Just as Lei Ting was about to take action, a deeper shadow emerged from the spiraling chaos of the space-time storm.
The shadow then split apart, manifesting in two diametrically opposed directions. One was clad in terrifying black armor—the "Commander."
The other wore similar black armor, yet the details were subtly different. Faint, delicate blue light drifted naturally from every gap in his plating. This was another "Commander," one who appeared to have lived a completely different life, crowned with a diadem of blue crystal.
Under the shocked gazes of Lei Ting and Evenheiler, the latter spoke.
"A pleasure to meet you, Lei Ting. And you, Evenheiler Kang..."
His voice was raspy and horrific, carrying an eerie resonance.
"...My friends whom I have never met. The isomorphs of my archenemy."
—"Isomorphs."
In that instant, Lei Ting understood everything.
...
"Wake up. They aren't the people from your memories."
"‘Alternate space-time isomorphs.’ Do you remember? It’s a concept that has been proposed countless times, even back in the Earth era..."
In the midst of a dream, a voice echoed quietly.
Kang Li felt the voice was familiar, as if he had known it for a long time.
On "Gaia," he had dreamed of it countless times. It was this voice that had inspired his talent, allowing him to possess a perception far beyond ordinary people even when his ability development was unclear. It allowed him to see the phantoms of primordial humans that even A-class espers might not perceive.
Through the haze, Kang Li seemed to see a cluster of starlight. He could not discern its true form, but he could hear it—
"...Wake up, Kang Li! Wake up!"
A surge of sharp pain hit him, and Kang Li snapped awake.
He gasped for air, the pale gold light in his eyes flickering. The scattered starlight in his mind had not yet fully dissipated when another dark shadow came crashing down. Before he could even make a sound, he was pinned beneath a massive boulder that had fallen from the sky.
A long time passed before sharp, angular cracks began to spread across the boulder.
A substance-like light, resembling inlaid gold, rose from within and blasted the rock into fragments. Amidst the reddish-brown dust, Kang Li slowly stood up. Panting, he forced his long-broken humerus back into place and channeled his energy to form a solid protective membrane to hold it steady.
The agonizing pain made him grit his teeth, his face contorting. His handsome features, so similar to Evenheiler’s, were nearly ruined by his grimacing.
At the same time, he felt as though he had forgotten something once again...
What was it?
He didn't know.
Then let it be unknown.
Silver-white starlight tinged with gold flashed through his mind and vanished. Kang Li focused his mind, staunched his bleeding, and performed basic first aid on his minor wounds before looking up at the sky.
The planet he had crashed on was located in the Yabrisak star sector. Severely affected by stellar winds, dust permeated the entire world, and the atmosphere was thin and turbid.
At this moment, a small moon above had just been blown to pieces by a cannon blast, and fragments of all sizes were raining down. A rocky meteor shower that blotted out the sun descended, severely obstructing the view of the starry sky for those who had crash-landed here. Interspersed among the rocks were scattered escape pods, wreckage of damaged starships, and the remains of kinetic weapons that hadn't fully burned up. As they slammed into the planet's surface, they left booming scars across the crust. Mountain-sized slabs of rock fell into the depths of the fissures, their sheared faces sharp and dull.
The earth collapsed, and dust clouds rolled—the planet was vibrating, gradually drifting from its original orbital path.
This should have been a major catastrophe, but in the present context, it mattered little.
The original star of this solar system had already become a "space firework." In about sixty years, its remnant plasma would reach this point, vaporizing the planet in an instant before moving on to the next.
And this was merely the most ordinary annihilation strike in an interstellar campaign. The target was just a star and its three planets on different orbits; one of the strikes hadn't even hit a home world, but its moon instead.
In practice, this might have been nothing more than a commander lightly pressing a confirmation key... but to the people on the planet, it was a world-ending cataclysm.
Earlier, Kang Li’s operation had been struck from afar by that strange, seemingly mutated "Starstream."
It was a torrent of energy like a celestial river, and he had only managed to intercept one-twentieth of it. The rest had torn his ship to shreds, killed his comrades and friends, and washed the survivors away in different directions. He had gone from having a ship to fly to being a protagonist in some "Space Drift 4000 AD (Unequipped Edition)," falling into this planet's gravitational field and being forced through the atmosphere.
Now, his armor was incomplete and he had multiple fractures. Under the influence of intense radiation and harsh weather, it was impossible for him to recover his condition in a short time, break free from the planet's gravity—which was two to three times his accustomed environment—and return to interstellar space to continue the fight.
Moreover, there were more painful things he kept hidden beneath the surface—
Someone had died. Right beside him.
The killer was a monster extremely similar to his other father. It was too strong; thus, when it killed the people he loved, he had been powerless.
Kang Li slowly clenched his jaw.
He showed no sign of weakness. Instead, he set off, walking step by step, slightly staggering into the orange-red sandstorm.
Beneath his black hair, the golden light in his left eye, which shimmered with white-gold brilliance, gradually faded.
At the same time, a golden spear drifting in interstellar space also retracted its light. At a speed that was difficult to notice, it quietly slid toward Kang Li’s distant location along with the drifting space debris.
Dazzling orange-red surged, and near-gold ripples flowed—these were the planetary features of enriched iron and other rare metals.
If his father, the man who deterred the galaxy single-handedly, were here, this entire planet would have been turned into a convenient weapon... every obstacle would have been smashed through. Whether by brute force or intellectual deconstruction, that man would certainly have been much more useful than him in the face of such problems.
...But that man was not here.
The one here, the one who had endured all this, was Kang Li, not Lei Ting.
And he could not rely on anyone, just as he had never truly relied on anyone for the past twenty-odd years.
Kang Li did not release his dazzling white-gold energy. To prevent being scanned and locked onto by enemies in outer space, he didn't even let it cover his body to provide a layer of protection against the knife-like sandstorm.
On the contrary, even the light in his eyes was silently extinguished.
The tall young man marched through the storm with his head bowed. No one could see his deep blue eyes—and his common black short hair was soon coated in a layer of indistinct orange-red.
...
Within the space-time rift, the faceplate of the blue-lit "Commander" slid open, revealing his true face to Lei Ting and Evenheiler—a face both real and familiar.
It was a man with red hair. His eye sockets were filled with burning red gel, and the phantoms within led to a dark space where the esper entity marks of the Galactic Empire rotated endlessly. In the very center, there was an additional burning blood-flame of deep blue.
Likely, those were not "eyes" at all, but some kind of colored, soft one-way mirror. When they occasionally flowed and glinted within the sockets, they looked like a congealed tear of crimson.
"...Kotales," Lei Ting said hoarsely.
It was Atrin Kotales.
But clearly, it was not the Kotales they knew... but a dark, terrifying, and complete Galactic Tyrant who had never split into different personalities!
Lei Ting and Evenheiler exchanged a look.
From the next moment on, no more pleasantries were exchanged. The battle entered a white-hot stage from the very start. Powerful energy fluctuations churned the ripples of space-time into a chaotic mess. Endless storms spread toward different spatial rifts, erupting at various space-time nodes both accidentally and inevitably.
The environment of the interstellar era grew even harsher because of this, but the warriors of the future continued to fight with steadfast hearts.
The planet where Kang Li had crash-landed—or rather, been forced to skydive from the stratosphere—was destroyed on the eighth day after the battle began. By then, he had just pulled together a battered team of strangers. Seventeen or eighteen lucky survivors of various races piloted a half-broken ship, using the final impact of the planet's internal release to return to space.
At the same time, he covertly summoned the spear gifted to him by "Solar Star," letting it naturally adhere to the ship's engine to hide.
From a distance, it looked like nothing more than a dim decorative light strip.
Upon returning to space, he immediately encountered a small unit of mutated Macrophages scavenging for matter and energy—while their main force continued to pour out incessantly, patiently and efficiently building massive reinforced chitin nests around the Universal Channel. Even if occasionally destroyed, it did nothing to affect their unified will of "destroy, devour, convert, establish."
More intensely, the nearby battlefields were now all overrun by calamities.
Among the enemies from other parallel space-times, many possessed appearances that were familiar yet strange due to bizarre mutations or visibly different life experiences.
There was no shortage of A-class and higher espers among them; even the aura of a "Double-S" had seemingly flickered within the channel. Thus, even though it wasn't just pure enemies emerging from the Universal Channel, this patch of universe that had abruptly become a battlefield began to destabilize the space-time balance of the entire galaxy.
"Firewine" had vanished and was suspected dead; the "Architect" was single-handedly holding off multiple Macrophage hive queens; "Starstream" had also disappeared. Other "S-class" individuals had their own duties. The strongest, "Solar Star," was still present, but his posture as a Great God perched at the Galactic Core made one wonder what he truly intended to do...
Ultimately, the one who bore the greatest pressure on the material realm's front line was actually the "Dragon Slasher," who had been in a slump since the death of the "Emperor's Blade."
Kang Li had watched the space hunter's battles from afar a few times and was deeply shaken by such powerful and pure strength.
As for himself... though he didn't know why "Solar Star" wouldn't establish a connection between that spear and him, Kang Li decided to follow the guidance of "Solar Star." He would swim against the tide of ten thousand enemies toward that Universal Channel, which was visible to the naked eye yet extremely distant in reality.
In this way, the descendant of "Solar Star" and "Starstream," and also the child of "Man"—Kang Li, also known as Lei Li—took the few teammates willing to follow him and began a journey that seemed like a blind march toward death.
Meanwhile, in the distant past, Lei Ting and Evenheiler were swept away by the turbulence caused by their battle's excessive disruption of the space-time balance. Along with their enemy, they began a truly chaotic journey through time and space.
Almost at the exact moment they vanished, a rusted and dilapidated starship emerged from a space-time rift. It ground across the battlefield where energy had not yet settled, then departed silently after failing to find its target.
Within the space-time rift, the chaotic and brilliant phantasmagoric lights, surpassing human comprehension, illuminated the mottled and blurred name on its hull.
—"Crater 9xx."
***
