Chapter 98: Encountering Interstellar Raiders

Chapter 98: Encountering Interstellar Raiders

Picking up from the last chapter — Xuanze’s father had taken the ten crates of data and the two prisoners with him, telling me he needed to return to HD Star at once to report everything and prepare for war.

Silver Pearl and the rest of us saw Xuanze’s father, Mother Han, and their party out past the swamp, watching as they boarded their ship and lifted off for HD Star.

Silver Pearl had wanted very much to go along, but Mother Han asked her to stay behind. This place was, after all, the anchor point for Earth’s projections into the virtual Future World. Someone had to look after it.

Honestly, I wanted to go to HD Star myself — wanted to see their interstellar war firsthand. I hadn’t really put my cosmic abilities to the test yet, and I was itching to try them.

Dealing with the Tengshe Star team, I’d only faced ordinary surveyors — nothing close to real fighters. Beating them had been far too easy to feel satisfying. What I really wanted was a proper opponent, someone worth crossing swords with.

Silver Pearl caught the restless look on my face, came over, and straightened my collar.

“Itching for a fight, are you? It seems the cosmic energy you absorbed this time took remarkably well — the transformation was thorough, too. Xuanze and Hanming both came here to absorb it once, but neither of them got results like yours. Maybe your constitution simply suits this kind of energy better.”

Only then did Du Xiaoran dare look properly at Silver Pearl. Just as I’d told him, she was beautiful as an immortal, pure as ice and jade, gentle in every motion. And the tender way she looked at me sent him into such fits of envy that blood came streaming from his squirrel nose.

Silver Pearl, ever perceptive, spoke to me again, softer this time.

“Why don’t you make your way to Yaomei Star? It’s one of the eight outer satellites of HD Star, and it’s been suffering raids from Tengshe Star’s interstellar pirates lately. It’s the smallest of the eight, too — it has a few capable fighters, but nowhere near enough overall strength. Mostly it just holds the line; it can’t strike back. Most of its people are merchants working the interstellar docks there. Its real defense comes from the border-defense garrison HD Star has stationed on it. You could go there first and get a feel for your cosmic abilities.”

“Is Yaomei Star far?” I asked. “Can our Blue Planet’s virtual projection even reach that far?”

Silver Pearl smiled. “You shouldn’t think of the virtual world as a projection at all — a projection would have distance limits. But what Xuanze built isn’t a projection. It’s a mirror image, built on the relationship between entangled photon pairs. If quantum interaction can span twenty-one light-years, why would a little distance like this matter? Ordinary people from the Blue Planet who come to Bixian Star can’t step outside that circle — but that’s not a matter of distance. It’s a matter of ability.

“Yaomei Star lies to the east of Bixian Star, about a trillion kilometers off. You can catch a scheduled flight from here — there are regular routes running between all eight outer satellites. Or, if you’d rather use your own cosmic ability and teleport through the green jade disk’s cavity-sac, that works too, though it’s nowhere near as comfortable or reliable as a scheduled flight. Here — take this crystal token from Bixian Star. Show it to the border-defense garrison there. They’ll know exactly who you are.”

She drew out a crystal token, tucked it against my chest, and pressed a sweet kiss to my lips.

I smoothed a hand through her hair and said, “All right. Wait for me.”

Silver Pearl nodded.

Watching us say our goodbyes, Du Xiaoran — halfway through choking down secondhand romance — sprayed another ten drops of blood from his little squirrel nose.

I shot him a look, but he pretended not to notice.

I knew he had no intention of leaving. He wanted to stay right there in the Crystal Palace…