“The Perseverance has reached Genma Space Station. All departing students, please take all your belongings and leave in order.”
Standing beside the window, Lu Yin stared down at the space station below. Genma Space Station was a long distance from the solar system, and the first place that the Perseverance would perform a wormhole skip. It was quite ordinary to most people, but for earthlings like Zhang Dingtian and Xu San, it was a completely novel experience. The place was thousands of times larger than the Perseverance, a construct of all sorts of strange metals that looked like a giant beast brandishing its claws. Its flight machinery constantly adjusted its position ever so slightly, keeping it floating in one place.
Behind Genma was a protective net made of countless flying machines. Even though they were quite a distance away, Zhang Dingtian could feel the shocking fluctuations of Explorer-realm star energy from out back. The Perseverance settled down on a giant dock, and beam after beam of light flashed below as students left the ship.
Coming from all corners of the Empire, most students didn’t need to go to the Capital Star. Over twenty of them stopped off at Genma and left the Perseverance, clearly in a more relaxed mood. One of them was Jeraldine, who finally left Lu Yin’s side. Glancing back at the spaceship, she saw Lu Yin waving to her and glared firmly before mumbling something under her breath; they clearly weren’t pleasantries. From his perch up above, Lu Yin raised a brow; this brat needed a beating.
Besides Jeraldine and Veron who were from the same school, Parlie’s planet wasn’t far and he left as well. Surprisingly, even Silver got off at this stop, leaving Lu Yin deep in thought as he watched the youth’s back. That guy was unfathomable. Cooperation? They’d work out who’d played whom soon enough, but before that, he needed to understand Silver’s backing.
Lu Yin noticed Sigmund’s figure in the sky before returning to his observation of the star charts; it was only in outer space that he could truly feel its boundless nature. He was confident in getting to the fifth star within the month, so how strong would he be then? Every additional star was double the former’s power, and he had suppressed a Sentinel Qingyu with four. Five could perhaps let him match Yu Academy’s Melders; even Munoor might not be a rival at that point.
The Station Master of Genma was named Barudar, an Explorer whose combat level had broken past 10,000. He had been stationed here for over two centuries and worked conscientiously the entire time; while someone of his status didn’t need to oversee the wormhole personally, he had made sure to be its primary guardian for the past 200-odd years and thus gained fame throughout the Great Yu Empire.
Sigmund quickly travelled behind the station and glanced at the wormhole before looking at the protective net of warships packed densely around it. Barudar’s own ship was at the very center, and the door creaked open to reveal a middle-aged man in combat armor. He appeared before Sigmund in one step, “Greetings, General Sigmund.”
Sigmund respected this man quite a bit, so he smiled, “Station Master Barudar, we haven’t met in thirteen years. How have you been?”
Barudar replied with a serious tone, “Haven’t noticed any enemy invasion in these thirteen years.”
“That’s great. His Imperial Majesty has mentioned many times to thank you for protecting the borders.”
Barudar immediately gave a military salute, “I’m a soldier of the Empire, it is my duty to protect the borders.”
“You should be notified that there’s a fringe planet called Earth that recently evolved. We have to trouble you to monitor it strictly, and dispatch people at the earliest opportunity to destroy the failed goods or the enemy may sneak in,” Sigmund warned.
Barudar grew apprehensive, “The Neohuman Alliance?”
Sigmund nodded and looked towards Earth, “The zombies that failed to evolve cannot be discovered by the Neohuman Alliance. Even if they take just one corpse king, it will spell trouble for the Great Yu Empire. You must understand the importance of this matter.”
Barudar remained stern, “I do. I’ll send troops to Earth immediately.”
“Also, don’t harm the planet when you destroy the zombies. That planet belongs to the King Zishan now.”
Barudar acknowledged and left immediately. Not long after, the Perseverance launched off again and flew towards the wormhole behind the space station. The moment it entered the wormhole, everyone felt their body growing weightless. But in the next moment, everything returned to normal, and the only difference was the change in the surrounding stars. They had appeared in another system’s space station, not needing to pause for even a moment.
Xu San was relieved. He had been afraid in the moment they had entered the wormhole, as that darkness of the depths was not one that everyone could bear to look at. The wormhole had allowed them to traverse a rather vast distance, and they had moved from the solar system into another weave altogether.
The universe was divided as such. Galaxies were the smallest full units, followed by local clusters, and superclusters, and finally a filament. Most great powers of the universe were measured in the number of filaments they controlled; each one contained multiple superclusters and was vast beyond measure. The Great Yu Empire contained thirteen in total, almost dividing the Frostwave Weave into two halves.
Above the filaments were the weaves. The entire Outerverse contained 72 in total, of which the Frostwave Weave was just one. They each averaged about a hundred territories, and the Frostwave Weave was above average at 125. The Great Yu Empire only occupied about 10% of it in total.
The solar system was located in the fourth filament, and the Perseverance had just warped from the fourth to the third. They were headed to the Capital Star in the first filament, the center of the Great Yu Empire.
The training area was much emptier after the departure of a batch of trainees, but Lu Yin still saw a few familiar faces when he headed to the facilities. Those faces avoided him immediately, but he didn’t particularly care; he had no plan to live with them in harmony anyway. The Zishan kingship was bound to bring him trouble from the moment it had been granted to him, and he could already tell that he would be hated throughout the Great Yu Empire. But so what? It was a false identity anyway, and all he needed was the authority to influence some territory of the Great Yu Empire in the future. Of course, he didn’t yet have that authority, but the kingship would help.
The training facility was quite large and could simulate different environments and regiments. Lu Yin ambled towards the gravity region which had a hundred gravity rooms, a place where he could train his physical body. Each gravity room was large enough to accommodate multiple people training at the same time.
Lu Yin found an empty room and increased the gravity to sixfold, warming up for a while before increasing it again. His body gradually felt heavier and the pressure on his organs grew stronger. His body was drenched by the time he reached 30x; this was the most that the average Sentinel could survive.
“Alright, time to train,” he muttered, starting his normal regimen. It was a set of basic exercises that he’d used to toughen up his body so he could use the Shockwave Palm without using any star energy. Things like the Shockwave Palm and Spacerender Palm might not be as effective as other battle techniques, but he didn’t wish to give up on them either. In a situation where he had no access to star energy, they would be a lifeline.
Outside the gravity room, student after student gazed in wonder at the figure posted on the console. Someone guessed, “Thirty times normal? Who’s training there? Could it be Munoor or Yan Gang? Or Huo Xiaoling?”
“Or perhaps that one old soldier, there are Melders among the soldiers too.”
“It’s most probably a soldier. They can’t get enough star crystals, so they train physically instead. There are many Sentinels with Melder-level strength.”
“But they’re just trash, so what if their bodies are so strong, they’re just warslaves,” someone retorted.
Not far away, several soldiers’ expressions warped but they didn’t retort. They had all come from trial planets themselves, and it wasn’t easy to even enter the Perseverance. Unfortunately, they weren’t qualified for the Great Yu Empire to pay for formcast remodelling, so they truly were warslaves.
“That’s enough, why don’t you just open the door if you want to know who’s inside,” another student was impatient.
Someone beside warned, “There may be trouble if you interrupt someone else’s training. Thirty times normal gravity, it’s very likely a Melder. Do you think you can take it?”
That student’s face changed and he did not dare to proceed.