81: Boundless Starry Sea and Echoes of Order

Martian orbit gradually regained its calm, the wreckage drifting slowly under the pull of gravity like silent tombstones left behind by a battlefield. The hope suspended amidst the ruins, the new scorch marks and damage on its hull silently speaking of the brutal battle that had just concluded. Inside the medical bay, Sun Zheng leaned against the side of the bed, his fingertips lightly touching the slightly hot glimmer keystone on his chest. The flowing light inside the keystone seemed more active than ever, as if it were resonating with some existence in a distant star sector.

"Commander, the preliminary damage report is complete." Falcon's voice came through the communicator, his tone carrying exhaustion. "The fortress's outer defense network has a damage rate of 70%, but the core area is intact. Surviving units are assisting civilians in evacuating to underground shelters."

Sun Zheng took a deep breath, his gaze scanning the data scrolling on the bulkhead screen. Mars was held, but the price was heavy. However, what made his heart palpitate at this moment was not the mess before him, but the faint fluctuations transmitted by the keystone—a tremor that seemed to come from the depths of the universe, where order and chaos intertwined.

"Falcon," he suddenly spoke, "have the reconnaissance department focus on monitoring energy remnants in the direction of Jupiter, especially the spatial folds after the beacon's collapse... I always feel like there's still something there."

Deep within the ruins of the Guanghan Palace base, an engineering squad moved with difficulty through the dilapidated corridors. The veteran leading them suddenly stopped, his helmet light sweeping across a strange scorch mark on the wall—it wasn't caused by an explosion or an energy weapon, but looked more like the traces of some giant organism being instantaneously carbonized. Fine purple crystals remained at the edges of the scorch mark, similar in material to Scrin units, yet older and more eerie.

"Report, unknown biological tissue residue found... wait, what is this?" An Engineer crouched down, tweezers gently picking up a metal shard embedded in a crack in the wall. The metal shard was only the size of a fingernail, but it was engraved with spiral patterns he had never seen before, with a faint golden glimmer flowing within the patterns.

Meanwhile, far at the edge of the Oort Cloud, the wind chaser was falling into an eerie silence. On the bridge's main screen, the massive order beacon hung in the center of the comet belt like a frozen blue star. However, a thin crack suddenly opened on the beacon's surface, and countless data streams poured out like a waterfall, tangibly weaving into a fragmented star map in the vacuum—the end of the star map pointed to a coordinate that hadn't even been marked in the Scrin database.

"The signal source is actively parsing our communication protocols..." Captain Renault suddenly gripped the control stick. "It seems to be... trying to talk to us?"

Sun Zheng's fingertips suddenly trembled. The keystone abruptly erupted with a blinding blue light, and a fragmented image rushed into his mind:

Countless twisted metal spires stood on a frozen planet, with crystals originating from the same source as the glimmer keystone suspended atop the towers, while humanoid beings clad in purple robes prostrated themselves beneath. They looked up at the sky, and what they chanted was not the chaotic wavelengths of the Scrin, but some kind of orderly and sorrowful prayer—

"The Reaper... was once a Guardian of order?" Sun Zheng woke up with a start, cold sweat soaking his military uniform.

The communicator suddenly emitted a piercing alarm. The Mars surface monitoring station captured a set of abnormal signals: right at the coordinate point where the Jupiter beacon had collapsed, space twisted again like a torn wound, and a spindle-shaped ship less than a tenth the size of a Scrin warship, covered entirely in white armor, quietly leaped out. Its hull bore no markings, only a line of ancient text originating from the same source as the keystone patterns engraved on the edges of the portholes.

"Unknown ship approaching Mars! Its speed is... too fast!" Amidst the radar operator's exclamation, the white spindle ship had already broken through the atmosphere, hovering above the ruined command tower of the Hope Fortress. A beam of light was cast down, and a blurry humanoid silhouette slowly emerged within the pillar of light—

It was an old man clad in a blue and gold dual-colored robe, his pupils swirling with starlight identical to that of the keystone, and the crystal embedded at the top of the staff in his hand was resonating and ringing with the keystone on Sun Zheng's chest.

"Successor," the old man's voice rang directly in Sun Zheng's consciousness, carrying the vicissitudes of ages, "what you destroyed was not an enemy, but the lock of a cage."

He tapped his staff lightly, and a holographic star map expanded on the bridge, with the ruins of the Jupiter beacon's coordinates marked as a blood-red focus: "The true 'void whisper'... has long since awakened. It is consuming the energy released by the beacon's collapse, and you..."

The old man's image suddenly fluctuated violently, and half of his face actually began to show the purple patterns characteristic of the Scrin: "...are its new Anchor Point."

Sun Zheng suddenly pressed his throbbing forehead, the keystone at this moment becoming so hot it almost seared into his skin. He saw clearly the final coordinate marked in the star map—

It wasn't the Oort Cloud, not the Solar System, not even any point within the Milky Way.

The end of the coordinates pointed squarely at Earth's core.