The transition from Hyperspace to Realspace was not smooth. It felt like the entire planet had been dropped onto concrete from a ten-story building.
Terra-Nova shuddered violently. In the mega-cities, skyscrapers swayed on their dampeners. In the oceans, massive rogue waves smashed against the radiator spires.
Inside the Command Bunker, the alarms were not beeping—they were screaming.
[WARNING: CATASTROPHIC RADIATION LEVELS.][SHIELD INTEGRITY: DROPPING. 80%... 75%...][SOURCE: MULTIPLE PULSAR EMISSIONS.]
"We dropped too close!" Master Mo yelled, his hands flying across his navigation console, his goggles reflecting a blinding strobe light. "The gravity well dragged us out of warp! We are in the crossfire!"
Jiang Chen looked at the main viewscreen.
It was a hellscape of light. They were surrounded by three massive Pulsars—dead neutron stars spinning at hundreds of rotations per second. From their poles, beams of high-intensity gamma radiation and x-rays swept across the system like the lights of a cosmic lighthouse.
Every time a beam hit Terra-Nova, the purple Planetary Veil flared white, groaning under the assault.
"The Veil is boiling!" Emperor Xia's projection flickered in and out of existence. His voice was distorted, filled with static. "This light... it is not just hot. It is Anti-Qi. It disrupts the spiritual bonds of the Dragon Veins. I cannot hold the shield, Administrator! My soul is being cooked!"
"It's the Great Filter," Mo cackled hysterically, though he was terrified. "This is why the GCA doesn't come here! A cultivator's aura is a magnetic field. These stars are giant magnets. If you fly a spirit ship through here, your soul gets scrambled like an egg!"
Jiang Chen watched the shield gauge drop. 60%.
If the Veil failed, the gamma rays would strip the atmosphere in seconds. The oceans would boil. The people would die of radiation poisoning before they even knew the roof was gone.
"Physics," Jiang Chen whispered. "It's always physics."
He plugged his neural link deeper into the mainframe. "System. Analyze the beams. They act like weapons, but they are natural phenomena. They have a pattern."
[SYSTEM ANALYSIS: TIER 0 PHYSICS INTERVENTION.][SUBJECT: NEUTRON STAR PSR-J1748.][ROTATION: 716 Hz (Rotations per Second).][NATURE: RHYTHMIC HIGH-ENERGY PULSE.]
The System, the crystallization of the Old Universe, did not see a threat. It saw a battery charger.
"They are spinning," Jiang Chen realized. "They aren't continuous lasers. They are pulses. On-Off-On-Off."
He turned to Emperor Xia.
"Xia! Stop trying to block the beam! You're fighting the ocean! You need to ride the wave!"
"Ride it?" Xia gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his face in the Core Chamber. "It is burning me!"
"System," Jiang Chen commanded. "Calculate the Resonant Frequency. We are going to synchronize the Planetary Veil's refresh rate with the Pulsar's rotation."
[CALCULATING HARMONIC SYNC...][TARGET FREQUENCY: 716 Hz.][PROTOCOL: THE OPEN DOOR.]
"Listen to me!" Jiang Chen's voice boomed over the speakers to the entire command crew. "We are going to lower the shields."
"Are you insane?" Grand Marshal Ye Bai shouted. "We will vaporize!"
"Not all the way," Jiang Chen's eyes glowed with the blue light of the System. "We are going to flicker the shield. When the beam hits us, we are closed. In the microsecond between beams... we open. And we let the background radiation in."
"Why?" Master Mo stopped typing.
"Because we are running low on fuel," Jiang Chen smiled, a predatory grin. "And God just gave us a free outlet."
The Synchronization
The command was executed.
The Planetary Veil, which had been a solid wall of purple light, began to vibrate.
HMMMMMMMMMM.
The sound was a low E-flat, vibrating through the bones of every citizen. The shield began to strobe at 716 times per second. To the naked eye, it looked solid, but to the sensors, it was a shutter camera blinking at impossible speeds.
The Pulsar beam swept over the planet.
FLASH.
The shield was up. The radiation bounced off.
The beam passed.
CLICK.
The shield opened. The ambient magnetic energy of the neutron star—massive, raw, and electric—flooded into the Dragon Spine.
It didn't hit the cities. It was funneled directly into the Planetary Capacitors.
In the Deep Core, Emperor Xia screamed, but it wasn't in pain. It was in shock. The burning pressure vanished, replaced by a torrent of raw power flowing through him, not against him. The Dragon Veins, usually gold, turned a blinding electric blue.
"Energy levels..." Old Wu stammered at his console. "Administrator! The capacitors are at 100%! 200%! The batteries are overloading!"
"Don't store it!" Jiang Chen ordered. "Dump it into the grid! Send it to the factories! Send it to the Legion!"
The Iron Citadel - Barracks
General Han was in the armory, trying to repair the scorching damage on his armor from the Void Beast acid. The power in the base was flickering due to the shield strain.
Suddenly, the lights surged. They didn't blow out; they became blindingly bright.
The charging dock for his Mark VI armor began to hum. The suit, which usually took six hours to charge to full combat readiness, flashed green in three seconds.
[Power Core: 100%.][Overcharge Detected: 400%.]
Han stared at the suit. The green eyes of the helmet were practically lasering holes in the wall.
He grabbed a Fusion Battery for his heavy bolter. It was vibrating.
"General!" a Lieutenant ran in, holding a datapad. "The fabricators! They're running at quadruple speed! We just printed a month's worth of ammunition in ten minutes!"
Han looked at the lights. He felt the vibration of the planet.
"The Administrator..." Han grinned, picking up his supercharged helmet. "He plugged the planet into a socket."
Deep Core Command
The crisis had turned into a feast.
The Pulsar Fields, the "Great Filter" that had killed countless Void Shattering experts, was now fueling the Terran Coalition's industrial revolution.
Master Mo stared at the readings, weeping tears of scientific joy.
"It's beautiful," Mo whispered. "The Alliance fears this place because they rely on spiritual stability. But machines... machines love the noise. We are harvesting the heartbeat of a dead star."
Jiang Chen disconnected the interface. The fluid in his tank was bubbling from the heat, but he felt energized. The System had updated the planetary status.
[Planetary Energy Reserves: MAXIMUM.][Iron Legion Combat Readiness: SUPERCHARGED.][Hyperion Drive Status: COOLED & READY.]
"We can't stay here forever," Jiang Chen said, stepping down. "The structural integrity of the Veil can't take this strobing for more than a few days. The Dragon Veins will burn out."
He looked at the map. They were in the middle of the Pulsar Field. The radiation was masking their presence perfectly.
"But we have enough juice now," Jiang Chen pointed to the Galactic Meridian. "With this charge, we don't need to do short hops. We can long-jump."
"How far?" Ye Bai asked.
"Straight to the edge of the GCA Central Worlds," Jiang Chen said. "We skip the border patrol entirely."
[SYSTEM ALERT: ANOMALY DETECTED.]
The System's voice interrupted the victory lap.
[The Radiation harvest has revealed a hidden signal masked by the Pulsars. It is not natural.]
Jiang Chen frowned. "A signal? Here?"
[Audio Only. Loop. Frequency: Pre-Era Human Standard.]
"Play it."
The speakers crackled. Through the static of the neutron stars, a voice emerged. It wasn't a cultivator's chant. It was a recorded message, repeating every 716 milliseconds.
"...This is Station 4... The Wall is holding... but the Queens are adapting... Send nukes... Send everything... We cannot let them pass the Filter..."
The message looped.
"...This is Station 4..."
Silence descended on the bridge.
"That's not GCA," Master Mo said, shivering. "That language... it's Old Tongue. The same dialect as your Ancient Archives."
"It's my people," Jiang Chen whispered. "The Pre-Era Civilization."
He looked at the location of the signal. It was coming from the center of the Pulsar triangle.
"They didn't die out," Jiang Chen realized. "Or at least... they left a sentry."