The signal from Station 4 was strong, rhythmic, and desperate, cutting through the radiation of the Pulsar Fields like a lighthouse beam. Terra-Nova, now supercharged with the stolen energy of the neutron stars, followed the frequency to its source.
But there was no station. There was no spinning metal fortress or debris field of a lost war.
Floating in the dead center of the Pulsar triangle, protected by the magnetic shear of the stars, was a bottle.
It was a Jade Flask, carved with runes the size of continents, drifting in the void. It was colossal—large enough to swallow a moon whole. The mouth of the flask shimmered with a spiraling, milky-white vortex.
"The signal is coming from inside that," Master Mo whispered, adjusting his goggles, his hands trembling over the sensor array. "It's a Spatial Artifact. A pocket dimension. Someone put the station in a jar."
Before Jiang Chen could order a scan, the space around the flask warped. A figure materialized in the vacuum, sitting cross-legged on a floating prayer mat made of woven starlight.
He was a giant, projected by his own aura to stand thousands of miles tall. He wore robes embroidered with images of dying galaxies. His skin was like parchment, his eyes swirling nebulae.
[Target Analysis: Entity Class - Nirvana Realm (Tier 9).][Designation: The Collector.][Threat: Extreme. Reality distortion imminent.]
The giant opened his eyes. He didn't look at Terra-Nova with malice. He looked at it with delight.
"A rogue planet?" his voice resonated, not through sound, but through the fabric of space, shaking the foundations of Neo-Beiluo. "And modified with... Primitive Mechanics? How quaint."
He reached out a hand the size of a continent.
"I have not seen a Clockwork World in three thousand eras. You will make a fine centerpiece for the Bronze Wing."
"Evasive maneuvers!" Grand Marshal Ye Bai screamed.
But it was useless. The giant didn't throw Qi. He threw a Rule.
"Collection."
The vortex at the mouth of the Jade Flask expanded. A suction force—not gravity, but a spatial mandate—grabbed Terra-Nova. The engines roared, the Iron Legion braced, but the planet was pulled inexorably forward.
The universe twisted. The stars vanished. Terra-Nova was sucked into the bottle.
The transition was instantaneous and nauseating. One moment, they were in the blinding light of the Pulsars. The next, they were floating in a soft, amber twilight.
They were inside the flask.
The interior was vast, a dimension stretching millions of miles. And it was full.
"Look at them," Emperor Xia whispered, standing on the observation deck, his spirit body flickering with awe and horror.
Floating in the amber stasis were thousands of ships. But not cultivation ships. These were Pre-Era Starships. Dreadnoughts with railguns. Exploration cruisers with solar sails. Massive orbital habitats.
And in the center, blinking its desperate SOS, was Station 4.
They were all frozen. Golden talismans, each the size of a building, were slapped onto their hulls, locking them in time.
"It's a museum," Jiang Chen realized, his cybernetic eyes zooming in on the nearest ship—a Battlecruiser with the markings of the United Earth Federation. "He didn't destroy them. He collected them."
The sky of the dimension rippled. The face of the Antiquarian appeared in the amber clouds, looking down at his new acquisition.
"Welcome to the Vault," the Antiquarian boomed. "I am Collector Yuan. Do not struggle. The stasis field preserves you. You are art now."
He leaned closer, his giant eyes scrutinizing the Planetary Engines in the Himalayas.
"Fascinating. Fusion Thrusters? Crude. Dirty. But the scale... ambitious. Tell me, little Construct, who built you?"
He was talking to the planet as if it were a toy. He assumed Jiang Chen and the population were just automated gears inside a machine.
Jiang Chen keyed the global comms. "Do not fire. He thinks we're a doll. Let him think that."
Jiang Chen stepped onto the external hull of the Command Bunker. He looked up at the giant face in the sky.
"We are not a Construct," Jiang Chen projected his voice using the Planetary Speakers. "We are travelers."
"It speaks!" Yuan clapped his hands, causing a thunderclap that rattled the Veil. "A sentient Artifice! Even better. I have a Sentinel Droid from the Sirius Sector that sings opera. You two will look lovely next to each other."
"Release us," Jiang Chen said calmly. "Or your collection will break."
Yuan laughed. It was a sound like grinding tectonic plates. "Break? Little toy, I am a Nirvana Realm master. I hold this dimension in my palm. The technology you are made of is heresy. It is dead. It is metal without a soul. I keep it only to remind the galaxy why we ascended beyond such clumsy tools."
He pointed a finger at a massive Pre-Era Titan Mech floating nearby. It was frozen mid-stride, a golden talisman stuck to its cockpit.
"See that? The 'God-Killer'. It tried to shoot me with a 'Nuke' four thousand years ago. Now, it holds my coat."
Jiang Chen looked at the Titan. He looked at the talisman. And then, his enhanced vision noticed something else.
The Titan wasn't powered down. The reactor lights were faint, but steady.
Jiang Chen looked closer at the other ships. The dreadnoughts. The Station.
[System Analysis: Target 'God-Killer' Titan.][Status: Immobilized via Spiritual Interference.][Power Source: Active.][Reason for Stasis: The Collector has jammed Spirit Stones into the mechanical joints to block movement.]
Jiang Chen almost laughed.
The Antiquarian didn't know how technology worked. He didn't know how to turn it off. He had just slapped "Stop" stickers on everything and jammed rocks into the gears.
"You call this heresy," Jiang Chen said, a cold smile spreading across his face. "We call it Standby Mode."
"System," Jiang Chen commanded via neural link. "Ping them."
[Query: Broadcast Range?]
"Everything. The whole museum. Broadcast the Wake Up Codes on all Pre-Era frequencies."
[Protocol: REBOOT.]
An invisible signal, encoded in binary—the language Yuan called 'clumsy'—shot out from Terra-Nova. It passed through the amber air. It hit the Titan. It hit the Dreadnoughts. It hit Station 4.
Inside the Titan's cockpit, a dusty console flickered. [Command Received: Administrator Override.][Stasis Jammer Detected: Purging.]
The Titan shuddered. The golden talisman on its chest smoked as the internal reactor surged to 100%. The "Spirit Stone" Yuan had jammed into the knee joint was pulverized by hydraulic pressure.
Yuan blinked. "What?"
The Titan moved. It turned its head. Its massive Gatling Cannons spun up.
Then, the Dreadnoughts woke up. Their running lights turned from red to green. Turrets rotated. Missile bays opened.
Station 4 stopped broadcasting SOS. It broadcasted: [TARGET ACQUIRED.]
"My collection!" Yuan screamed, his face in the sky twisting with confusion. "Why are the dolls moving?!"
"Because you didn't take the batteries out," Jiang Chen roared. "Iron Legion! Target the flask walls! All ships! Fire at will!"
It was the greatest accidental fleet in history.
Ten thousand years of frozen human weaponry woke up simultaneously. The Titan unleashed a torrent of depleted uranium rounds into the sky. The Dreadnoughts fired railgun salvos. Station 4 launched a swarm of antimatter missiles.
And Terra-Nova, the angry new arrival, added its own fire. The Planetary Engines flared, not to move, but to burn.
The amber dimension turned into a firestorm.
Yuan panicked. He was powerful, but he was fighting an army of millions inside his own pocket. He tried to crush them with his will, but the sheer volume of explosive ordinance was overwhelming. A railgun slug the size of a bus slammed into his projected eye.
"Insolent trash!" Yuan howled, withdrawing his consciousness from the dimension to protect his real body.
The disruption caused the Jade Flask to crack.
"We have a breach!" Master Mo shouted, pointing to a tear in the amber sky where real starlight was bleeding through.
"All units!" Jiang Chen commanded. "Follow me! We are leaving the museum!"
Terra-Nova surged forward, aiming for the crack.
But they weren't leaving alone.
Behind them, the Titan, the Dreadnoughts, and the drone swarms of Station 4 formed a phalanx. They recognized the Administrator's signal. They recognized Terra-Nova as home.
They weren't just escaping. They were defecting.
Terra-Nova smashed through the wall of the pocket dimension, shattering the Jade Flask into a billion glittering shards.
They emerged back into the Pulsar Fields.
Collector Yuan sat on his prayer mat, bleeding from his eyes, holding the broken neck of his precious bottle. He looked up, terrified.
He didn't see one rogue planet anymore.
He saw a planet. And flanking it, an armada of the Ancient Dead, reawakened and ready for war.
"You broke my toys," Yuan whimpered, realizing too late that he wasn't the one playing the game.
Jiang Chen's voice broadcasted from the center of the fleet, amplified by the Titan's war-horn.
"We aren't toys, Collector. We are the Terran Coalition."
"And we are keeping the ships."