Chapter 2007: Lighting the Strange Dream in the Heart (Part 37)

At the back door of an inconspicuous clothing store in the Disney Star Wars area, a young woman put on a smuggler's cloak as fast as she could. While tying her belt, she looked back at her two companions who were dragging the knocked-out clerk behind a cabinet.

After a while, the younger male companion came out, looked left and right, and after finding that no one was paying attention here, said, "Our spaceship has completely crashed. If we want to leave this planet, we have to find a new spaceship."

"Rey! Rey!" An old voice came from inside the clothing store. The young woman who had just put on her clothes, known as Rey, hurried inside.

"What's wrong? Finn, where did you put him?" Rey turned her head to look at the young man beside her. The man was also changing into a smuggler's robe, while the older man standing beside him didn't need to change clothes; he was already dressed in rags.

The old man walked over with his weapon in hand, looked at the two young people, and said, "Before that clerk was knocked out by us, he was chatting with someone who looked like a pirate about the Galactic Council."

"Galactic Council?!" A look of surprise appeared on Rey's face, "Isn't that something from decades ago? Are you sure he was talking about the Galactic Senate of the Galactic Republic?"

"I couldn't have misheard." The old man was very certain.

"Do you remember the beam of light we saw when we were flying the spaceship?" Finn said, "Solo, have you ever seen such light?"

The old man known as Solo shook his head. In his long career as a ranger, he had never seen such a strange sight either.

"We didn't travel to the past, did we?" Rey said with a headache, "So the Galactic Republic still exists now, and the Galactic Senate hasn't dissolved yet."

"Whether this is truly the case, we still need further confirmation." The old ranger known as Solo looked left and right and said, "You two hurry up and change your clothes. We're going to catch a tongue."

The two young people looked at each other, tidied up their clothes as fast as they could, and the three of them left the clothing store together.

And just after they left, blue slime suddenly emerged from under the floor where the clerk they had knocked out was lying. The slime slowly covered his body, and the clerk opened his eyes again.

Then he took out his phone and said to the other side, "Director, I've memorized all the lines, there shouldn't be any problems... Rest assured, I let the symbiote control my heartbeat and brain waves, they definitely won't be able to tell I'm faking being knocked out."

"Okay, I understand. But I'm really a bit worried about that group of alien pirates. Are you sure they won't reveal the truth?"

The three people who left the clothing store in a hurry first circled to the back door of a tavern, wanting to see if any drunks would bump out. After waiting for a long time, there was no one, only a group of humans in strange costumes wanting to pull them for photos.

They just thought this was a special custom here and didn't care at all. Finally, they entered the tavern.

Soon, the seasoned ranger Solo spotted a slightly smaller Ravager pirate and followed this pirate all the way to the corner of a balloon shop.

It was just the time when the afternoon sun was most scorching, and there was no shade here, so there were very few people. When they reached here, the pirate's drunkenness came up, and he leaned against the wall and began to vomit.

Then he didn't look like he was just drunk; maybe there was something in the wine that made him allergic. He coughed constantly and picked at his throat, but after struggling for a long time, he couldn't even curse a single dirty word.

Finn, the youngest and strongest of the three, saw the opportunity, lunged forward, and choked the humanoid pirate's neck in one go.

The pirate's stomach was already churning, and being choked like this made him unable to catch his breath. When he woke up again, he found himself lying in the shade of a rock, with three strange-looking humans staring straight at him.

"Cough, cough, cough." The pirate coughed violently, wiped his mouth with his hand, frowned, and stared at the few people in front, saying, "Who are you?"

He reached out to touch his weapon, but found that he had been stripped of everything except his underwear. Obviously, these three were very professional. The pirate spat on the ground and said, "Fine, you win. Just say what you want."

"Do you know the Galactic Senate?" The young Rey was obviously a bit impatient. As soon as the pirate opened his mouth, she asked hurriedly.

This question really stumped the pirate. He froze on the spot for a long time, then said, "Galactic Senate? Do you mean the Galactic Council?"

It was obvious that the second word they said was different. The former word starting with S meant the real Senate, while the word starting with C actually meant "committee." There was a difference between the two.

However, because the starting words were so special, this small difference in word meaning wasn't very obvious. They both sounded like some kind of leadership organization in the galaxy.

"Tell us everything you know." Solo took out his weapon and looked at the pirate with a cold face.

The pirate found that what he held was the real deal, swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and said, "You really stumped me. I don't deal with them much, but our boss doesn't have a good relationship with them."

"Who is your boss?"

"I can't tell you, I... Fine, fine, don't be excited. The leader of the Ravager team is Yondu. Looking at your expressions, I know you haven't heard of him. You must be from other star clusters, right?"

"Get to the point!"

"I don't know what you want to hear. I can only tell you that the Galactic Council is actually an interstellar leadership organization within the galaxy. The lower house is the real local civilization leaders of the galaxy as members, while the upper house is the supervisors sent by the high-level civilizations of the Ring Sector and the three great empires."

"And they also have a guard, called what... Guardians of the Galaxy? But I haven't heard any news about them for many years."

Solo immediately widened his eyes and said in a low voice, "Jedi Order?"

The other two young people looked at him. Solo revealed a look of recollection and then said, "You might not know about the history of the Galactic Empire. That was something from when I was young."

"During the Galactic Republic period, there was a brave and battle-hardened special forces unit that was the defender of the galaxy's security and peace. They were called the Jedi Order."

"Everyone in the Order was a master of the Force. They served the Galactic Senate, and one of the most famous among them was my friend Luke Skywalker."

"What Jedi Order?" The pirate looked confused.

The others just took the terms he mispronounced as the pirate being uneducated and having heard rumors, but the general structure all matched up.

That's right, the background stories of Star Wars and Marvel had great commonalities, and some places could even be said to be complete homages. The most similar points were, first, the Galactic Senate, and second, the origin of life.

In the history set by the Star Wars background, there were also Celestials, and even the settings were similar. They were all tall giants. After the Celestial era ended, life in the galaxy appeared only after a long evolution.

Solo asked several more times. The pirate said some things very accurately, some things were rambling and unclear, and some things were just nonsense. The few people could only rely on his fragmented language to infer clues themselves.

"It might be the end of the Galactic Republic era now." Solo thought and said, "The Senate has not completely collapsed, but corruption has already sprouted. Residents living on remote planets have already glimpsed signs of the collapse of order."

"Then the next era is the Galactic Empire?" Rey flipped through the few historical knowledge in her brain and asked tentatively.

Solo nodded. He was also recalling past history. It was actually very simple. When any system reached its end, it was inevitably rigid. The Galactic Republic, which originally took maintaining the galaxy's security and peace as its own duty, had its various measures mixed with private desires by the time it reached the last generation.

After experiencing a series of main storylines, Sidious finally became the Prime Minister of the Galactic Republic, but how could a parliamentary republic reach the peak of power?

Faced with this situation, ambitious people in this historical period would only make one decision, and that was restoration.

Thus, this Prime Minister named Sidious, like many dictators in history, secretly manufactured a clone army.

When the army pressed on the border, the senators had no other choice but to pin all their hopes on the Prime Minister, so he obtained power like a feudal emperor.

Afterwards, this Sith Emperor corrupted the Chosen One, Anakin, and created the most classic villain character in sci-fi film history, Darth Vader—the father in the "I am your father" meme, Luke Skywalker's father.

Solo and Luke Skywalker were good friends and also members of the Star Wars trio. Although he was old now, he still had a deep impression of the adventures he experienced when he was young.

And then he suddenly thought that the current Sith Emperor might be preparing for a terrible Clone War for greater power. This war would last for several years and take away countless lives.

Thinking of this, he finally couldn't sit still. Solo stood up with a *whoosh*, looked at Rey, and said, "This is your destiny, child. We must go to the Galactic Senate and stop the Emperor's conspiracy!"

The other two were a bit confused because they knew nothing about the inside story from thirty years ago, but Solo had no time to explain too much to them. He walked to the pirate as fast as he could, grabbed the pirate by the collar, lifted him up, and looked at him, saying, "Where is the nearest spaceship? Tell me!"

"This... this... how would I know?" The pirate said with a difficult face, "I'm also an outsider. Why don't you go ask those locals?"

The pirate pointed behind the rock. A little boy holding a drink and a balloon had just walked past there. He looked like a tourist who had just finished a ride and was looking for his parents who were shopping nearby.

Seeing that it was a child, Solo's face softened slightly. He thought about it and felt that this could be considered a good idea. Although the locals here acted strangely, they looked friendly. Maybe they could get information from them.

The three of them didn't tangle with the pirate anymore, but quickly circled out from behind the rock. As a result, the little boy bumped into them head-on.

"Ouch!" The little boy was dizzy from the bump and fell to the ground on his butt. After he stood up, he found three people in strange clothes standing in front of him. Not only was he not afraid, but he jumped up and cheered.

The two young people in the group looked at each other. Rey, who looked kinder, sighed slightly, adjusted her facial expression, squatted down, held the little boy's shoulders, and said.

"Child, we are lost strangers. We might need your help. Are you willing to help us?"

The little boy blinked, then a look of surprise appeared on his face, as if he had thought of something, and said, "I'm willing, of course I'm willing. What help do you want me to give?"

"We want to find a spaceship." Rey looked back at her two companions and said hesitantly. Actually, she didn't hold any hope at all. Such a small child, how would he know where a spaceship was?

But unexpectedly, this little boy jumped up excitedly and pointed in a direction, "The one you are looking for must be that one, over there, there is a big spaceship over there that you can sit in!"

Following the direction the little boy pointed, the few people looked far away, and then behind a semi-enclosed rock mountain, Solo saw a familiar spaceship.

That evoked countless memories for him, because this ship was once called the fastest ship in the galaxy, and it was exactly the Millennium Falcon he had once ridden with his old friend Luke. ===== CHAPTER 2008 =====