Xyrin Empire
Chapter 507 Blue Moon

Chapter 507: Chapter 507 Blue Moon

Yanfeng Qili’s guesses about the nature of the world seemed as naive and laughable to us as the ancient human belief that the sky was round and the Earth flat. Although there were some parts that fitted reality, overall, it was just a crude model. But, I never expected that the Red Moon would actually erupt suddenly, following Yanfeng’s calculations.

There really wasn’t a minute to relax; I had just killed the Roman Spirit Army in the Inner World and then had to play a level-clearing game with Yanfeng Qili’s mini-boss team in the Outer World. After finally meeting the final boss and a dialogue box later, I had to be switched back to the Inner World without any break. Man, could you at least give me a pause to save the game?

But complaints aside, we had to deal with the situation urgently.

I completely sealed Yanfeng’s magic abilities. This guy’s only goal was to discover the truth of the world—a simple treatment rendered him harmless: I had Dingdang pull out her kindergarten drawing book, claiming it was an ancient rune text that recorded the mysteries of the world. Yanfeng actually believed it. I reckon any random picture in those booklets would keep him earnestly studying until death, especially since Tohsaka would be overseeing him later. So that takes care of Yanfeng Qili.

And poor Gunman Cu Chulainn—allow me to use such an insignificant adjective as "unlucky" for this man who’s comparable to Xiang Lin. You couldn’t imagine my confusion when a mosaic-covered object was thrown in front of us by the iron-faced Ge Mu, until Saber explained it beside me, and I finally associated that pile of stuff with Cu Chulainn.

The process was straightforward: a thorough group beating. According to the detailed procedure provided by Saber, Cu Chulainn first became a superhuman for fifteen seconds, causing quite a stir and completely suppressing Saber and others who were at only a fifth of their strength, and then...

Then Rider lost her temper.

It’s unimaginable. Always a quiet gamer and seemingly gentle, Rider actually went berserk. She immediately requested full liberation, and along with Medea and Sasaki, also transformed into their full forms. It never occurred to anyone that each standing before level 5 Cu Chulainn could only manage to say "Damn" before getting plastered with a mosaic.

And now he still has to bow and respectfully call "senior" to the three women and one man who just beat him up—heck, he’s already been turned by Sakura’s tentacles... cough, into a proud new recruit of the Avalon Heroic Spirit Army.

After resolving these last two nuisances, we returned to the Inner World. Tohsaka and Ilya, naturally curious, followed along. Since these two persistent followers could no longer be shaken off, let them follow. Just so long as they don’t ask to join the troops on a lunar mission.

Reynolds and his army had established a temporary outpost at the initial landing site, forming a circular defense with dozens of photon cannon siege guns switched into turret mode. In front of the turrets, a series of bunkers and hastily deployed missile towers were placed at intervals of one hundred meters. These small integrated buildings clearly adopted Protos modular technology. Although it was unknown whether they were directly constructed via super space-time transmission, the fact that they were completed in such a short time after we left indicated that this construction technology was a leap forward.

In the center of this simple yet effective defensive structure stood a hundred-meter-tall Xyrin space sensor, apparently transported in its entirety from Shadow City. The blue glow-emitting crystal-metal hybrid tower had already been disassembled into several independent cylindrical components that were slowly rotating in the air, creating a deep "whoo whoo" sound in the wind, indicating it had already been activated.

As for the massive battlecruiser, the Hibernian, it hovered silently in the air behind the entire defensive circle, like a dark cloud touching the ground or a lurking giant beast. This feat was definitely not something the original power system of the Hibernian could achieve but was due to an anti-gravity engine or something similar from Imperial technology.

Despite no enemies in the Inner World, Reynolds had not relaxed his vigilance in setting up such meticulous fortifications, reflecting the rigorous style he had developed over years of difficult warfare.

Tohsaka and Ilya, of course, were seeing such an alien base, which usually appeared only in science fiction movies, for the first time. After all, the previous grand yet dizzying alien landing battle they had watched was different from this super-advanced base they could now observe closely. As soon as they entered the outpost, they immediately looked around curiously. Even Red A, who usually kept a stern face, couldn’t help but marvel all around, abandoning any pretense of decorum. Probably the only one who remained calm was Uncle B. As the second-in-command of the AB golden duo of Archer and Berserker (when had this duo formed?), the latter, with his wooden-headed stoicism, was a hundred times more composed than the former—except for his sworn duty to protect the little loli, Ilya, the three-meter giant paid no heed to the surrounding turrets and tanks.

"Ah, that was quick."

Sandora nodded in approval as she looked at the newly formed outpost, while I turned to face the approaching Reynolds and asked, "What’s the situation now?"

"Ten minutes ago, there was an outbreak," Reynolds, still clad in his heavy power armor—despite having been promoted to the Chief Governor of the New Eden Federation, he still preferred to be on the frontline in such situations—while Kerrigan stood by his side in Ghost Agent custom alloy light armor, silent, "the Red Moon suddenly expanded several times within our field of vision, covering the entire sky in three minutes, the ground gravity was almost zero, and there were severe electromagnetic disturbances. However, there was no substantial damage. Two sets of gravity isolation devices and temporary ghost energy shields from the Empire protected my soldiers. The Imperial sensor was just transported here; your Chief Scientist is currently adjusting it and doesn’t allow us near it."

Tex, rubbing his back, walked over and caught Reynolds’ words, adding, "That woman is really fierce. I just wanted to go take a look, and she threw me straight out of the position. Even the Xyrin scientists have such strong combat capabilities... Ouch..."

This is so-called scientists who know martial arts, and not even hooligans can stop them—but a scientist who casually throws people out violently... Could the always quiet and gentle Taville also have another identity as a masked superwoman saving Earth?

Reynolds, with an embarrassed expression, spoke to Tex in a tone filled with helplessness, "Rifling through someone’s scientific secrets without permission, you should be thanking your lucky stars that you only got thrown out instead of getting hit by a couple of peanut-sized projectiles."

"Don’t mind, Taville isn’t against you; she just doesn’t like being disturbed while working," I punched Tex, who was still in pain, on the chest, "You should feel lucky, half of us usually shoot first and ask questions later, and Taville is relatively one of the mild ones."

"I think I should find a good bottle of wine to calm my nerves," Tex muttered as he walked away, "Maybe marrying a bottle of seventy-year-old brandy isn’t a bad choice for the rest of my life."

Did that fall really hit his head?

"Rin, you guys wait here... uh, what are you doing?"

I turned to speak to Tohsaka and Ilya but found that the latter had already started trying to strike up a conversation with those formidable "Alien Soldiers," causing awkwardness. Due to military discipline, they could not easily respond to strangers, but these two curious kids seemed to be the boss’s boss’s boss’s... ultimate boss’s friends, making them hard to offend. Eventually, the two Marine Corps Soldiers cornered could only sweat profusely and stammer, finally acting cool by pulling down their visors, indicating that they were just NPCs capable of saying only "Our ancestors are fooling you."

"Wow, big brother, can Ilya take a photo with them?" The silver-haired little loli ran up to me, excitedly tugging at my sleeve, while the gunman she had been bothering shivered, and I could almost see a sweaty face behind that orange visor.

"Stop it, this is a military-controlled zone," I firmly stopped Tohsaka and Ilya from causing more trouble for the Marine Corps Soldiers, then quickly pulled Zeratul over, "Go play with this alien uncle!"

"Great mentor, this..."

Poor Zeratul had just started to speak when he was dragged away by a cheering Ilya.

"As expected, people who are with you always tend to become quite distinctive," Kerrigan said sincerely and admiringly.

When I saw Taville, the tuning of the sensors was almost finished, and they had begun to guide the incoming support fleet, while our esteemed female scientist was busy organizing data uploaded from downstream information endpoints. I initially thought, under such circumstances, even if they were to send a researcher, it would typically be an ordinary Xyrin Technician. Still, I didn’t expect Taville, the Imperial Chief Scientist herself, would be present at the scene, which made me feel somewhat that something unusual was happening.

"Your Highness, you have arrived just in time."

Noticing our arrival, Taville quickly came to greet us, "The energy burst from the Red Moon entered its first dormant phase seven minutes ago, but we have just collected a substantial amount of data, and the conclusions are shocking."

"What happened?"

Hearing the always calm Taville use the word "shocking" to describe her discovery made me tense as well. She gestured in the air with her hand, creating a rectangular floating screen in mid-air, covered with a continuous stream of dizzying data and graphics.

To be honest, if I had to point out any flaw in this intelligent sister, besides her bizarre love for coffin-shaped objects, it would be her habit of showing me a bunch of complex data every time she reports something, which is also one of the embarrassing things because I always feel completely illiterate, as I recognize nothing on it...

"Although your subordinate knows you don’t recognize any of this, please don’t protest by looking at comics, okay?"

Ah, criticized by my own subordinate, and by someone like Taville, no less.

Sheepishly putting away the comic book, I scratched my head, "You talk, you talk."

The intellectual sister sighed helplessly, pushed her glasses, and said, "Your Highness, during the massive energy burst of the Red Moon, the Inner World experienced a total of three milliseconds of several information explosions. These bits of information were captured by the monitoring Leaving World Garden. We analyzed that these messages might be coming from the Inner World’s descent into chaos and have been bound by the strong energy of the Red Moon until now—theoretically speaking."

"Uh-huh, and then?" I pretended to understand and nodded.

"Then we discovered that the composition of the information is very similar to the generic Shadow Space."

"Oh," I nodded.

Three seconds ticked by.

"What did you say?"

I was slow to react just now.

"This space, known as the Inner World, a mirror image of the Outer World, exhibits energy fluctuations very close to those of the Shadow Space," Taville repeated seriously, word by word.

"Visca!" I grimaced, feeling a toothache before turning my head to pat the little girl who was tugging at her clothing, "Have you ever wiped out a world that included this model before?"

The little girl put on a serious face, recalling as her brilliant mind processed for a full half minute before she gently shook her head under my anxious gaze, "No!"

"Alright, we’re off the hook then, you can continue your analysis now."

Having a sister who once caused countless disasters must be tough, huh? I see that message in your eyes.

"Yes, the basic situation is like this, the Inner World was probably once a Shadow Space, just like our Shadow City, a parallel world unfurled in another dimension using the external reality as a template. Of course, it’s much larger in size, it might even have replicated the entire Solar System, but its central control was destroyed.

What we see now is a Shadow Space that has gone out of control, its external information intake module seems to still be partly operational, and because of this, in certain ’relics’, it presents a high degree of synchronicity with the Outer World, leading us to mistakenly believe it was a natural mirror of the external world. But in the recent surge of information, we found traces of it having been copied."

After Taville finished speaking, he closed the dazzling information box, giving me time to digest this shocking fact.

Looking around at the desolate and broken desert under the red moon, the shattered land... the entire Inner World, turned out to be an uncontrolled Shadow Space?

If so, the problem was significant; Xyrin Technology was notoriously tough, especially when they were causing us trouble.

"We can no longer find any remnants of the Shadow Space," Taville said softly, "chaos is everywhere, exploration is fraught with difficulties, everything here has been unordered for too long, even the most powerful Xyrin Host can hardly trace its original creator."

"But the device that created the Shadow Space is definitely still operating somewhere," Sandora asserted, "otherwise this place would have collapsed by now. Taville, could it be that moon?"

Sandora was referring to the red giant moon suspending in the sky, which at that moment was emitting a mysterious and ancient glow, burying its secrets deep beneath the boiling sea of energy.

"That’s the most likely scenario," Taville nodded, indicating that her research team also had evidence for this, "The Red Moon is the only place we haven’t been able to inspect clearly. Its interior clearly has a high energy reaction. If this uncontrollable Shadow Space still has a control core, it can only be inside the Red Moon. But in my database, the Empire has never had a planet battleship like the Red Moon: its surface lacks any solid form, consisting entirely of a dense energy body, emitting strange energy that still poses a threat even fifty thousand kilometers away, essentially ruling out its use as a space station. Additionally, the energy form of the Red Moon itself is different from conventional Imperial energy..."

"Are you talking about that thing called anti-ghost energy?" I raised an eyebrow and casually asked, looking up at the sky.

"Yes, Your Majesty, Red Moonlight has a wavelength consistent with Ghost Energy, but the waveform is entirely opposite. According to the theory of decreasing Xyrin Energy Levels, this energy must be the result of a higher-level energy decay, but I have tried all models and can’t deduce how this strange energy could decay from Void Energy—it’s theoretically impossible."

"Right, speaking of which, those black crystal daggers that can allow ordinary people to enter the Inner World..." I suddenly recalled the two crystal daggers Yanfeng Qili had found. According to him, he had purchased these daggers at a high price from a mysterious old man while traveling in China; they were part of a collection that also included two faded jade pieces, a cross blessed by a high monk, and a luminous pearl that had accidentally fallen into the fireplace and melted instantly into a gel-like substance. Among these, the two black crystal daggers were the only treasures that didn’t make him curse.

If the above paragraph included something weird, just ignore it. You should know that in this world, there are more sleazy characters than just Sicaro...

"The key, a resonance crystal that allows non-Xyrin Apostles to enter Shadow Space, is made of quite ordinary material. Apart from the Empire, at least a thousand civilizations can manufacture this kind of crystal and it is indistinguishable from an ordinary crystal when not activated," Taville shrugged. "Therefore, I didn’t initially realize what it was intended for—a gift prepared by the founder of Shadow Space for the Imperial Family, perhaps. But now, due to the loss of control in Shadow Space, its authentication function has become ineffective; theoretically, anyone can use it."

"Have there been any close observations of that planet?" Sandora asked casually while looking at the data constantly refreshing on a floating window next to her.

"Two unmanned exploration spacecraft are observing from several kilometers above the Red Moon, but at such close proximity, our scanning equipment still cannot penetrate its energy barrier."

I was not surprised by the fruitless efforts of the exploration spacecraft. After all, that planet was very likely a Xyrin product and possibly some type of special equipment from the peak era of the Empire. Expecting two small exploration spacecraft to penetrate the barrier of a planet battleship-level Xyrin celestial body was simply laughable.

"Honey, do you feel like there’s something in the middle of that moon?"

I nudged Sandora, who was scanning data beside me. She looked up and followed my gaze. After a moment, she nodded, "It seems like there’s a bright spot?"

In my line of sight, a huge moon hanging in the sky seemed to have a spot, not very bright but obviously out of place in color from its surroundings. With Sandora’s confirmation, I was sure I wasn’t hallucinating. But our actions had seemed to serve as a signal; nearby, Taville and the technicians working around the sensors also gradually looked up, puzzled, at the giant red moon. The sensors’ antennas made a low whistling sound in the wind, which soon began to pick up strange noises.

It was like sharp birdsong.

"The sensors are being disrupted, the energy intensity of the Red Moon is rising!"

"A flood of error messages is entering the communication links, we’re trying to rectify it..."

"Report to the commander! We’ve lost contact with both exploration spacecraft... Complete silence over all channels, the Red Moon is expanding... The first spacecraft is confirmed destroyed, the second one has escaped the energy storm and is returning at full speed!"

A succession of tense reports sounded almost simultaneously, not only from the technicians operating the sensors but also from the teams monitoring remotely in Shadow City and observers stationed in near-Earth orbit of the Inner World. A massive influx of information had the staff instantly busy, while Taville immediately rushed to the nearest information terminal operator, shouting, "What’s happening? What destroyed the spacecraft?"

"Reporting to the commander, it was Ghost Energy, a frontal assault by a cruiser’s main cannon-level Ghost Energy. The second spacecraft’s returned images show the attack came from..."

"From the Red Moon."

I filled in what the operator hadn’t finished, then looked up at the sky.

Now it was clearly visible; it was a blue bright spot.

The bright spot that appeared in the center of the Red Moon rapidly expanded, within moments growing large enough that its shape could be discerned by the naked eye. Its expansion rate was multiplying geometrically, like a drop of blue ink spreading in a pool of water, and it wasn’t just one spot—on the surface of the Red Moon, at least a dozen blue spots were visibly spreading outwards at the same time. The entire giant moon seemed to be consumed by blue flames, like paper-cutting engulfed in fire, and within minutes, it turned into a deep blue sea hanging in the sky.

"As I was summoning Sasaki... the moon in the sky turned blue..."

A sentence Medea had once said suddenly echoed in my ears, merging with the bizarre astronomical spectacle before me.

The Blue Moon, indeed it appeared. (To be continued. For more details, please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)