After the church deacon left, the taskers in this area dispersed with an unspoken understanding. So engaged in fights, others in trades.
Because of her high task completion efficiency, Ye Bai inadvertently drew the wariness of other taskers, which saved her a fair amount of trouble. Seeing her choose a direction to leave, those nearby instinctively gave her space.
The farther she moved from the wormhole region, the darker and more desolate the surroundings beca. Even with Ye Bai’s keen vision, she could only make out faint starlight from distant galaxies, countless light-years away.
Fortunately, as her ntal power grew, the psychological fears that typically plagued intelligent beings in vulnerable states had all but vanished. Flying alone in such an environnt no longer unsettled her. Instead, she distanced herself while sorting through the gains from this expedition.
Two thousand flexible Stellar Points and the manufacturing technology for the rare material—Shadow Magnet.
No wonder the task had quickly gathered a hundred willing B and A-level ntalists. Ye Bai, as the top perforr, naturally received the richest reward, but even the average taskers likely didn’t fare too poorly—certainly better than grinding for points in the trading zones.
Of course, what probably attracted taskers even more was the fact that the Stellar Church held technologies far rarer and more advanced than those in the exchange zone.
What appeared in the exchange zone now was clearly a filtered, second-tier selection. Even Ye Bai, seeing it for the first ti, could tell—let alone those who had long operated in the chaotic starfields.
Yet, reflecting on today’s mission, Ye Bai remained deeply puzzled.
Upon actually engaging with the wormhole-closing task, she could clearly sense its structural instability. Its "front" likely differed from the wormhole she knew in the Solar System.
The latter allowed stable passage for nurous spacecraft, akin to a well-built tunnel, while the forr felt more like a precarious natural fissure, teetering on the brink of collapse.
Ye Bai suspected that the task she had completed was akin to sealing such a fissure.
But why? The Stellar Church didn’t strike her as a charitable organization, and this barren expanse of space held no life—hardly an "environntal" cause.
Unless… it was related to the wormhole’s connection point?
Ye Bai gazed into the uninhabited void. The wormhole had been sealed, but faint spatial disturbances lingered.
Extending her ntal power, she located a weak ripple in space and applied the sa gravitational-wave technique she had used to close the wormhole—only this ti, she reversed the process.
After a while, she stopped.
The attempt was woefully inefficient. Despite expending a third of her ntal energy, the impact was less than one percent of what she had achieved at the wormhole.
"Never mind."
Shaking her head, Ye Bai abandoned her curiosity and prepared to return.
Perhaps due to the Stellar Church’s vast resources or the area’s unique properties, the exchange zone’s wormhole teleportation couldn’t be used here. Instead, upon completing the task, she had been granted a one-ti return trip, identical to the outbound journey.
Even with no one around, she cautiously set the wormhole’s exit near the asteroid belt—still a distance from the black hole’s lair.
Having never personally manipulated spatial technology before, she lacked familiarity. But now, activating the wormhole, she gained a deeper, more nuanced understanding.
Unlike large-scale wormholes, where every move affected the whole, micro-wormholes felt to Ye Bai like temporary spatial bullets—piercing through space for a fleeting mont, allowing passage along their brief trajectory.
Though she didn’t know the source of this "bullet’s" power, witnessing it sparked an idea.
The space around the temporary wormhole warped, making the previously unyielding weak point more pronounced.
Seizing the mont, Ye Bai channeled her ntal energy and tried again.
Clang…
This ti, after pouring a substantial amount of reversed ntal energy, she felt herself breach so fissure. Her ntal form even hallucinated a crisp, ringing sound.
Ye Bai sensed her consciousness breaking through the fabric of space, reaching into an unknown realm.
"......"
"......"
"......"
Yet, only silence greeted her.
She swiftly activated her Insight ability but gleaned nothing. Had the earlier feedback not been so unmistakable, she might have dismissed it as a hallucination.
The next mont, the wormhole fully ford before her.
The residual shockwave from the "bullet’s" final impact surged like a tidal wave, covering the breach she had just exploited. Ye Bai hastily withdrew her ntal probe before the gap sealed entirely.
Perhaps the other side was just another stretch of dead space… or so dark universe.
"Best not to indulge curiosity recklessly."
Muttering to herself, Ye Bai shook her head and stepped into the wormhole without delay.
With no access to the exchange zone’s wormholes here, missing this one would an a troubleso journey back.
The familiar sensation of traversal enveloped her, and she pushed aside her earlier thoughts, focusing instead on the Shadow Magnet production process.
Then—
Every hair on Ye Bai’s body, hidden beneath her adaptive camouflage, stood on end.
"......"
A torrent—or perhaps countless torrents—of sothing indescribable, neither purely ntal energy nor pure information, suddenly cascaded over her, drenching her consciousness from the crown of her head downward.
"Drenching" wasn’t quite accurate—it was rely the initial sensation.
In the next instant, mid-traversal, Ye Bai felt her physical form dissolve, leaving only her ntal essence to collide headlong with the deluge.
Whispers, knowledge, fleeting images—countless fragnts of information surged toward her.
Overwheld by the sheer force, she instinctively tried to grasp, to retain sothing—but it was all too vast, too rapid. The re act of attempting to process it froze her thoughts into numb stagnation.
Unable to be absorbed, the information passed through her ntal form as abruptly as it had arrived—then vanished without a trace.
It might have lasted an eternity, or perhaps no more than three seconds.
Buzz—
When self-awareness returned, Ye Bai found herself clutching her head, adrift in the void. Ahead, the familiar asteroid belt lood.
What… just happened?
Ye Bai searched her mories, accompanied by another loud buzzing in her head, before she faintly recalled the information she had strained to comprehend and morize.
"Do not be discovered."
"Beware... the stars."
Ye Bai murmured these two phrases—the only ones she had managed to grasp from the overwhelming flood of information.
Beyond that, all that remained in her mory was a faint glimr of light.
She couldn’t even describe what that flash was, but as the sole surviving image, it clearly held significance—and for so reason, it gave her an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.
No matter how hard she tried to recall, though, she found no further clues.
Her body instinctively absorbed cosmic energy to restore her ntal strength. After resting for a while, Ye Bai finally lowered her hands from her head.
When she took in her surroundings, her expression shifted once more.
This location was hundreds of kiloters off from her intended teleportation point. While that distance might be considered 'short' on a cosmic scale, it was impossible for her to have drifted this far unconsciously while disoriented.
The deviation had co from the micro-wormhole’s coordinates.
Was it caused by that sudden surge of information? Ye Bai could think of no other explanation.
Moreover, it was clear that the flood of data during her transit had been triggered by the impulsive experint she had attempted monts earlier.
But she never expected that a simple act of curiosity would lead to such chaos while traversing the wormhole.
—Even if there was sothing on the 'other side' of the wormhole, why was the reaction delayed?!
Ye Bai reflexively complained in her mind, only to be imdiately sward by countless questions...
What was that sudden deluge of information? Who had sent it? Was it a warning or a threat?
And the ssage—"Do not be discovered"—who was she supposed to hide from? What was she not supposed to reveal?
...Was it her identity as Bai Ye? Or was it her knowledge of the Ten Thousand Realms’ secrets?
At that thought, Ye Bai frowned. This was her greatest secret. The Star Alliance might have already guessed it, but the lawless sectors of the galaxy remained unaware.
Yet that imnse flood of data had conveyed sothing that almost seed... concerned for her. It made no logical sense.
And then there was the second part—"Beware the stars." Did it refer to the Church of the Stars? Or perhaps the 'deity' they worshipped?
The sheer scale of that information surge had been so vast that even Ye Bai, an atheist, could only describe it as sothing divine.
Was the Church of the Stars’ call for psychics to seal the wormholes ant to block access to the 'other side'? If so, their efforts seed strangely half-hearted.
If anyone else attempted what Ye Bai had done, wouldn’t they also receive the sa ssage? Why wasn’t the Church more vigilant about exposure?
Taking a deep breath, Ye Bai steadied herself and reached out to sense the surrounding space once more.
"Still no good..."
If space had been like water before, now it was frozen solid.
And after that earlier shock, she absolutely wouldn’t dare repeat her experint. Whether the information was benevolent or not, it demanded caution.
Collecting her thoughts, Ye Bai flickered into motion, swiftly making her way back to the Aether Lab.
Reviews
All reviews (0)