Stars See Me [Interstellar] | Chapter 255 | A Weary Reunion in the Void | Novela.app

It had to be said that the Gazer’s final act was quite a shock. This was true for ordinary people, and it was true for Lei Ting. Even more shocking was that when his dormant spirit was jolted awake by that sharp pang of agony, he sensed the presence of another "Immovable" power within the starry void. And it came from... someone he had never expected. Lei Ting released his energy, and a brilliant light submerged him. That power burned like a raging fire, and within the flames, he held the soul in his arms tightly. The collision of their powers made their contact feel as solid as physical matter. Once unconscious, the "Immovable" state Evenheiler had been simulating vanished. But Lei Ting had already seized that fleeting moment of alarm; bracing his spirit, he crossed through space, allowing himself to be swept into the uncontrolled turbulence along with the other man. Chaotic, twisted black fissures churned like undercurrents in the sea. In a chain reaction, the space-time barriers—already weakened at the points of gravitational anomaly—shattered into pieces. Lei Ting closed his eyes. At this moment, golden sunlight and silver-white starlight intertwined. Their radiance flowed together harmoniously, yet their colors remained distinct in the finer details. No one was being stained by the other’s color anymore; no one was intentionally hurting the other for any reason. Though he had already separated from "Immovable" and his spiritual thought was currently incomplete, his energy surged outward almost without limit, managing to offset most of the impact for a time. In the deep cosmos, a patch of chaotic, violent darkness grew, twisted, evolved, and then contracted inward. All of this occurred silently until, finally, the entire region of space shrank into a single point and vanished. A star sector disappeared from the Milky Way. The reaches of space that had once sat on either side of it joined together, leaving a pitch-black thin line—about ten kilometers wide and a star sector long—spanning the gap. From any angle, it looked equally tilted and sharp, like a holographically simulated artificial suture. It possessed no external influence; it simply existed. But even so, the gravitational and informational chaos caused by the altered sense of space triggered massive upheavals within the star systems on both sides. The galaxy overturned because of it, and a disaster began to spread. Had these sectors not been so close to the giant black hole and the Large Magellanic Cloud—areas where sapient life was already non-existent—this would have been a heartless act of artificial extinction. *** Some time later, when Lei Ting’s energy was mostly depleted, he felt a powerful force of rejection. He and Evenheiler’s soul were spat out from the cracks of space-time, tumbling as they were hurled into the distance. It was only then that he realized the instruments on Evenheiler had disappeared at some point; evidently, things made of matter truly could not withstand the shock of space-time transition. They drifted uncontrollably with the tide. The passage of time felt both brief and eternal. During this period, Evenheiler struggled several times to wake up, but having exhausted too much, he ultimately failed to do so. During this process, Lei Ting found himself flying toward a starship. He recognized it. It was the *Crater 900*, which had gone missing along with its entire star sector. It had a captain named Wan Huan, one of his former classmates and an excellent commander. They had once run simulated campaign commands together at the academy. Back then, Wan Huan was the only one who could keep up with him in terms of tactics, strategy, and mental processing speed in that field. She was a worthy opponent. *Now, the chaotic transit begins,* Lei Ting thought. He didn't bother to change the form of his spiritual thought to react, for he sensed the emergence of space-time turbulence once again. The disappearance of the *Crater 900* was indeed a space-time reaction rather than pure material annihilation. Lei Ting attempted to expand his mental strength. His current "vision" was not true sight. Without a body, he naturally had no lenses, optic nerves, or cone cells; he couldn't possibly possess "vision." It was merely a biological state simulated by his mental strength. The range he could "see" was the range his mental strength covered. In a state of space-time travel, he could no longer extend his mental strength to the terrifying distances he once could. Moreover, as the distance grew, the scenes he "saw" became increasingly blurred. Thus, Lei Ting could only see that at a certain point in time, a sphere glowing with blue light flashed near the *Crater 900*. It was about the size of a fist, its shell appearing to be a combination of black metal and blue crystal. It had been precisely deployed to this location—and then, a blinding light exploded! A sharp radiance, like light refracting through a crystal, submerged everything. ... *Crystal.* Amidst a new storm, Lei Ting fell into thought. The space-time weapon that took the *Crater 900* was not a naturally occurring "coincidence" of the universe. It bore strong artificial traces and seemed to place great emphasis on the concept of "crystals." Furthermore, its own power source came from within those blue crystals. That had to be a vital element... but in the past, Lei Ting had never heard of any civilization possessing such power that used high-energy blue crystals as a power source. And... why did they target the *Crater 900*? To put it bluntly, that starship was utterly insignificant to the overall situation at the time. If such a weapon actually existed, it should have been used against targets with greater strategic value—such as the Human Federation's capital planet, or "Sun Star" himself. Lei Ting held Evenheiler loosely with one arm, his thoughts racing, eliminating options at a speed beyond ordinary imagination. But soon, he felt a hint of fatigue. No... compared to the fatigue he had accumulated over these years, it wasn't even a drop in the bucket. It had been eroding his mental resilience for a long time, making him more fragile every second amidst endless guilt and the pain of his spiritual thought tearing. Without "Immovable," he had no way to stop this agony—which exceeded the limits of human endurance—from spreading. In such pain, Lei Ting was forced to stop overthinking. However, he didn't make a sound, nor did he let go of Evenheiler. He simply floated silently within his own light, his eyes—flickering with golden flames—looking somewhat vacant. The dim golden flames, and the man they composed. This was everything Evenheiler "saw" when he finally woke up. He was silent, somewhat dazed as he perceived everything around him. He could feel his own power; he could feel that both it and he were still active. Someone had saved him. There was only one person who would do such a thing and was capable of doing it. "..." Evenheiler didn't know the situation. He decided to continue acting more ignorant than he actually was, "looking up" at that light just as he had in the mental realm: "...Lei Ting?" To his surprise, he saw a weary face and a pair of eyes that were more silent than the surrounding fire. The pain he had felt before, combined with the residual power and majesty in those eyes now, caused Evenheiler’s observation to stall for a brief moment. But in the next second, he realized he had slipped up: such a reaction clearly showed he knew how formidable those eyes were! This made him instinctively pull back, a trace of vigilance rising... even though one of the initial purposes of this short journey was to help the person before him. But Lei Ting only watched him quietly, the expression of his spiritual thought devoid of joy or sorrow. After a moment, the tall, handsome young man raised his hand. A surge of power crossed the glowing void, gently stroking Evenheiler’s hair, which shimmered with silver stardust. Evenheiler froze. He almost thought he was hallucinating, but the clarity of Lei Ting’s movement as he withdrew his hand proved it was real. After that, Lei Ting did not speak to him. He simply lowered his head quietly, maintaining a state of almost complete self-emptying as he outputted his energy. Evenheiler’s expression was complicated, his mind somewhat adrift. "...Do you have nothing to say?" he asked hoarsely. "No," Lei Ting said. "Are you sure?" "..." Lei Ting had no intention of answering again. He tilted his head somewhat listlessly and sat down within his light—maintaining a formal posture was an energy-consuming task, whether one had a body or not. "Where are we going?" Evenheiler stared intently at the other's glowing, lowered features, slowly stepping forward and tentatively drawing closer. "..." Lei Ting still did not answer. Evenheiler narrowed his eyes and moved forward again: "You don't know either?" Lei Ting closed his eyes, his hands clasped with elbows resting on his knees, and buried his head. He simply didn't have the strength for redundant thinking or conversation. And this fact was soon discovered by Evenheiler. Evenheiler’s lips moved, but he swallowed the reprimands and questions that had been on the tip of his tongue. He leaned down toward the figure: "...Are you alright, Lei Ting?" Lei Ting supported his forehead and eyes with one hand, while the other rested naturally on his knee. He tried to muster his spirit to answer several times, but in the end, he only closed his mouth silently. After a long while, he whispered: "...I'm okay." From the tone of those two short words, Evenheiler perceived a truth. This truth filled him with both shock and joy, but at the same time, a subtle sense of panic and worry began to well up in his heart. Evenheiler slowly sat down beside Lei Ting. He could sense the powerful energy constantly pouring out from the young man beside him—'young man,' he thought, how absurd. If one truly counted the days they had been alive, this fellow was only a few years younger than him. He reached out toward Lei Ting, slowly stroking the long hair that burned with golden flames. Those flames were weakening imperceptibly, strand by strand, slowly revealing a touch of pitch-black within. That was the color of Lei Ting’s hair. "I can feel... you are very tired," Evenheiler asked in a low voice. "Does this also mean that the one before my eyes isn't 'Sun Star Lei Ting,' but... the person I know?" "Perhaps..." The voice Lei Ting simulated in the mental link was extremely low and deep, carrying a subtle hint of the ethereal. "...Or perhaps it is no longer him." He lowered his head and spoke softly, feeling his energy being ground away by the violent space-time turbulence. That power, born of the universe's own way of regulating violence, crushed the strength he paid out bit by bit. And from it, he even derived a sliver of solace. A sliver of quiet solace. A sliver of nihilistic solace. *** | Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | 环形山900 | Crater 900 | The name of a missing starship. | | 万幻 | Wan Huan | A character name; captain of the Crater 900. | | 阳星 | Sun Star | Lei Ting's title/alias. | | 灵思 | Spiritual Thought | Refers to the soul, mental essence, or psionic manifestation. | | 不动 | Immovable | A specific high-level power or state of being. | | 凝望者 | Gazer | A collective entity of human consciousness. |