feet, without hearing or sight, left only with weak senses of touch and pain… the Agate Clan are born nearly deaf, blind, and crippled.”

  With that, she lifted a finger and idly pointed toward the misty expanse of void tens of thousands of miles away.

  Buzz—

  In an instant, a surge of fundamental particles flickered into existence there.

  A violet mass of matter multiplied endlessly, rapidly assembling into a macroscopic landform—a continent of rock and soil spanning a hundred miles across.

  Moments later, hundreds of millions of tons of atmosphere materialized, descending to shroud the newborn landmass in a dense, protective layer of air.

  At the same time, that small landmass, under some unfathomable power, distorted the surrounding fabric of space-time—suddenly generating a gravitational field equal to that of an ordinary rocky planet.

  In only moments, a tiny world capable of sustaining fragile carbon-based life had emerged from the boundless void.

  The Agate juvenile, its form still wavering like a blur of tangled neural strands, stirred. Then, in a flash, it traversed tens of thousands of miles, descending inexplicably onto the newly formed plain.

  Upon entering this strange domain, the juvenile instinctively unleashed its vast mental power. In an instant, its perception swept across the rock and soil layers for thousands of meters, rapidly gathering every scrap of usable data.

  Lacking hands or feet, it exerted immense telekinetic force upon the ground around it, lifting and anchoring itself in mid-air with effortless precision.

  “Roar!”

  The earth trembled. From the surrounding strata, countless striped tigers, each the size of a truck, burst forth with feral cries. They lunged as one, fangs bared, muscles rippling with raw power.

  But before they could strike, the Agate juvenile’s body flared—its form blazing like a three-dimensional fishing net woven from blue light.

  A shockwave of telekinetic force erupted outward. From afar, it seized the charging beasts, rending them apart with merciless violence.

  Dozens of titanic forms were shredded into chunks of flesh and blood, torn asunder mid-leap. Whirlwinds surged from the turbulence of displaced air, scattering gore in a storm that painted the landscape for nearly a thousand meters.

  This was not the end.

  No sooner had the giant tigers been annihilated than, within a few hundred meters of the Agate juvenile, fifteen assault tanks suddenly burst from the ground, tail-first. They locked into place, their turrets swiveling in unison—then unleashed a deafening barrage.

  Clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter!!!

  Shells streaked through the air. Explosions thundered as dark smoke billowed upward, engulfing the juvenile in a storm of fire and shrapnel.

  But in the very next instant—

  From within the smoke, vast bundles of telekinetic force erupted. Each one carried the crushing weight of tens to hundreds of tons, condensing into invisible, razor-edged drills. They shrieked through the air, piercing distance and atmosphere alike, and drove themselves straight into the cannons of the tanks.

  Once inside, they writhed and tore like raging beasts. In moments, all fifteen armored vehicles were mangled from within, reduced to smoking, burning heaps of twisted metal.

  When the last echo of violence faded, the haze cleared. The Agate juvenile stood untouched—its shimmering shield of telekinetic energy utterly unbroken by the storm of firepower.

  “Without hearing or sight, it wields mental power as ears and eyes. Without arms or legs, it commands telekinetic force as its limbs.”

  Far away in the void, Seraphine shook her head lightly and murmured in wonder:

  “The Agate Clan—born with innate mental power and telekinetic strength measured in thousands of tons—truly are perfect as builders and scientific assistants. But…”

  A faint smile tugged at her lips. “I still need to see their physical strength.”

  At that thought, the Agate juvenile on the hundred-mile-wide landmass suddenly felt all of its telekinetic power vanish into nothingness.

  At that moment, the Agate juvenile crashed heavily to the ground.

  And then—around it, a formation of more than a dozen Space Marines suddenly materialized. Each stood over three meters tall, encased in massive power armor, brutal Chainswords clutched in their gauntlets.

  Hiss~ Rumble rumble rumble!!

  The instant they appeared, the armored giants revved their roaring Chainswords. Heavy footsteps thundered as they charged, covering several hundred meters in a breath before hacking down at the Agate juvenile’s net-like body.

  With its telekinetic force stripped away, the juvenile could do nothing but endure the onslaught.

  Sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle…!!!

  Blades screamed as sparks showered in all directions. The metallic shriek of tearing, grinding, sawing filled the battlefield.

  Yet, even under such ferocious cutting, the Agate juvenile’s body did not collapse instantly. Its lattice of nerves—seemingly fragile—proved astonishingly resilient. For a full minute it withstood the brutal hacking, before finally breaking apart into scattered nerve bundles, twitching faintly on the ground, then falling silent.

  Dead.

  Clap~ Clap~ Clap~

  In the distant void, Seraphine slowly brought her hands together, a smile touching her lips.

  “Not bad at all. Though its body structure appears loose and fragile, it is in truth a fundamental lifeform. Each nerve bundle is harder than steel—yet at the same time, tougher than high-elasticity rubber.

  A perfect balance of hard and soft.”

  Her smile deepened.

  “Fated to be… my eternal slave.”