“Where’s Brother Lei? He’s not here yet?” Sandro asked, his face alight with excitement and curiosity as he stood bathed in the radiance of the Stargate.
“Not yet,” Lucas replied with a smile. He looked up at the monumental space structure and sighed softly. “So, this is ‘A-1’...”
“What’s ‘A-1’?” Susanna asked, her head snapping up at the mention of what sounded like a serial number.
“‘A-1’ is the name of this Stargate,” Sandro explained. As the top freshman in the Information Engineering department this year, he was better informed than most, likely due to his passion for using his technical skills to gather intel. “It was our very first Stargate. Back then, we were a vassal state of the Galactic Empire. Given our size at the time, we were theoretically only allowed to own three Stargates.
“This thing allows for stable mass space-time travel without the need for warp drives or induction beacon fields. Its strategic significance is immense. We originally planned to name the three gates ‘A-1’, ‘A-2’, and ‘A-3’. But just as ‘A-2’ began construction, the Empire collapsed. So, its codename became ‘A-002’, signifying that there would be many more to come.”
“To be honest, it’s a very simple name,” Lucas remarked, still staring upward. “But I heard it actually has another name.”
“It does,” Sandro said. “Look at the illuminated windows in the center of the stabilization structures on both sides. The characters they form in Ancient Earth script—that is its true internal name.”
Hearing this, Rosian and the others looked up, squinting at the square, steadily glowing windows and the blocky characters they formed.
Although the Galactic Common Tongue was the standard now, the *Solaris* was not lacking in linguistic talent. Soon, someone recognized the character at the top of the gate: “Chang...”
“Chang’an,” a voice said. “It’s called ‘Chang’an’.”
It was a familiar, striking voice. Everyone turned to see Lei Ting.
The black-haired youth stood tall, gazing up at the Stargate. The shimmering blue ring was reflected in his eyes, looking as though it had been cast into another patch of deep, dark space.
Then, the metallic calcium that had been orbiting him like a swarm of bees or a cluster of stars suddenly snapped together, forming a silver-white cube. As he raised his hand, it flowed into his sleeve like liquid mercury.
“‘Chang’an’?” Lucas tilted his head curiously. “What does it mean?”
Lei Ting glanced at him, pondered for a moment, and said, “It was an ancient capital of many dynasties on Old Earth. It was also the starting point of the first stable trade route between the East and West of the Afro-Eurasian continent.”
As he spoke, he looked back up at the majestic creation. In that moment, the complexity in his gaze surpassed everything else. A profound emotion emanated from him, causing those around him to fall into an instinctive silence. Perhaps most people of the interstellar era could not fathom this feeling, but he didn't care.
In his eyes, this Stargate was profoundly romantic.
*My compatriots, whom I have never met... you have long since vanished into the starry sea. Yet the great legacy you left for this world still benefits us, thousands of years later. Is that so?*
*I know the ships, large and small, passing through that gate are just like the merchants of old, riding horses and leading camels across the vast desert. Today, I turn a page of a history book, and in doing so, I leap across a thousand years of the past.*
Lei Ting walked forward slowly toward the "Chang’an" suspended in space. But after only two steps, he stopped, simply standing among the crowd, looking up at the light and the "other shore" within it.
The clear inner ring, the rushing outer ring, the stabilization structures, the monitoring and maintenance stations, and the spindle-shaped frame shrouded in energy tails—"Chang’an" was like an eye, silently watching the people in deep space, watching the long-shattered home in the distance, watching the distant past and future, and watching the soul that had come from a past world into this future.
Perhaps crossing this gate was a way of conversing with the generations who had lived for it.
They had once gambled everything on a path for a future they would never see, spending two hundred years to build this Silk Road that was both short and long.
And then, the carp leaped over the Dragon Gate.
A moment later, Lei Ting suddenly turned to Sandro and asked, “What is its ‘counter-gate’ called? Is it ‘Rome’?”
“Ah, yes.” Sandro was stunned. “You’ve read about this too?”
“...Just a little,” Lei Ting replied vaguely.
Lucas looked at them blankly, feeling as though he were bouncing back and forth within a void of knowledge. But it didn't matter; he was always full of curiosity.
Before he could ask a question, however, a voice suddenly interrupted the conversation. “Yo, Rosian, so this is where you ran off to?”
Lei Ting frowned and turned to look. It was Romu, whom he hadn't seen in a while and who had grown considerably more robust. Romu seemed completely oblivious to the unwelcoming glares from the crowd. He grinned and approached Rosian, throwing an arm over his shoulder. “Such a big event—why didn't you come spend it with your big brother?”
Rosian, whose physique had also grown taller than it was a month ago, twitched the corner of his mouth.
“By the way, did you know?” Romu slapped the silent youth’s shoulder heavily and raised a hand. With a sharp *snap* of his fingers, he summoned a flame between his tips. “I’ve already awakened! What about you? Still a long way off, I bet?”
The faces of those around them shifted. Awakening about a month after enrollment put him squarely in the first tier. There were only three students from the New Solar System in this year's intake: one was a T0 "Double S," and now another was a T1, clearly of the elemental or energy branch...
Good grief, was that place really such a cradle of geniuses?
Lei Ting narrowed his eyes at Romu. Like Rosian, this guy had B-rank mental strength. To achieve an ability awakening in the first tier meant he certainly hadn't been idle.
However, interestingly, the boy wasn't showing off his power for Rosian’s sake; he was posturing for Lei Ting.
Fine... a Beta with a competitive streak stronger than his own as an Alpha.
It was normal. There was a whole group of Omegas in the Super-Powered Mecha Department with competitive streaks stronger than his, too.
Lei Ting stopped looking at Romu and turned back to the Stargate named "Chang’an." This calm, deliberate dismissal seemed to daze Romu. Just as someone started to laugh and Romu stepped forward in humiliated anger, his path was blocked by a vibration from the hull of the *Solaris*.
On the plaza, the people standing or sitting in every direction suddenly went silent.
With less than half a second of reaction time, all the students, including Lei Ting, dropped to the floor in a collective prone position!
*Boom—crack-crack-crack, bang!*
Continuous mechanical noises echoed from all directions. Lei Ting could feel the steel and alloy structures shifting. The giant ship was transforming—or rather, only the structures on the deck were.
Then, under the shocked gazes of everyone present, every building structure exposed on the deck surface began to close and sink amidst blaring warning sirens. Eventually, they vanished beneath the surface, leaving only the empty, absolute plane of the deck and tens of thousands of bewildered "passengers."
Now, the entire deck of the *Solaris* had become one massive plaza.
All internal and external information flow was briefly cut off. "Supervisor Vallen," who had just finished a communication and been scolded by his superior, stood with a dark face where his shop used to be. Looking out, he saw nothing but the dark deep space, ships of various sizes, the vast, flat deck of the giant ship, a few merchants like himself, and... a floor covered in prone students.
Vallen: “?”
The corner of Vallen’s mouth twitched. This scene was truly nostalgic—once, he had been one of those children lying on the ground.
He looked into the distance, gazing at the gate named "Chang’an."
Regardless of whether a student lived near the Academy, it was a tradition of the Orion Human Federation First Military Academy that all incoming students be transported to the Outer Rim to board the *Solaris* and retrace the path of their ancestors.
The entire academic year spent on the *Solaris* was the journey to the Capital Star System.
A sense of personally experiencing the passage of time made him turn away from the Stargate and look out into the distant deep space. But with that one look, he almost thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
At the stern of the giant ship, enveloped by the spherical defense shield, a person was standing on the empty mechanical structure.
The man was tall and sturdy. The upper half of his face was covered by a black full-face visor, while the exposed lower half was rugged and handsome. His mid-length black hair was streaked with white at the temples, and that white hair was tucked casually behind his ear, flickering in and out of sight beneath his black bangs.
He wore a black-and-gold armored uniform and a golden laurel crown on his head. A heavy, broad black cloak draped from his shoulders, and the insignia of the "Orion Human Federation First Legion" gleamed on his chest plate.
The man was looking at Vallen. Beneath the visor’s goggles, his gaze, faintly illuminated by the Stargate, clearly reflected the blue ring and refracted a hint of dim golden light. It was as if a beam of light had fallen into an abyss, and in that light, there was only Vallen.
Then, the man turned away. His pitch-black cloak and the pendant decorations, which looked like overlapping sacred stoles, fluttered slightly. The space around him suddenly distorted, and in the blink of an eye, his figure vanished, leaving only a black-hole-like trace that instantly contracted and disappeared.
It all happened in an instant. Vallen merely blinked, and the dark space he was looking at was empty once more.
He instinctively took two steps back, a faint starlight shimmering in his blue eyes, and even his hair showed signs of changing color. Because he—
***
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