Chapter 115 Space Station - Heavenly Court

Great Xia, Beijing time, twelve noon.

It should have been a time of blazing sun, but on the bustling CBD streets, pedestrians stopped in their tracks one after another.

There were no dark clouds, no smog.

The light faded rapidly within just a few seconds, as if God had suddenly turned down the brightness knob of the world. A heart-palpitating sense of oppression blanketed the entire Northern Hemisphere.

"Look at the sky!"

Someone screamed, pointing at the sky in terror.

Countless people looked up, and then, their pupils contracted violently.

They saw that ten thousand meters above, a shadow, so large it defied description, was slowly cutting into the outline of the sun. It was not a solar eclipse, because the edges of that shadow had distinct metallic angles, and one could even see flickering, eerie blue lights on its surface with the naked eye.

It was too big.

So big that it obscured half the firmament, so big that it induced a sense of suffocation akin to thalassophobia.

...

Across the ocean, at The Pentagon.

The piercing sound of the red alarm nearly shattered the bulletproof glass.

"God... what the hell is that?!"

A four-star general stared fixedly at the real-time footage transmitted back by the satellite, the coffee cup in his hand shattering with a "snap."

On the screen, the data for the object that had suddenly appeared in geostationary orbit was glaringly red:

【Diameter: 2200 kilometers】

【Mass: Incalculable (gravitational waves have already caused global tidal anomalies)】

【Energy reaction: Exceeds detection limits】

"This is an invasion! This is an alien mothership!" The general's face twisted as he roared hysterically, "Open all nuclear missile silos! All of them! Notify the President to enter the doomsday bunker! Hurry!"

Meanwhile, Europe, the Polar Bear, the Foot-Basin Chicken... all the aerospace agencies around the world fell into complete frenzy at this moment.

Before that steel behemoth, humanity was as insignificant as a swarm of ants covered by the sole of a shoe.

Despair, panic, and chaos swept across the globe in just ten minutes.

...

Just at the critical moment when the world's nuclear buttons were about to be pressed.

The Great Xia authorities, through all global frequencies—whether television, radio, or live streaming, and even hijacking foreign social media—released an announcement containing only two sentences.

The screen displayed a peaceful blue background.

The presenter wore a smile, their tone as calm as if they were reporting that it would rain tomorrow:

"Citizens, please do not panic. With the approval of the relevant departments, our country has recently recovered and deployed a new type of scientific research facility."

"This space station has now entered its predetermined orbit. Due to its slightly large size, it may cause short-term shading in some areas; we ask for your understanding."

The world was dead silent.

The Eagle-Sauce general's finger froze one centimeter above the nuclear button, his eyes nearly popping out of his sockets.

"A space station?!"

You call a steel planet with a diameter of two thousand kilometers, larger than Pluto, a space station?!

Before the world could recover from this absurd explanation.

On the surface of that shadow that blotted out the sky, tens of thousands of huge guide lights suddenly lit up.

Immediately following that, an interstellar warship that was already considered a behemoth in the eyes of Earthlings—luan bird one—slowly swept past beneath the shadow, flying toward the berth of that giant fortress.

Under the high-definition live broadcast lenses of the whole world, a heart-shaking scene occurred.

The over four-hundred-meter-long luan bird, the moment it approached the fortress, looked like a bee returning to its hive, flying into a skyscraper.

It was too insignificant.

So insignificant that in front of that huge berth gate, its figure was almost invisible.

This extreme contrast of scale was more impactful than any pale language.

Chen Weiguo watched the steel kingdom of gods now stationary in orbit on the big screen; this iron-willed man's eyes were red-rimmed at this moment.

For this day, how many years had Great Xia endured?

From being poor and destitute, to now having gods descend upon the zenith.

"Chief, it's time to give it a name." Academician Wang was wiping his glasses nearby, his hands trembling violently.

Chen Weiguo took a deep breath, his gaze like a torch.

"Let's call it—【Heavenly Court】."

Since there were no gods in this world to begin with, then we shall build a Heavenly Court to guard this universe in all directions.

...

Inside the "Heavenly Court" fortress, core medical area.

Lin Yuan had a very long dream.

In the dream, he was dismantling air conditioners at a scrapyard, but as he dismantled them, the air conditioners turned into Transformers and chased him for overtime pay.

"Scared the hell out of me..."

Lin Yuan opened his eyes abruptly, gasping for air.

What met his eyes was a patch of white ceiling, and the air was filled with a faint scent of mint, without the smell of disinfectant peculiar to hospitals.

He subconsciously wanted to sit up, but discovered that his body was covered in various monitoring electrodes.

"Don't move. Your muscle fibers have just finished restructuring; moving now will hurt like being run over by a truck."

A cold yet slightly mocking voice came from somewhere.

Lin Yuan turned his head.

He saw that there was no one by the bed, only a palm-sized holographic projection floating in mid-air.

It was a little girl wearing a Gothic lolita dress with silver long hair reaching her ankles, sitting cross-legged in the air, holding a lollipop (composed of data) in her hand.

"gaia?" Lin Yuan asked tentatively.

"It is I, Savior."

The little girl crunched the candy in her mouth and tilted her head to look at him, "However, to adapt to the aesthetics of you carbon-based lifeforms, I molded a new image for myself. How is it? According to Great Xia's two-dimensional big data analysis, this image has the greatest lethality to male humans."

Lin Yuan: "..."

This was the titan-class AI that controlled billions of machine armies and possessed heaven-defying computing power?

"How long have I slept?" Lin Yuan rubbed his temples, feeling his brain still buzzing.

"Earth time, 72 hours." gaia snapped her fingers, and the floor-to-ceiling window glass beside them instantly became transparent.

Lin Yuan's pupils contracted slightly.

Outside the window, it was not the familiar Gobi Desert, nor was it that dark underground base.

But a huge, azure planet.

Clouds rolled and unfurled, the ocean was deep blue.

He was floating tens of thousands of kilometers above, overlooking the mother planet that nurtured him.

"Welcome to the 'Heavenly Court' fortress." gaia floated in front of him, the corners of her mouth curling into a human-like arc, "Or rather, welcome to your new home."

"We... really brought it back?" Lin Yuan looked at that planet, feeling a strong sense of unreality.

"Brought it back. Although we almost burned out the main engine." gaia shrugged, "By the way, Academician Wang asked me to tell you that the void crystal core has crumbled into powder due to energy exhaustion. He is currently crying while sweeping the floor in the fortress's power room."

Lin Yuan's mouth twitched.

What a waste.

That was an S-rank treasure.

However, looking at this magnificent steel city of gods beneath his feet, he felt it was worth it.

"There is one more thing that I think you should see." gaia's expression suddenly became a bit more serious.

Her little hand swiped through the air.

An extremely complex star map unfolded before Lin Yuan. Most areas of the star map were dark, except for one crimson coordinate point shining on the other end of the spiral arm.

"What is this?" Lin Yuan frowned.

"This is a piece of low-level encrypted information I discovered while cleaning up Shura's residual data."

gaia's voice became cold:

"Although Shura was a virus, it was also a biological weapon manufactured by the Mechanical Papacy. In the second before its destruction, it sent a signal to this coordinate."