The Heavens: A Qing, the Yue Girl at the beginning

A series of unheard-of and bizarre terms left the listeners breathless, as if they had been transported to a vast cosmos far beyond their imagination, a mysterious and dangerous realm beyond.

Tuoba Wuchou's voice grew lower and lower, but he did not go into details: "The dwelling place where extraterrestrial creatures live and multiply is not the mountains, rivers, lakes and seas that you and I know, but a five-fold void ring that stretches beyond the nine heavens - from the inside out, they are Lan'ai, Tianlan, Taihuang, Hanzhou and Jihai."

"It was a vast space spanning billions of miles... an unimaginable expanse. Icy celestial bodies, large and small, floated there, some with eerie, cold starlight burning on them, and true magnetic turbulence surged like an invisible river. Furthermore... countless unknown rays permeated the air, and turbid stellar miasma drifted by. The extraterrestrial spiritual atmosphere was thin yet pure..."

"The creatures there... are of various forms, some like giant rocks and ice walls, some like star sails and giant fins, some like flowing smoke and ghosts, with extremely unique endowments and survival rules that are completely different from this world."

He sighed with emotion, “Their very existence is a symbol of a power that transcends our comprehension.”

"Even if not all of these extraterrestrial life forms are incomparably powerful and have reached the legendary ninth realm of immortality, their ability to survive and reproduce in the desolate outer starry sky means that their level of life... at least in terms of their extensive absorption of stellar energy and their adaptability to extreme environments, is bound to be stronger than all the living beings nurtured by this world!"

“These characteristics are nothing short of a ray of hope for Tianliang.” Tuoba Wuchou sighed, clenching his fist as his tree-like Dharma form receded. “Just the fact that it can break free from dependence on the spiritual energy of this world… is enough to resolve our greatest nightmare—the exhaustion of spiritual energy in the end times!”

"So... in the later stages of the 'blood-seeking' frenzy, a group of fanatics dominated by the radical ideology of the 'Unification Faction,' with the tacit approval or even covert support of the Empire's high command, returned to the ancestral land of Beiming! They... attempted to use the ancient observatory here to communicate with the comet migrating in the five rings and summon extraterrestrial beings!"

"The reason why we had to go to this bitterly cold Northern Sea was something I later inquired with the Imperial Observatory. It is said to be related to the transparency, seeing, and cleanliness of the celestial energy, the duration and traceability of continuous observations during the polar night, the tilt of the ecliptic plane, and the refraction of light. This is also the reason why the You Dynasty specifically set up instruments here."

Zhao Qing nodded, thinking to himself that an observatory built within the Arctic Circle indeed has many irreplaceable special conditions. Judging from this known information, the target is most likely a celestial body in the outer solar system, in the region beyond Neptune's orbit.

"Initially... it was just an accidental attempt, stemming from the study of ancient books and fragments of information passed down from before the fall of the You Dynasty... or even earlier." Tuoba Wuchou shook his head slightly, a trace of confusion and reminiscence flashing in his eyes. "Those records are vague, their sources are even more mysterious, and they are full of blindness and evil."

"Later... I vaguely discovered some clues, perhaps... related to the Yuan clan, or the true origins of our Tuoba clan? The Northern Patrol King of the You Dynasty... It is said that he had a son who was secretly placed in the far north before the Patrol King was ordered to return to fight against the rebels in the Central Plains and ultimately died on the battlefield..."

"In the past, although Emperor You unified the world and his cultivation was unparalleled throughout history, he still maintained a degree of wariness towards his most powerful subordinates, the Four Regional Kings. After imparting profound martial arts techniques to them, he kept them stationed at the borders for many years to avoid them from meeting each other as much as possible..."

"Therefore, when the Northern King gazed at the starry sky from this 'end of the world,' created many supernatural powers, and raised his offspring... perhaps he left behind some unknown foundations? Some secrets passed down and guarded from generation to generation? These settled in the northern frontier and transformed into the hidden inheritance deep within the bloodlines of the Yuan and Tuoba clans."

“It’s a pity…” His voice grew hoarse. “In the most difficult years of the past, when the people of Beiming fought against strange beasts on the ice plains and relied on snow to fill their stomachs, these so-called ‘foundation’ never manifested. When Tianliang was first established, and the Seven Realms experts had to go to the battlefield and pave the foundation with mountains of corpses and seas of blood, these secrets were never mentioned.”

"It is ironic that just when the empire was at its peak, with no worries about food and clothing and no longer any fear of survival, and with enough power to sweep across the grasslands, some people dug out these treasured items as 'brilliant solutions'!" He smiled self-deprecatingly. "They said, 'The treasures left by our ancestors should not be wasted.'"

"It turns out that the Netherworld Emperor and the Four Directions Patrol Kings from hundreds of years ago seemed to have already come into contact with extraterrestrial beings and obtained some secrets about the starry sky, knowledge that can be described as forbidden..."

"These tattered books, unearthed from who-knows-where, record those... rituals for communicating with the Heavenly Demons. The steps are bizarre and complicated: fragments of meteorites from outer space need to be ground into extremely fine powder to make silver-gray paint, which is then used to draw spiral star trails on the top of the ice plateau."

Hundreds more glass mirrors were etched out, with tadpole-shaped runes engraved on the back of each mirror. Following specific azimuth angles, these runes could refract or focus distant starlight and magnetic rays, projecting a phantom image that overlapped with the celestial canopy…

"Even more extreme, altars were carved out of the ice mountains stretching for hundreds of miles, with pillars inlaid with shimmering crystals. From a distance, they looked like a giant array of missiles pointing towards the depths of the sky..."

"Years later, I finally understood that those mirrors and altars were probably 'codes' for positioning and identification, like the beacon fires of a post station, allowing the 'eyes' in the sky to accurately locate this place, or like constantly shouting in all directions of the starry sky: 'There is prey here.'"

"Communication... has begun."

Tuoba Wuchou's voice was low and nightmarish, "At first, it was just intermittent starlight scattered and blurry, but gradually... some clear images of comets were captured, revealing the unique primordial essence of life, and people's confidence began to rise, cheering and investing more!"

"On the third full moon night when the ceremony began, the sky really changed."

He looked up, as if he were seeing the starry sky of yesteryear again. "The aurora borealis in the Northern Sea was no longer the usual green and purple, but had a silvery-gray hue, like countless fine threads hanging down from the sky. At the same time, the glass mirror of the altar lit up, reflecting some distorted symbols—these were the 'language' of extraterrestrial beings."

"The Heavenly Demon replied?" Zhan Mohe asked cautiously, "How did the 'Return to One Sect' decipher the other party's message?"

"Because they have the corresponding 'dictionary' on hand, left behind by the You Dynasty." Tuoba Wuchou explained, "The messengers from outside the domain call us the people of the 'Inner Domain of Blazing Sun,' which means 'a world closer to the sun, warm and even hot,' which is very different from the dark, cold, and desolate primordial energy environment of the outer domain's fifth ring."

"So, the extraterrestrial demons have set their sights on our vibrant and habitable world? They want to migrate here?" Recalling the history of the Tianliang people migrating from the Northern Sea to the grasslands, Zhan Mohe naturally guessed the evil motives of his enemies.

"Wrong! Completely wrong!"

Tuoba Wuchou retorted with a cold laugh, "Don't use human thinking to rashly speculate on the thoughts of non-human life forms! In their eyes, the Blazing Sun Inner Domain is filled with the excessive True Fire of the Great Sun, and the turbulent gales will constantly disperse the stellar energy and extraterrestrial spiritual atmosphere. The primordial essence and water essence will also evaporate in an instant, making it difficult to survive. It is almost no different from purgatory..."

"The 'Reef' that first communicated with the 'Unification Faction' and the Flame Spirits it carried both claimed that before this, no one had ever imagined that such a harsh environment as the Blazing Sun Inner Region could actually nurture a life form with advanced intelligence and cultivation reaching the eighth level. This is truly an incredible miracle!"

"Clearly...they're deceiving us, aren't they?"

Zhan Mohe couldn't help but interject, "There's already a precedent with Youdi and the others! Their language translations match up perfectly! Besides, this bizarre claim doesn't conform to basic common sense at all! Without sunshine, how can flowers and plants grow? Without food, wouldn't they starve to death?"

Zhao Qing pondered to himself: Mars, Venus, and Mercury, all planets in the inner solar system, are indeed uninhabitable regions lacking water and organic matter. Even Earth, teeming with life, has less organic matter than Sedna, a dwarf planet only two thousand miles away. Perhaps, in this vast universe where primordial energy exists, cultivation methods abound, and life can emerge even in desolate cold, Earth is actually a unique, frog-in-a-well situation?

"The words match, but Youjiao is unaware of our world, so it's perfectly normal for him to be surprised on the spot!"

Tuoba Wuchou countered with a question: "How could an elder from a remote village in southern Xinjiang know the details of the high-level discussions during a ranch transaction between two major tribes in the northern grasslands?"

"I already said that the vastness of outer space is measured in hundreds of millions of miles. Do you think that's just something I made up?"

"Such a vast distance, even for a powerful expert in the Eighth Realm, like that floating reef, it would take tens of thousands of years to cross... News simply cannot travel freely, there is a huge delay!"

"As for the issue of sunlight... extraterrestrial life generally obtains energy by breathing in and out vital energy, and plants as we know them simply do not exist."

"Then... how did they manage to have a basically unified language and be able to recognize each other?" Zhan Mohe's questioning spirit reappeared.

"Time! A time long enough, beyond the imagination of ordinary people! According to what Youjiao said, the lifespan of their kind starts at millions of years! And its own consciousness, conceived and born within this body and the fragments of the star core, has already gone through thousands of cycles of birth and death! Passed down through countless generations!"

"Adding it all up... it's probably over a billion years? Or even longer!"

"The lifespan of a Flame Spirit is much shorter... but living for a few hundred years is the bare minimum. The longer-lived Great Flame Spirits will only be extinguished at tens of thousands of years old, and their offspring will differentiate from the scattered embers."

"Is this true? Is there any evidence?" Zhan Mohe persisted, "I don't think we should believe everything we hear, right?"

"The 'Return to One' faction has changed many contacts. Although their consciousness frequencies are all different, the information they exchange is almost identical. From the perspective of military intelligence and interrogation investigation, we should not have been deceived in these matters. After all, many things have been confirmed by astronomical observations."

Tuoba Wuchou briefly explained a few points, then turned to a deeper level: "With the increasing number of communications... some high-ranking extraterrestrial beings revealed a shocking secret."

"They claim that in the extremely distant past, about 70,000 years ago, a catastrophe of 'double sun conjunction' occurred—another world illuminated by another sun briefly swept across the edge of our vast world! A huge, blazing sun passed through the middle of the silent sea, bringing with it enemies from beyond the realms!"

"In this rare event of the 'Alternate Eclipse,' over a hundred billion otherworldly beings, piloting skeletal warships and accompanied by millions of giant comets, launched a ruthless invasion of our shared world, engaging in earth-shattering battles in the Silent Sea, the Frozen Universe, and the Primordial Wasteland!"

"Even several of the secondary spiral arms that stretch for hundreds of billions of miles in the Frost Universe have been shattered! More than a dozen Ninth Realm longevity beings have perished! Life forms at the Seventh and Eighth Realms are even more insignificant! Only those at the Half-Step Ninth Realm can be considered the backbone of the force!"

"Thanks to our geographical advantage, we have once again defended our homeland, but we are powerless to launch a counter-invasion and occupy the enemy's territory—because in a few thousand years, when the borders of the two suns separate and the distance between them stretches to trillions of miles, such a distant war will be meaningless..."

"The reason is simple: this kind of alien solar eclipse triggers large-scale contact between the beings of the two great worlds, forcing them to engage in a catastrophe of super war. It happens once or twice every million years!"

"Regardless of which side, if the difference in strength is not overwhelming, they must retain some reserves to prepare for the next round of new conflicts. Once the two worlds are completely separated, they will no longer be enemies—in the hundreds of millions of years of extraterrestrial history, they have never encountered an invasion from the same other world."

"This is incredible... It sounds more mythical than mythology!" Zhan Mohe analyzed and replied, "Having never encountered the same extraterrestrial enemy before, does that mean that on a larger scale, there are countless star systems like the Five Rings of the Outer Realm, which far surpass our world?"

Zhao Qing smiled slightly, thinking to himself: The so-called intertwining of the vast world is nothing more than the natural contact of the trajectories of stars orbiting the galactic center. The two stars pass through the Oort cloud under each other's gravitational control, thus triggering the collision of life within it... both grand and ordinary...

That said, does the Frost Ring, suspected to be part of the Inner Oort Cloud, actually have a spiral arm-like structure? Like a miniature version of the Milky Way? Modern astronomy doesn't seem to have made such a discovery.

However, considering that the size ratio between the Milky Way and typical stars is almost the same as the size ratio between the solar system and typical comets, falling within the same order of magnitude, it naturally feels like a coincidence.

Could it be due to the interaction between the tidal forces of the Milky Way and the gravity of the Sun, the Kozai-Lidov effect? ​​Under the rule of the conservation of gravity and angular momentum, matter in a rotating system naturally tends to a spiral configuration, which is not surprising and makes sense.

"They also claim that, according to reliable information, during the invasion 70,000 years ago, a considerable number of enemy warships fell into the inner two rings and the Blazing Sun Inner Domain. One of them crashed in our land, which may have brought many positive and negative effects, perhaps including factors that promoted the emergence of intelligence..."

Tuoba Wuchou's gaze shifted: "But if such a starship crash were to happen again, no one could guarantee that it wouldn't be carrying a threat or lethal weapon capable of wiping out local life... Therefore, they hope that we can grow up quickly and have the ability to handle such events."

"Then, they sincerely expressed that as ancient 'neighbors' with a higher 'civilization,' they have the right and the obligation to communicate with and 'help' us, the natives of the 'inner domain,' in order to prevent us from being destroyed unprepared in the event of a possible future disaster."

"They said that we, the people of the inner realm, can no longer sit idly by, hiding in the seemingly safe but actually fragile cradle of the inner realm, oblivious to the threats from the outside world. We must learn to face the storms sweeping across the starry sky, shoulder the corresponding responsibilities, and adapt to this cold and vast truth..."

"The truth? Do you believe in such a truth?" Zhao Qing suddenly spoke up: "I mean before the potential problems have surfaced."

"I believe... part of it." Tuoba Wuchou closed his eyes. "Because we did indeed find the crashed spaceship..."

...(End of chapter)