To be awake is to think; to be alive is to act. As the half-self separated from Raytine’s soul, "Yangxing"—essentially another Raytine—understood this truth deeply.
Just as he understood that he was not truly an independent life form.
While existing as "Yangxing," he was a fragmented part of another person. He controlled extremely dangerous power with cold rationality. He was a seal to suppress the heavens, a blade forged from the white-hot molten iron of a man who had torn down his inner boundaries and incinerated his former self. He did not carry the past; he forged the future.
After Raytine severed his subjective self from him, although the main body retained the title of "Yangxing"—after all, it was a name bestowed by others and could not truly be transferred—Yangxing himself became a brand-new existence. He was powerful, stable, cold, rational, and unashamedly extreme. He inherited the phonetic name "Raytine," appearing as formal and majestic as that name ever had, and just as perpetually busy as the Raytine of old.
He possessed all of Raytine’s memories, yet lacked the corresponding emotions, for "Unmoving" had nothing to do with sentiment.
He knew that the universe and history had once posed a question to a young man, and the answer was "Yangxing."
*To be awake is to think; to be alive is to act.* Faced with a problem, one must always provide a solution.
Yet this did not feel like an exam—how could such a gentle word describe these actions? So many had died that Raytine, even now and perhaps forever, could not forget those twenty years.
Blood stained his hands; the fires of war scorched the galaxy.
Even though he knew that writing answers on an exam required logic, facing a disaster did not. When all things come to pass, people rarely care about the process of the solution. Beyond the exam paper, results are what matter; the content following "Solution" is never as important as the content following "Answer"... yet he still felt pain because of it, and would continue to feel pain until he finally let go.
And they both knew that for this matter, the word "letting go" simply did not exist.
Thus, "Yangxing" was separated as a solution, prepared to carry out his near-endless work.
But now...
"Raytine!" That illusory voice echoed amidst the golden glow. "The war never ended—come back! You have unfinished business!"
Simultaneously, in the distant Abrizak Star Sector, a collapse occurred. Space-time shattered in an instant, and the sound of strings transmitted like waves, exploding across the stars of the galaxy.
Amidst the energy torrent of gold, crimson, and azure within the Silver Core weapon platforms, beneath the swarming machinery, a massive golden figure rooted upon an iron wall of intertwined biological tissue suddenly opened its eyes.
It was a biological colossus. Its exposed upper body alone stood over a hundred thousand meters tall. Its arms were like mountain ranges, their powerful contours stretching long.
As he rose, the metal disgorged him as softly as rippling water. Countless thick mechanical tentacles fused with flesh had completely replaced his lower limbs. Now, they moved with deceptive slowness, flowing and flying amidst this magnificent metal throne like a steel sash spanning heaven and earth, or like terrifying shackles binding a god or demon.
Shortly after, the Great God submerged into layers of barriers, the metal displaying heavy ripples.
Finally, under the terrified gaze of observers from various factions stationed on the Ringworld, a massive humanoid face emerged upon the pristine metal shield.
It was cold, stern, and its gaze was calm. A grid of energy-releasing lines sliced it into countless small blocks, making it look like a piece of space pixel art from a distance.
But those lines did not lose their utility. On the contrary, the energy they radiated made a single speck of "Firewine" shine brilliantly. It plunged into his eye in an instant, and as it was incinerated, it also—
Yangxing remained silent for a moment, saying nothing.
Then, he lunged forward, his upper body bursting forth from that magnificent, orderly metal architecture—the core art of the entire galaxy.
He knew a new problem had been placed before him.
And he would solve it, providing the universe with a new answer, the full scope of which was yet unknown.
As he always did.
***
The anomaly in Abrizak caused another space-time storm to appear. Chaotic ripples pierced the timeline, erupting briefly at different coordinates across various points in time.
The galaxy, already restless, grew tense as its focus shifted toward the Abrizak Star Sector.
The colossus-like Yangxing shared some information with the galaxy. Simultaneously, he sent out a portion of his power, transformed into a long spear, carried by Kang Li—who shared a deep connection with the main body—toward the Abrizak Star Sector.
The "Sea Region" of Abrizak truly lived up to its reputation as the first place in the material realm to fail. Even though it had long since turned into the "Sea Lord" and vanished with it, a stable, spherical omnidirectional passage had opened where it once existed.
That passage seemed to link to the "Bottom of Spirits," and a vast number of enemies poured out from within.
Notably, these enemies consisted not only of Aberrations and Abominations but also a large number of creatures whose original life forms were still recognizable, such as...
"Mutated... Great Devourer Worms?!"
Kang Li was utterly aghast when the fleet encountered a wave-like swarm of pitch-black space insects.
One must understand that as a calamitous race capable of snowballing into a biological extinction event for the stars, the Great Devourer Worms were currently able to coexist peacefully with other civilizations primarily due to the strength and stability of their Queen, the "Architect." Furthermore, under her deliberate maintenance, their numbers were kept extremely low—only enough to maintain the Queen’s palace.
Anyone with eyes could see that once this race lost control, the situation would be far beyond what a mere "disaster" could describe!
But following the fountain-like overflow of the swarm, an even more terrifying event finally occurred: as the various enemies began to slaughter one another, the first familiar yet strange figure appeared.
That figure was initially unnoticed by anyone on the battlefield.
Until a sharp starlight tore through the firmament—a power of silver-white starlight flickering within the darkness, a power similar yet different to a certain someone’s, manifesting in space as a thin, sharp, and gentle arc—
—And in an instant, it cleared half the battlefield’s interstellar space, regardless of friend or foe.
In the distance, Kang Li, fighting atop a damaged starship, was startled from his focus by a certain calling in his heart.
Holding a spear shaped from golden light in one hand and a slightly paler golden longsword in the other, he parried the claw-blade of a Great Devourer Worm and thrust his spear, reducing it to ash.
Then, he turned back in the center of the battlefield.
Across the intersecting lines of fire, he saw a familiar yet strange, eerie figure emerge silently before the omnidirectional passage.
It was a figure neither quite human nor inhuman. It was slender and not particularly large, possessing the stature of a normal Orion human. However, a head of brilliant golden hair, longer than its body and flowing like a cape, fluttered in the darkness, interspersed with clear starlight.
"Starstream..."
Someone murmured the name. The name of one who had once written his own legend.
A name that brought immense pressure.
The figure seemed able to hear. It slowly tilted its head and "looked" over.
Only then did Kang Li discover—
—Beneath that brilliant golden hair, there was no "human" face.
What existed there was only a void of darkness, and a perfect circular halo where starlight occasionally flickered.
"Hah...!!"
In the desert, Evenheiler suddenly snapped back to his senses.
At some point, his mind had wandered; a subtle sense of crisis made him uneasy.
"What’s wrong?" Raytine asked.
He could not possibly ignore such an abnormality in Evenheiler.
"...I feel..." Evenheiler murmured thoughtfully. It was hard to describe the feeling in his heart; it was like an anxiety a step beyond the norm, a heart-stopping...
"...threat," he said. "I feel a threat."
"Where is it coming from?"
"From where it comes—" Evenheiler replied reflexively, then realized Raytine’s speechless expression and shifted his gaze. "Alright, an ill-timed joke. I mean, I don’t know."
Raytine knew he wouldn’t lie about such things, so he didn’t press further. He simply adjusted his posture, gazing up at the moonlit sky from the sand dune.
By now, Cortares had already left—in this era, he was a sculptor with his own work to do on the other side of the Earth.
When the two clearly perceived the fluctuations in space-time, they did not stop him from leaving. Instead, they remained in the uninhabited desert, looking at the jade-plate moon and the details of its craters visible to their naked eyes.
Raytine had been telling Evenheiler stories of what lay beyond those craters, and Evenheiler listened quietly. In the world between the initial lull of the storm and the gradual clearing of the sky, they seemed to have found a rare moment of tranquility.
The wind and sand blew around them, but due to the presence of transcendent power, they could not truly draw near to inflict the sharp or heavy harm they would on an ordinary person.
After that, they spoke no more, until the storm struck. Darkness swept them away from the crevice of the era, intending to take them from the present and into another segment of history.
But within the storm, a disturbance occurred—the oscillations of space-time were attracting each other. Although the physical impact was entirely repelled by the "Unmoving" state Evenheiler had simulated, they were shocked to find thousands of cracks spreading from the darkness.
Countless images flickered within them. When the cracks collided with Evenheiler’s simulated "Unmoving," neither could cancel the other out; instead, they fell into a deep stalemate!
Raytine’s expression tightened.
Although Evenheiler’s energy was deeper than that of an ordinary "S-rank," it was clearly insufficient against the consumption rate of "Unmoving." Even though this was a simulation rather than the original, with reduced functionality and consumption, if this continued, the two of them might be trapped in the space-time rift, and might even be unable to maintain their external defenses!
Raytine was confident enough that even if he completely withdrew his defenses, he could survive the space-time storm. But Evenheiler could not!
***
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