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

The spacecraft slowly approached the jump gate management station.

When the distance was reduced to less than 100 kilometers, a directional communication signal was sent from inside the management station.

Song Chen tapped "Accept" on the main control screen, and the communication was connected.

But what appeared on the light screen was not a person, but a ball of light.

A ball of light, suspended in mid-air, constantly changing in color and shape, has a bright nucleus that is almost white at the center, surrounded by a constantly flowing halo of color, transitioning from blue to purple and then to pink, like the ever-changing aurora.

The ball of light blinked rhythmically, each blink accompanied by a precise stream of data—that was its language.

A communication method consisting of light wave frequency and amplitude was automatically translated into Bactrian by the spacecraft's translation system.

"Leap Gate ND-7734 Management Station, No. CT-7721-C, please report your navigation purpose, departure point, destination, and civilization level."

The light cluster spoke in a calm and efficient tone, without any unnecessary politeness.

Gu Qian stepped forward: "Blue Star Civilization, Level 1, departing from the Solar System, heading to Flowing Star to sign the Subordinate Civilization Treaty."

The ball of light paused for two seconds, seemingly searching a database.

Then its flashing frequency increased slightly, and the color of its outer halo changed from bluish-purple to a warm yellow with gold spots.

The spaceship's database mentions that when energy-based life forms express emotions such as "interest" or "excitement," a warm-colored component appears in their aura.

"Blue Star civilization, interesting." The ball of light repeated the name.

"You know what? You've become quite well-known. Six hundred million years of waiting, four investments, three failures, and finally, you succeeded on the last try."

"Those guys in the investment department have already turned your story into an internal training case study, titled 'On Never Giving Up: Blue Star Investment's Six Hundred Million Years of Waiting and Returns.'"

The cabin was deathly silent.

Dozens of mission members were petrified; they had never imagined the bloody and tearful history of their planet over the past fifty years.

The massacre of cities by alien beasts, the fall of base cities, and the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers were all presented as a PowerPoint presentation by the Cangxing Alliance, complete with a title.

Song Chen didn't react much. He had already figured it out. In the eyes of the Cangxing Alliance, Blue Star was just a project number, and human suffering was just a line of risk assessment data in an investment report.

Anger is pointless; when your fists are strong enough, the score can be re-settled.

If your fists aren't strong enough right now, then you'll have to bear with it for now.

"We've caught another new fish," the ball of light suddenly added.

Then it emitted a series of light wave vibrations that sounded like a half-smile through the communication channel, and continued:

"Alright, this is the first time a Level 1 civilization has signed an agreement to waive toll fees for its voyage. Let's go straight there."

"I suggest you prepare for entry there before the next jump node, as entry checks on Flowing Star are much stricter than here."

After he finished speaking, the communication was cut off.

A ripple appeared on the blue energy membrane inside the jump gate, and it began to expand, causing the shuttle-shaped and spherical spacecraft to automatically make way.

Song Chen nodded to Gu Qianzhi, who took a deep breath and pressed the jump confirmation button on the main control panel.

The moment the spaceship passed through the blue membrane, the crew members all felt a slight dizziness.

Then the view outside the porthole changed again.

Between the third and fourth jump nodes lies a multi-star system, with six stars orbiting each other in extremely complex orbits.

Their gravity pulls at each other, weaving a complex gravitational web in space.

The spacecraft travels through this net, and the view outside the porthole changes every few minutes.

Sometimes it's an orange nebula illuminated by three stars simultaneously, sometimes it's an accretion disk formed by two white dwarfs devouring each other, and sometimes it's a lonely rogue planet drifting in the darkness.

After recovering from their initial shock, the mission members began to get back to work.

Gu Qianzhi summoned people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Martial Arts Research Institute, opened the publicly available clauses of the treaty concerning subordinate civilizations in the spaceship's database, and began to analyze them clause by clause.

Chen Yuanzhou then pulled a few people from the Academy of Sciences together and opened a document called "General Knowledge of Cosmic Civilization (Elementary Edition)" and began to study it from the beginning.

The first chapter of this book is titled "The Fundamental Properties of Psionic Energy and Its Applications on an Interstellar Scale," and the table of contents alone is forty pages long.

Song Chen found a quiet training room on the spaceship and began to adapt to his newly enhanced power.

He did the Qi and blood control training three times. With a body containing 1.5 million units of Qi and blood, every move he made would generate enormous destructive power, and he needed to readjust.

He didn't want to accidentally smash the negotiating table of the Cangxing Alliance after arriving on Liuguang Star.

The spacecraft continued its journey.

The fifth jump node is located in the center of a spectacular star-forming region, where countless young stars are condensing from clouds of gas and dust.

Their cores have just begun to ignite, and their surfaces are churning with violent thermonuclear reactions.

The dust cloud was blown into all sorts of strange shapes by the radiation pressure of the star, some like an open palm, some like a bird with outstretched wings, and some like a giant mushroom.

The ionized hydrogen region emits a deep red fluorescence when excited by star radiation.

After the sixth jump node, the spacecraft entered a routine flight that lasted half a day.

During this half-day, the mission members took turns resting and studying.

Gu Qianzhi barely closed his eyes. He read the publicly available terms of the Treaty on Subordinate Civilizations several times, and his expression grew more and more solemn with each reading.

The seventh jump node is the last transit point for entering the Streamlight Galaxy.

After the spaceship passed through the jump gate, the starry sky outside the porthole suddenly darkened because there was a celestial body in front of it that absorbed most of the starlight.

The mission members didn't need to ask what it was, because it was too bright.

A neutron star with a diameter of about 30 kilometers is suspended in space. Its surface is different from that of ordinary neutron stars, and it presents an extremely dazzling light.

Blue Cherenkov radiation, purple synchrotron radiation, golden X-ray afterglow...

Various colors erupted from the surface of the star, layer upon layer, as if someone had set off a firework in space that would never explode.

The magnetic field of a neutron star rotates at the speed of light, and charged particles are accelerated to near the speed of light by the magnetic field, forming a huge radiation ring around the star.

The radiation ring's light transitioned from dark red to bright blue, like a rainbow-colored halo wrapping around the planet.

The outer edge of the halo consists of tens of thousands of radiating waterfalls, each stretching billions of kilometers, and each one bends into a perfect arc of magnetic field lines in space.

From a distance, it looks as if the planet has grown tens of thousands of glowing tentacles, slowly dancing in the void.

This neutron star was transformed by the Cangxing civilization using technology far beyond human comprehension into an ever-burning beacon, and also into one of the most prosperous administrative hubs in the Milky Way.

Centered around the meteor, it is surrounded by millions of man-made celestial bodies of various sizes.

Some are docking ports, some are trading posts, some are military outposts, and some are simply giant cities floating in space.

Countless spaceships shuttle back and forth among these man-made celestial bodies, their contrails weaving a perpetually flowing web of light in space.