Su was stunned for a moment. A few seconds later, the man suddenly laughed, looking at Jiang Jianming in disbelief. “Are you trying to convince me to surrender? With such emotional rhetoric!?”
Jiang Jianming: “No, the Crystal Cult’s crimes are unforgivable, the Empire won’t accept your surrender.”
Su: “Then what do you want?”
At this time, the Imperial army had withdrawn, with Black Shark Base at the center, and debris from the battles floated in this region of space.
The massive spherical wormhole began to expand, and Jiang Jianming heard the voice of Black Shark Base personnel through his earpiece:
[Colonel Jiang, jump energy levels are sufficient, two minutes until the wormhole fully forms. The base will enter immediately upon formation, please return to the base interior at once!]
“Hey,” Red Dragon impatiently pulled at Jiang Jianming, “why waste words with someone like this? Let’s go.”
“You go in first.”
Jiang Jianming looked up at the expanding wormhole, set a countdown on his wrist device, “I have a few questions for this Bishop of Destruction.”
Red Dragon rolled his eyes in contempt and turned to leave. Jiang Jianming turned his gaze back to the captured cockpit, looking toward Destruction.
He sighed. “Your Excellency Su, you are the last remaining bishop of the Crystal Cult. As far as I know, there has never been an anti-human organization of such scale and severe impact in history. I just want to talk with you before you die.”
“…”
Su shook his head, “Then unfortunately, you won’t get any enlightenment from me.”
“I am a lost soul, and my reason for following Archbishop Gauis was merely hoping that crystal particles could guide me to truth, but…”
But in the end, the crystal particles couldn’t answer his questions.
This man with gray temples raised his head, looking at the space around him.
After this battle, the Crystal Cult was almost completely eliminated, with no other chances remaining. Archbishop Gauis had thrown himself into the Crystal Nest, and as for the outcome of that decisive battle, it was no longer something he could know.
As death approached, endless bewilderment showed in the Bishop of Destruction’s eyes.
“Why,” he muttered softly, “do I sometimes feel humans are beyond salvation, yet at certain moments… it’s as if I’ve never truly understood what humans are.”
Jiang Jianming thought briefly, then answered. “Perhaps our essence is precisely this full of contradictions.”
The disabled human stood on the gravity walkway outside the base, gazing at his final enemy from afar.
The shadow of the alloy structure completely enveloped him, the wormhole’s turbulence disheveling his black hair.
“But what’s unfathomable is worth exploring,” he said slowly.
“For tens of thousands of years, we’ve explored the world outward, and ourselves inward.”
“The universe is boundless, and the self is full of contradictions. We are thus fortunate to have an infinite path ahead.”
Creak... Jiang Jianming heard his anti-crystal armor make an unsettling friction sound, as if some force was pulling him upward. That was the spatial interference effect of the wormhole.
Dozens of meters away, Destruction lowered his eyes, muttering, “An infinite path ahead… is it.”
“I always thought our inability to escape our foolishness and despicable animal nature was the source of our tragedy, yet you say this is our fortune. Commander, you really are…”
Su slowly lowered the hand that had been touching the small crystal on his chest, and sighed.
He could see that Jiang Jianming hadn’t let his guard down, but had stopped at the maximum safe distance, making a mutual destruction strategy impossible.
“Then,” his Adam’s apple bobbed, his eyes shifting through several emotions before he finally asked. “Will humanity win?”
Jiang Jianming smiled. “What do you think?”
“…”
Beep beep–
His wrist device sounded; the safety time he had set had passed.
The spatial distortion rapidly increased, making Jiang Jianming sway, barely able to stand.
Inside Black Shark Base, the silver-haired woman pounded on the glass. Diana anxiously called out. “Jiang!! We’re about to jump, come back quickly!”
The Bishop of Destruction suddenly closed his eyes and said in a barely audible voice. “The Mother Nucleus… is underground.”
Jiang Jianming’s expression changed slightly as he abruptly disconnected his earpiece. “What?”
Red Dragon braced his arm against the automatic door, shouting, “Hey! Disabled, are you tired of living? Come back!!”
Diana’s expression suddenly changed as Audrey’s consciousness took over the body. She gritted her teeth, jumped down from the second floor, and sprinted toward the door.
“Gauis’s consciousness will merge with the Mother Nucleus in the Crystal Nest…”
The Bishop of Destruction curved his lips slightly, saying softly, “It’s somewhere beneath the crust in the Crystal Nest. If you want victory, you must find and destroy the Mother Nucleus before the Ultimate comes.”
“Jiang!!”
Footsteps rushed from behind as Audrey grabbed Jiang Jianming’s arm, “There’s no time, hurry!”
They exchanged a glance and turned to run back. Heat and pressure squeezed their bodies. During their sprint, Jiang Jianming squinted back to see the Bishop of Destruction gazing up at the approaching wormhole, his expression somewhere between bewilderment and acceptance, showing no fear of death.
“We’re going to jump, hold onto me!”
Audrey released her crystal bones and struck hard against the steel walkway. The two of them used the final recoil to dive through the door as it slammed shut behind them.
Almost simultaneously, Black Shark Base plunged into the jump wormhole. The gravity walkway hadn’t retracted in time and was shattered to pieces under the wormhole.
Audrey suddenly turned back. “Jiang, how are you? Did you hurt yourself in the fall?”
Red Dragon rushed over in large strides, saying through gritted teeth. “Hey, did he tell you something at the end!?”
Jiang Jianming coughed twice as he got up from the ground. Looking outside again, the cockpit containing the Bishop of Destruction had scattered its final ashes.
“He said,” after a moment of silence, Jiang Jianming said gravely, “the Crystal Nest’s Mother Nucleus is underground.”
……
The existence of a core that concentrated crystal particle consciousness within the Crystal Nest was something Black Shark Base had theorized years ago.
The expedition force confirmed this when entering the Crystal Nest: the crystal particle density increased as they moved in a fixed direction.
However, they had all previously thought they would see the Crystal Nest’s Mother Nucleus once they reached those coordinates. They hadn’t expected they would need to dig underground.
“Ah, come to think of it.”
Changze clapped his hands together, “When the Crystal Nest swallowed Gauis back then, it did drag him underground.”
Jiang Jianming remained silent in thought. After returning to the base, he had immediately sent this intelligence to the military department. Now, having removed his battle armor, he sat in front of the large screen, leisurely browsing through data.
Standing next to him with hands on her hips was a fuming Diana. “Jiang, you took another risk!”
Jiang Jianming lifted his face innocently. “Not at all, I timed it well, but Destruction suddenly started talking about the Crystal Nest’s Mother Nucleus, and I couldn’t not listen.”
Diana: “What do you mean couldn’t not, what’s more important than your life? I-I’ll call my brother to scold you!”
“…Your brother already scolded me once.”
“Oh, really? Then I’ll tell His Highness the Crown Prince and the Chief, let them scold you!”
Speak of the devil, the door to the break room opened.
The Chief walked in and removed her mask.
“Chief…”
Jiang Jianming had just stood up, and upon seeing that young beautiful face, he smiled slightly, “I’m still not quite used to it.”
Sylph said softly, “That’s why I thought I should show my face more often, you’ll get used to it soon.”
“No need to trouble yourself.” Jiang Jianming went up to her and said seriously, “Chief, now that the Base Body plan is completely finished. I hope to redo the consciousness projection and receive the original body’s memories… is that alright?”
Sylph wasn’t surprised, but lowered her eyes and sighed lightly. “Are you really sure about this?”
Lance and Changze in the room also looked at him.
A flash of guilt passed through Jiang Jianming’s eyes, but he still nodded firmly. “Yes. That’s also a part of what makes me who I am. Even if they’re unbearable fragments, I don’t want to forget…I’m sorry.”
Sylph’s brow twitched, “Unbearable?”
She realized something seemed off, “Wait, why are you apologizing?”
“Wasn’t my past self really terrible in personality?”
Sylph: “?”
Lance and Changze were also confused: “?”
Jiang Jianming returned their confused looks with equally puzzled eyes, as if he had stated an undeniable truth like “one plus one equals two.”
He actually said very seriously, “Emperor Kaios… His Majesty was so good, yet rumors of discord between the Emperor and Commander still spread in later generations. Using the process of elimination, it must have been the other party’s problem, right?”
All three people then took on complicated expressions.
Sylph turned away, at a loss for words.
=Changze discretely gave him a look. “Your Excellency Jiang, to be honest, what you just said… is at a level that would silence both the Emperor’s faction and the Commander’s faction.”
Now it was Jiang Jianming’s turn: “?”
Changze patiently explained, “The Commander’s faction would think you’re a blind fan of their rival, while the Emperor’s faction would think you’re their rival pretending to be a blind fan.”
Jiang Jianming was silent for two seconds, then said, “Aren’t you supposed to be a researcher?”
Why are you so experienced and knowledgeable about this?
Changze flashed a bright smile. “Oh, when my Base Body was in the Glorious Autonomous Dominion, I was a fan following His Highness Ryann.”
Jiang Jianming: “…”
“Little Excellency, Commander, let’s drop it this time, but please don’t say such things in the future, especially in front of His Majesty.”
Sylph let out a long sigh, “After you left that year, His Majesty couldn’t come to terms with it for a long time. He felt he had wronged you.”
During those years when the Commander slept, the stars returned to humanity, glory belonged to the Empire, leaving only solitude for the monarch.
Sylph still remembered those nights when Kaios silently guarded the Commander’s coffin.
His Majesty didn’t like turning on the lights, always hiding himself in the depths of darkness, resting his forehead against the edge of the ice coffin, letting his platinum curls cascade down like a sculpture.
When she came to persuade him, the Emperor would shake his head wearily. He kept his eyes closed, his eyelashes casting shadows on the crystallized skin below.
“Sylph…” Kaios spoke with his eyes closed, his voice hoarse and soft, “Zhen misses him, misses him so much.”
“Looking back now, it seems absurd, why did Zhen and the Commander… end up like that?”
“He was already enduring so much hardship, weighed down by so many heavy shackles, yet Zhen was blind and couldn’t see clearly, ultimately hurting him so deeply.”
“After making such mistakes, Zhen didn’t even dare to apologize in person, just locked him in Woll… you’ve seen those surveillance footage, haven’t you? Later, he would stand in the courtyard every night looking at the night sky, trying to find the starship’s trajectory…”
The Emperor gently kissed the glass of the ice coffin, murmuring, “No amount of regret now can bring it back.”
“Your Majesty, please don’t be like this.” Sylph said softly, “The Commander knows your feelings for him, he doesn’t blame you. And everything was cleared up in the end, before the Commander went to sleep…”
But His Majesty often wouldn’t listen, lost in his heartbreaking emotions, his consciousness hazy and thoughts scattered.
“Sylph… Zhen heard that the gods worshipped by people in the Ancient Blue Star Era would descend from heaven to earth to suffer, and after death, their merciful souls would return to the clouds.”
Kaios opened his eyes, which were dim, his fingers tracing the pale outline of the sleeping figure through the ice coffin, “Zhen stubbornly refuses to let him rest…is Zhen making another mistake?”
Sylph was speechless. Ryann laughed self-mockingly. “See, after treating him that way, Zhen cries a bit and he softens again.”
“Zhen sometimes dreams…dreams of before…when Zhen and Jiang were on Blue Mother Star.”
“He was still very young, Zhen was even younger, could still sit in his embrace, listening to him recite Ancient Blue Star Era poems one by one.”
“If only…” the Emperor choked, “If only we could go back… to that time…”
“If only he could wake up again, could look at Zhen once more…”
During those years, Kaios kept torturing himself like this, and Sylph had to passively endure it. Those feelings were truly indescribable.
So at this moment, the Base Chief gazed deeply at the black-haired youth before her, her heart turbulent and unceasing.
“For the consciousness projection,” Sylph finally said, “you should still let His Highness accompany you, he promised that you would wake up in his arms back then.”
“No need, Chief.” But Jiang Jianming shook his head, his gaze clear, “I’ve thought about it, but if Ryann knows, I’m afraid his original consciousness will go crazy and possess someone again… You said that would be risky.”
Previously, he had only seen Ryann’s first Base Body’s remains, yet the Emperor’s original consciousness had risked so much just to come comfort him.
This time when he does the consciousness projection, with Ryann’s temperament, he definitely won’t be satisfied with just having a Base Body accompany him, he’ll certainly go crazy again.
But honestly, Ryann’s original consciousness had already forcibly traversed too many times. The first time he came over, he couldn’t even speak; the most recent time was in the Crystal Nest when he wanted to “eat him,” his memories and cognition were already confused.
Jiang Jianming dared not provoke him anymore.
“While His Highness doesn’t know, Chief, please help arrange it for me quickly, best if it can be completed before reaching the Crystal Nest.”
He smiled as he spoke, his gaze gentle. “I want to meet him as a complete person.”
