Waking from a chilling dream, Evenheiler’s gaze was momentarily vacant.
He felt cold—an extraordinary, pervasive cold that crept in from all directions, churning up dust like fine snow in the depths of his soul.
"Is the climate control off...?"
Amidst that illusory chill, the handsome blond youth rolled over and sat up. He leaned against the heavy, solid wall of his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
In the latter half of the last century beginning with '3', a semi-elliptical basic hibernation pod frame had become popular among the humanoid races of the galaxy. Shaped like half an eggshell and open at the top, its hardened exterior could be retrofitted with various instruments, while the interior was lined with thick, soft padding. It provided the sleeper with a profound sense of security through stable, soft support and slight compression.
Many households possessed such pods, and the Kang family was no exception. After all, the most popular series of hibernation pods currently on the market were products of Kang Pharmaceuticals.
Low blood pressure left Evenheiler in a daze for a long while until he finally shook his head, regaining his senses.
"What's going on?" he muttered, opening the control panel to scan the settings. "Nothing seems to be wrong..."
By now, the temperature seemed to have risen. That strange cold had vanished, replaced by golden sunlight spilling into the room. Evenheiler glanced out the window; the weather was fine, but the sun was too fierce. Clouds, trees, and passing aircraft cast shadows edged with gold. The dense, shimmering light was so brilliant it made one squint.
*It seems like a beautiful day,* he thought.
So, he headed out. Descending from the twenty-second floor, he stepped onto a pedestrian path that led directly to a nearby park. Evenheiler felt like taking a stroll, so he went.
The artificial river in the park was crystal clear, devoid of any wild charm, and frankly quite boring to him. Having seen the most primitive ecological environments since childhood, the activated-carbon-based bionic fish looked like nothing more than swimming stones to him. No matter how 'life-like' they appeared, the very existence of the word 'like' proved they were not the real thing.
Evenheiler stood beneath a tree, one hand resting on the trunk, watching the school of fish from a distance. He felt the river lacked true vitality. Were the bionic fish there merely to purify the water? But this wasn't a source of drinking water... what was the municipality thinking?
He didn't know.
After watching for a while, he prepared to leave, bored. He called out habitually, "Lei Ting, it's time to go."
The moment the words left his mouth, he froze. *Who is Lei Ting?*
Who was Lei Ting? He didn't know.
The heat in the air grew increasingly heavy. He felt the descent of a sun and looked up abruptly, only to be blinded by the dazzling golden light in the sky. He staggered back into the shade of the trees, unable to look directly at the celestial radiance.
He could hear it... the earth was trembling. The planet's crust was churning, driven by anomalous internal shifts that forced a sudden, violent change in the world. The clouds hung so low they seemed ready to crush anyone beneath them, and as a rift spanning ten thousand miles tore open, people were screaming.
Shouting.
Crying out.
Weeping.
Praying.
Begging for mercy.
Screaming.
Screaming.
Screaming.
Screaming...
Even with such extensive modification, a single person, a building, a park, a city—all were too minuscule when faced with a planet, the heavens, and the force that tore everything asunder.
"Is it an enemy attack?! Where is the Empire's army? Solar Star!" he heard someone shriek. "Solar Star... he can definitely stop this! He can get here fast! Solar Star!"
He heard someone crying out, "Solar Star, save me!"
He opened his eyes.
"Solar Star—!" "It's the Solar Star..."
"It's... the Solar Star?!!"
The world shattered. The planet people relied on for survival disintegrated. Between the fragments were mineral veins, buildings, bodies of water, bionic fish, rapidly cooling magma, and the frosted corpses of the dead...
People's pale faces bore various expressions as the cold spread, their calls dissipating into the play of light and shadow.
No one answered.
***
Lei Ting sat up abruptly.
He did not gasp for air like most people waking from a nightmare; his breathing remained steady.
The pitch-black, narrow space was like a coffin. Only his own light illuminated the darkness. The air was stale, but he didn't care; he had long since ceased needing to breathe air to maintain normal vital signs and cognitive functions.
Space, far from any star, was cold. The first time he had let down his energy shielding to directly contact the vacuum, he had nearly been frozen into a statue.
But even if he were frozen into a statue, his inner self would maintain a vigorous vitality. This was the nature of a 'Limit-Breaker.'
Lei Ting’s gaze was calm as he flew out of the space.
He had only rested briefly. That long-awaited sleep had lasted about half an hour—a mere nap for most. But for him, it was the longest sleep he had had in two years.
However, though he had completely suppressed his emotional fluctuations, he still dreamed of the scenes when he took action. He remembered everyone... every face, their fading vitality, and their cries for someone. Tragically, 'Solar Star' was among those names. He was among them.
They wanted to beg him for help. They believed he could save them, even if not everyone.
Until they saw who the visitor from above the stars truly was.
...
Lei Ting gazed at the distant starlight. It was light from thousands of years ago.
And the starlight gazed back at him, like countless eyes watching him from the deep dark of space and the darkness of the deep.
Would someone watch him through the transmission of light? How would people at the other end of time view him?
For the first time, as Lei Ting looked at the stars, he felt as though he were meeting an old friend across ten thousand years, meeting the stars themselves.
Such a feeling should not be ignored, but he didn't have much time for idle thoughts.
There was much work to be done today.
He left his unmanned fleet and flew toward his distant objective.
***
In the galaxy, red dwarfs are the most common stars. Not everyone enjoys the radiance of a yellow sun; by comparison, red suns actually have a greater presence in the cultures of various galactic races.
However, planets orbiting red dwarfs have their own problems as homeworlds for civilizations: powerful solar activity threatens life, terrifying induced currents limit technology, and the orbital periods are too short, making seasonal changes extremely abrupt. Overall, it is difficult for a promising civilization to develop.
Furthermore, such planets are almost always tidally locked to their parent stars. The entire planet has only one habitable zone—the terminator line, where ultraviolet levels are moderate. Inward lies the permanent day zone, unfit for habitation; outward lies the permanent night zone, where going is a death wish...
Yet, unknown to the vast galaxy, on the terminator line of such a planet lived a group of 'people' about four to five meters tall.
They possessed a fully functional mechanical city. It was not small compared to the settlements of typical early-stage indigenous civilizations, but compared to their once-glorious homeland, it was less than a drop in the ocean.
The city held about a hundred thousand people—the last of their race's strength. The city maintained a high-oxygen environment sufficient to sustain such massive biological life. This hadn't been much of a burden several hundred years ago when they first arrived...
But over those centuries, resources had become increasingly scarce. A few years ago, they had managed to launch an exploration ship, but the crew had unfortunately landed on a nearby planet during its glacial cycle. The ship was still orbiting the planet, but the people were now frozen statues somewhere on the surface.
Consequently, most of these hundred thousand people had to fight.
Whether starting or continuing... they had to leave the city wearing protective suits and oxygen masks.
Ahead lay the terrible eternal day; behind lay the horrific eternal night. The last global scan had been conducted before they landed. Now, centuries later, although their technology had not regressed much despite the lack of resources, they lacked the energy to maintain a scanning system. They were forced to walk into the unknown.
Until one day, an exploration team brought back a burning, red, semi-solid substance from the scorched earth of the eternal day zone.
Upon testing, this eternally burning substance fit the definition of a non-Newtonian fluid and even possessed strange biomass characteristics. It was like a mass of burning, living blood, though no one knew whose veins it had come from.
But it was certain that it could provide a massive amount of energy for the city.
It was the necessity for their survival and their lives.
Thus, a century-long resource collection operation began and continued to this day.
During this time, the city's population dwindled from over a hundred thousand to nearly a hundred thousand—the strength of the individuals meant their birth rate and desire to procreate were extremely low, while external threats meant the frequency of combat casualties was not insignificant...
Fortunately, having been completely disconnected from the Star-Net, they had few entertainment options, and sometimes they truly had to resort to the manual labor of making children.
And in the cycles of day and night they set for themselves, that substance named 'Fire Wine' burned loyally, providing new heat for civilization and life, sustaining a new spark of vitality.
Until a few days ago, the city's defense systems scanned a small black fleet in near-space.
At the time, they didn't think it was a problem. The fleet was clearly just passing through. Given the city's built-in cloaking functions, it was impossible for the fleet to discover a mechanical city capable of housing tens of millions on the planet's surface in such a short time.
The people still believed they could finish their final preparations and return to the sky and their ancestral stars...
...But today, sharp alarms suddenly erupted throughout the mostly decommissioned city.
Simultaneously, a golden radiance descended from the stars, aimed directly at the city center.
The falling-object interception system failed entirely for unknown reasons. The point-defense systems, after automatically activating, suddenly shut down and went silent. The city's supreme commander gave the order, and the remaining tens of thousands of well-trained personnel began manual operations, only to discover to their shock that it wasn't the automatic consoles that had failed, but the entire defense architecture.
This proved that the enemy's method of disabling them was not network technology, but something else entirely.
And if the defense system could be paralyzed, so could the city.
The commander lowered the hand he had prepared to signal fire—it was useless anyway—and looked toward the target plummeting down with blazing radiance.
He saw the light make a sharp turn about a thousand meters above the ground, flying toward his position.
Only a moment later, a black-armored warrior, barely over two meters tall, came to a sudden halt, hovering not far before him.
Long black hair drifted; a pitch-black cloak billowed. Inertia sent them fluttering forward, and the ripples of the impact swept through the not-so-empty command room, yet they failed to budge the group of three-to-four-meter-tall carbon-based humanoids.
The guards' weapons were aimed directly at the figure. Before the commander could raise his hand to forbid the attack, the celestial visitor floated in the air, arms crossed, tilting his head slightly.
Silently, the metallic structures of all the weapons quietly melted into lumps, then flew into the air of their own accord, swirling like stars beneath the temple-high ceiling.
And those eyes, so dazzling they were terrifying, swept over the crowd with a flat, indifferent gaze.
...*Tsk.*
Judging by the newcomer's powerful control while flying, if he could destroy the weapons directly, he could certainly have altered their internal structures while leaving the exteriors intact.
The man was issuing a warning, not looking to kill them immediately.
The commander endured the throbbing pain in his eyes and mind, lowering his head to avoid that gaze. Then he sighed silently, stepped out from the crowd, and walked to the front.
"Noble, unknown 'Limit-Breaker,' it is an honor to serve you." He bowed low, his posture humble to the point of being in the dust. "May I ask, what is your intent in coming from so far away?"
"I am looking for the remnants of the 'Galactic Empire,'" Lei Ting said softly, his eyes fixed on the other. "I know the inheritors of that glory still exist among the stars. And now, their new mission has arrived."
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 康氏制药 | Kang Pharmaceuticals | A pharmaceutical company mentioned as the manufacturer of hibernation pods. |
| 阳星 | Solar Star | Lei Ting's title/alias (Yáng Xīng). |
| 火酒 | Fire Wine | A red, semi-solid, burning biomass used as an energy source. |
| 晨昏线 | Terminator Line | The dividing line between the day and night sides of a planet. |
| 银河帝国 | Galactic Empire | The ancient or fallen empire whose remnants Lei Ting is seeking. |
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Stars See Me [Interstellar] | Chapter 206 | Remnants of the Empire | Novela.app | Novela.app
