124: Even as time washes away the spirit, its protection will never crumble.

Ice, dust, rocks... vast amounts of matter floated chaotically in mid-air, gathering or colliding to condense into a fantastical, silent cloud of mist.

The silver, menacing bow of the Warship slowly cut through, revealing several dilapidated, large-scale structures emerging from the void—

The fleet led by Xi Hai had arrived at the station of the 9-89 Border Legion.

The two sides quickly established communication.

That group of officers who called themselves proxies were initially incredulous upon learning that not only had reinforcements arrived, but a Supreme Director would be stationed long-term at Tianjin Seat V89.

After confirming the truth, they all wept bitterly, and some even fainted on the spot.

That exaggerated reaction took even Xi Hai by surprise.

After night lamp reviewed the archives here, Xi Hai finally understood what this so-called Legion before him had endured.

Seven hundred and seventy-two years ago, in that era of surging winds and rising clouds,

humanity, having just united, achieved a decisive victory in the Great Restoration war, and countless fallen star systems returned to human hands.

The Order Alliance, which had been established for less than thirty years, worked together and, after paying a tremendous price, pulled humanity, which was on the brink of extinction, out of the gutter.

And Tianjin Seat V89 was merely a tiny droplet beneath the monstrous waves of that era—

This small star cluster, with only five hundred star systems, appeared insignificant along a battle line spanning tens of thousands of light-years.

The Empire, which was far from being as bloated and corrupt as it is now, left behind a second-line combat fleet, changed its designation, and used it as the garrison fleet here.

That's right, this was the 9-89 Border Legion.

The Empire of that time was full of ambition, and everyone believed that the human fleet would sail toward the far distance, just like their predecessors in the golden age, reaching the very edge of the universe.

However...

Compared to the turbulent arrival, the monstrous waves stirred up by the era chose to recede quietly and rapidly, leaving behind only stains on the ground and shifting sands, silently recounting past glories—

Those creations left behind from the pre-era were like amulets with a limited number of uses; every time one was triggered, it grew a little dimmer.

As humanity kept pushing forward by burning the relics of the old era, the aliens were also constantly retreating to gather their strength.

The iron fists of both sides collided fiercely at the Tiankan Seat (next to the Tianjin Seat).

And then—it shattered with a roar.

The grand and spectacular Great Restoration suddenly came to a halt, and the severely wounded aliens were also unable to fight again.

The situation was thus eerily frozen in place.

The members of the Order Alliance calculated their assets together and discovered that the family fortune left by their ancestors was almost completely exhausted. If the aliens were to launch another invasion like that, they would be... powerless.

In desperation, they could only propose a plan called "Watch":

that is, all human regimes would provide resources to the Military Alliance,

and the Military Alliance would return to the essence of war—

building walls.

Just like that, the Great Restoration ended, and the construction of the two major defense lines of the Military Alliance officially began.

And those areas that were originally on the front lines of the Great Restoration saw their status instantly plummet from news headlines to insignificant corners:

no construction foundation, filled with crises, and far from the core areas of the regime,

tasteless to eat, but a pity to discard.

Just like that, like countless other fringe star clusters, Tianjin Seat V89 was quietly left to gather dust for over seven hundred years.

And the 9-89 Border Legion stationed here was like it had been forgotten by the world.

There were no new recruits, and supplies were pitifully scarce.

The veterans who had experienced that great war faced the longest broken promise of their lives—

In the beginning, they kept their engines preheated and their live ammunition loaded at all times,

conducting drills that were incredibly close to real combat with unparalleled enthusiasm every day;

later, they seemed to realize something.

Engines were no longer preheated,

live ammunition was gradually removed from the chambers and sealed in warehouses,

leaving only the training that was incredibly close to real combat.

Gradually, the veterans really became old soldiers:

more and more people began to fall behind in the high-intensity training, starting to lag and make mistakes,

the synthetic starch blocks provided in the cafeteria felt softer to the touch but became harder to eat,

and everything before their eyes began to be covered in a hazy fog, making it difficult to see clearly.

Just at this moment, the aliens came again—

seemingly having discovered the situation of the Military Alliance building defense structures, the alien entities began to launch constant harassment.

Because it was close to the end of the Tiankan Seat-Tianjin Seat defense line of the Military Alliance, Tianjin Seat V89 was also implicated.

With duty at the forefront, the training that had lasted for over a century was, after all, like those preheated engines and loaded ammunition, brought to a sudden stop.

However, just because the training stopped didn't mean the veterans were finished—

their withered fingers might be weak, but they could still pull the triggers of their weapons;

their hazy eyes might be blurred, but they could still watch the locked red dots on the radar;

furthermore, the combat skills that had been trained for a century and were almost fused into their flesh and blood, along with the anger and unwillingness accumulated over a century,

kept their minds incredibly clear—

"For humanity! At all costs! Let the aliens perish in despair!"

The Warships, which had been maintained to a polish, roared once again like war beasts after a century of silence.

The symphony of machinery and flames rang out, falling into the not-so-clear ears of the veterans like the equally unwilling roar of an old friend.

Even though the Warships hadn't been activated for hundreds of years, operating them on the battlefield was as smooth and fluid as a new ship, just as it had been when the young soldiers first encountered them—

however, this time, the soldiers were no longer the clumsy, green recruits of that time, but skilled warriors capable of merging with their own Warships.

Wave after wave of invading aliens were wiped out, and countless humans were able to survive under their protection.

After that interrupted "Great Restoration," they had once again found the meaning of their existence.

But it seemed a little too late.

Time had become their greatest enemy; even bodies edited by golden age genetics would still grow old,

not to mention—

they had waited for too long.

The first to fall before time was a Marine.

To clear out the aliens that had landed on the surface, he led a team to air-drop onto a habitable planet.

After successfully defending a light industrial hub, he just collapsed to the ground without any warning.

When the anxious people scrambled to pry open the helmet of his Exoskeleton, and then those of his comrades who had already fallen on the battlefield,

people finally realized that their Guardian Angels, who always wore masks, had become so old—

That was the first time the veterans and the people they protected truly connected in a meaningful way.

The veterans, hollowed out by hatred, finally realized that the people on the surface were not appendages protected in a greenhouse—they were compatriots, and they were brothers-in-arms.

Later, new figures gradually appeared on the Legion's Warships,

and the white-haired veterans gradually took off their full-face helmets, beginning to retire from combat positions to civilian roles like instructors and teachers.

—After another hundred years,

finally, the last storyteller veteran closed his eyes.

He had almost forgotten everything: his own name, the names of his comrades, the names of food...

but he also seemed to remember everything. He told everyone he met about his glory during the Great Restoration, and emphasized over and over again that humanity would definitely fight to the end of the universe, just as they once had.

People found him in a cramped secondary gun firing position—even though this secondary gun had been decommissioned and sealed off decades ago.

People didn't know how he had opened the faulty electronic door, or how he had squeezed into that tricky position,

but the successors knew—from this moment on, only they were left.