Chapter 401: Vanguard (10,000!)

Under the scorching sun, the Twin Towers of Dawn City shimmered brilliantly. The massive steel metropolis stood like a mechanical heart in the center of the Yunjiang Plain. This was the capital of the Longguo Prefecture, the hub of the hinterland, the crown of civilization, and the final watchtower for millions in the Asia-Pacific Continent under the Apocalypse.

The towering hundred-meter city walls resembled a giant's spine, their surfaces covered in bullet holes and claw marks. The bloody battle from last night had carved new scars into the metal. The army, operating mechs and drones, was currently clearing the corpses of the strange entities along the walls while collecting blood essence.

Soldiers of the Iron Guard Brigade stepped through blood-soaked mud, silently searching for survivors. A mech kicked aside a monster's head, revealing the face of a young girl beneath. Her eyes were still open, and her hand clutched a crumpled city entry permit—though after the dissolution of the Council, this item was useless.

"Damn it!" The soldier operating the mech stomped the strange entity's head into a pulp, cursing with rage.

Since the construction of the No. 1 and No. 2 city walls, Dawn City had never faced an assault of such massive scale. With the Federal Council dissolved, panic and turmoil ensued, the outer districts flooded with chaos, and the dark night descended ahead of schedule.

The polar night assault from the No. 5, No. 7, and No. 8 Star Abyss caught millions of survivors off guard. The Night Patrol and City Defense Battalion disintegrated and fled, but the 130,000-strong Garrison Army fought through the night, finally holding the line by relying on the high walls and abundant firepower.

Woo—

Lin Xian took an aircraft to land on the deck of the Zhentian Warship. Led by guards, he arrived at Ye Lan's office. Through the transparent curtain, one could almost overlook the entire Dawn City from high above.

He looked at the devastation outside the No. 1 city wall and the smoke that had yet to dissipate; beneath his calm expression, ripples stirred.

At this moment, Lin Xian was drawn to a green potted plant on the desk. On the small plant grew several bright red cherry tomatoes. Lin Xian reached out, plucked one, wiped it on his clothes, and popped it into his mouth. It was sweet, sour, and juicy—refreshing and looking very tempting.

"They call these cherry tomatoes. They are self-pollinating and are one of the few varieties discovered that can grow and bloom in soil invaded by darkness."

A voice came from behind. Lin Xian followed the sound and saw Ye Lan taking a book down from a high shelf near the bookcase. Lin Xian hadn't even noticed her when he walked in.

"Is it good?"

Ye Lan took the book down, turned around, and looked at Lin Xian calmly.

"You look much younger than in the files."

This was her first time meeting this young man, Lin Xian. His gaze was sharp, his posture upright, and there was a sense of caution in the way he walked.

"Not bad." Lin Xian felt a bit awkward. He had thought no one was here, only to be caught stealing a snack... Seeing Ye Lan's calm expression, Lin Xian knew she didn't mind, so he scanned the office. He found the interior very simple, mainly consisting of books, a desk, and a simple single bed.

Ye Lan walked over and placed the book on the table. Lin Xian glanced at it; it was "Decisive Moments in History."

"The Phoenix Society has reorganized the Federal Cabinet officials. Some high-ranking officials who colluded with Zhou Mingyuan to persecute survivors have been arrested for crimes against humanity. According to preliminary statistics from the Night Walker organization, casualties from last night's attack exceeded 30,000. The vast majority were ordinary people from the outer districts who were swallowed and submerged by the darkness before they could enter the city."

"Is it because of the Dark Mark?" Lin Xian frowned. "The outer districts of Dawn City held out for so long; how could they suddenly suffer such a massive attack?"

"That is exactly what we want to know."

Ye Lan sighed and said, "No. 5 Star Abyss, dark-corrosion cells, mycelial consciousness connectivity—our battle with the darkness is in a silent and passive state. If we view the darkness as a civilization invasion, then the war between humanity and the dark civilization has already begun. We are facing such an enemy for the first time; only with information parity can we strive for the initiative."

As she spoke, she looked at Lin Xian. "Chu Zhaonan also understands this, so while fighting a desperate battle, he chose to open the city gates to let people from the outer districts enter the city for refuge."

"Last night, the Deep Red World launched a sabotage operation involving Red-Human Strange Entities and undercover personnel. A large number of vehicles were destroyed, leaving many people unable to evacuate. This is exactly what the Deep Red World wanted to see."

Lin Xian looked at the vast Dawn City district outside the window and said, "Professor Ye, with so many people, is there enough time to evacuate?"

"If we cannot evacuate them all at once, we must mobilize in multiple batches and race against time." Ye Lan said at this moment, "The Garrison Army and the Iron Guard Brigade will continue to garrison Dawn City until everyone has been evacuated."

Hearing this, Lin Xian's fist tightened slightly. The situation before him was the same as it had been at the airport.

"If needed, my convoy can help with the transfer."

Ye Lan looked at Lin Xian. "I called you here to talk about the Crescent Moon Project."

Lin Xian frowned. "The Crescent Moon Project has already failed. Julius himself at the Mount Olympus launch site is dead. He might have known some information, but clearly, he didn't want us to obtain it."

"Have you ever thought about why he didn't want us to obtain it?"

"Because he is a pervert, a piece of trash." Lin Xian gave a cold laugh.

Ye Lan did not speak.

"Using humans for experiments, creating some 'New World' civilization, burning vehicles, letting these people wait here to die—I don't think a pervert needs a reason." Lin Xian couldn't control his emotions and sat directly on the sofa. "Perhaps they didn't obtain any information at all; they were just playing us. Pinning expectations on such a judgment might be meaningless!"

"Judging from the abnormal attacks last night, breaking the Sky Veil and connecting to the darkness must have had an impact on the Star Abyss," Ye Lan said calmly.

"But why me!" Lin Xian suddenly shouted.

"Such an important mission, always talking about the survival of human civilization, some 'last chance for humanity'—what does this have to do with me, just because I am a mechanical ability user?!!"

Ye Lan calmly watched Lin Xian vent his anger. Before Lin Xian's eyes, the young faces from the Crescent Moon operation seemed to surface again, and he saw the look in Chu Yan's eyes before she died once more. His mood was incredibly heavy.

The office was very quiet; the air seemed to have a pleasant scent of books. Lin Xian took a deep breath, and his restless emotions gradually calmed down.

"Of course they don't want us to obtain it. They want to conduct experiments or something; they'd be happy if we humans died out quickly, and then they, these self-proclaimed 'New Civilization' members, could... be free and unfettered, right?"

Ye Lan observed Lin Xian's expression and said:

"We cannot treat the enemy as lunatics, nor can we treat the darkness as a pure disaster."

Lin Xian chewed on these words, his gaze tightening.

"Either Julius knows nothing, or he needs to protect this information—protect their 'gods'?"

Lin Xian let out a heavy breath. "Fine, I know the direction of the Crescent Moon operation was correct, but now, the result is already like this, what else can we do?"

He looked at the sky outside the window and smiled bitterly. "I don't know if we should be happy or more desperate if the Vanguard Project succeeds. There is a feeling of being abandoned. I just never understood why she said that to me at the end, telling me not to give up on her."

"Whether to give up or not depends on our own perspective." Ye Lan said this and pressed a control button on the table.

*Hiss. *

At this moment, an automatic door next to the office opened. Cold air surged, and a cryo-pod device slowly flew out.

Lin Xian's gaze froze the moment he saw it, because lying inside the cryo-pod was none other than Chu Yan.

Although there were no longer any signs of life, the bloodstains on her body had been cleaned very thoroughly. She lay there quietly, as if she were asleep.

"As a mental-type ability user, Chu Yan achieved extraordinary results in countless struggles against the Deep Red World." Ye Lan looked at Chu Yan in the cryo-pod and said to Lin Xian, "Before this operation, she once chatted with me about the consciousness link that formed between you and her. She said it made her feel somewhat anxious and fearful. Whether it was due to her operational identity or her identity as a woman, she couldn't face it calmly."

"When I discussed the Crescent Moon operation with her, she also raised this doubt: that we couldn't determine the true target, or whether the target's information had any value. But now, the mutations in the three major Star Abysses show that the impact of consciousness connecting to the darkness exists. Therefore, we must strive to obtain this information. This information may have significant importance for the survival of human civilization."

Lin Xian shrugged helplessly. "But what other way is there?"

"Do you know?" Ye Lan looked at Lin Xian, her gaze serious. "Chu Yan could not invade two people's consciousnesses at the same time."

Hearing this, Lin Xian's expression froze, his face full of confusion.

"What do you mean? She only invaded that real Julius?"

"I trust Chu Yan. Her judgment of the situation has always been very clear. So, I really want to know, before she died, what did you communicate, what did you see, and why did she make such a choice?" Ye Lan said.

Lin Xian shook his head, his expression solemn as he recalled and said:

"We judged that Julius's main body must be among them, because to control the Galaxy Heart of Dawn City, he uploaded Deep Red No. 3 to the intranet, waiting for the Gray Mist Messenger launch port to open to take over the entire city's central network. The root server system at the Mount Olympus launch site required his identification authentication. Chu Yan judged that Julius wanted to protect the dark information, so we used this point to find the main body, completed the iris recognition, captured Deep Red No. 3, and regained control of the Galaxy Heart."

"So was Chu Yan's choice random?" Ye Lan suddenly asked a question that left Lin Xian puzzled.

"No, the difference in mental power fluctuations between the two Juliuses was not significant. Chu Yan thought the opponent might have undergone some kind of training, or..."

Lin Xian opened his mouth, his expression suddenly changing as he recalled Chu Yan's words.

"I can scan the differences in mental power fluctuations between individuals. Clones will have differences due to time and training, but these two seemed to have undergone the same training, or rather, neither was Julius himself."

Thinking of this, Lin Xian suddenly became suspicious.

"If neither was Julius himself, she really did choose randomly."

"No," Lin Xian refuted his own words, rubbing his brow. "I forgot one thing. She said that if the target is in a conscious state, mind-stealing cannot be performed."

"But this doesn't work..." The more Lin Xian thought about it, the stranger he felt. "At that time, both Juliuses were..."

"Stealing thoughts is a very dangerous thing. Even if you catch the target, you have to do it while they are unconscious. A conscious person's mental power is very strong, not to mention that human mental power is constantly growing now. So the most I can do is give you a headache; only in dreams is it my home field."

Lin Xian's expression was solemn. If Chu Yan could not perform mind-stealing on a conscious person, then the mental attacks she used on the two Juliuses at that time were all feints. The purpose was to make them reveal a flaw, letting Lin Xian know that the one killed was the true target capable of iris recognition.

But the contradiction was, if Chu Yan didn't perform mind-stealing, how did she die herself after the target was killed?

"This doesn't make sense!!"

Lin Xian looked at Chu Yan lying in the cryo-pod, his expression urgent, muttering to himself: "Why, why did you die?!"

"You might have missed something." Ye Lan watched Lin Xian calmly.

"Impossible, I watched her die with my own eyes!"

Lin Xian paced back and forth, his gaze never leaving Chu Yan, while Chu Yan's words echoed in his ears.

"The most important goal of the Crescent Moon operation is to obtain information, and I am the main direction of the operation."

"Listen to me, I will control Julius in a moment, you scan his iris immediately."

"Even if his brain dies, the brain cells won't lose activity immediately. The micro-electrical signals of each neuron will be completely cut off, and all 'thoughts,' 'memories,' 'judgments,' and 'organ perceptions' will remain for a few minutes..."

"This is... the only... choice... Lin... don't... give up on me..."

Chu Yan's cry before her death echoed in Lin Xian's ears like a tolling bell. Lin Xian's lips were dry, and he stood frozen in place.

"What did I miss?"

"What did I miss?!!!!"

Lin Xian stopped pacing.

*Thump! *

In an instant, Lin Xian's pupils dilated. The scene of the office before him was like a black hole tearing and stretching the light. All memory fragments constantly backtracked, returning to the launch of the Vanguard Project before dawn, returning to the offline weapons of Dawn City, the panic of the whole city, returning to the blood-colored flower blooming on Chu Yan's face before she died, returning to the white hall where hundreds of Julius clones floated. Time constantly regressed before his eyes, returning to the Jinhai where thunder roared!

Ding Junyi told him: "Now humans can separate dark energy from cold dark particles. This is essentially a form of energy conversion from dark invasion. You can understand it as a higher-purity cold dark reagent that humans can absorb. According to Mochizuki Zhenji's calculation formula derivation, 18% is the limit that the human body can convert. This limit is also a critical value for the evolution of ability users. So in principle, except for forced filtering by the human body, there is currently no material on Blue Star that can isolate or store this energy."

Mochizuki Zhenji told him: "Judging from those colonial suppressors and restraint devices, the Deep Red World was tailor-made for it, but this monster was dead to begin with. Why do you think they installed these things?"

Chu Yan told him: "So the S-class we see is like a god to the Deep Red World. And if they want to connect to such a god, to peek into a completely unknown life form and civilization, they cannot let ordinary people or experimental subjects do it."

Kiki told him: "I understand, just like the Red-Human Strange Entities, they connect to the S-class not just to communicate information, but they want to use this mode to become S-class life forms themselves?"

His memory backtracked to when he and Kiki ascended, looking at the giant colonial corpse under Jinhai. On that armor with no power output, there were only colonial suppressors and restraint devices, and...

Mycelial brain-machine devices!

"I know what I missed." Lin Xian's expression had lost its calm, and he said slowly:

"The curtain-breaking device was launched as Vanguard Project Sequence No. 1, intending to resurrect that S-class action brain or reconnect it. Their previous tests only connected half of the action brain. Julius said that this attempt alone killed 145 clones. I have been wondering about one thing: whether the Deep Red World is competing with us for the Galaxy Heart, or for so-called dark information, or wanting to kidnap the whole city and destroy vehicles, he never threatened... to destroy the Vanguard Project. And why was Chu Zhaonan so certain that Julius would let the Gray Mist Messenger launch smoothly?"

"Because... Julius himself is on the Gray Mist Messenger!"

Lin Xian swallowed hard, his gaze falling on Chu Yan, and he sighed, muttering:

"Your only choice at that time was because after the launch started, you captured the mental power fluctuations of Julius who was ascending. So what you truly invaded was the Gray Mist Messenger!"

*Hoo... *

Lin Xian took a long breath and sat back on the sofa, feeling inexplicably incredulous.

Connecting half an action brain could instantly kill 145 people. He finally understood how the powerful Chu Yan died in that instant. Before assisting Lin Xian in feinting against Julius, she had already determined the outcome she might face—not being killed by the red-light man, but being swallowed by the gray mist.

Thinking of this, he looked up at Ye Lan and said with a complex expression: "You had already thought of this?"

Ye Lan said: "Chu Yan told me that if the operation failed and information could not be obtained from Julius, she would use invading the S-class action brain as a follow-up plan. She did not fear death; she was only worried about how to pass on the information she obtained."

"So she chose me." Lin Xian said. Ye Lan looked at Lin Xian: "She said that every time you were near death, you would link consciousness with her. This might be a commonality."

Lin Xian got up and walked to the window, looking up at the blue sky, and smiled bitterly: "To verify it, there is only one way."

After speaking, Lin Xian turned around immediately, his gaze resolute: "There are still unfinished small starships at the Xinggang, right? Lend me one!"

Ye Lan did not stop him.

Subsequently, he arrived at the Xinggang and found an unfinished Ray-class starship at the construction port. This starship was 40,000 tons, but currently, only the main frame was completed. Lin Xian directly raised his hand to activate the Black Star Forge. A violent mechanical space gate opened wide, slowly swallowing the starship.

Lin Xian gritted his teeth. With a massive loss of energy, he watched the giant structure space of the Black Star Forge, his breathing becoming increasingly heavy. He didn't consider whether he could complete the transfer, nor did he know if this would succeed.

He only had an urgent, taut heartstring now. He had to see if that woman was still alive!

*Boom, boom, boom! *

The hydraulic columns in the berth area hummed. A giant starship was transferred directly into the Black Star Forge by Lin Xian. After the mechanical gate closed, Lin Xian was already covered in cold sweat, finally saw darkness before his eyes, and slowly collapsed.

*Hum, hum, hum. *

The hollow sound echoed in his cranial cavity, as if he were in an endless, vast, empty cosmic abyss.

Lin Xian tried to open his eyes but found he could do nothing. He only felt a dull earthquake occurring deep in his head, and a huge sense of detachment came over him.

After adapting for a while, he could finally feel his existence, so Lin Xian opened his eyes.

In an instant, his pupils shrank!

He was actually standing on the head suppressor armor of that Gray Mist Messenger. This hundreds-of-meters-tall S-class flesh colonial armor was now covered in a thin layer of white frost, floating defiantly in the pitch-black space.

The sun's radiance stung Lin Xian's eyes like a golden wheel. He raised his hand to shield them, only to find a figure floating past him, accompanied by a large number of fragments.

Lin Xian was shocked to find that this was a young man wearing a starship uniform, who was already dead. As far as the eye could see, more and more dead crew members appeared before Lin Xian. In the space around the Gray Mist Messenger, countless starship fragments floated. Looking ahead, four 300,000-ton starship wrecks were scattered in the vacuum of low Earth orbit like toys crushed by a god.

The bridge of the Star Shepherd was broken in two, the exposed keel like torn fish bones, flashing with cold, hard metallic luster. The fusion reactor of the Ark was completely pierced, the melted armor solidified into hideous black lumps like charred hearts. The engine array of the Stars was completely disintegrated, and tens of thousands of thruster nozzles floated silently...

Countless cabin sections, corpses, and broken structures floated, resembling a tragic scene after an interstellar war. The edge of the atmosphere glowed with a blood-colored radiance; that was the burning debris in orbit falling.

Lin Xian turned his body and then froze.

People.

Tens of thousands of corpses floated in the vacuum like a strange deep snow. Among them were many who had died in hibernation pods. The youngest red-haired girl looked to be no more than eighteen; her braids had come undone, and her hair danced slowly like the tentacles of a jellyfish. These people were the elites selected for the Vanguard Project, the seeds of human civilization—young, vibrant, pioneers, and also martyrs of exploration.

It was hard to imagine what had happened here a few hours ago. Further away, Lin Xian saw a super-large starship that had completely disintegrated. That was the Civilization Vanguard. At this moment, the rear star-propulsion cabin section was completely broken, but the supply propulsion cabin was gone. The giant bow was still held high toward the direction of the deep star orbit, in utter silence.

Lin Xian turned his head. Blue Star hung below. This giant planetary home was blindingly blue in the sunlight. Storm clouds swirled over the Pacific Ocean, and the outlines of the continents were still clear. He could even recognize the former city clusters, but at this moment, on the continental shelf of the Asia-Pacific Continent, several "scars" like black holes were entrenched on this planet.

The closest one was the No. 5 Star Abyss, like a black tumor growing on the planet. The black sky curtain spread in waves, swallowing even the atmospheric clouds!

This was the first time Lin Xian had seen the full picture of a Star Abyss. The terrifying scene made his teeth chatter. At the same time, in the direction of the dark firmament, it was pitch black and empty, yet there seemed to be some kind of sorrowful gaze from the darkness, as if it had completely surrounded the entire Blue Star—cold, empty, like an abyss!

"Lin Xian!"

Lin Xian suddenly heard a voice. He definitely hadn't misheard; this was Chu Yan's voice!

Turning his head, he saw a light shadow of a woman standing quietly on the suppressor device of the Gray Mist Messenger.

"Thank you for not giving up on me."

Chu Yan looked at Lin Xian, her excitement hard to hide, but Lin Xian also saw that Chu Yan's consciousness body at this moment was extremely unstable—pale, flickering, as if it could disappear at any moment.

"Actually, it was Professor Ye..."

Lin Xian smiled self-deprecatingly, thinking he had already put her in a body bag.

Chu Yan shook her head: "Listen to me, Julius's main consciousness has already uploaded into the action brain of the Gray Mist through the mycelium. Although he linked it, it actually must be controlled with the assistance of the Deep Red No. 3 host. This host is named 'Viola,' just like your Grace. Now, I have used my mental power ability to directly seize his control and stole all his most top-secret information regarding connecting to the darkness, including the Deep Red World organization."

"But the price is?"

"Not important!" Chu Yan said to Lin Xian: "Listen clearly to what I say next, remember it all, and tell Professor Ye and General Xu!"

"Okay, I'm listening." Lin Xian's gaze was serious.

"The Deep Red World connects to the S-class brain through mycelium. What they obtain is not information, but a signal. This signal is very complex. Through analysis of 'Viola' and the Deep Red World's human experiment data, it was discovered that this signal might be an emotion!"

"Emotion?"

"Yes! Emotions, or wills, from the Star Abyss. There are two in total: the first is fear, and the second is doubt!"

"Fear of what?" Lin Xian asked.

"There is no subject. This fear comes from human experiments. From the perspective of the Deep Red World, they believe that dark invasion is a kind of fear power, and this makes sense regarding the principle of human mutation after mental collapse. But the problem is, it's impossible to determine whether this fear is humanity's fear of the darkness, or the darkness's fear of humanity."

Lin Xian frowned: "The darkness would fear humans?"

"Do not understand it from a subjective perspective." Chu Yan looked at the giant Star Abyss on Blue Star: "Observed from inside the Star Abyss, if interpreted from the perspective of civilization, humans are also an existence that dark creatures cannot understand or recognize. They don't understand us, and we don't know how they exist or how they were born. This is a relationship that cannot be communicated or proven between each other."

Chu Yan looked at Lin Xian: "Do you know the Rosetta Stone?"

"I do."

"Two completely strange civilizations generally have two ways of communicating without translation. The first is using the pictographic method, which doesn't work between us and the darkness. The second is the behavioral logic chain! It was precisely through this that we discovered the Dark Mark. You know this, right?"

Lin Xian nodded.

Chu Yan continued: "So if there is only one signal, this signal has no reference significance, because it's uncertain whether it's from human experiments or the darkness. This cannot form a logical coordinate system. But the most critical thing is the second signal!"

"Doubt." Lin Xian said.

"Yes!"

"The Deep Red World discovered this point, so they are certain that the subject emitting the signal comes from dark life, or the Star Abyss. If we substitute this signal into the Gray Mist and the current changes in the No. 5, No. 7, and No. 8 Star Abysses, this behavior is highly likely that the Star Abyss discovered the existence of Dawn City through connecting to this consciousness. And this discovery is not just as simple as a dark coordinate!"

Lin Xian frowned: "So the Black Tide attack last night was highly likely not just because of those people carrying marks."

"Correct! If it were just marks, given Dawn City's firepower, it could have been cleared in advance. But the dark riots of the three Star Abysses attacked for a whole night!" Chu Yan said sternly: "This means the Star Abyss is doubting, is probing!"

Lin Xian felt his scalp tingle: "So the expansion speed of the Star Abyss is actually..."

"Unrestricted." Chu Yan said with a serious expression: "There is no 1 year, no 4 months. As long as they probe the coordinate point, it only takes one night to cover the entire Blue Star!"

Lin Xian's gaze was shocked: "No wonder the No. 5 Star Abyss moved, all Star Abysses in the world are accelerating. Is this a coordinated relationship?!"

"Have you ever experienced a power outage?" Chu Yan continued: "When the room is pitch black, if you are not familiar with the environment, you can only rely on your hands and feet to probe and walk. This might be very slow. But if you turn on the lights, or you are already familiar with that location, you will walk over very quickly!"

"So monsters use Dark Marks to locate humans. No wonder after the Black Tide attack last night, large-scale S-class entities and Corpse-Drivers were discovered in the direction of the 3 Star Abysses." Lin Xian looked helpless: "It's over. We thought we would have plenty of time to transfer and evacuate the people in the city. Putting it this way, we might encounter the Corpse-Drivers and S-class disaster tonight..."

"Julius knew this, which is why he wanted to use the entire Dawn City as an Apocalypse Day test site. They wanted to research the true evolution mechanism as quickly as possible. Transforming themselves into strange entities and human-strange entities was actually the second choice. There is another important piece of information, which is that the Deep Red World's original purpose was not this."

Chu Yan said to Lin Xian: "The original purpose of establishing the Deep Red World was a path to digital life and mechanical ascension. It was just that the Deep Red World began to spiral out of control later, heading toward abilities, colonial armor, god-selection, and angels. And the one who initially organized the Deep Red World was an organization called the SIID Foundation. This was an extension of the previously largest global Roffey consortium, controlling a large amount of the Federation's economic lifeline. You might have heard of it."

Lin Xian was stunned: "I haven't just heard of it... I've also had contact with 'them'."

"Lin Xian, you must quickly inform Professor Ye and General Xu, otherwise it will be too late!"

Hearing this, Lin Xian looked at himself and shrugged helplessly: "You know, I can only see you when I am completely exhausted; I cannot control myself waking up."

"Then what should we do?"

"What else can we do..." Lin Xian smiled bitterly: "I'm thinking, even if the whole city knows this news and we escape, according to this theory, once the Star Abyss probes successfully, even if we flee to the poles, it would be meaningless, right? We might not even be able to escape the expansion speed of the Star Abyss."

Chu Yan was slightly stunned, then stood there with a disappointed expression.

"Lin Xian."

"Hmm?"

"If the world is going to end tonight, are you afraid?"

"I was a little bit." Lin Xian looked up at the cosmic starry sky and gave a wild laugh: "Now I'm not that afraid. I can count as having been an astronaut once in this life."

Chu Yan admired his optimism and sighed helplessly.

Lin Xian looked at Chu Yan's current state and simply sat down: "Since I can't go back, let me chat with you."

"Chat about what?"

"For example, are you really dead?"

Chu Yan's expression was complex: "My mental consciousness body is currently invading Julius, borrowing his life force to survive. He kept himself in a high-level life pod. I will survive in this state for a short period, but after my mental power disappears, I will completely perish."

Lin Xian opened his mouth and suddenly smiled.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I originally wanted to say I don't know if there's any other way to save you, but then I thought, the world might end tonight, maybe we won't even live as long as you."

Chu Yan smiled inexplicably. She looked at Lin Xian with glistening eyes, and after a long while, she said:

"Thank you, Lin Xian."

"What's there to thank? You helped me seize the Galaxy Heart, saved the whole city, and sacrificed yourself. What else do you need to thank me for?"

"Thank you for appearing in my consciousness, for being able to complete this mission with me, and for being able to stay here and chat with me..." Chu Yan said.

Lin Xian sighed long and hard: "It's a pity that we are both consciousness-entangled. Otherwise, in this situation, how nice it would be to have a drink."

Chu Yan looked at the sky full of starship wrecks and countless martyrs of the Vanguard Project and said to Lin Xian: "By the way, there is another very important piece of information. After the Vanguard starship sequence broke through the Sky Veil, I received a message from the Civilization Vanguard captain Chu Jing to Dawn City on the common star channel. But at that time, this place was swept by a dark energy storm, and no information could be sent out."

"What information?"

"It's that the Civilization Vanguard successfully obtained the energy data of dark-corrosion cells absorbing dark invasion through the dark-corrosion cell curtain-breaking activation monitoring experiment device when breaking the Sky Veil. If we use dark-corrosion cells to perform this potential energy conversion of dark invasion, we can, like dark creatures, 100% filter and purify water. If we use the co-potential device to excite this energy microwave, we can also help humans completely shield against dark invasion and solve the mutation disaster!"

Lin Xian's gaze changed upon hearing this. Isn't this his Heterostructural Rubik's Cube? And it's even more powerful than the Heterostructural Rubik's Cube because it can filter out dark invasion in the water!

"That device actually had this purpose!"

Chu Yan said seriously to Lin Xian: "When the Vanguard fleet encountered the dark energy storm, the 【Civilization Vanguard】 was actually the only starship capable of breaking away from the storm and leaving. However, a large-scale mutation occurred on the 【Civilization Vanguard】, so Chu Jing finally chose to launch the two remaining supply propulsion ships to push the 【Natural Selection】 and 【Deep Blue】 out of the dark energy storm area, and prepared to turn the 【Civilization Vanguard】 back..."

"He wanted to transmit the data back to Dawn City!?" Lin Xian asked in surprise.

Chu Yan nodded.

"He wanted to leave a hope of survival for humanity."

"He didn't want to give up on humanity."

Subsequently, Chu Yan told Lin Xian how, after invading Julius's consciousness, she broke through that invisible Sky Veil from the posture and perspective of the flagship of the Curtain-Breaking Project. From Chu Yan's description, Lin Xian seemed to witness that epic and tragic scene with his own eyes: 7 doomsday starships carrying tens of thousands of people, plus human frozen embryos and civilization libraries, rushed at full speed toward the Sky Veil that could directly destroy them. Within 30 minutes of encountering the dark energy storm, how the 7 captains fought to escape.

It was an incredibly tragic yet unswerving scene. Countless young lives vanished in the cold cosmic space. Lin Xian couldn't imagine how Chu Jing made the tragic decision to launch the supply propulsion ships to send away 【Natural Selection】 and 【Deep Blue】 while knowing he could survive. Perhaps it was as resolute and firm as when he commanded the Civilization Vanguard to rush to the very front of all starships.

Lin Xian looked into the distance of the starry sky at that giant, fragmented 'Deep Star'-class starship that symbolized the glory of human technological civilization, floating quietly in the vacuum, its bow held high.

Like a brilliant flag.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 402 =====