High Martial Arts: Slay enemies to become stronger, forge invincibility from billions of corpses.

Song Chen isn't concerned with these titles for the time being; he's more interested in something more substantial.

But before he could speak, the messenger had already raised a hand, if the edge of that ball of light and shadow could be called a hand.

In the starry sky at the center of the hall, a projection slowly coalesced.

It was a golden stone, about one meter tall, irregularly shaped, with fine lines covering its surface.

The stone floated in the air and rotated slowly, with a dark golden light flashing across its surface with each rotation.

"This is the Source Spirit Star Stone."

Song Chen stared at the projection. No explanation was needed. The star core inside his body had begun to tremble violently, and his entire body was heating up.

He could sense that the projection in front of him represented the source of all power.

"Fifty-one years ago, it was this very source spirit stone that filled your planet with spiritual energy," Dawn began to recount.

Below the projection, countless golden veins extended from the bottom of the star stone, like a vast spider web or the roots of a giant tree, spreading out densely and covering the entire floor of the hall.

Then the golden veins spread upwards along the wall, eventually weaving into a complete network in mid-air.

"These are psionic energy channels," Dawn said, pointing to the golden lines.

"After the Source Spirit Star Stone lands, it will automatically unfold its spiritual energy channels, which will penetrate into the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere, entering every living organism."

"It is these networks that allow every life form on your Blue Star to absorb spiritual energy without needing any special techniques or talents."

Li Qingcang leaned forward slightly, staring intently at everything in front of him.

"In a normal life evolution system, a life form needs specific talents, techniques, and guidance to sense the existence of spiritual energy."

"Not even one in ten thousand people might be able to touch the threshold, but it's different if you have a psychic energy channel. All living beings, as long as they have a nervous system, can directly access psychic energy."

"The reason why warriors on your Blue Star encounter almost no bottlenecks when breaking through from the first to the sixth rank is precisely this."

"No wonder." Li Qingcang's voice was a little dry.

"In the fifty-one-year psionic era, humanity can break through from level zero to level six as long as enough energy is accumulated."

"This speed is too fast in any cultivation system. I always thought it was a genetic mutation caused by meteorite radiation, but now it seems that it is not a mutation, but that a network cable has been directly inserted into everyone's body."

"A very accurate metaphor." Chenxi nodded.

Song Chen didn't speak. He was observing how those veins extended, how they started from the star stone and covered the entire planet's ecosystem layer by layer.

Then he suddenly realized something: behind all of this was a network, a network that had been laid out 600 million years ago.

The light of dawn flickered, and then continued, "Six hundred million years ago, the exploration fleet of the Cangxing Alliance discovered this planet."

"There are no signs of life on Earth yet. According to the Alliance's investment rules, only civilizations that have reached level 0.5 are eligible to accept Source Spirit Star Stones. Civilizations that are too low-level cannot bear spiritual energy, so investing in them would be a waste of time."

"So you started waiting." Song Chen looked at him.

"Yes." The messenger nodded.

"I was dispatched to Earth and put into slumber."

"The pre-set wake-up condition is that the Blue Star civilization level assessment value reaches 0.5. If it does not reach that level, I will continue to sleep. If it does reach that level, I will automatically wake up and release star stones."

"I waited for 600 million years, and during that time, I woke up four times."

The projection in the center of the hall began to rewind, and golden star stones appeared, arranged on the timeline.

"For the first time, 550 million years ago, a civilization with silicon-based life forms appeared on Earth."

"It took them three million years to reach level 0.5, where they acquired rudimentary industrial capabilities and energy control systems."

"So I released a starstone, which they absorbed over 20,000 years and converted into their own evolutionary energy. Then, internal divisions occurred, and a war broke out between the silicon-based and carbon-based parasites. Civilization collapsed, and the investment failed."

The second starstone lit up.

"The second time, 360 million years ago, a type of intelligent soft-bodied creature in the ocean established a global underwater civilization."

"Their expertise in mathematics and hydrodynamics far exceeds your imagination; I have deployed the Star Stones."

"But they chose to use all their psionic energy to modify the marine ecosystem, trapping the entire civilization in a closed ecological cycle and losing its upward momentum. I judge this as a failed investment."

The third star stone lit up.

"The third time, 65 million years ago, was the dinosaur civilization."

"As you just saw in the corridor, these are the closest investments to success in the history of Earth. Dinosaurs' flesh and blood are far stronger than those of mammals, making them naturally suited for psionic enhancement."

"I released a starstone, and the dinosaur civilization reached level 0.9 within three hundred years, just one step away from becoming a level one civilization."

Song Chen recalled the scene from before: "Then they used the energy of the star stones to turn Blue Star into an ice age."

"Yes." Chenxi nodded.

"At that time, the most powerful three-headed dinosaur gathered its subordinates to fight for global control, and the great war triggered a global psionic storm."

"The concentration of psionic energy in the atmosphere surged and then suddenly dropped to zero, glaciers advanced, psionic energy receded, dinosaurs went extinct, and the investment failed."

In the projection, the fourth star stone lit up, its light more dazzling than the previous three.

"The fourth time, fifty-one years ago."

"Human civilization has reached the 0.5 level assessment line for the fourth time. Although you humans are physically weak, you have completed the path that other civilizations would have taken hundreds of thousands of years to complete through the Industrial Revolution, the Electric Revolution, and the Information Revolution."

"I released the fourth Source Spirit Star Stone in accordance with the Alliance's rules."

The light of dawn turned towards Song Chen, whose three-meter-tall silhouette bowed slightly, as if watching him.

"As you've seen, this investment was a success."

"You have given birth to star-core level life, and human civilization has become a Class I civilization in the universe."

The hall remained quiet for a long time.

Song Chen stared at the projection in front of him. The timelines of the four Origin Spirit Star Stones were still suspended in the air. Each stone represented an investment spanning hundreds of millions of years, and each one ended in failure. Only the last one lit up.

That time, the price was that five billion people on Earth struggled for half a century under the fangs of alien beasts, tens of millions of soldiers were buried under the high walls, and every brick of hundreds of human base cities was soaked in blood.

Six hundred million years, four investments, the rise and fall of countless civilizations.

All of this is just a business transaction.

"That's too extravagant," Li Qingcang said first, his voice dry.

"It's so big that I can't quite digest it."

"It is indeed big." Zhou Wangyue only said three words and then stopped.

Song Chen took a deep breath. He was shocked, but he was never the kind of person who would be overwhelmed by shock.

The next question, and the most crucial one, was already swirling in his mind: how could he repay the kindness of the Cangxing civilization?

Thinking it over, Song Chen looked at Chen Xi: "You said humanity owes you a huge sum of money, to be repaid over tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Repay what? How will they repay it? There shouldn't be anything on Blue Star that the Cangxing Alliance would consider, right?"

"Your judgment is very accurate."

"There are indeed no material resources on Earth that would interest the Alliance. Your gold, diamonds, and rare minerals are no different from sand in the universe."

"Your only value lies in the future."

Song Chen felt the star core inside his body throb.