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

Shi Yiguang flicked the light filament, and a complex image on the crystal screen suddenly magnified, with Saturn and its dazzling rings occupying the center of the field of vision. Countless tiny ice particles and rock fragments moved in an orderly fashion in their orbits, refracting the distant sunlight to form vast and exquisite strings of cosmic beads.

"It is Saturn's rings."

She confirmed, "There is a large amount of water ice there, and hydrogen and oxygen can be easily obtained. Whether it is used to support life activities or to supply fusion engines, it is an open-pit mine that can be mined at will."

"At the same time, Saturn's powerful magnetic field and gravitational disturbances are like a natural 'mist veil'. In addition, although the distribution of particles in the rings varies, the overall scale is huge and easy to hide. If a spacecraft docks in it, the energy signal and metallic characteristics are easily obscured by background interference, making it difficult to lock the corresponding 'signature'."

"Conventional deep space exploration networks are almost ineffective, failing to obtain clear target information. We can only roughly infer through orbital dynamics inversion that it is hidden in a gravitationally stable region between Saturn's F and A rings, with a probability exceeding 87%..."

"Over eighty days, covering 13 billion kilometers, that's quite impressive, especially for a bulky manned ecoship." Zhao Qing continued, "I heard that among the crew, besides the Doomsday Faction, there are also members of the Dragon Clan like Gattuso? The Wind King was defeated and fled?"

"The maximum speed detected so far is 0.09% of the speed of light, and it took fourteen days to complete the acceleration process." Shi Yiguang briefly reported: "But from the perspective of generational spaceships, two weeks is insignificant. Perhaps it can maintain long-term acceleration for more than two centuries and eventually approach 10% of the speed of light."

"After all, with the blessing of dragon alchemy, the related fusion engines should be highly mature. To reach this value, all that is needed is proper design and a sufficient nuclear fuel payload. Before that, the deuterium and tritium secretly collected may not be enough, so we must prevent the information from being leaked."

"Current intelligence indicates that the hibernation technology possessed by organizations such as the Holy Palace Medical Association alone can allow high-level hybrids to live for more than 300 years. Combined with the slowed flow of time in the Nibelungen, it is not impossible for a generation to continue for more than a thousand years."

"It is not unimaginable that we could fly to distant destinations such as Proxima Centauri, Barnard's Star, and Tau Ceti (Tau Cang Wu), leaving behind all the grudges and grievances on Earth, the history of the war between dragons and hybrids, and the prophecy of Nidhogg's revenge, and drown them in the rolling stardust behind us."

Zhao Qing asked thoughtfully, "But why set sail so decisively? Why choose September 2004, when the entire project wasn't even fully completed? That's too early, eight years earlier than 2012... Could it all be the result of our actions?"

“It’s hard to say,” Shi Yiguang shook his head slightly, “but some of the prophetic visions suggest that perhaps because the spiral of fate has been disrupted and some kind of balance has been lost, Nidhogg’s return is very likely to be brought forward, and no one can stop it… perhaps, around Christmas at the end of December?”

"Christmas? It's probably inseparable from Odin."

Zhao Qing smiled: "How are things on the Secret Party and Han Gao's side? The Ghost-toothed Viper and the Feathered Serpent Trypanosome have not yet been eradicated. The latter has actually spread to more than 80% of the land, with a potential number of over 50 million infected. The control efforts are extremely disappointing. It's practically the countdown to a global 'zombification' and 'Deadpool-like' phenomenon."

"Space has almost become the last pure land."

"A large number of powerful figures suddenly died due to the so-called 'Silverwing Serum' extracted from trypanosomes? All for the sake of prolonging life and evolution? The deceased included the president himself? To avoid panic, they had someone undergo plastic surgery to create a stand-in? They use AI-synthesized voices to give speeches in various states every day? Is this how they deal with crises?"

"It's truly... both laughable and pathetic."

"Beset by internal and external troubles, the doomsday faction's choice to flee can be seen as a kind of 'wake-up call'."

She sighed softly, but still couldn't let go of a few key doubts: "But Zero, this 'Supreme,' was taken away directly. The Dark Lords seem to have abandoned their plan to usurp the 'throne.' Is this... really normal? What exactly is hidden behind this?"

For some reason, Zhao Qing always felt that there was a deeper secret behind the escaped starship and the Doomsday Faction's decisive abandonment.

Something unusual must be a sign of something sinister; something extremely strange must be a sign of a ghost.

"Time...reincarnation...restart?" she murmured slowly.

……

At the same time, deep within the clock tower of Kassel College.

The air was filled with the smells of old dust, the smoke of fine cigars, and a strange, indescribable odor of metal and sulfur, the smell of alchemical reagents.

A huge, old-fashioned brass calculating machine, its gears and levers meshing precisely, processes data streams far beyond the design limits of its time, emitting a low hum in the corner.

The old silver cigarette case was open, but neither Angers nor Flamel were in the mood to enjoy a Havana cigar. They were both staring at the center of the room, at the holographic screen projected by EVA that was suspended in mid-air.

Amidst the irritating background noise, a stream of cold blue data cascades down like a waterfall, eventually coalescing into a slowly rotating, breathtakingly complex 3D image of a gigantic man-made object, accompanied by astonishingly detailed parameters.

Below the entire sketch is a simple yet weighty code name: "PROJECT POLARIS EXPEDITION".
Angers' fingers tapped the table unconsciously. His eyes, weathered by a century of storms and having gazed upon countless dragons, were now fixed on the engine section of the giant ship projected on the screen—not any known chemical propulsion system, but one whose design originated from a long-forgotten concept.

"Project Daedalus..."

Angers’ voice was deep, with a hint of disbelief and hoarseness. “In the 1970s, the British proposed the concept of an interstellar spacecraft, propelled by nuclear fusion pulses… theoretically, it could reach 12% of the speed of light. But they all thought it was just a fantasy on paper, and the power required was a century ahead of its time.”

"Clearly, some people don't think it's a fantasy, and they've found the key to making it a reality."

Flamel leaned against the liquor cabinet, his usually cynical face unusually shrouded in solemnity.

He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, his gaze never leaving the projection, and said in a dry voice, "300 terawatts... Angers, do you know what that number means? It's equivalent to more than ten times the current peak power consumption of the entire human civilization."

"But they accomplished this on a ship."

EVA's ethereal female voice echoed in the room, calmly adding the harsh data: "Based on the analysis of orbital observation data and residual energy characteristics, this figure has a reliability of over 92.7%. Its acceleration phase lasted approximately 14 days, with peak output power stabilizing in the 310-330 terawatt range..."

"It successfully propelled an object with a total mass of over 7.5 million tons to the vicinity of Saturn's orbit within 90 days and decelerated it. Its core engine efficiency far exceeded any of our previous estimates."

"7.5 million tons... 20,000 passengers..."

Angers closed his eyes, as if he could feel the silent vibrations as that colossal creature tore through the earth's crust and broke free from gravity.

What should have been a cataclysmic disaster was perfectly concealed beneath the eternal permafrost of Siberia and the colossal Nibelungen. "We always thought they were building a fortress, a refuge, in northern Siberia." "We were wrong. It was never a static shelter; it was... an ark buried underground. And it, just over ninety days ago, right before our very eyes, set sail for Saturn?"

“Let me correct you, old friend,” the vice principal interjected. “It wasn’t more than ninety days ago. According to the final timestamp of this ‘Polaris Expedition’ program outline, and the faint anomalies in the deep space observation data compared to EVA, their main fusion engine array was fully activated on September 15, 2004.”

"More than three months have passed since then. Nearly one hundred days."

“One hundred days…” Angers repeated the number, as if to savor the immense irony, “They traveled in one hundred days the distance that would take humankind’s most advanced spacecraft several years or even longer to reach Saturn.”

"And we, only after their engines shut down and they were completely hidden in the background radiation of Saturn's rings and countless ice particles, were we able to piece together the whole story through their 'abandoned' database and Zhao Qing's 'gift' of friendship?"

The watchman took a sip of strong liquor, the pungent taste seemingly clearing his head: "The most ingenious deception is that they even deceived the vast majority of the people on their own ship."

“Think about the fragmented intelligence we’ve gathered in the past—the ‘cozy’ Khrushchev housing community, the ‘stable’ closed social experiment, the ecosystem and gene bank that ‘preserves the human race’… a perfect facade. Even the people living there thought they were just living in a secluded Arctic city.”

"Who would have thought that the solid 'land' beneath their feet, the research base, is actually the deck of a super spaceship capable of traveling at nearly one percent of the speed of light, or even faster?"

EVA pulled up some dusty archives, where some blurry black and white photos and fragments of handwritten meeting minutes came to light.

It was Paris in 1919. On a street after the rain, a group of people wearing long black overcoats were evacuating from the direction of the Arc de Triomphe. The corner of the photo was labeled "First Separation".

Another diary excerpt contains a copy of the declaration made by the "traitors" at the time:

"On November 11, 1918, a ceasefire was reached on the Western Front. But the bodies of the hybrids piled up at the bottom of the Somme, and their blood stained the Rhine red. We finally understood that before the war against the dragons had even begun, humanity had already demonstrated its destructive instincts in killing each other, and the Secret Service's insistence on 'protection' was a joke."

"Slaying dragons? We are merely delaying the inevitable, not changing it. True wisdom lies in preserving the flame of civilization, not in perishing alongside the old world destined for destruction."

“The Doomsday Faction…” Angers chewed on the word, his tone complex, “The schism after World War I… Beowulf and his ilk never wanted to talk about it. Now, it all makes sense.”

The vice principal chimed in, his tone laced with sarcasm: "The brutality of the war, and the madness of humanity using technological power in such an industrialized and large-scale manner for the first time, deeply affected some members of the Secret Party. After combining this with their research on the history of the Dragon Clan, they developed an extreme pessimism."

They believed that the era of dragon rule was perhaps the true "natural" order, and that humans were merely despicable usurpers whose inherent selfishness and violence doomed them to their doom. Any attempt to save the world on the front lines was a futile and pointless sacrifice, and might even hasten the final reckoning.

"The ideological conflict was irreconcilable, and this group eventually chose to silently betray the Secret Party. They called themselves 'The Doomsayers' and took away some precious research materials and alchemical heritage, quietly disappearing into the dark side of history."

Angers slowly said, "Their initial bases of operation were scattered in Central and Eastern Europe. Taking advantage of the chaos after the war, they began to slowly and steadily infiltrate the research institutions of the Weimar Republic and later Nazi Germany, and even extended their tentacles to the rising Soviet Union."

"In the decades that followed, while we were immersed in the illusion of peace that had ended two world wars, the doomsday prophet, who were seen as cowards hiding in the shadows licking their wounds, took advantage of the industrial potential of the Soviet Union and Germany and the unrestrained scientific research environment to develop rapidly, gaining resources, talent and... a vast space to hide from the public eye."

"With their 'insight' into history, they patiently absorbed the cutting-edge technological achievements of both sides from both sides, especially... nuclear energy, aerospace, and computers, using the arms race and space race of the Cold War as excellent cover on both sides of the Iron Curtain."

EVA timely projects new files: blurry design drawings marked with Russian and German annotations; files of personnel wearing old-fashioned Soviet uniforms or white coats, with background information highlighted in red, all pointing to a secret connection with known doomsday faction members.

“In the 60s, ‘Project Ice Axe’ was officially launched, and Korolev’s design bureau was filled with hybrids hiding their identities. It was from this time onwards,” her tone remained calm, but the content was thrilling, “that they began to systematically use space exploration missions to search for… traces or potential refuges that the Dragon civilization might have left behind in outer space.”

"The real turning point happened here."

EVA pulled up a new image—a radar map of Venus transmitted back by an early Soviet probe. The rough black-and-white image showed incomprehensible, extremely regular, huge geometric structures scattered across the vast plateau.

"In 1970, the Soviet Union's Venera 7 made the first successful soft landing, but the data it transmitted was strictly censored. Subsequent explorations, especially radar mapping, revealed some... unnatural creations: more than 20,000 giant pyramids and bronze columns, ranging in size from hundreds to thousands of meters."

"Isn't this a fabricated rumor by trashy media? Describing the volcanic dome as the ruins of an ancient civilization?" the vice principal interrupted, as he usually enjoyed reading such unscrupulous tabloids.

“The dome and the pyramids are not contradictory,” EVA replied. “In fact, this is the most ingenious misleading statement.”

"Earth and fire dragons are adept at utilizing and modifying geological activities, possessing the ability to manipulate rocks and magma. They could very well use or even shape volcanic structures as the base or component of buildings, turning domes into their own living spaces, and deploying a series of optical camouflage and camouflage."

"To date, the exact situation of the local dragon descendants remains unknown. However, as early as the initial Venus 7, some communication waves carrying dragon script were received. After deciphering, it was revealed that the Black King's wrath had burned the Nine Realms, forcing us to flee to the Twilight Star, never to return home..."

"Based on the scattered information provided by the other party and the general situation of multiple probes, the Doomsday Faction Committee pointed out in its internal report that: this branch of the dragon race, which achieved interplanetary migration 13000 years ago, had a 'Dragon Mouth' of at least 30 million people at its peak, far exceeding the total number of hybrid races in various countries today. Its industrial technology was in no way inferior to modern humans, and even surpassed them."

"However, they were utter losers, not even the main force in the Black and White Kings' civil war. Apart from their escapist mentality, which led them to build some alchemical orbitals in advance and abandon their home planet to flee as soon as the war started, they had nothing to be commended for."

"But what was the result? They lost the courage to fight, but instead gained a completely new living space and became the most complete example of the preservation of the essence of the current dragon civilization, instead of being completely destroyed by Nidhogg's wrath like countless of their kind on Earth."

"This discovery and historical lesson from the 'predecessors' has completely solidified the belief of the highest levels of the Doomsday Faction—that resistance is meaningless in the face of the fully resurrected Black King, escape is the only chance of survival, and interplanetary space travel is the key to spreading the seeds of revolution."

"Considering that Venus is already occupied and difficult to contest, and is not suitable for human habitation, while the Moon is too close and not safe enough, their next target has been Mars colonization..."

"Mars?"

The vice principal asked in confusion, "Then how did it end up on Saturn?"

...(End of chapter)