The training hall in the depths of the Himalayas vibrated with the impact of steel on hard-light shields. Grand Marshal Ye Bai moved like a blur, his vibro-blade parrying the strikes of three Space Marines simultaneously. He spun, channeled a burst of Sword Intent, and knocked the seven-foot giants onto their backs.
He sheathed his sword, but he was frowning. He wasn't out of breath. He wasn't sweating.
"Again," Ye Bai ordered.
"Grand Marshal," General Han grunted, picking himself up. "That was the fiftieth round. You are faster than the simulation predicts."
"I am not faster," Ye Bai looked at his hands. "I am stagnant."
Later, in the command center, Ye Bai voiced the concern that had been gnawing at the upper echelon of the Coalition for decades.
"We have been under the Veil for nearly a century of internal time," Ye Bai said to Jiang Chen and Emperor Xia. "My skill has improved. My understanding of the Dao has deepened. But my Realm... I am still Spirit Severing. I cannot break through to Void Shattering."
Emperor Xia, whose glowing form was seated in the command chair, nodded solemnly. "It is the fishbowl effect. A koi cannot become a dragon in a pond. The Planetary Veil protects us, but it also isolates us. We are recycling the same spiritual air. There is no fresh cosmic Qi entering the system to fuel an ascension."
Jiang Chen looked up from the schematics of the Hyperion Drive. "That is the trade-off. We chose safety over growth. We capped our magic level to max out our tech tree."
He projected the image of the galaxy.
"That is why we need to jump. We need to find a new star, a new source of energy that isn't recycled. But a blind jump with a planet is suicide. We need a map."
Jiang Chen turned to the prisoner containment feed. Captain Luo, the captured GCA officer, sat in his cell, looking broken after years of isolation.
"Luo says the GCA doesn't use maps," Jiang Chen said. "They use 'Star-Sensitives'—cultivators born with an affinity for the Void. But there is one man who tried to draw the galaxy."
"A cartographer?" Ye Bai asked.
"A heretic," Jiang Chen corrected. "His name is Mo. He claimed that stars follow mathematical orbits, not the whims of ancestors. The Alliance exiled him to a rogue moon in the Debris Belt. They call him the 'Madman of the Junk Moon'."
"He uses math?" Emperor Xia raised an eyebrow. "In this universe?"
"Exactly," Jiang Chen smiled. "He sounds like my kind of guy."
The stealth shuttle—a modified Kunpeng-Class Dropship painted matte black—slipped through the gap in the Planetary Veil. It engaged its optical camouflage, vanishing against the backdrop of the stars.
Jiang Chen, Ye Bai, and a squad of Iron Legionnaires sat in the hold. They were heading for coordinates extracted from Captain Luo's nav-computer.
"Why is technology so rare out here?" General Han asked, checking his bolter. "If the GCA has traveled the stars for thousands of years, why don't they have computers? Why do they use brains in jars?"
"Because Magic is a crutch," Jiang Chen explained, adjusting his void-suit. "When you can telekinetically lift a rock, you don't invent the crane. When you can send a message with your mind, you don't invent the radio. Cultivation halts technological progress because it solves problems too easily... for the elite. The GCA never needed science because the strong are already gods."
"But Mo needed it," Ye Bai mused. "Because he was likely weak."
The shuttle shuddered.
"Approaching the target," the pilot announced. "It's... it's a garbage dump, sir."
The rogue moon was a graveyard of ships. Thousands of hulls from different eras of the GCA were lashed together with chains and frozen gravity spells. It looked like a metal tumbleweed drifting in the dark.
"Landing sequence engaged."
The shuttle touched down on a platform made of welded hull plates. The gravity was artificial, generated by spinning the entire moon structure—a primitive centrifuge.
Jiang Chen stepped out, his sensors scanning the environment.
[Atmosphere: Thin. Toxic.][Life Signs: One.][Constructs: Hundreds.]
"Welcome to the exile," a voice crackled from a rusted speaker tower. "Did the Alliance send you to execute me? Or did you just get lost?"
"We are not the Alliance," Jiang Chen amplified his voice. "I am Administrator Jiang. I am looking for the man who drew the map."
"Maps are lies!" the voice cackled. "The stars move! The Void breathes! You can't draw a river that changes course!"
Suddenly, the piles of scrap around them shifted.
"Contact!" Han shouted.
Dozens of small, spider-like robots scuttled out of the junk piles. But they weren't like the sleek droids of Terra-Nova. They were cobbled together from spirit-wood, rusted gears, and glowing stones. They moved with a jerky, ticking rhythm.
[Analysis: Clockwork Automatons. Power Source: Low-grade Spirit Stones.]
"Clockwork?" Ye Bai deflected a mechanical spider with his scabbard. "These are toys."
"Don't destroy them," Jiang Chen ordered. He walked forward, ignoring the spiders climbing on his legs. He knelt down and picked one up.
He looked at the mechanism. It was crude, but the logic was sound. It used a Differential Gear—a concept that shouldn't exist in a cultivation world.
"You built a differential," Jiang Chen said to the air. "To calculate torque without Qi."
The voice on the speaker paused.
"You... you know what that is?"
"I know that your gear ratio is off," Jiang Chen said, tapping the spider's thorax. "You're losing 15% efficiency to friction. You need ball bearings, not wooden dowels."
A heavy blast door at the base of a crashed frigate hissed open.
A man walked out. He was ancient, his hair a wild mane of white, his robes stained with grease and oil. He wore goggles made of bottle glass.
Master Mo stared at Jiang Chen—at the gleaming alloy of his cybernetic body, at the glowing arc reactor in his chest.
"You are metal," Mo whispered, walking closer, ignoring the giant Space Marines. "But you are alive. You have no Dantian. No aura. How are you moving?"
"Fusion," Jiang Chen tapped his chest.
Mo's eyes widened behind the goggles. "The power of the sun... in a box? Theoretical. Impossible. I wrote a paper on it. They burned it."
"They burned my books too," Jiang Chen said. He pulled a data-slate from his belt. He didn't activate a weapon. He activated a Star Chart.
It was a 3D holographic projection of the local sector.
"We have a ship," Jiang Chen said. "A very big ship. But we are blind. We need a Navigator who understands that the universe is math, not magic."
Mo looked at the hologram. He reached out with a trembling, grease-stained hand. He swiped the map, zooming in on the Void Nebula.
"You came from the Nebula," Mo deduced. "You passed the Matriarch. You survived the gravity well."
He looked at Jiang Chen with a desperate hunger—the hunger of a scientist who had been alone in a room of religious fanatics for a century.
"You understand," Mo whispered. "You understand that gravity is a curve. That time is relative."
"I do."
"The Alliance..." Mo spat on the ground. "They think they fly by will. They don't know the currents. There are rivers in the Void, Administrator. Hyperspace Lanes. If you try to warp without them, you hit a wall. If you follow them, you can cross the galaxy."
He pointed to a blank spot on Jiang Chen's map.
"The Galactic Meridian you seek. It's here. But to get there, you have to pass the Great Filter."
"The Great Filter?" Ye Bai asked.
"A region of chaotic space," Mo grinned, revealing missing teeth. "The Alliance avoids it. They say demons live there. It's actually just a dense field of Pulsars. Their radiation disrupts Qi. It makes their flying swords fall out of the sky."
Jiang Chen smiled. "Radiation? My ship eats radiation."
Mo laughed. It was a joyful, manic sound. He turned and ran back into his scrap-fortress.
"I'm packing! Don't leave! I need my calipers! I need my sextant!"
General Han lowered his weapon. "He's crazy, Administrator."
"He's perfect," Jiang Chen watched the old man scurry. "He's the only human being in this galaxy who isn't trying to become a god. He just wants to know how the machine works."
Terra-Nova - The Bridge
When the shuttle returned, Master Mo didn't gasp at the size of the city or the height of the Space Elevator. He gasped at the Calculator.
He stood in the Command Bunker, staring at the Architect AI's mainframe.
"Binary," Mo wept, tracing the lines of code on the screen. "Zero and One. The language of truth."
"Master Mo," Jiang Chen said, pointing to the Hyperion Drive controls. "We have the engine. We have the fuel. Plot the course."
Mo climbed into the Navigator's chair. It was too big for him, but he didn't care. He plugged his own primitive, clockwork interface into the console. The System adapted instantly, translating his gear-clicks into digital data.
"Target: The Pulsar Fields," Mo announced, his hands flying over the controls. "The GCA won't follow us there. Their souls would cook. But us... we are made of sterner stuff."
Jiang Chen strapped into the command chair. He looked at Ye Bai, at Emperor Xia on the screen, at General Han standing guard.
"Planetary Engines to standby," Jiang Chen ordered. "Engage the Hyperion Drive."
[Project HYPERION: Active.][Void Gland Synthesis: Stable.][Space-Time Folding: Initiated.]
The vibration returned. But this time, it wasn't a hum. It was a scream of reality being torn.
Outside the Veil, the stars stretched. They turned from points of light into infinite lines of color.
The rogue moon, the debris belt, the dead solar system—it all vanished.
Terra-Nova didn't move. The universe moved around it.
They were no longer drifting. They were jumping. And for the first time in history, a planet had decided to become a starship.