107: Two great civilizations

The vast Milky Way is like a huge river flowing with light and dust, quietly swirling in the void of the universe.

For Human Civilization, which has just stepped out of the Cradle, this galaxy is full of the unknown and romance.

But in the eyes of those ancient civilizations that have been fighting in the universe for thousands of years, every spiral arm of the Milky Way is soaked with the blood and wreckage of civilizations.

Deep in the Orion Arm, where the Solar System is located, a vast territory spanning hundreds of star systems is shrouded in dark red shadows; this is the territory of the Iofer Federation, a hegemonic civilization that worships absolute power and conquest.

The Iof People are very similar to the demons in human mythology.

Their adult individuals are nearly three meters tall, with knotted muscles all over their bodies, covered in a layer of hard, dark red keratin skin, sufficient to withstand direct fire from gunpowder firearms.

On the top of their heads, they have a pair of huge, backward-curving bone horns, which are symbols of power and status, while the large bat wings on their backs with a wingspan of over six meters give them the ability to glide and maneuver at high speeds in low-gravity environments.

Even more terrifying is that this race is born with weak psionic talent.

Although they cannot match interstellar warships like the psionic users of those idealistic empires in the "stellar universe", this power is enough to allow them to perceive danger, strengthen their bodies in close combat, and even exert slight deterrence and interference on the thoughts of others.

In their home planet era, this power allowed them to stand at the top of the food chain, and when they stepped into the starry sky, this power turned into a sword for conquering the universe.

The history of the Iofer Federation's expansion is a bloody history of war; in the past thousands of years, their fleets have swept through the surrounding star regions like locusts.

They believe in the jungle law of "preemptive strike", and once they discover any potential civilization that might pose a threat to them, no matter what stage of development the other party is in, the Iof People will destroy them without hesitation.

Their technology tree is lit entirely for war; although they have not mastered the delicate space folding technology like the Faleim People, they have pushed the destructive power of conventional physics to the extreme, and their Warp Engine, after thousands of years of violent iteration, can travel between stars at 50 times the speed of light, which is already top-tier among the many civilizations in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way.

In terms of weapons, every iofer capital ship is equipped with gravity wave oscillation cannons capable of tearing apart the crust and blast cannons that fire high-energy rays, and their ultimate deterrent weapon, the "Star Destroyer", can detonate the core of a habitable planet with a single shot, turning it into dust in the universe.

Even more chilling is that the Iof People have mastered a long-range strike technology called "Stellar Mutagenesis".

By launching special gravity tractor devices and fusion catalysts at the target star, they can artificially induce a supernova explosion and use the gamma-ray bursts generated when the star dies to conduct blanket cleansing of enemies tens of light-years away.

Thirty-five years ago, the S-56 star aimed at the Faleimland System was exactly one of the Iofer Federation's "routine cleanings".

One of their probes accidentally discovered the abnormal energy fluctuations of the Faleimland System decades ago; although they could not analyze the specific strength of the other party, according to the logic of the Iof People—an unknown neighbor is a mortal enemy, the commander-in-chief of the Fifth Rapid Response Fleet issued the attack order without hesitation.

In their view, this was just casually swatting a potentially poisonous insect, not worth caring about at all.

In the cognition of the Iof People, they are the undisputed gods in this star region of the Orion Arm, and almost all enemies have turned into dust of history, becoming trophies in their museums.

Yes, almost.

If you draw a line on the Star Map of the Milky Way connecting the Orion Arm to the adjacent Perseus Arm, there is an extremely chaotic star region near the midpoint of this line.

Here, the arrogant expansion pace of the Iofer Federation has been abruptly blocked.

Blocking them is a civilization from the Perseus Arm that is equally powerful and ancient but completely different in style—the Angel Theocracy Empire.

If the Iof People are demons from hell, then the Angel people look like messengers from heaven.

Their individual forms are surprisingly similar to Earth humans, possessing exquisite features and slender figures that conform to human aesthetics, but their average height is between two and three meters, each individual having skin as white as snow, with long hair like flowing gold and bright golden eyes.

And their most significant feature is the pure white wings growing on their backs; this is not a decoration, but a physiological symbol of their strict racial hierarchy.

Ordinary Angel civilians and soldiers have one pair of wings, nobles and officers have two pairs, while members of the royal family and the highest clergy in the ruling class have six huge wings.

Unlike the Iof People who advocate materialism and mechanical technology, the Angel civilization is a highly idealistic psionic civilization.

They do not just use tools to pry the laws of the universe like humans and the Iof People, but add the psionic power of the gods they believe in while developing conventional technology.

The Angel people are born with powerful psionic talent, and their warships are not just piles of metal and circuits, but magic weapons for psionic amplification.

Their shields are psionic barriers woven by thousands of psionicists, with particularly outstanding defensive capabilities against energy attacks, and their weapons are focused psionic storms that can penetrate armor directly and burn the brains and minds of enemy crews.

In the doctrines of the Angel people, they are the chosen people of the true God of the universe, shouldering the mission of purifying the universe and spreading divine grace.

Any civilization that does not believe in the true God is a heretic or an infidel, and needs to be "purified" or "redeemed".

In a sense, their foreign policy is not essentially different from the iofer civilization.

When these two super civilizations, both in the expansion stage, both possessing top-tier technology, and both confident and xenophobic, met on interstellar routes, war became the only language.

This war has lasted for nearly a thousand years.

This is a true interstellar meat grinder, with tens of thousands of warships pouring destructive firepower on each other across a front line of thousands of light-years, stars being detonated, planets being glassed, and countless lives vanishing into ashes in the collision of two behemoths.

The blast cannons of the Iof People and the psionic light spears of the Angel people intertwined into a death grid in space, and the demon legions of iofer drove heavy mechas to engage in close-quarters combat with the Angel psionic legions holding psionic light swords and psionic rifles in landing battles.

The technological levels of both sides were on par, their tactics countered each other, and they had won and lost for a thousand years, with neither able to completely destroy the other.

This star region has therefore become the most dangerous forbidden zone, and the wreckage of countless warships has formed a river of death spanning the galaxy here.

When Human Civilization had just learned to use fire, this war had already begun, and until Human Civilization stepped into the starry sky, this war was still continuing; for these two behemoths, the Solar System was just a speck of dust on the edge of the battlefield, too small to be worth even a glance.

Until... 5 years later.

Faleimland System, Central Council Control Center.

A huge holographic Star Map was suspended in mid-air, displaying in real-time all the dynamics within a radius of one hundred light-years transmitted back by the "sentry surveillance array".

Since the activation of the sentry array, it has been like the eye of God, seeing through everything, taking in every ripple of gravitational waves in the surrounding star regions.

"Report! The construction progress of the Quantum Slingshot in the B-79 star system has reached 85%, and the engineering fleet of the home star system is conducting final gravitational lens calibration."

In the control hall, hundreds of operators were nervously processing massive amounts of data, and the entire civilization was preparing for the upcoming expedition and defense.

Just then, a senior technician responsible for monitoring the core data of the sentry array suddenly let out an exclamation.

"Abnormal signal! The sentry array has captured a violent space distortion reaction!"

"Coordinates?" asked the duty member immediately.

"Coordinates 3-7-9, about 92 light-years from Faleimland! Not in the direction of the S-56 star, it's a brand new coordinate!"

The technician's fingers danced rapidly on the console, converting the abnormal data into visual images.

"This kind of space fluctuation... is not a natural celestial phenomenon." The technician's voice carried a hint of confusion, "Its curvature characteristics are extremely chaotic; it should be a ship that was forcibly exited from Warp Drive status."

"Image processing complete! Target materialized!"

The Star Map on the main screen zoomed in instantly, locking onto that distant void.

In a piece of space that was originally empty, space suddenly shattered like a broken mirror, and accompanied by a space-time ripple invisible to the naked eye, a huge warship appeared out of thin air.

That was not a warship full of industrial violent aesthetics like those of humans, nor was it a spaceship pursuing streamlined and silver-white technological sense like those of the Faleim People.

This warship presented a stunning biological texture and sacred aesthetics.

Its hull was pure white, the surface covered with armor plates that looked like feathers, and three pairs of huge energy wings radiating golden light extended from both sides of the streamlined hull, just like a six-winged Angel swimming in the sea of stars, and the bow was a huge golden ring with a dazzling ball of light condensed in the center, resembling a halo above an Angel's head.

However, at this moment, this beautiful and sacred warship looked extremely miserable.

Its white hull was covered with scorched scars and huge holes, the two pairs of energy wings on the left were flickering, leaving only broken metal skeletons floating in space, and the golden ring at the bow was also missing a corner, occasionally erupting with unstable electric arcs.

It had clearly just experienced a tragic battle and was in an extremely weak state.

"Analyzing target..." The AI of the sentry array quickly gave a conclusion, "Target length is about 10,240 meters, mass is about 90 million tons, high-intensity psionic residue detected, this ship is not in our known database."

In the old universe of the Faleim People, psionic spaceships often meant idealistic civilizations or some special advanced civilizations.

"What is it doing?" Price's image appeared in the corner of the screen, asking in a deep voice.

"No broadcast, no communication request." The technician in charge of monitoring frowned and reported to Price.

On the image transmitted back by the sentry surveillance array, the scarred, pure white warship did not stay in space waiting for rescue or death as previously speculated.

Instead, after a brief inertial drift, the engine at the stern that had been extinguished suddenly ejected a stream of unstable golden plasma.

Like a raptor that remained vigilant after being injured, it forcibly adjusted its posture, stumbling but with a clear purpose, rushing toward the nearest star system, which was numbered S-92 Galaxy in the Star Map of the Faleim Civilization.

This was a desolate, lifeless star system, with only a few barren rocky planets orbiting a dim orange dwarf star.