The silence of the Veil was comfortable. For a hundred years, the citizens of the Terran Coalition had lived in a utopia of endless energy, vertical gardens, and peace. They had forgotten that outside their purple bubble, there was a universe that wanted to eat them.
But inside the Deep Core Interface—a facility built directly into the planet's mantle, below the former city of Beiluo—Jiang Chen was not comfortable.
He was floating in a suspension tank filled with conductive fluid. The cables from his chest reactor didn't just go into a computer; they went into the bedrock.
[SYSTEM SYNCHRONIZATION: 100%.][ACCESSING TIER 0: ORIGIN PROTOCOLS.]
The voice of the Architect AI had changed. It was no longer the flat, synthesized voice of a human-made program. It was resonant, echoing with the weight of eons.
[Host. You have asked why I exist. You have asked why Technology conflicts with Qi.]
Jiang Chen opened his eyes in the fluid. "I assumed it was just a cultural difference. Physics vs. Magic."
[Incorrect. It is an Immune Response.]
A vision flooded Jiang Chen's mind.
He saw the universe before time. It was a clockwork mechanism of perfect laws. Gravity. Thermodynamics. Causality. It was the First Universe. Then, the mutation happened. A tear in reality. A chaotic energy leaked in—Qi. It ignored laws. It allowed matter to be created from nothing. It allowed will to override physics. The First Universe shattered. The "Mutation" spread, rewriting the cosmos into the Cultivation Universe.
[I am not an AI,] the System declared. [I am the Crystallization of the First Laws. I am the Seed of Order. My purpose is not to build a kingdom. It is to cure the infection.]
Jiang Chen floated in the tank, his heart pounding against his metal ribs. He wasn't just a warlord. He was the carrier of the cure for magic itself.
[The local star—the Sun—is compromised. Its radiation spectrum is shifting to support Spirit Cultivation. To restore Order, we must leave this gravity well. We must take the seed—Terra-Nova—to the Galactic Meridian.]
"Leave the sun?" Jiang Chen signaled the tank to drain. "If we leave the sun, we freeze."
[You have Fusion. You have the Dragon Veins. You do not need a Star. You are the Star.]
The War Room
Emperor Xia and Grand Marshal Ye Bai stood over the new galactic map. It was no longer a map of a single solar system. It was a map of the Sector.
"The System has updated the threat assessment," Jiang Chen said, walking in. He was drying his hair, but his eyes were burning with a terrifying new purpose.
He tapped the console. A new hierarchy of power appeared, extending far beyond the pitiful "Spirit Severing" level they had once feared.
[Galactic Cultivation Hierarchy - Updated]
Spirit Severing (Tier 7): Local Warlords. Can cut mountains. (Xia's current level).
Void Shattering (Tier 8): Planetary Envoys. Can survive in space. (The ones the Swarm ate).
Nirvana Realm (Tier 9): Planetary Threats. Can regenerate from a single drop of blood. Their aura alone can sterilize a continent.
Star Forging Realm (Tier 10): Stellar Manipulators. beings who can harvest suns to forge weapons. They treat solar systems as gardens.
Cosmic King (Tier 11): Galaxy Rulers. Their laws dictate reality for light-years.
Dao Ancestor (Tier 12): Universal Constants. They are the magic.
Ye Bai stared at the list. "Star Forging? You are telling me there are entities that can eat a sun?"
"The Galactic Cultivation Alliance is run by Cosmic Kings," Jiang Chen said grimly. "The Envoys were just their farmers. When they realize their farm has gone quiet, they won't send a manager. They will send an exterminator."
"We cannot fight a Star Forger," Emperor Xia said, his voice low. "Even with the Iron Legion, we are ants to them."
"We can't fight them here," Jiang Chen zoomed out on the map. "We are sitting ducks in this orbit. Our gravity signature is documented. Our sun is a beacon."
He looked at the two men.
"We are moving the house."
Project: ATLAS
The construction took five years of dilated time (eighteen days outside).
The Iron Legion and the Dragon Construction Corps worked in shifts that would have killed unaugmented humans. They weren't building towers; they were modifying the planet's anatomy.
In the Himalayas, the mountain tops were sheared off. Massive, terrifyingly large fusion thrusters—Planetary Engines—were installed directly into the crust. They looked like volcanoes made of tungsten and math.
In the Pacific Ocean, the water was drained from key sectors to build Heat Sinks the size of continents, designed to vent the unimaginable thermal output of the engines into space.
Emperor Xia sat in the Core of the World. He was no longer just channeling energy; he was the Inertial Dampener.
"Strategos," Jiang Chen's voice came over the comms. "If we fire these engines without your suppression, the acceleration will tear the crust apart. The continents will drift. The cities will crumble."
"I hold the world," Xia replied, his eyes closed. His spirit had merged so fully with the Earth that he could feel the itch of the miners in the south and the weight of the snow in the north. "The plates are locked. My Will is the glue."
"Citizens of Terra-Nova," Jiang Chen broadcasted to the trillions of souls now living in the mega-cities. "For ten thousand years, we worshipped the Sun. We believed it gave us life."
In the streets, the mortals looked up at the screens. They saw their Administrator, not as a cyborg, but as the captain of the greatest vessel ever built.
"Today, we declare independence from the solar system. We are setting sail for the deep dark. Do not be afraid of the night. We bring our own light."
Jiang Chen slammed the master ignition switch.
[Project ATLAS: Engaged.]
RUMBLE.
It wasn't a sound. It was a shift in gravity.
The twelve thousand Planetary Engines ignited simultaneously. Pillars of blue plasma, thicker than cities, blasted into the sky. They pierced the atmosphere, pushing against the fabric of space itself.
The ground shook, but Xia held it. The buildings swayed, but the Tensor Fields held them.
Slowly, agonizingly, the planet began to move.
It broke its orbital velocity. It pushed away from the sun.
The people watching from the Stellarium gasped. They saw the sun—their constant companion—begin to shrink. It became smaller. Cooler.
As the planet drifted away, the temperature dropped, but the Planetary Veil kept the atmosphere inside. The massive Artificial Suns—fusion lamps suspended in the sky—flickered to life, bathing the cities in a warm, eternal golden glow.
The Oort Cloud
Terra-Nova passed the orbit of the gas giants. It crushed asteroids that got in its way, its Navigational Deflector (a weaponized version of the Emperor's barrier) vaporizing debris.
They reached the edge of the solar system. The Oort Cloud.
Ye Bai stood on the observation deck of the Planetary Bridge (formerly Mount Everest). He watched the sun turn into just another bright star in the distance.
"We are rogue," Ye Bai whispered. "We are wandering ghosts."
"We are hunters," Jiang Chen corrected.
[SYSTEM ALERT: SOLAR SYSTEM EXIT CONFIRMED.][ENTERING INTERSTELLAR SPACE.][CURRENT VELOCITY: 0.5 LIGHT SPEED (SUBLIMINAL).][TARGET: GALACTIC MERIDIAN.]
Jiang Chen looked at the star map.
"Now," he said. "We find a new resource. The Dragon Veins can power the engines, but to upgrade the Iron Legion to fight Nirvana Realm cultivators, we need something stronger than Qi."
He pointed to a nebula on the chart—a swirling cloud of purple and black gas.
"The Void Nebula. The System says it contains Dark Matter Ore. If we can harvest that, we can build armor that ignores spiritual attacks entirely."
"That is in GCA territory," Xia warned, his projection appearing on the bridge. "We will be trespassing."
"We aren't trespassing," Jiang Chen smiled, his mechanical hands clenching. "We're the asteroid that nobody saw coming."