I want to tread the heavens

The jade pendant emitted a faint, perceptible light. Using his own mental focus as a guide, he piloted the Meteorite, carefully navigating this chaotic region where navigation signals were almost nonexistent. He no longer relied entirely on the compass, nor trusted those contradictory external data. Instead, he devoted most of his energy to maintaining that elusive "sense of direction," while painstakingly calculating and correcting based on the starship's inertial units and the trajectory data accumulated during previous stable voyages.

It was like crossing a narrow bridge blindfolded in a storm, relying solely on a single clue to perceive an unknown lighthouse. The exertion far exceeded simply piloting the starship. Fine beads of sweat constantly seeped from his forehead, only to be silently absorbed by the cabin's temperature control system. The tension from intense concentration caused his temples to throb slightly. Yet, his gaze remained calm, his hands steadily resting on the control sensor area, subtly adjusting the course, avoiding those areas that felt particularly chaotic and dangerous.

Fa Cai seemed to understand the danger at the moment. It stopped sending any distracting messages, its entire body tense, ears perked up, and amber pupils contracted to their most alert state, constantly scanning every inch of the scenery and subtle changes in energy flow outside the porthole. Its instincts told it that its master was engaged in a silent confrontation with the entire chaotic void, and any external disturbance could be fatal.

They had been sailing for an unknown amount of time—perhaps several hours, perhaps longer. The surrounding "fog" seemed to have thinned somewhat, the frequency of the distorted light and shadow shifting decreased, and the omnipresent interfering "noise" also seemed to be weakening in Ling Xiao's highly focused perception. This gave him a slight jolt of excitement; were they about to pass through this strange interference zone?

However, in that instant when his mind began to relax slightly because of this change—

A sudden change has occurred!

There was no warning, no light, no sound. The Meteorite was as if it had suddenly crashed into an invisible, extremely viscous mass of glue. No, more terrifying than glue, it was an invisible dragging force coming from all directions!

The starship suddenly sank, as if gripped by the invisible hand of a cosmic giant. All the engine nozzles erupted with overloaded screams at the same moment, and the dark blue tail flames were stretched and twisted, but they could not stop the starship's forward momentum from being forcibly suppressed and reversed!

"Warning! An abnormal gravitational field has been detected! Its intensity is increasing rapidly!"

"Out of control! Engine overload! We're being dragged towards a point!"

"Gravity source locked—directly ahead, suspected hidden planetary object!"

"Warning! The shield is experiencing abnormal stress, and its structural integrity is decreasing!"

On the main screen, a blinding red light and a cold, mechanical female voice blared simultaneously! A barrage of alarm messages flooded the screen. The once stable starship now violently lurched and spun, like a leaf caught in a whirlpool. Ling Xiao was slammed against the back of the driver's seat by the immense inertia; had it not been for the restraints and his superhuman physique, this impact would have been enough to damage his bones and muscles.

"Awooo!" Fa Cai let out a short cry of surprise, its four claws extended sharp hooks and gripped the floor tightly, preventing it from being thrown off, but it was still shaken and disoriented.

Ling Xiao's mind was buzzing, but he forcibly suppressed the surging blood and momentary dizziness, his gaze sweeping across the main screen like lightning. The gravitational field distribution map showed an absurdly powerful gravitational source; the starship had been firmly captured by its "gravitational tentacles" and was being irresistibly dragged towards the abyss of death. The remote detection array hadn't detected this gravitational source at all before; it was as if it had suddenly "jumped" out, or had been hidden in strong background interference until they got close enough to enter its "hunting range" before suddenly launching its attack.

"It's a trap! Natural... or..." A chill ran through Ling Xiao's heart. He desperately pulled back the control lever, instantly pushing the main engine power to 120% emergency overload, even disregarding the possibility of damaging the engine core. The starship let out a mournful cry of unbearable strain, its tail flames shooting out to their maximum, attempting to resist the terrifying drag.

However, it was useless!

The gravitational pull was stronger than imagined. The starship's struggles were like an insect caught in a spider's web, flapping its wings in vain, only to be entangled tighter. The dragging speed was even increasing! Outside the porthole, the previously chaotic background rushed backward—no, it was the starship being pulled forward at an accelerated pace toward that... gradually becoming clearer darkness.

No, it wasn't pure darkness. In the direction of that gravitational source, the outline of a planet was rapidly magnifying in the field of vision!

It was a desolate, grayish-white planet. There was no glow from an atmosphere, no azure of oceans, no verdant green of life. Its surface was covered with massive craters, crisscrossing deep canyons, and endless grayish-white mountain ranges, which, illuminated by the faint (severely distorted) starlight from the distance, possessed a cold, rigid, and lifeless quality. It hovered there silently, like the carcass of a colossal beast floating in the void, radiating a chilling desolation and coldness. And now, this "carcass" was opening its invisible maw, ready to devour them.

"No! The engine can't withstand it!" Ling Xiao judged instantly. Conventional power is as insignificant as dust in the face of such a powerful force of nature. Forcing a confrontation would only result in the starship's structure being torn apart by gravity, or the engine overloading and exploding.

What to do? Being dragged down and crashing into the planet's surface will result in being shattered to pieces! Even if you fall into its gravitational field and cannot escape, becoming a "satellite" orbiting it, you will eventually be unable to escape the fate of exhausting your energy and dying in silence.

In this critical moment, Ling Xiao's mind remained unusually cold and clear. The battlefield survival rules instilled by Uncle Rong, his understanding of the "Zhou Tian Xing Chen Dao Dao Jing" (Scripture of the Great Dao of the Celestial Stars), and the vague intuition about the essence of power deep within his bloodline, belonging to the "Devouring Heaven" (a concept in Chinese mythology), collided and merged wildly.

"Gravity... is also force... it's distorted spacetime, a manifestation of mass... the power of stars contains creation, and can also cause tides... can my power of meteors...?"

An extremely bold, almost insane idea took shape in his mind.

He didn't try to continue battling the planet's gravity head-on, that would be suicidal. Instead, he did something that left conventional starship pilots speechless—he abruptly cut off the overload output of the main engine and even actively shut down most of the attitude control nozzles!

In an instant, the Meteor lost all its active propulsion, and the momentum of being captured by the planet's gravity suddenly intensified. It hurtled toward the gray-white dead star at a faster speed and with a straighter trajectory! The overload caused by the acceleration instantly pressed Ling Xiao and Fa Cai firmly into their seats, their bones cracking.

"Ling Xiao?!" A terrified thought crossed Fa Cai's mind.

"Trust me!" Ling Xiao roared inwardly, his eyes bloodshot and resolute. He poured all his mind and spiritual power into the jade pendant on his chest without reservation, while frantically circulating the "Zhou Tian Xing Chen Dao Dao Jing" (Great Dao Scripture of the Celestial Stars), but not releasing it outwards, but rather collapsing inwards, concentrating it in his dantian and deep within his bloodline!

He was imitating, imitating the power his mother had in his memory to control the stars, imitating the image of stars falling during the "Star Soul Tempering Heart" ritual, imitating the instinct of the "Devouring Heaven" bloodline to devour all things—temporarily transforming himself into a tiny, condensed "force field singularity" with opposite attributes!

This is not an attack, but a countermeasure, a disruption!

Just as the starship was about to break through a certain critical speed and plunge into an irreversible abyss orbit, and had even begun to emit a faint red glow from friction with the planet's sparse, almost non-existent exoplanetary matter—

Ling Xiao let out a low growl, suppressing his emotions to the extreme. He then used the jade pendant to amplify and guide the "reverse force field," which was amplified to the extreme and mixed with pure meteorite power and a trace of bloodline origin. He then forcefully and without any skill pushed it out in the direction from which the planet's gravity was coming!

There was no earth-shattering explosion, no dazzling flames.

There was only a dull, resonant "hum" that seemed to originate from the structure of space itself!

Centered on the Meteorite, the surrounding space, distorted by the powerful planetary gravity like a downward-sinking funnel, suddenly "bounced" upward and outward! Like a bowstring stretched to its limit, suddenly plucked in the opposite direction!

The power of this "single shot" is negligible compared to the planet's gravity itself. However, the timing and location of its appearance, as well as the stellar principles it contains that are "incompatible" with or even subtly repel the planet's gravity, produced a miraculous effect.

The Meteorite, which was accelerating wildly downwards, seemed to have crashed into an invisible, slightly elastic "wall," and its downward momentum suddenly stopped! Although the "wall" was instantly "pressed" back by the planet's gravity, this brief, almost negligible pause and weak rebound force bought Ling Xiao a split second!

It's this very moment!

"Full engine! Maximum thrust! Reverse! Disengage!!!"

Ling Xiao's roar was synchronized with his mental commands! The main engine and all attitude thrusters, which had just been shut down, roared back up in less than a hundredth of a breath, their power instantly soaring to 130% of the design limit! The starship's keel groaned as if it were about to break, but this time, the thrust was no longer fighting against the complete, continuous, and overwhelming gravitational pull of the planet, but against the gravitational field that had been "interfered" with, exhibiting an extremely subtle "pause" and "disorder"!

"Swoosh—Boom!!!"

A ghostly blue tail flame erupted wildly, leaving a mournful and resolute streak of light against the backdrop of the greyish-white Death Star. The Meteorite trembled violently, like a dying beast uttering its final roar, forcefully pulling itself upwards and outwards from that invisible quagmire of gravity, clinging to a sliver of hope!

The direction of acceleration has changed! Although still pulled by strong gravity, the speed increase is slow, but the downward trend has been stopped, and it has turned into an extremely difficult upward climbing trajectory!

"Hold on! Get rich! Stabilize the ship's structure!" Fine blood trickled from Ling Xiao's seven orifices, a sign of his mental and spiritual exhaustion. But his eyes shone with a frightening intensity. His hands were as if welded to the control panel, frantically fine-tuning each nozzle. Taking advantage of the brief period of gravitational disturbance caused by the "interference," he maximized the starship's thrust, desperately "sliding" outward along a tangent line at an acute angle to the planet's gravity.

Fa Cai understood Ling Xiao's intention. It let out a low growl, and its silver-gray fur exploded, releasing a faint moonlight power. It was not an attack, but rather like an invisible "bandage," trying its best to stabilize the most vulnerable structural connection points inside the starship and resist the metal fatigue and stress concentration brought about by violent maneuvers.

Time seemed to stretch out countless times. Each second felt like an eternity. Outside the porthole, the greyish-white world of death, initially overwhelming with terror, gradually transformed into a massive shadow looming diagonally below. Then, the edge of the shadow slowly began to sweep across the field of vision, the cold grey surface gradually being replaced by more and more dark void…

"The gravitational field strength is weakening! We are moving out of the effective capture range!" The main control system finally delivered a less hopeless report.

As the gray-white death star completely transformed into a smaller, more unsettling gray patch behind it, the Meteorite finally seemed to break free of its hook, its weight lifted, and it plunged back into the relatively "normal" void. The roar of the engines gradually subsided, and the overheating alarms from over-operation slowly went out.

Inside the starship, chaos reigned. Many unsecured items had been smashed to pieces during the violent jolts, and the air was thick with a faint smell of burning (from the overloaded engines and circuitry) and the distinctive odor of metal rubbing together. On the main screen, the value representing structural integrity had dropped by nearly 15%, and several subsystems were flashing yellow warning lights, indicating they needed repair.

Ling Xiao slumped in the cockpit, gasping for breath, his face as pale as paper. Each breath was accompanied by the throbbing pain in his meridians from overexertion. That "reverse force field impact" had almost drained most of the meteorite power from his dantian and had also caused a significant shock to his mind. But he was still alive, and the starship was still largely intact.

Fa Cai lay limply on the ground, panting with its tongue lolling out, its silver eyes revealing exhaustion and lingering fear. That attack had taken a toll on it as well.

A full incense stick's time passed before Ling Xiao barely regained a sliver of mobility. He struggled to sit up, first checking on Fa Cai to make sure it was just exhausted and otherwise unharmed, before he felt relieved. Then, he looked at the gray-white dead star that had become a tiny dot, his gaze extremely solemn.

"Natural...or man-made?" Doubts arose in his mind. The gravitational field appeared too suddenly, too secretly, and its intensity was abnormally high. If it weren't for his special inheritance, which allowed him to survive by a near-self-destructive means at the last moment, they would now be just another pile of forgotten wreckage on the surface of that dead star.

This "Desolate Storm Belt" was far more bizarre and dangerous than he had imagined. It not only interfered with navigation but also concealed deadly natural traps.

"We can't blindly rely on sensory navigation anymore," Ling Xiao thought with lingering fear. The jade pendant's guidance might point to the final destination, but the specific dangers along the way still required the most careful detection and judgment.

He mustered his strength and began to deal with the damage to the starship, prioritizing the repair of the navigation and detection systems. At the same time, he ordered the main control system to mark and move away from the desolate planet codenamed "Gray Skeleton" and the large area of ​​airspace surrounding it at the highest alert level.

The Meteorite, bearing new wounds and with even greater vigilance, continued its arduous journey along that faint sensory "anchor point" through the perilous cosmos. The road ahead remained fraught with uncertainty, and this brush with death had, like a cold wedge, been driven deep into Ling Xiao's heart—the cosmos was far from smooth. Every step required a life-or-death struggle.