Under the gaze of the galaxy and the stars, a promise was fulfilled.
The S-class individuals who had been spectating for days dispersed along with the personnel they had brought. None attempted to catch up or greet Lei Ting. They all knew that from this day forward, a great mountain—a super-powered sun—loomed over their heads.
...Yet, certain questions naturally arose: What was the purpose of this battle? Why had that planet become like that? Who had burned it? Or rather... how much did this have to do with the 'Sun Star'?
A 'Double S' had begun to exert his excessively powerful force upon the world, turning an entire star system into a wasteland that no one could enter. Would this be the start of a new disaster?
From the very beginning, the Sun Star’s power had fundamentally countered almost all biological life. If he wished, he could turn an entire space station into a fused mass of sculpture with a single thought, or transform a crowded commercial planet into a desolate dead zone.
Of course, there were many espers in the world whose abilities were inherently more dangerous than his, but as long as their knowledge, mindset, calculation power, or energy levels could not match his, they would inevitably fall by his hand.
In the depths of the starry sky, streaks of light vanished into the far reaches. Messages traveled even faster to their intended destinations, leaving countless beings trembling with anxiety.
The alarm bells of the galaxy had been rung. This focus-pulling threat did not stem from war, nor was it related to the crystalline entities sworn to devour the galaxy or any other external force. War, sacrifice, and alien races from the periphery were simply too far removed from their daily lives. But the Tane people—and the 'Sun Star'—were practically on their doorstep.
The man wearing the golden crown... he had visited the Ring World and appeared in numerous news reports. Races with aesthetic tastes similar to Orion humans knew he was tall and handsome. He didn't inspire love at first sight, nor was he particularly terrifying, yet most who met him face-to-face found him unforgettable for the rest of their lives.
In the early days, he was always underestimated.
Back then, he was simply too humble, sincere, and polite. His earnestness and kindness were apparent to everyone. Such a person seemed destined to encounter trouble, but unlikely to cause it for others, let alone pose a threat. Not all 'Double S' espers successfully grew to maturity; a kind child was naturally prone to being looked down upon, schemed against, or held at gunpoint. His power was naturally seen as a sharp tool for others to use.
The earliest research concerning him actually focused on how his abilities would affect the technology of the Orion Human Union. Looking back now, there certainly was an effect—his existence had caused the Union’s progress in materials science and metal classification to accelerate at an incredible pace, which served as the foundation for almost all applied technology.
If the principal of the First Military Academy hadn't protected him so well within the school, and if every long-distance internship hadn't been with the First Legion, he would have encountered an unspeakable number of heinous plots during those years before he had fully matured.
As for the ordinary citizens of interstellar society...
Well, people always pay less attention to things far away from them; it is a biological instinct. Faced with their current lives and the new burdens or benefits arriving tomorrow, what did a 'Double S' matter? He was too far removed from most people. Before he truly began doing great things these past two years, the perception of him in the information-saturated interstellar society was merely: "That Double S from the Human Union who hasn't gone mad yet. A good prop for propaganda. Strong, but perhaps not exceptionally so. He might even die before finishing his growth period."
That was all.
The physical growth period for Orion humans generally lasts until around age twenty-six. Usually, it is only at this age that they truly and completely set into their final form, and their super-power levels no longer undergo earth-shattering changes.
This year, Lei Ting was twenty-six.
In this very year, he, who had previously kept a relatively low profile... gave the galaxy a brilliant (literally) surprise. It was also from this moment that people realized the dark clouds hanging over their heads might never have left.
***
*It indeed never left,* Lei Ting thought.
He had destroyed the 'Stele' before it could fully take shape, reading a vast amount of memories and knowledge from it that originally belonged to 'Sain Tane.' Out of respect, after a cursory browse through that information, he partitioned the parts concerning the man's personal life and placed them in the 'Forgotten Zone' of his memory.
As an 'Unbound,' his brain was fundamentally incapable of truly forgetting anything. Issues similar to hyperthymesia would plague them forever. Even Lei Ting could only designate a partition of his memory library to be 'deliberately ignored' so that he wouldn't be overcome by emotion every time he saw something familiar—just like the period he spent alone at the academy after graduation. That was the last time he had personally gone to the academy, because it was filled with memories of him and his old friends. Past feelings and the emotions of the time were vivid to him; he could not forget, and that was painful.
While partitioning the memories, Lei Ting added two new sections to the 'Forgotten Library'—or rather, the 'Memory Recycle Bin.' One held the fragmented memories of Sain Tane, and the other was linked to the 'Spirit-Thoughts' that had newly gathered around him.
Over these two months, at least four billion 'Spirit-Thoughts' belonging to the Tane people had swarmed toward him. The pollution they carried was mostly not very severe and was naturally dissipating. Once this process of dissolution was complete, the 'Spirit' and the 'Thought' could separate; the former would descend into the 'Spirit Depths,' while the latter would remain in the material realm.
However, a problem arose from this—if the Spirit-Thoughts were allowed to release their pollution in a chaotic manner, it would certainly not be a good thing. In the galaxy, almost any planet with excessively high levels of pollution would be directly leveled by the nearby governing powers using military force, completely exterminating everything on it, precisely because of the existence of Spirit-Thoughts.
After a biological being dies, the process of separating this lingering spark is itself a process of energy release. As long as the pollution has not been completely dissipated and the energy release is not finished, a planet with a large number of polluted Spirit-Thoughts is entirely uninhabitable for normal organisms.
Thus, Lei Ting could only keep them by his side, sending them outside his 'sun' to be scorched within the corona-like flares. This would accelerate their purification and separation, after which he could return the 'Thoughts' to the material realm.
*Spirit below, Thought above.* Since the cycle of life and death had operated this way for eons, he did not intend to break the rule lightly. The 'Spirits' below had no place of their own to go, so he could only keep them within his light for now, planning to arrange for them later as circumstances dictated.
In this process, Lei Ting not only had to expend a massive amount of energy but also had to resist the subtle erosion of the pollution. Although it couldn't shake him...
...Strange new responsibilities had been added!
*Tsk!*
Lei Ting retracted his Colossus Mecha and raised a hand to rub his temples, but failed due to his helmet and visor. He sighed and did not deactivate his head armor. Instead, he took a brief 'look' at Evenheiler, whose internal metallic elements he had temporarily marked.
Good, his physical condition hadn't worsened further.
He withdrew his consciousness and settled into his exclusive Induction Beacon Drone Fleet. He temporarily carved out a small space of three or four square meters within the flagship, tucked himself inside, and opened the useful memories from the 'Imperial Blade' to cross-reference them with his memories of his past life.
***
A long time later, Lei Ting opened his eyes again.
This time, his sigh was even louder. He even fell backward in a flat drop, his heavy armor slamming into the alloy floor—which he hadn't reinforced—with enough force to leave a dent.
From these memories, he confirmed that most of the information from his past life was indeed correct. In his previous life, he had also taken on the responsibilities thrown at him by the 'Imperial Blade.' During those years, he had personally executed 'Exterminatus' on hundreds of thousands of planets, even completely destroying them.
Countless sapient beings had died by his hand, and he remembered the manner of every single death. That was a pain he could not forget and did not deserve to forget... He had even interacted with some of them. They weren't all necessarily good people, and they didn't always do good things, but at least... if not for the pollution, most of their crimes would not have warranted death.
An ordinary person who had chatted with him in disguise one afternoon vanished suddenly in the cracking of a planetary crust, dying with a face flushed with excitement, thinking they had simply awakened their super-power late.
An old woman who once sold him old-fashioned wraps didn't know that she and her children had already mutated. When the sky shattered and they were submerged in a tide of fire and metal, she was still praying to some god she believed in.
The people of an entire planet were jolted awake by the explosion of their world's disintegration. They had been obsessed with singing and dancing for over a century, all technological development had stagnated, and their physical features and thoughts showed no abnormality. Yet, their internal biological structures had long since melted and been kneaded together by the power of mutation. They wore a facade of perfect beauty and the illusion of a tourist planet while spreading pollution into the stars.
A mechanical race that had long ago abandoned flesh suffered a programming glitch, unaware that black-red tentacles were sprawling out from their energy cores. They merely thought their research had made a new breakthrough and that they had finally regained their former emotions.
All these changes caused by 'pollution' had a collective name: 'Degeneration.'
Why did polluted individuals, even silicon-based lifeforms, grow carbon-based hyperplastic flesh and cysts? Because such terrifying changes were originally brought about by a biological experiment based on carbon-based organisms!
That experiment, which took place in the distant past, concerned the morphological transformation of life. Lei Ting wanted to know the history of the past precisely because he needed to cross-reference the information in his mind, preventing any errors in his past-life memories regarding such a vital matter. Similarly, he was guarding against the possibility that he hadn't been reborn but had instead traveled to a parallel world.
But so far, every single one of his memories corresponded perfectly with reality. Although the development of events differed greatly due to the changes in himself and Cheyenne... those were merely the upper floors of the building. Lei Ting could see that the foundation was exactly the same as in his 'past life.'
His memories truly came from the future of this universe.
In that case... the problem was even greater.
In Lei Ting's memory, the 'Star' civilization's original intention in designing the 'Degeneration' experiment was certainly not to drag all races down into ruin together. The original name of this experimental plan was actually 'Ascension,' but it failed—and it failed many times.
Consequently, at least six major categories of 'Degeneration' processes were created. Their paths differed, and their results varied, but without exception, they all added a new gun to the heads of all orderly life...
Even worse, through millions of years of natural evolution, the entire 'Degeneration' system rooted in the 'Spirit Depths' had perfected itself to a degree that was horrifyingly self-consistent. As the mirror image of the 'Spirit Depths,' the material realm naturally hosted 'Degenerates' for a long time.
The Degenerates with the greatest presence were those similar to Xenodemons but without the pollution effect—'Star Beasts' and 'Abominations'!
*The 'Star' civilization... you have truly done every evil deed imaginable. Your crimes are monstrous!*
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 灵思 | Spirit-Thoughts | The lingering spiritual remnants/echoes of a deceased being. |
| 灵之底 | Spirit Depths | The metaphysical "bottom" or destination for spirits in this universe. |
| 堕变 | Degeneration | (Duòbiàn) The horrific mutation/corruption process caused by ancient experiments. |
| 升变 | Ascension | (Shēngbiàn) The original, failed experimental goal of the Star civilization. |
| “星”文明 | “Star” Civilization | An ancient civilization responsible for the Degeneration experiments. |
| 星空巨兽 | Star Beasts | Massive creatures inhabiting space, revealed to be a form of Degenerate. |
| 憎恶生物 | Abominations | Monstrous entities, also revealed to be a form of Degenerate. |
| 诱导信标无人舰队 | Induction Beacon Drone Fleet | Lei Ting's specialized fleet of automated drones. |
| 巨像机甲 | Colossus Mecha | The massive mecha form/armor used by Lei Ting. |
