Finally, Lei Ting thought. Finally, this day has come.
A pitch-black arena took shape, filled with the surging turbulence of chaotic, violent energy.
He allowed his cloak to billow wildly, his long hair escaping its crown to fly in the wind. In that moment, the silver-white strands hidden beneath his neat black hair were revealed in abundance, reflecting the dazzling light.
He opened his hands, letting golden radiance mold itself into sharp blades within his palms.
A slender two-handed saber and a heavy two-handed greatsword—he gripped one in each hand.
His powerful muscles and precise, disciplined form allowed Lei Ting to pull a ship even in civilian clothes; now, the war armor he wore functioned as a powered exoskeleton, magnifying his strength further.
The moment the colossal mecha closed around him, a saber and a greatsword, each thousands of meters long, manifested in its hands.
Within the completely sealed, dark space, Lei Ting closed his eyes for a brief moment.
When he opened them again—
His brow furrowed sharply, and he leaned forward into a combat stance. With an expression so ferocious it bordered on terrifying, he swung his blades!
A burst of incomprehensible killing intent and fury erupted. They surged within his chest like a stellar explosion—a relentless, crowding rage. No one could maintain a peaceful mind amidst such scorching fire.
Before this moment, these emotions had been suppressed, burning on the reverse side of his soul under the shadow of the light of 'Unmoving' for nearly twenty years.
What a long time, Lei Ting thought. Long enough for a person to grow into adulthood.
Ah, adulthood.
If that child... his child... had been allowed to exist, she or he would be a youth of seventeen or eighteen by now. That entire lifespan would have been contained within these two decades. He didn't know if he would have been a good father, but he knew he would have been a different man because of that child... and perhaps Evenheiler, his lover, would have been different too.
But think. Think of the word 'growth.'
He was already in his forties. Even if that was considered young for an Orion, and even if his appearance remained that of a twenty-five-year-old.
It was foreseeable that even when he reached four hundred, he would still look like this, perhaps with only a few more white hairs.
But his classmates, his friends, the people he once trusted, the people he lived and studied with, the people he joked with in the lounge, the people he would make eighteen bets a day with just to decide who would go fetch the food...
They were forever frozen at an age... not even reaching twenty-five.
And then there were the people of the Federation he had seen—the civilians, the soldiers, the officials... those who died resisting the Eldritch, those who died fighting back against the Abominations, those who died in one defensive war after another. There were even those who simply vanished from space because a Star Beast happened to pass by.
And those killed by Lei Ting himself because of pollution—had they done anything wrong? No, they were not at fault. They simply existed, and so they died.
Someone had once suggested blaming the destruction of those planets on Star Beasts; after all, such things had happened before.
In the past, when certain Legions directly destroyed life-bearing planets in remote sectors to harvest resources, they would blame a Star Beast when reporting the updated star charts according to regulations.
But Lei Ting had refused.
Not only did he refuse, but he punished that person... with a coldness unprecedented even in the eyes of his 'own people.'
"Do you know... why?"
Lei Ting whispered softly, though he didn't know who he was asking. He could see his vision beginning to be submerged in darkness, and within the shadows prowling the edges of his sight, faces began to emerge.
Some were pale, some dark, some despairing, some hateful. They screamed and vented, their curses never-ending, roaring as if to smash everything that remained solid in his heart.
But among them were children, toddlers—tender faces that made it hard for him to justify himself.
Most of the children still wore the expressions of those who hadn't realized what was happening. Mixed into the cursing, weeping crowd, they were small, yet in his eyes, they seemed taller than the heavens.
These were the people who had died wrongly at his hands—his citizens, his compatriots, the children he should have held high hopes for. He could see the lingering smile on one face; he remembered her, a girl who had just earned her first paycheck and was going to honor her parents, and then she died, killed in a man-made apocalypse.
An apocalypse where even the stars crumbled.
Every one of them was like that. They simply existed, simply lived... and then lost everything, including their lives.
Especially their lives.
And now, regardless of whether the echoes in their 'Spirit Thoughts'—temporarily freed from the suppression of 'Unmoving'—were reviling him, hating him, or cursing this 'madman, tyrant, evildoer, executioner' who had subjectively chosen to sacrifice them... or even the Human Union that led him to make such a choice, Lei Ting remembered. He remembered that at least a third of them, when the disaster struck, had tried to call for help from the Federation police, nearby patrol fleets, or... 'Sun Star' himself.
Only after death did the people realize that the one who caused the disaster was 'Sun Star' himself.
Killing intent, despair, loathing, hatred, sorrow...
The kindling of rage was released piece by piece, and psychological agony accumulated continuously.
Lei Ting was trembling slightly. His face no longer wore that false, iron-like, mask-like smile.
He didn't have the bad habit of laughing when he destroyed something.
But at this moment, Evenheiler, who was meditating with closed eyes in the mental world, suddenly snapped his eyes open.
The sunlight had changed. He felt a sense of... terror within it.
An extreme killing intent, a desire for destruction, hatred, rage, and a screaming impulse that couldn't find a voice—all of it mixed together, instantly making him grit his teeth. He stared ahead with furious eyes; for a moment, he wanted only to destroy everything, just as he had in his youth when he wanted to destroy the Human Union and all the crimes he loathed.
But he did not.
In the space of a single breath, pure white starlight welled up in his eyes.
This energy, completely untainted by gold, smoothed the mania and rage in his heart. It poured out from around him, allowing him to lift his head in tranquility and gaze at the zenith above.
For the first time, the golden flow of light that submerged everything in the sky had vanished.
He saw a silver-black dome that was expanding and receding until it disappeared completely, and beneath it... an endless, unmanned fleet.
They were bathed in a new light, a light Evenheiler had never seen before. It was parching and cruel, as tangible as substance, forming the shell of this world...
...And, just like a true star, it surged and burned.
***
'Fire Wine' felt complex and solemn.
It recalled the conversation it had just overheard through certain methods, cross-referencing it with the information in its memory. Finally, it confirmed: those fellows in the 'Silver Star Council' actually hadn't lied.
Surprising, it thought.
It seemed those guys really wanted to live... but there was no way. 'Sun Star' wouldn't let them go.
That man always knew how to control himself and how to let out long-suppressed things at the necessary moment, honing them into a blade to destroy every target he had long since marked.
Sigh... as long as he doesn't slip up and blow the fragmented 'Ring World' to pieces.
Building that thing back then was quite a hassle... and it had its reason for existing.
Fire Wine darted through the massive chitinous walls, plunging into a high-speed transport channel. It was 'fired' toward a distant location along with a vast amount of construction material.
The 'Architect' had granted it the relevant permissions, so it faced no obstacles. Velocity-filtering rings every three thousand kilometers made it go faster and faster, but when the journey was two-thirds complete, the devices began to slow it down.
Dozens of hours later, it 'popped' out of the channel exit.
The materials and energy traveling with it were automatically diverted, returning to their places under the arrangement of the Lord of Macrophage.
At this moment, a piercing, loose spiral light-spear appeared in its sensory field. The light-spear looked like a steel nail, pinning a broken disc into the night sky—flickering upon it were starlight, cracks, and the calls of civilization.
That was the Milky Way. It knew.
And that light-spear was the power erupting from the 'Silver Core.'
'Fire Wine' knew a lot; it had always known. It knew many things... sometimes, it just didn't want to, or couldn't, speak them aloud.
It knew that the 'Silver Heart' at the center of the 'Silver Core' was actually a massive black hole; this light-spear was the manifestation of its energy accumulation after being weaponized. The 'All-Stars' had built it during the early stages of the war—back then, the Milky Way didn't exist, and the 'Ring World' was merely the outer wall of an experimental site built around the central black hole.
It knew that when the ancient war occurred, the 'Eldritch' didn't exist. And in the later-formed 'Spirit Depths,' these things weren't present in every region.
It also knew that 'Sun Star' wouldn't let this matter pass easily. And those people... those people who ensured 'Sun Star' would never let this go... they were dead, and dead they remained.
And the root cause of ninety percent of these catastrophic sins lay upon the 'Silver Star'...!!
"I hope he can control himself..." Fire Wine murmured.
It had come here to observe the movements of the 'Silver Core' from a bird's-eye perspective.
Now, the ends of that double-pointed light-spear were expanding further, and energy that would alarm all matter boiled within.
The 'Ring World' was beginning to struggle; some unstable sections among the tens of thousands of blocks were being knocked away by the energy tide. It was no longer a perfect ring—
As expected, Fire Wine thought.
The crown-like 'shackles' within its body emitted a light like twilight. In this radiance, it searched tensely, finally finding its target within a certain sector.
It was a pitch-black giant sphere, about five times the size of a conventional star. In the energy tide of the Silver Core, it looked like a sesame seed in a washbasin, yet... it remained motionless.
Fire Wine felt somewhat relieved and let out a long breath in its heart.
After giving up most of its substance to the surrounding chitinous defense layers, the layers had gained powerful energy resistance, but its own form had shrunk considerably.
At the moment, it was somewhat limp, its usually perfect spherical outline sagging.
"Fortunately, he still remembers to control the range of impact..." Fire Wine grumbled, cautiously moving closer to observe the specific situation.
But after shifting inward a few times and flying for a short while, it suddenly scattered its form and let out a scream that sounded like a glob of slime swearing.
Simultaneously, dense golden pillars of light brushed past every part of 'it'—countless sharp arrows of light. They shredded the 'Stellar Alloy' shell, and almost all matter and energy enclosed within were ground into powder.
Even if it was just a piercing strike, the result of countless piercings was no different from countless slashes or countless hammer blows.
They were all unstoppable and would inevitably bring eternal destruction and death.
Fire Wine used ninety-nine percent of its mental power to force itself into a rapid retreat, using the remaining bit to feel lucky it hadn't approached the danger zone.
But a few breaths later, after dodging wave after wave of light arrows like a rainstorm, a surge of terror erupted within its body, which had shrunk by another half.
In that place where all matter and energy were being filed away and scattered, a massive figure emerged from the center of destruction.
It was a god-like black-and-gold colossal mecha. A near-white, dazzling golden light shone from its visor. Its armored form, belonging to the interstellar era, carried a hint of 'ancient' elegance. A wide energy cloak draped from its shoulders, a blazing and brilliant gold.
The corona of that super-powered sun had been turned into a cloak by its master...
And now, the 'man' wearing this glory held an eight-thousand-meter greatsword high with both hands, slashing down toward a composite shadow pinned by a long saber tens of thousands of meters away!
Finally...
Finally!
Lei Ting roared as he slashed downward. The blade split the blood-colored torrent, even surging it back with a blinding golden radiance!
No one could look upon his current form without recoiling. The rage suppressed for decades had awakened in his heart, his eyes, his face, and his entire being.
The will of destruction descended. He was finally able to release this anger and fulfill his promise to his friends, comrades, and the departed, bestowing upon the enemy...
...Death!
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 灵之底 | Spirit Depths | A metaphysical or extradimensional realm in the setting. |
| 银心 | Silver Heart | The very center of the galaxy/Silver Core. |
| 诸星 | All-Stars | Likely a reference to an ancient faction or collective of beings. |
| 灵思 | Spirit Thoughts | Residual mental echoes or spiritual consciousness of the deceased. |
| 阳星 | Sun Star | Lei Ting's title/codename. |
| 不动 | Unmoving | Lei Ting's specific power state or ability name. |
| 星合金 | Stellar Alloy | A high-grade fictional metal used for megastructures. |
| 巨噬之主 | Lord of Macrophage | The title of the 'Architect' entity. |
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