Everyone's playing Red Giant? I, Black Hole, devour everything!

All team members turned their detectors toward the direction from which the light was coming.

Then, they were all stunned.

It was a—no, it was something that couldn't be described as "a single thing".

It was a vast sea of ​​light.

Light surged from the far distance, illuminating the entire starry sky as if it were daytime.

No.

Brighter than daytime.

Compared to it, the stars in the universe that can only be seen by distances of "light-years" are like candles illuminated by the sun, instantly dimmed and without light.

"The detection data is out—it's about... 320 light-years away from us."

Three hundred and twenty light-years.

This distance is not actually that far on a cosmic scale.

But the key question is—how can the light emitted by a celestial body 320 light-years away reach here?

And it's so bright?

This means that the absolute brightness of that celestial body has reached an unbelievable level.

"Wait, look at the detector's brightness data—"

All eyes were focused on that line of numbers.

Brightness index: Cannot be displayed.

The dial reading range has been exceeded.

The designers of the probe never imagined that there would be celestial bodies in the universe that were this bright.

The exploration team leader remained silent for a long time.

Then, he said something in a very soft voice.

"Everyone... retreat. Retreat further away."

"Captain, shouldn't we get closer? There's bound to be something good on a celestial body of this magnitude—"

"Even the best things require a certain life to obtain. Do you think something that emits that kind of light is something we could possibly get close to?"

The captain swallowed hard.

"Report these coordinates to the sector command. Also... post this message on the public channel."

Almost simultaneously, the public channel of the 27th star sector was bombarded with messages.

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!!! Did you guys see that?! That light!"

"I saw it! I'm 500 light-years away, and it's so brightly lit that I can't even see my own star!"

"That's nothing! I was 600 light-years away, and three of my observatories were burned out!"

"What on earth is that? A supernova explosion? A gamma-ray burst?"

"Impossible. The light curve of a supernova isn't like that. The light is too stable; there's no sign of it decaying at all."

"Wait a minute! Wasn't there just an observer named Lin Tian... who evolved into a quasar?!"

As soon as this news came out, many people brought up their personal profile screens.

The golden notice still hangs at the very top.

Now everyone understood.

The light that illuminated the entire star sector was not a supernova explosion.

That's a quasar.

That's Lin Tian.

"A quasar...a quasar? This light is coming from a quasar?"

"How did Lin Tian end up in our 27th Star Sector?"

"High-quality answer: I don't know."

"This brightness is probably brighter than the entire Milky Way galaxy!"

"This is fucking terrifying! Something this bright is right here in our sector?!"

……

The discussion on the public channel is getting more and more heated.

Countless observers pointed their detectors toward the direction from which the light was coming.

But they soon discovered a problem—

That quasar was incredibly bright.

All detection methods that use photons as carriers will fail due to overexposure when they get close to its light, just like looking at the sun with the naked eye will burn you.

The same applies to detectors.

Some people, refusing to believe in superstition, forcibly pushed the detector's sensitivity to the maximum—and then their detectors burned out.

The alarm in the observation chamber blared, and only static remained on the screen.

"Holy crap! My detector's burned out!"

"I've warned you before, but you just wouldn't listen."

"Damn it, tens of thousands of star coins are gone just like that."

Ordinary observers gave up on the probe.

But those observers with greater power took a different approach.

They abandoned optical detection and switched to gravitational wave detection.

Gravitational waves are unaffected by light.

At the very center of that radiance, on the screen of the gravitational wave detector, an unprecedented image is gradually taking shape.

It was a huge accretion disk.

Its diameter is larger than the entire solar system.

It is surrounded by a bottomless dark region—the core of the black hole, the event horizon.

Even light cannot escape that darkness.

sturdy.

grand.

It is not advisable to look directly at it.

This is a quasar.

All the observers who could see this scene fell silent.

……

Lin Tian restarted the gravitational lens.

The overwhelming light was refracted, diminished, and obscured by layers of curved spacetime.

It's like wrapping a sun in layers upon layers of black cloth.

The light quickly faded.

After a few breaths, the illuminated starry sky returned to its original darkness.

It was as if nothing had ever happened.

"Isn't the effect a bit too strong?" Lin Tian was very satisfied with the result, but also somewhat helpless.

From this moment on, he will have no way to hide it anymore.

However, he didn't care.

If someone who has reached the level of a quasar still needs to hide it, then he would be a complete failure as the ruler of quasars.

Lin Tian was preparing to organize his evolved attribute panel before leaving the 27th Star Sector.

Suddenly, his senses picked up a signal.

Very faint.

It was so faint that if his spacetime curvature hadn't reached level eighteen, he would never have been able to detect it.

That is an information entity.

It is hidden in the deepest part of the quasar incubation field—right where the original quasar was located.

After the primordial quasar was merged, only an empty spacetime remained.

But the information body remained suspended in place.

It seems to be waiting for something.

Lin Tian extended his senses over the area.

The structure of the information body was similar to the database he had seen at the Ayers dark matter collection station, but it was more refined and complex.

Its outer shell is made using gravity imprinting.

This allows it to be preserved for hundreds of millions of years without being worn down by time.

And its internal storage contents—the moment Lin Tian's consciousness touched it, it automatically activated.

A series of images slowly appeared before Lin Tian.

That was an observer from the Ayr race.

His body looked covered in wounds.

Those scars are not physical; they are traces left after the gravitational field was torn apart, and marks left after the collapse of the spacetime structure.

Although Lin Tian didn't know how these wounds were caused, he could tell at a glance that this Ayers tribesman had experienced an extremely fierce battle.

The video begins to play.

The Ayr observer spoke.

"Those who come after..."

"If you see this video... it means you have inherited our legacy."

"You found the quasar incubation site, you completed the fusion, and you evolved into a quasar."

"congratulations."

"But there's one thing I must tell you."

"This is the truth that our Ayrs race discovered on the eve of our demise, at the last cost of our entire civilization."

"Please remember—the will of the universe is not a benevolent giver."

Its real name is...

"Cosmic Filter".