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

Song Chen took a sip and indeed felt the True Star within his body tremble slightly.

The tremor was very slight, like someone calling out from afar, and Zhenxing responding.

Seeing his reaction, Lao Chao squinted and laughed for a long time: "Your star core was only recently formed, right? Nine out of ten ninth-rank members who come to me are like this. Starfall Tea is for stabilizing the cores of new ninth-rank members."

Song Chen sat in Chaoyin Pavilion for most of the day, listening to Lao Chao tell many stories about Azure Star.

It is about how the Yunlan civilization built this city that floats on the lake.

It is said that the earliest Yunlan people dug out a kind of spiritual energy crystal from the bottom of the lake. That crystal could form a stable levitation force field on the water surface.

The foundation of the entire city is made up of hundreds of huge floating crystals.

There's also the story of a certain ninth-tier expert who, after failing to break through here, smashed up the entire street.

Some people's star cores shattered, and the residual spiritual energy within their bodies went out of control, turning all the buildings on the east bank of the lake area into dust overnight.

Later, when Lan Du renovated that area, they specially planted a patch of spiritual plants on the east bank to purify the residual spiritual energy.

The spiritual vein at the bottom of the lake is actually the home of a sleeping cosmic behemoth.

It is said that the giant beast's breathing is the pulse of the spiritual vein, and it will turn over once every few hundred years, when it turns over, the water of the entire lake will reverse.

Song Chen listened with great interest. Most of these stories were fake, and Lao Chao laughed as he told them.

It was pleasant to listen to; he didn't need to distinguish between real and fake sounds. He could simply sit in that chair and let the sounds and the lake breeze brush past his ears.

He also went to the psionic arena in Landu.

It was a giant domed building suspended above the lake.

It is divided into dozens of arenas, where psionicists from the third to the eighth rank can go up and compete.

Song Chen didn't go on stage; he just sat in the stands and watched for the entire afternoon.

The psionic light curtain on the dome automatically adjusts the intensity of psionic vibrations on the arena to prevent the aftershocks from leaking out.

He saw someone use spatial warp to dodge their opponent's attack, leaving a trail of afterimages on the arena, each afterimage carrying faint spatial patterns.

I also saw heavily armored warriors charging forward with psionic cannons under their weight, the stone slabs beneath their feet cracking into a spiderweb pattern.

The psionic cannon struck his armor, sending sparks flying, but he didn't retreat an inch.

Gunners also fired tens of thousands of ice spikes in a very short time, each with a different trajectory, weaving a dense, impenetrable net on the arena.

These people's strength was nothing in his eyes.

But his fighting style, his moves, and how he used psionic energy all found it very interesting.

He memorized several particularly ingenious moves.

On the third night, Song Chen returned to the cave.

Lan Ning and several servants had already cleaned up the cave.

The spiritual plants in the living room had been watered, and water droplets still clung to their leaves.

The spring water in the tea room was ready, and the fire in the stove was kept very low, emitting a soft hissing sound.

He went into the meditation room, sat on the futon one last time, and closed his eyes.

He felt the true star within his body, which hung steadily in the center. He felt the space around it and the gravitational connection between himself and this universe.

He could feel the gravitational waves spreading outwards from the surface of the true star, weakening with distance, but never completely disappearing.

Then he stood up and walked out of the quiet room.

"I'm leaving."

He said to Lan Ning.

Lan Ning bowed to him, her posture as perfect as when they first met.

"Have a safe journey, sir."

Song Chen left the cave and boarded the Shadow Ship, departing from Azure Star.

He tried to activate the void traversal and found that the ninth-level void traversal, with the support of the ninth-order star source power, became even more unrestrained.

If he wanted, he could tear open a wormhole large enough for the entire Shadow to pass through in one go.

This ability was unthinkable at the eighth level, when the crack he tore open was only big enough for one person to squeeze through, and it was unstable.

"go home."

The Shadow entered the jump portal and disappeared at the edge of the azure starry sky.

The distance from the blue star to the Milky Way is eighteen million light-years.

The Shadow can travel 50,000 light-years in a single jump, and theoretically it could reach that destination in just over 300 jumps.

But Song Chen wasn't in such a hurry; he stopped several times along the way.

Sometimes it's to avoid a dense nebula, and sometimes it's to evade the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Sometimes I just feel tired and stop to rest for a couple of days.

Once, he stopped on the outer edge of a binary star system, where two stars orbited each other, one an orange giant and the other a white dwarf.

The gravitational pull between them tore out a long tail of starlight.

Song Chen parked the spaceship at a safe distance, opened the observation screen on the porthole, and watched the two stars slowly rotate.

The dwarf star is devouring the outer layer of the giant star, creating a bright stream of matter.

Matter is drawn from the surface of the giant star, bypasses the center of mass of both stars, and finally falls into the accretion disk of the dwarf star.

The whole process was quiet and long, but Song Chen could feel how much power was contained within it.

That power was billions of times stronger than the true star within his body.

But in the universe, it is just an ordinary binary star system, without even a name.

He looked at it for a long time, then continued on his way.

The cockpit of the Shadow was quiet, with only the low hum of the engine accompanying him.

He practiced, rested, and looked at star charts on the spaceship.

Sometimes he would zoom in on the star map to a section of the Milky Way, looking at a few familiar areas.

The location of the Tian Shu defense line, the direction of the Blood Erosion Galaxy, and that little yellow dot on the Orion Arm—that's the Solar System.

Every time he saw that yellow dot, he would linger for a while longer.

I haven't been back for three years. I wonder if the plane trees at Tianhai University are still there.

half a month later.

Song Chen returned to the Milky Way. He first turned on his communicator and dialed in Lar's quantum communication frequency.

The communication signal was very weak in intergalactic space, and it took him almost a minute to get through.

The voice of Lars came from the other end of the line, hoarse and tired, but still in the same tone.

Song Chen is already very familiar with that kind of tune.

He was always so unhurried, as if everything was under his control, or as if he simply couldn't be bothered to care.

"Song Chen? Where are you?" Lal's voice carried a hint of surprise.

"We're back. We just reached the edge of the Milky Way."

"Have you finished taking care of things over there?"

"Barely."

Song Chen then asked, "Lord Ral, how is the battle situation at the Tian Shu defense line?"

He was very concerned about this; if they lost, the entire galaxy would be in big trouble.

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end before a reply was given.

"It's still the same, a stalemate between the two sides. The Bloodthirsty Mother Nest is hiding in the north and won't move, and we won't go out either."

"There are small-scale conflicts every day, but no major wars break out."

"Those tenth-level beings from the Nine Luminaries Civilization are still holding the line, and the First Holy Lord hasn't been able to advance either."

"We're waiting for reinforcements, and they're waiting too; it's a stalemate."

"It's been three years," Song Chen said.

"Yes, it's been three years. After you left, the 68th War Zone had a new batch of people."

"Your defensive line was eventually recaptured, but you lost three battleships and your garrison suffered more than half its casualties. However, you still managed to take it back in the end."

"By the way, how are things going on in the Blood Erosion Galaxy?" Lar suddenly asked.