Alien Hotel.

Chapter 429 Star Species

Upon seeing the message from Baili Qing, Yu Sheng was slightly taken aback, and then immediately looked up and surveyed his surroundings.

Level IV cognitive reshaping... Planetary-level reality reconstruction...

"Holy crap, this is hilarious..."

Yu Sheng muttered something under his breath, and then without hesitation, while his phone still had a signal, he dialed Baili Qing's number.

The person on the other end seemed to have been waiting for his message. The call was answered almost instantly as soon as he dialed. Yu Sheng didn't waste any words. After hearing a "hello" from the other end, he got straight to the point: "The reality of Shuji has been reconstructed."

"...As expected, but still the worst-case scenario," Bai Liqing's voice remained calm, as if it always carried an aura that could calm everyone down. "However, judging from the fact that the signal can still be connected, the reality reconstruction on that planet should not be completely 'closed' yet, and the metamorphosis process of the 'star body' is not yet complete."

“Tell me what’s going on first,” Yu Sheng said quickly. Out of the corner of his eye, the cold wind and rain swept into the hall through the roof again, but it seemed to pass by from another dimension without interacting with anything in the hall. Several colorful humanoid silhouettes with poor signal suddenly appeared in the rain, walking and talking as they passed through the curtain wall next to the front desk. “I need all the information about ‘Star Entities’.”

“I’ve already passed on the information the Special Operations Bureau has, and there are some additional details, but I’ll try to keep it brief,” Baili Qing said calmly and quickly. “I just received samples from Garrison-3 and listened to the recovery team’s report. We can now basically confirm that the Dark Angel parasitizing inside Garrison-3 is a ‘Star Derivative,’ and its parasitic stage should be between the late stage of metamorphosis and the ascendant stage. Moreover, due to external stimuli, it is highly likely that it has completed its metamorphosis ahead of schedule and forcibly ‘ascended’ from the star body. This process will be completed within a few days…”

"Regarding the Star Derivative, He may be one of the oldest known Dark Angels. We even suspect that He may have existed in our real universe before the first angel, the Tree Angel, descended—although we currently lack empirical evidence for this..."

"Compared to other dark angels, the celestial body has many unique characteristics, the most important of which are twofold. First, its activities seem to have a strong 'purpose,' namely, constantly seeking new planets to 'parasitize.' Second, it exhibits a process of change that resembles a 'life cycle'..."

"At the start of parasitism, it will teleport to the target planet in the form of a meteorite, and then make a simple and brutal orbital descent - this stage is called 'sub-entity';
"After landing on the target planet, the star will quickly burrow underground and transform into a crystalline structure that can expand rapidly inside the star—this stage is called the 'latent transformation period.' We don't know how long this process will last, but we are certain that its expansion inside the planet will accelerate exponentially in the later stages of the latent transformation."
"After the latent transformation period, the planet will begin to prepare for the next 'transfer'. It will 'eat' everything that can be used on the planet, including planetary ley lines and... high-energy minerals. During this stage, it will no longer expand, but will reorganize a new 'core' in the nest it has built. We call this stage 'emergence'."
"The duration of the metamorphosis period is also unknown. After this stage ends, the 'essential' part of the celestial body will shrink into a new core and break through the soil from the planet's interior, flying into the universe. This 'ascension' process is extremely fast, and the part that separates from the celestial body is called the 'ascended body'."
"The Ascended Being possesses the ability to move faster than the speed of light, and may even be able to 'teleport' through subspace or other unknown means. Its core will enter a dormant state during this process, and upon arriving above the new target planet, the Ascended Being will re-enter the 'sub-entity' state and begin a new round of parasitism..."

Eileen leaned on Yu Sheng's shoulder, listening to Baili Qing's voice coming from the phone's speaker, and suddenly muttered, "Simply put, it's just eating, sleeping, and running in a cycle."

Yu Sheng's lips twitched slightly: "...Your interpretation seems to work too."

Then he immediately thought of something else.

"How could no one detect Him when He was carrying out such a large-scale activity in the real world?"

“That’s exactly what I’m going to talk about next,” Baili Qing said quickly. “The most bizarre and dangerous aspect of ‘Star Entity’ is not its ‘parasitism,’ but its powerful ‘cognitive reshaping’ that can cover reality within a certain range.”

“From the moment the ‘latency period’ begins, the celestial body will release a wide range of cognitive interference. Within the range of interference, ordinary people cannot detect the existence of the celestial body at all, including all the ‘anomalies’ it creates—people will live next to the crystals that the celestial body spreads out, and even build homes and cities on top of it after the celestial body has completely burrowed underground.”

"Historically, various forces have discovered the parasitic presence of celestial bodies before—usually, they observed anomalies in various parameters of a planet from extremely distant locations using probes, but once they got closer to observe it, the investigators would conclude that 'everything is normal.' Scholars from various forces spent a long time, poured in a lot of effort, and even relied on luck to confirm the existence of 'celestial bodies,' and roughly summarized its 'periodic changes,' but to this day, no one has successfully 'captured' it during the latent transformation period and the metamorphosis period... This is the first time for you."

A sudden rumble of thunder swept across the sky, and a strange howl seemed to come from afar amidst the wind and rain. Yu Sheng looked up at the entrance of the hall and saw that the streets outside seemed to have lost their gravity and detached from the ground, with various buildings floating in mid-air in disarray. New roads "grew" out from between the nearby buildings, winding their way through the buildings.

As Yu Sheng approached the entrance to the hall, he cautiously observed the changes outside while quickly speaking: "It seems that... the 'cognitive barrier' He created has malfunctioned. The world before our eyes has gone completely mad and is constantly becoming more chaotic."

Bai Liqing said solemnly, “What you are seeing is a fault line in the ‘boundary’ of the cognitive barrier—the erroneous reality and the real reality are squeezing and deforming each other. All observations have lost their accuracy in this process. What you are seeing is neither the real Mo City nor a complete illusion. This should also lead to the instability of the ‘depth’ of your surrounding environment. And if my judgment is correct, this situation will continue to worsen.”

“The cognitive interference of the celestial body has a very dangerous characteristic, that is, it will exhibit ‘superimposed resonance’ as the degree of influence on the surrounding intelligent beings deepens… In short, every mind affected by the celestial body will become part of the cognitive barrier, and the ‘illusions’ they experience under the influence of the celestial body will further enhance the degree of reality reconstruction.”

"This is another important reason why the parasitism of celestial bodies is difficult to detect—the deeper the parasitism, the more people will perceive everything around them as normal. And this 'perception' can even directly alter the 'truth' of the real world. When you enter the late stage of metamorphosis, even if you have 'true vision,' you won't see anything unusual when you enter a planet parasitized by a celestial body, because..."

Baili Qing's voice suddenly became intermittent, as if the "depth" of Yu Sheng's surroundings had changed once again. Before the signal was completely lost, a vague sentence came through the phone—

"You... are in a dream created by everyone on the entire planet..." A noise rang out, and Baili Qing's voice disappeared. The notification of depth change and communication interruption popped up on the phone screen again.

Eileen and Huli looked at each other in bewilderment.

Luna tilted her head this way.

Yu Sheng looked at his phone, which had lost signal, pondered for two seconds, then casually stuffed the phone into his pocket and reached out to open a small door beside him.

Across from the door was Baili Qing's desk—she was sighing as she placed her phone on it.

Yu Sheng leaned half his body out of the door and slumped onto the table in front of Baili Qing: "I didn't hear what you said last."

Baili Qingteng immediately stood up from his chair.

This was the first time Yu Sheng had ever heard that this aloof female bureau chief could actually jump up, and even grimac when her leg hit the table.

Then the two of them stared at each other for two seconds.

Yu Sheng was a little embarrassed, while Bai Li Qing's expression was complex—three parts embarrassment, two parts anger that dared not be spoken, and five parts surprise and uncertainty. The remaining ninety parts were unclear. In any case, based on this expressionless woman's usual behavior, she probably used up all her expressions in these two seconds.

After a moment of silence, Yu Sheng, feeling apologetic, suggested to the other party, "...How about I go back and start over?"

"Need not."

Bai Liqing sat back down in her chair, rubbing her legs under the table without making a sound, and said with a stern face.

Then, after a second, she added, “I’m saying you’re in a dream created by everyone on the planet—hundreds of millions of people on the desolate planet are using their ‘knowledge’ to help the celestial body undergo its final ascension, and you’d better find a way to interrupt this process before that thing’s ascension matures.”

"Uh, okay."

Yu Sheng nodded and pulled his body back.

Just as he was about to close the door, Baili Qing suddenly looked up at him with a serious expression.

"Don't underestimate your opponent, although you... anyway, be careful."

Yu Sheng paused for a moment, looked up at Mo Cheng, who was completely out of control outside the hall, and silently turned his head away.

"Don't worry, I definitely won't underestimate them—I'm panicking just looking at this commotion outside."

Bai Liqing seemed to smile? Or maybe her leg pain caused her eye to twitch again? Yu Sheng couldn't see it clearly either.

He closed the door, then took a deep breath and stepped out of the hall into the absurd nightmare.

(End of this chapter)