The Fifth Holy War ended in tragedy, with two hundred thousand Golden Sun Wheel soldiers perishing in the Crystal Nest and the Great Emperor falling in battle.
The turmoil within the empire was unimaginable. The few who knew the truth could only suppress it, swallowing their tears.
Late at night, Lin Ge dragged her tired body back to the White Jade Palace, feeling bitterness and heaviness filling her organs, along with a deep sense of powerlessness.
Suddenly looking up, she saw tiny points of light suspended in the pitch-black darkness opposite her.
Lin Ge lifted her still-unfamiliar long dress and walked over step by step. She saw Sylph standing at the bottom of the steps to the new emperor’s chambers, her silk-like silver hair falling onto her smooth shoulders, eyes as blue as the sea, holding a floating lamp in her delicate hands.
“You’ve worked hard, Lin Ge,” Sylph said softly.
“You can’t call me Lin Ge anymore, Zhen is the Emperor, and you are the Empress Dowager.”
“I understand, Lin Ge.”
“Naughty girl.” Lin Ge laughed weakly as she climbed the steps.
In the light of the floating lamp, she could clearly see Sylph’s face, her beautiful features bearing indelible shadows, presumably matching her own.
“All along,” Sylph suddenly said calmly, “I seem to have always been protected by others.”
“I know I have talent in scientific research and have put in enough effort. So when you all were risking your lives on the frontlines, when His Majesty said I only needed to focus on laboratory work, I accepted it without guilt.”
“But now, the people who protected me have left one after another, and I realize that’s not right… it’s not right.”
Lin Ge listened quietly. Though she said nothing, her mind drifted to a warm evening from some forgotten date.
Three people sat casually in a palace room. Jiang Jianming was braiding Sylph’s hair, while Ryann, with his long curls loose, concentrated on peeling an apple.
The young Sylph, blinking her eyes, quickly stole a piece of apple to eat.
His Majesty wasn’t angry, instead feeding a piece to the commander whose hands were occupied, then expressionlessly using the juice on his fingers to make those lips glisten.
And herself? She was probably beside them, grinding her teeth in jealousy, Lin Ge thought to herself.
Yes, they had left one after another. If only they had been more honest then, if only they had spoken more of their true feelings before they left.
They entered the room together. Sylph pulled the heavy curtains closed and dimmed the floating lamp before placing it beside the bed. She turned around, extending her soft arms.
“Lin Ge,” she said in a gentle voice, “I know you’re grieving, as am I. So hold me, from now on it’s just the two of us.”
Lin Ge stepped forward and embraced Sylph.
……..
[I’m sorry, but when you read these words, I will have already left your side, Lin Ge.]
—At dawn three days later, the newly appointed Female Emperor received a letter from the Empress Dowager.
[I no longer wish to stay in the comfort of the palace, no longer wish to continue being protected behind you. I will personally go to Omega Alien Star, to be a true base chief, to do more of what I can do.]
Sylph wrote in the letter.
[All these years, His Majesty Kaios fully trusted me and placed the empire’s core technology in my hands, but I know the relationship between the Glorious Autonomous Dominion and the empire isn’t completely stable, and those with ulterior motives are still watching for opportunities.]
[To avoid unnecessary trouble, I will follow the Commander’s example from years ago, concealing my identity behind black armor.]
[You be the light of the empire, and I’ll be its shadow. I will think of you from across the sea of stars until the day we meet again.]
The paper letter scattered across the floor as Lin Ge ran out of the room.
[Furthermore, I have decided not to accept gene surgery for a hundred years.]
[Gene surgery seems like a wonderful method for eternal youth, but it easily makes one forget the passage of time. I want to use my own body to remember the years, and also remember those who can no longer feel the passage of time.]
[I’m sorry, Lin Ge.]
[Farewell, Your Majesty.]
“Sylph—Sylph, come back!!”
It was just at sunrise, when a slight chill still lingered among the golden rose bushes.
Lin Ge ran through the empty palace, her black hair swaying loosely. She looked around in confusion, crying out that name at the top of her voice, “Sylph…!!”
When she reached the highest point of the White Jade Palace, she saw a slender figure in a cloak walking down the long stairs step by step, into deeper shadows where sunlight couldn’t reach.
It was Sylph, who was leaving her to go to the distant sea of stars. That night’s intimate embrace was the first, and also the last.
Lin Ge suddenly stopped. The stellar light rose up, illuminating the star city’s alleyways below the palace.
Her fingers gripped the palace wall tightly, and suddenly she could no longer contain the emotions churning inside her. In that deserted place, she broke down sobbing.
She was the Emperor…and now she was all alone.
****
The Fifth Holy War seemed to draw the final period to the chaotic times. Year after year passed, and the new empire no longer experienced any other turmoil.
Although crystal disorder remained incurable, new cases decreased rapidly. All things flourished, and the people were happy.
In the distant Crystal Nest, that cluster of crimson-gold semi-crystalline life form was being slowly consumed.
As time accumulated, the crimson-gold gradually faded from the edges toward the center, becoming as colorless and transparent as the surrounding Crystal Nest ground. This was the process of Kaios’s consciousness being slowly killed by the Crystal Nest.
Finally, it was completely eroded by the Crystal Nest, leaving only a fist-sized thin crimson-gold suspended in the transparent cavity, pulsing weakly like a heart.
Inside its seemingly rigid body, Jiang Jianming was still sleeping.
The remnant crystal human’s body appeared fragile and harmless. Dense crystal particles rushed toward this sweet prey, about to tear him apart—
Just before the crystal particles could touch their prey, that weak consciousness awakened.
Like a dragon whose reverse scale had been touched, it let out a silent roar, its light blazing brilliantly!
In an instant, a radius of several hundred meters around Jiang Jianming was stained crimson-gold. More than ten crystal bones erupted from the ground, causing the Crystal Nest’s surface to crack in all directions, making the crystal particles tremble miserably.
When this fierce counterattack ended, everything returned to deathly silence.
The crimson-gold was again devoured by crystal particles, as if what just happened was merely a final flicker of life.
However, months later, when the crystal particles again invaded Kaios’s body and approached the sleeping figure, the same scene occurred again.
The monster awakened without warning, baring its enraged fangs at the Crystal Nest. It held its loved one in its embrace, devastating the surrounding Crystal Nest ground.
Its actions issued a warning—I may be half-dead, but if you dare touch the remnant crystal human inside me, I will crawl back from death’s door just to bite you viciously.
Was the Crystal Nest moved? No, it simply didn’t dare act. After several futile attempts, they could only remain in this stalemate, hoping that longer time—decades, centuries, millennia of solitude and darkness—would wear down this unreasonable existence.
But the moth-to-flame invaders returned.
They were humans in silver-black uniforms, repeatedly treading upon the Crystal Nest ground, fighting, dying, leaving scars on the Crystal Nest that were difficult to heal.
Their technology had advanced, their weapons became more effective, and their tranquilizers were different from before, seemingly having undergone a qualitative upgrade.
When the Crystal Nest blocked communications between expedition ships and space fortresses, they established temporary communication stations, using short-distance relay messaging to transmit encrypted data to distant places.
While expedition forces perished in the Crystal Nest, their data was captured by the Third Fortress and sent to Black Shark Base.
By then, the base chief had donned black armor, with a mask hiding her face and a voice modulator making her inscrutable—
Sylph was grateful for this. Otherwise, when the video was decoded and she saw that flash of crimson-gold on the Crystal Nest’s surface, that moment of emotion would have completely shattered the chief’s image.
She rewound that segment of footage repeatedly, watching it over and over without blinking.
There was no mistake, it was truly the color of Kaios’s crystal bones! Whether it was her imagination or not, that patch of crimson-gold seemed to be guiding the expedition force’s direction…
His Majesty Kaios was still there!?
……
“—You want to find Kaios’s consciousness source and perform mental consciousness projection for him?”
That night, the Female Emperor, who had just completed gene repair surgery, shut herself in and exclaimed at the projected chief, “Is that possible!?”
“It is possible.” Sylph’s originally excited voice became flat and mechanical through the voice modulator.
“But in all your experiments, don’t people have to lie in bed with these kinds of tubes connected to their heads… like this.”
Lin Ge gestured wildly around her head, saying dazedly, “Even if Kaios still has consciousness, his brain and body are gone, right!”
Sylph: “The core of mental consciousness projection technology is mental consciousness, not the physical body. It’s just that for humans, the brain carries consciousness, which is why we connect various instruments to people’s heads.”
“But His Majesty’s situation is different. He is 000, an existence with both human and crystal particle characteristics. You know that each microscopic crystal particle can carry consciousness. If His Majesty’s self-awareness can achieve two-way communication with Black Shark Base through crystal particles, I might be able to complete the projection for him!”
“How can you achieve two-way communication?”
Sylph was silent for a moment before saying, “I don’t know, this will be Black Shark Base’s next research objective.”
“…to complete a system that can extract human consciousness from crystal particles and send it into the Crystal Nest.”
=====
“Tsk…” After hearing this, Xie Yuduo rubbed his temples, his expression indescribable.
“So according to your speculation, besides swallowing the Commander, you later also, uh, swallowed Black Shark Base’s equipment!?”
Xie Yuduo showed an awkward but polite smile. “Your Highness certainly consumed quite a variety…”
Though it wasn’t eating in the normal sense.
Of course, joking aside, Major General Xie understood in his heart.
In a place like the Crystal Nest, in the enemy’s core, using one’s own body as a fortress to maintain a space for over fifty years was no easy feat.
Ryann stared at the display screen in the center of the bridge, leaning slightly forward. “…Major General Xie, what you should be most concerned about now might not be my eating habits.”
The dark space ahead remained quiet. But the 3D star map had already shown radar-captured anomalies, flashing warning red lights.
Xie Yuduo’s playful smile immediately disappeared. The major general typed a few commands on the virtual keyboard, expanding the 3D star map to maximum magnification—
Ahead, distorted crystalline objects were gathering in massive groups, swarming densely toward the Silver Big Dipper fleet in space.
“Very nice, we’ve been upgraded in treatment. When Silver Big Dipper came last time, it wasn’t this grand.”
Xie Yuduo’s face turned pale as he muttered, “Your Highness, if we die gloriously, can you do a third projection?”
Ryann pulled down the levers for highest alert and full combat status simultaneously, saying quietly, “Probably not.”
In the span of these few sentences, the attackers had already advanced one grid on the 3D star map… like a huge wave opening its bloody maw to devour tiny leaves on the water’s surface.
“These things are moving faster than the fleet’s top speed, and there’s not enough time to open a jump wormhole… retreat is impossible.”
Xie Yuduo switched to a channel and shouted into the mic. “Communications team! Is anyone alive in communications!?”
“Major General! Crystal particle density is rising sharply, long-range communication equipment is experiencing interference, we currently cannot transmit messages to the empire, our technicians are trying to find a solution…”
“Damn it.” Xie Yuduo’s face darkened as he cut off communication.
The Crown Prince stood up, coldly flexing the crystal bones at his wrist joints, “Don’t count on reinforcements, let all of Silver Big Dipper form battle formations to meet the enemy.”
“Break through, the Crystal Nest is ahead.”
