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

Two days later, the spacecraft completed its final jump.

The silver lines outside the porthole suddenly shrank into countless points of light, then unfolded again into an unfamiliar starry sky.

A verdant planet floats in the center of the field of vision, surrounded by two satellites of different sizes.

The satellite's surface is covered with grayish-white rocks, layered with pitted impact craters, devoid of any atmosphere or vegetation; it is a lifeless rock sphere.

The planet they orbit is a dazzling green.

The green color of Emerald Star comes from the vegetation covering its three continents. From space, the vast forests look like a glowing green ocean.

The folds of the mountains outline dark textures in the green, while the blue of the ocean and the green of the land intertwine to form a winding line along the coastline.

The polar ice caps reflect the starlight, cutting the white and green areas into two distinct regions.

The three continents are all different in shape. The largest one looks like a horizontal question mark, the middle one looks like an outstretched wing, and the smallest one looks like a water droplet.

Song Chen noticed something amiss. From space, he could clearly see the cities of the winged race. These cities were distributed along mountains and rivers, with light and elegant architectural styles, and towers and arched bridges arranged in a staggered pattern.

But no moving aircraft can be seen on the roads of these cities.

The Winged People are a flying race, so it's understandable that their cities lack ground transportation, but the sky is also empty.

"Attention, all personnel," Kane's voice came over the ship's intercom.

"Target: Emerald Star, Winged Human Civilization, a Level 1 Subordinate Civilization of the Alliance, with three installments of outstanding payments."

"The Ministry of Justice has issued a final collection order; this is the last chance to fulfill the obligation."

"Mission objective: Land in the Seven Wings Council's main city and deliver the final collection order to the Seven Wings Council."

"If they can pay off all the debts on the spot, the task is complete; if not, standard collection procedures will be followed."

"What is the standard collection procedure?" Song Chen asked over the communication channel.

Before Kane could answer, Ricky interrupted, his voice carrying an obvious hint of schadenfreude over the comms channel:

"Vice Captain, the standard debt collection procedure is to scare them in the air first, then land them."

"If they still don't surrender, then we'll start fighting."

"But we shouldn't need to fight this planet. I bet they can't even afford the paint we need to paint our spaceship."

"Rickie, stop making sarcastic remarks," Lina's calm voice interrupted the communication.

"I'm telling the truth."

"It's been 20,000 years. They've sold everything they could. They won't even take in the old, weak, sick, and disabled from slave ships. We're probably going to make a wasted trip this time."

"That's enough," Kane interrupted Ricky.

"Everyone, assemble in the equipment room. Equipment will be distributed before the mission begins. Wear uniform clothing, and masks are mandatory. They must not be removed during the entire mission."

Song Chen stood up and walked out of the rest cabin.

In the equipment room, seven people stood in front of their respective lockers.

Kane had arrived ahead of time and was standing in the center of the equipment room.

Beside him lay an open long chest containing his own equipment: a simple longsword.

He had already put on his mask; the pure black mask covered his entire face, leaving only a pair of calm eyes peering out through the deep red eyepiece.

Kane glanced at the entire team: "Did everyone get their masks?"

Song Chen took out his mask and asked, "Captain, this mask doesn't offer much protection, why do you have to wear it?"

Kane pointed to the mask: "Our Department of Retribution is pretty hated in the universe, and I'm not kidding."

"Every time we carry out a debt collection mission, we leave an unforgettable mark on the history of that civilization."

"They will remember your scent, your size, and your attack patterns. If they develop in the future or join another faction, the first thing they will do is to take revenge on the Punishers or the civilization behind them."

"The mask can block breath scanning and facial recognition, and combined with the body blurring function of the combat suit, you are just a black shadow in the mission log."

"This is not only protecting you, but also protecting the civilization behind you."

"You wouldn't want any civilization you've wronged to develop into a Type III civilization tens of thousands of years later, and the first thing they do is send a fleet to your home planet for revenge, would you?"

Song Chen didn't ask any more questions.

"Put your things on. Before we set off, I'll give you a brief overview of Emerald Star. I'll only say the important things once."

Kane brought up the holographic projection in the center of the equipment room, and a three-dimensional image of Emerald Star appeared in mid-air, slowly rotating.

"The Winged Civilization, we in our department usually call them 'Birdmen.' It's okay to call them that in private, but you're not allowed to use that word when you're on a mission."

"Their social structure is a tribal federation, with the highest authority being the Seven Wings Council, where seven chiefs each represent one of the seven founding tribes."

"The cities of the Winged People are built on cliffs and high mountains, in treacherous terrain, but that's irrelevant to us. We have spaceships."

"The individual combat strength of the Winged People is generally between the third and fourth tiers, with a few elites reaching the fifth tier. The number of sixth-tier individuals is extremely small, and the seventh-tier Star Core Realm, who are on par with us, disappeared ten thousand years ago."

"Why?" Song Chen asked, somewhat curiously.

"The last seventh-tier winged human was killed on the spot by the Department of Punishment during a debt collection operation three thousand years ago."

"His crime was resisting the Alliance's collection efforts by force, and since then, no seventh-tier has ever been born on Emerald Star."

"It's not that it's never been born, it's that it can't be born," Lina said from the side.

"The Winged Race's current level of psionic research is stuck tens of thousands of years in the past. When that seventh-tier Winged Race was killed, all of their advanced psionic research facilities were shut down by the Department of Punishment."

"This is the complete version of the standard debt collection procedure. Their population has plummeted from a peak of 12 billion to less than 2 billion now. There are fewer and fewer young and middle-aged people who can cultivate, and the inheritance of spiritual energy is also dying out."

"If this trend continues, they may not even be able to produce a sixth-order being in a few thousand years."

Kane looked around at the whole team and nodded.

"Let's go, destination Emerald Star, the main city of the Seven Wings Council."

The spacecraft began to break through the atmosphere.

The atmosphere of Emerald Star is thicker than that of Blue Star, and the spaceship's outer shell shimmered with an orange-red plasma halo as it rubbed against the ground at high speed.

Song Chen stood by the porthole and saw the emerald-colored continent rapidly magnifying beneath the clouds.

The city of the winged people was even clearer from the air, with its towers, arched bridges, palaces on cliffs, and villages in the forests. The architectural style was light and elegant, with extensive use of curved structures and openwork carvings.

But the streets were empty; there were no winged people flying, no aircraft taking off or landing, and even most of the city lights were dimmed.

This city seems to have been abandoned for a long time.

"Something's not right." Kane frowned as he stood at the command post on the bridge, his eyes fixed on the real-time data transmitted from the sensors.

"The city is large enough to accommodate 30 million people, but sensors show that the population density in the urban area is ridiculously low."

"The energy readings are also strange; many buildings have no energy supply, as if the entire city has been shut down."

"They should have received the collection ruling from the Ministry of Justice a long time ago," Lina said, her fingers flying across her information screen to bring up communication monitoring data.

"They probably evacuated because they knew we were coming."

"evacuation?"

"Where can they evacuate to? A civilization that owes a million dollars can't afford spaceships, can't leave the atmosphere, and is crammed into underground caves?"