Chapter 443: Chapter 443 The End of the Universe

No matter how long I studied it, I still couldn’t understand what exactly a Glory Starship was.

Of course, if you only looked at it superficially, these massive Planet Fortresses were nothing more than battle spaceships built in a somewhat unique way, just like Visca’s Barrier Star. I’ve been there more than once, and it felt like a high-tech Planet Battleship. But setting aside appearances, its essence was more like a mystic creation.

The physical manifestation of spiritual power, projecting the soul in the form of a Planet Battleship, was summed up in one mystical sentence about the entire construction process of the Glory Starship. Naturally, this was a simplified theory to accommodate my mortal-level comprehension. If anyone really wanted to know how Glory Starships came into being, I have a detailed document compressed to just four gigabytes for the index alone that you could take a look at…

It was night on the Mother Star; of course, since there was no constant star, the day and night here were also artificially controlled. The reason for setting the surface of the celestial body to nighttime was entirely for the convenience of observing the situation at the World Arbitration Agency.

In the clear and profound night sky, three giant moons hung.

Those were the Planet Battleships with their gravity isolation systems deployed, orbiting the distant orbit of the Mother Star. Because they were quite close, from our position they looked like huge, shadowless lamps covering half the sky. The faint radiant glow they emitted covered the land in a soft halo of light, giving a somewhat sacred feeling. These three Planet Battleships were completely different from what I had seen in my dreams; they were no longer those with mechanical structures exposed and covered in rough and aged appearances, but rather they were covered with a layer of smooth, silvery-white shells. This was the fully charged and functioning form of the Glory Starships. The silver-white shell was not just for aesthetics; its defense ability could even come close to the Gospel Book’s after activating the Arbitration Mode–of course, it was still slightly inferior to the latter. After all, the initial purpose of Glory Starships’ creation was not to act as frontline battle spaceships; their true strength lay in their strategic value.

Although it took a long time to prepare, Pandora and her companions needed only an instant to transform into starship forms. Strictly speaking, just a few minutes ago, Pandora had just finished the grand battle of snatching candies with Little Baobao, and now, according to the schedule, she had already turned into a Planet Battleship in outer space, leaving only Little Baobao with half a lollipop in her mouth, standing on the ground, dumbly looking up at the sky and muttering.

“I originally thought those three girls would take at least half a day to transform,” I said, rubbing my eyes and speaking to Sandora beside me, “how did it finish so quickly?”

Those three moons appeared out of nowhere in the sky! The sudden downpour of silver light nearly made me tumble in fright!

“Did you forget the essence of Glory?” Sandora gave me a sidelong glance, “As fast as thoughts can spread, that’s how fast Glory Starships can deploy. Their only time consumption is the preparation before deployment. At that time, Xyrin Apostles have to constantly adjust their spiritual power forms. Switching the massive spiritual power from a closed state to a semi-open state takes nearly a month, but when it actually comes to releasing that spiritual power, an instant is enough–if every Glory Starship had to be built in a shipyard like ordinary Planet Battleships over several months, all the while without any defense ability, the value of this ultimate weapon would be greatly diminished.”

I nodded, deeply agreeing with Sandora’s words, and it seemed that an even more important point was this: If Glory took several months to be built bit by bit, would the impatient Pandora have the patience to wait?

I looked up curiously at the three bright moons in the sky.

The largest one was Gaia, the next a level down was Alaya, and the smallest was Pandora… uh, what’s with this awkwardly divine feeling anyway? It was completely impossible to imagine three cute girls hanging in the sky and shining upon all living beings, dammit! Should I even comment on this situation?!

“Pandora, how’s it going?” Struggling to shake the strange thought of “three sisters shining upon all, big cuties saving the masses” from my mind, I reached out through spiritual connection to the loli general who, now in space, had finally expanded by billions of times but still tragically ranked last among the three sisters.

“The Arbiter has descended, please guide us…”

The voice that responded to me wasn’t Pandora’s usual unfathomable, emotionless tone, but a woman’s voice that seemed to blend multiple timbres, low and gentle yet conveying an unbelievable sense of solemnity.

“The biggest difference between the Arbitration Institution and a normal Glory Starship is that, once activated, the minds of the Three Sages merge completely into one, whereas the Xyrin Apostles under the normal Glory Form always maintain their independent self-consciousness,” Sandora saw the strange expression that suddenly appeared on my face and guessed without thinking what had surprised me, “They have now merged into a new mechanized consciousness, although they retain their original memories, but don’t expect to hear a response from any one of them anymore.”

“Uh… so they’ve temporarily disappeared?” A weird feeling suddenly surged in my heart. I knew that for the Xyrin People, this was as normal as eating and drinking, but the thought that Pandora’s will had become such a mechanized AI…

“It’s not quite right to say they’ve disappeared,” Sandora also seemed troubled to explain the current state of those three girls to me, “Well, you might think of them as a closed council of three, where every word you say to them is collectively reviewed by this council, and the results of the review are announced by an artificial intelligence spokesperson they’ve created. Throughout the process, you cannot communicate with any member of the council individually, nor can council members respond to you with their personal opinions… That’s roughly the situation, and this is also the working principle of the Arbitration Institution.”

A council, huh…

I looked up, a little madman full of militaristic thoughts, a dumb angel, and a blue AI whose attributes were still unclear but seemed to act in a mechanical and rigid manner. They had formed a council that could judge the entire world…

Sandora, let’s defy the heavens together!

It’s been a month and ten days since we left the Black Sun.

That massive dark celestial body had already collapsed completely about a month ago, as we had expected, the collapse of the Black Sun was entirely different from that of a normal star, showing no energy release or destructive gravitational impact. Its demise was as quiet as a bubble bursting without sound–befitting the “lawful death” attribute of the Black Sun itself.

When several unmanned outposts we deployed around the Black Sun simultaneously transmitted that the target zone had become a normal law zone and the Abyss Energy arrived as scheduled, its dark star core had been fortified for so long, now freed like a bird from a cage, bursting with as much energy as if injected with 200 milliliters of chicken blood, our unmanned outpost placed on the shell of the Black Sun lost contact in just two seconds. No doubt, it was the radiation of Abyss Energy that caused the outpost’s self-destruction.

Fortunately, the barrier set up by Dingdang and Qianqian worked, the space around the Black Sun had become a stagnation belt. Dingdang eliminated the quantum effects of that space, preventing Abyss Energy from instantly contaminating the entire universe through quantum radiation. Then, she set the speed of light in that space to ten meters per second, which was the limit Dingdang could achieve against such powerful Abyss Energy. Now, the Abyss Energy near the Black Sun is seeping out at this “highest speed in the universe,” slowly and firmly, but faced with the iron laws of the universe, it is still impossible to escape that cage for the time being.

Qianqian changed the time curvature of the space modified by Dingdang. Inside that space, time still flowed normally, but to us, time there was one and a half times slower than the outside world, giving the natives of the Kepulu Star Zone precious breathing time.

There’s one day left until the “Hot Restart.”

The Protos people’s evacuation is nearing its end. Nearly four-fifths of the Protos “Divine Race” in the entire star zone have reached or are on their way to several temporary refuges around Kepulu. There are some ecological planets urgently established by the Empire, and it’s not easy to complete such a large amount of work in a month. Even with the Xyrin Hosts’ construction speed, setting up sanctuaries for the refugees of an entire star system was an impossible task in such a short time. Ultimately, it was Lilina who used the sacred seeds bestowed upon her by her “merciful and loving Lady Goddess” to build unstable ecosystems on several planets, solving the urgent survival needs of the refugees. Now, the housing ships of the Protos people themselves and those simple ecological planets form the eastern area of the largest refugee camp in history, while the west part of this refugee camp, a crude colony named “New Eden” by Reynolds, is filled with human exiles.

Despite the fact that ultimately, less than a third of humanity was successfully mobilized (a number already staggering in itself, and not solely attributed to Uncle Reynolds’s charisma but also to the Imperial Army’s little “gentle persuasion” over local governments), the sheer population base of the Protos made the number of human refugees the most headache-inducing issue. So much so that the Imperial Army had to allocate nearly half of its transport ships just to get these people to safety. At that point, I even felt a bit thankful for Monsk, that foolish Dictator. If it weren’t for his paranoia and alarming media onslaught that convinced most of the upper-class citizens of Kepulu to stay and resist the “invasion” at home, these impoverished inhabitants of the peripheral zones would never have had a chance at refuge.

“Arbiter ready, the will of the Empire shall prevail.”

The World Arbitration Agency had completed all its preparations and self-checks. Although it had been hundreds of thousands of years since Pandora’s Trio had undertaken a synchrony of arbitration, their coordination was still seamless. As they sent back this message, the three Planet Fortresses, stationed above our Mother Star, formed a stable triangular formation, slowly orbiting our planet–a trajectory that blatantly defied normal universal law and was clearly propelled by the fortresses themselves. As the three girls, who had embodied Great Gods, gradually activated their Law Modules, the cosmic space we occupied began to exhibit various bizarre natural phenomena.

Suddenly, projected images of planets appeared in the Void, fleets of ships’ shadows clustered together, inexplicable flashes of light, and the occasional shooting star across the night sky–when this area hadn’t seen a comet for light years!

These were projections from different corners of the universe; they weren’t necessarily from our current era. It was just like the giant planetary phantom that had drifted slowly over Mother Star at an altitude of tens of thousands of kilometers just minutes before–Qianqian discovered that the object was actually a planet that had been destroyed a billion years ago!

“The last batch of human evacuees has left the blockade,” reported from the lower information link, “The Second to the Sixth Fleets of the Empire have already withdrawn from the Kepulu Star Zone. The area can be locked down at any time.”

While the information link reported thus, I knew that even now, scattered human fugitives were desperately guiding their private ships towards the Imperial blockade.

Less rational than the Protos and far less unified than the Insect Race, humans are psychologically fragile and fickle. Even in the places most influenced by Monsk, there were those with the intent to flee: often wealthy individuals, heads of private enterprises, or insightful scions of prominent families. It was not unusual for them to own private interstellar shuttles. These sporadic escapees had been passing through our outposts without a break for a month, and despite Monsk’s strict prohibition of such treasonous acts, these smugglers continued to do so.

Now before me was a communication port awaiting a command. With final confirmation at this port, the entire Kepulu Star Zone would be utterly locked down, leaving no one able to escape, including ordinary citizens who, in their desperation, were accelerating so wildly they risked burning up their ships.

“Ah Jun, there’s no time left,” Sandora said softly, leaning in, “This is a necessary sacrifice, we have a responsibility to the entire universe.”

“I know,” I took a deep breath, working hard not to think about the billions who still hadn’t evacuated from this star zone and were desperate to do so. We also…

“All Imperial outposts, attention. I am your Emperor. Now I command: Complete lockdown of the Kepulu Star Zone! Complete lockdown of the Kepulu Star Zone!”

Turns out, it only took that bit of courage to actually say it.

Imperial Commanders around me continued to work tensely but orderly. The command hall was as quiet as ever, but I knew that just one second before, this area, equivalent to the size of two Milky Ways, had been sentenced to death, including the countless lives that still lingered here.

The lockdown of the Imperial cordon was just the first step. Its purpose was only to prevent frequent mass exchanges from creating unstable fractures during the upcoming “Cosmic Division”. Two hours later, within a chamber temporarily set up as a temple, Dingdang also began her task: to transform the Kepulu Star Zone into a closed-off new universe.

This process is the highest authority possessed only by the Management God of the world; even the Xyrin People with their deep understanding of Mysticism cannot explain the principles behind this partitioning of the world. In my Perception, everything happened in an instant: the Spiritual Connection that had always maintained a smooth contact with Earth’s Shadow City was suddenly weakened, a phenomenon caused by the emergence of the World Barrier. Through slightly more advanced observation instruments, the anomaly was even more apparent: the volume of the Universe shrank in an instant, from its originally boundless expanse to the size of a single Star System, and beyond the Star System lay the unexplorable World Barrier. The Gravitational Waves we sent out from one direction would come back almost instantaneously from behind us, proving that the entire Star System had assumed a closed state–the space here realized continuity and closure on a 160,000 light-year scale–nothing could escape from here anymore.

Perhaps the scientists of Monsk would notice the anomaly in the Universe before the final moments of the formatting process; I wonder if they would regret their past decisions at that time?

For the Exiled who had already left the Kepulu Star Zone, the change that their homeland underwent was even more horrifying: disappearance, an instant disappearance!

When the world was cut into two parts, the Kepulu Star Zone was excluded from its original coordinates. In the eyes of the natives of Kepulu, the place they once called home vanished in an instant, leaving not even a void: the space around Kepulu Star Zone faithfully followed the laws of spatial elasticity, instantly filling the void left by the disappearance of the Star Zone.

“The closure of the world is complete, the establishment of the World Barrier is confirmed, and the Imperial Mainstay Fleet in the Mother Star has received the information purge exemption Code, ready for a Hot Restart at any moment.”

This was the report that came through the advanced information link; there was no more hesitation now.

No one could escape, not the Abyss, not the civilization here.

“Qianqian, stop the Time Distortion; Dingdang, release the speed of light and Quantum Effects!”

In an instant, I felt as if an immense, fierce Energy was sweeping across the entire Command Hall, but that must have been an Illusion. The Defense Barrier of the Mother Star was immensely powerful; it could even sustain itself for a significant amount of time inside the Abyss Gate. Now that the Power of the Abyss had been fully released, it could not infect this blue orb closest to it.

The violent negative sentiments began to sweep across everything, taking the form of Quantum Effects. At infinite speed, they enveloped everything they could find, but if these Abyss Energies had a consciousness of their own, they would be shocked to discover: the world they ambitiously wanted to destroy had become a narrow cage with a radius of only 160,000 light-years, and within this cage, there was also a ferocious Devourer locked up with them!

Three hours, just three hours later, the Abyss Power evenly covered every inch of this cosmic prison. The intense destructive intention stirred, spreading unrest throughout the world–I never thought their contagion speed could reach such a level. Even the strongest Protos Warriors could only endure for three hours at most?

“This is a rare research opportunity…”

Beside me, the mass projection of Taville suddenly let out a deep sigh. She was referring to the Protos Natives turning into Monsters under the influence of the massive Abyss Radiation, a process of a new species being eroded by the Abyss that was quite interesting research material for her–not necessarily valuable, but definitely full of amusement.

I gave this mad Scientist a displeased look and then connected to the Three Sisters who illuminate all things: “Activate the Hot Restart, begin!”

(Well, unexpectedly a second update… how about a little token of appreciation…)(To be continued, for more information, please visit www.wuxiaworld.site. More chapters are available, support the author, support genuine reading!)