Blue Star's Past

However, deep within that unseen realm of the dead, a strange change quietly occurred.

The moment Li Xingyao fell into a deep sleep and his mental connection completely relaxed, the three silently standing skeleton warriors, in the depths of their eye sockets, in the empty darkness previously illuminated by the faint blue light of their soul cores, suddenly—

Teng!

A cold, condensed, and slightly eerie blue-white flame, as if ignited by an invisible match, quietly lit up deep within their hollow eye sockets!

The flames leaped and burned silently, casting distorted, flickering shadows on the rusted sword blade and the greyish bones. Within those flames seemed to lie a deeper "presence" than the previous faint glimmer of light—a cold, silent...longing?

The flames burned for less than three seconds before being extinguished with a "poof," just like a candle blown out by the wind. At the same time, the Myriad Souls Banner trembled slightly.

The undead space returned to absolute silence, as if the eerie scene from moments before had never occurred. The three skeletons remained standing, their rusted swords bowed, like timeless sculptures. Only in the depths of their eye sockets, briefly scorched by flames, seemed to linger an extremely subtle, almost imperceptible, profound fluctuation, different from before.

At 6:15 a.m., Tianjing City awoke in the hazy dawn light.

The electric bus glided silently along the mirror-like road, its deep hum the pulse of the city's awakening. Li Xingyao pressed his forehead against the cool, reinforced glass window, gazing at the steel behemoth stretching its limbs in the morning light through the reflection of his slightly weary face.

"I still prefer the city from my previous life. There's too little sense of life here," Li Xingyao thought, his mind wandering.

This is a habit carried over from a previous life. Busy with studying and working every day, I only habitually clear my mind on the bus during my commute.

Li Xingyao wore a dark blue standard school uniform, his black hair slightly disheveled and falling over his forehead, concealing a sense of detachment in his eyes that seemed incongruous with his age. A wave of soreness washed over him, a natural reaction to the excessive strain on his mental energy the previous day—the initial communication with the spirit world, the attempted summoning, the impact of the failed summoning… each task had been mentally and physically exhausting. Yet, beneath this fatigue, his mind was in a strange, highly excited state, like ripples spreading endlessly in a deep pool after a stone had been thrown in.

A-grade potential! Star energy intensity 100!

This achievement, enough to make any peer ecstatic, was now overshadowed by the ancient little banner in his mind and the immense secret of that hazy space. His thoughts, like a stone thrown into the deep sea, sank into the ocean called "memory."

"Necromancer, this is the path I will take from now on."

He closed his eyes, trying to sort out the chaos of the previous night, but his thoughts raced like wild horses, uncontrollably. Eighteen years of his life as a transmigrator, eighteen years of experiences in this bizarre world, flashed before his eyes like an activated database.

"This world... ha," Li Xingyao chuckled silently to himself, "is like they forcibly bent the technology tree of my previous life's Earth and crammed it into the setting of some third-rate fantasy novel. Controlled nuclear fusion has created a space gate? Star energy? Necromancers? Space equipment? Celestial Dragons? It's really... full of ridiculous points, I don't even know where to begin."

"It's unbelievable, no matter how big your imagination is, to see a mage wearing kinetic armor casting spells while simultaneously engaging in melee combat with a greatsword." Li Xingyao recalled the first time he saw this video, and how weak the melee mage in his previous life who only knew how to cast light spells was.

As the memories deepened.

Everyday life, brimming with technological sophistication, intertwines with the physics-defying alien beasts and extraordinary powers depicted on television, forming the most absurd yet realistic backdrop of this era. Armored trains, underground rail networks… these steel arteries maintaining the fragile connections between urban fortresses now vividly emerge in memory—key modes of transportation for human survival. Highly similar urban frameworks, drastically different internal rules.

And then there's the "public family" system.

A complex mix of emotions welled up inside him. Gratitude? Yes. Without this government-built system, "orphans" like him, whose fathers had perished in another world, would struggle to even survive in this post-apocalyptic world.

It was the government-provided housing, comprehensive education, and social security that allowed him to live to adulthood and awaken. But the regrets from his childhood... or rather, the "helplessness" he felt when he didn't regain his memories of his past life, still haunted him.

The missing "regular" family affection, the care and protection from parents, is a void that no amount of generous compensation or standardized care can fill. He recalled the empty apartment last night, with only the cold greetings from the smart home assistant. The concern from his sister Xingyue and brother Xingyang came through the screen, warm, yet always separated by an invisible distance.

My chaotic thoughts were pulled back to the heavier river of history. This was the turning point repeatedly emphasized in history textbooks, the watershed of humanity's fate on Earth—2328, the first year of the cataclysm.

At that time, the world's major powers, in order to break through energy bottlenecks, frantically focused their technological efforts on one of the ultimate goals—the miniaturization of controlled nuclear fusion. It was a high-stakes gamble that brought together the world's top minds. Almost every country was working at the same time, trying to get ahead of the others. However, in an ultra-high-energy experiment, the energy field underwent an inexplicable distortion, the spatial structure was torn apart, and three huge, stable spatial gates appeared out of nowhere, like scars, in the core regions of China, the Western Alliance, and the Americas, respectively.

This door is Pandora's box, but also a gift.

"It's true that in any world, humanity is always on a path of self-destruction with no turning back."

Initially, humanity cautiously sent probes and supplies in, but most were "thrown" back, along with some never-before-seen "crystals" emitting strange energy fluctuations. These crystals were sometimes as hot as fire, sometimes bursting with high-voltage arcs, and sometimes releasing dangerous radiation... They seemed to be exploring, adapting, and analyzing the environment of this world. After the initial astonishment, an unsettling calm prevailed in 2329. Humanity assumed it was merely the discovery of a new dimension or parallel universe, imagining it filled with resources and opportunities.

On the eve of New Year's Day, in 2330.

The textbook described this moment with the somber phrase "the moment of falling stars." The tranquility was utterly shattered. Without warning, the three spatial gates burst forth like dams bursting, unleashing an unimaginably violent torrent of energy! Monitoring data showed that the energy flow rate skyrocketed exponentially within just a few hours! The area within a one-kilometer radius of the gates instantly became a living hell. The most noticeable changes occurred in the once docile pets—they became agitated, extremely aggressive, and even began attacking their owners.

Along with this destructive energy comes a new kind of energy that permeates the air, invisible and intangible yet omnipresent—stellar energy!

Like an invisible catalyst, it quietly seeped into every corner of Earth. It was both the source of the disaster and the cornerstone of all subsequent supernatural power systems. For Earth's native life forms, this sudden surge of stellar energy was like the hand of God, forcefully propelling their evolutionary chain. Plant vines became as tough and robust as giant pythons, and flowers could spray corrosive liquids; insects swelled several times, even dozens of times, their exoskeletons hardened, and their mouthparts sharpened; docile herbivores possessed terrifying strength and self-healing abilities, and their territorial instincts expanded to unprecedented levels; even some microorganisms underwent terrifying mutations…

The mutation has begun! And it's happening on a large scale, uncontrollably, and in an overwhelmingly threatening direction towards humanity. The technological advantage of humankind on Earth is rapidly crumbling before the berserk native life forms that have adapted to the planet's energy. Farmlands, mines, and transportation routes outside cities are falling one after another. Humanity, the species that once stood at the top of the food chain, has been brutally dethroned in a short time by its own wildly evolving "brethren" on its home planet! Panic spreads like a plague.

Human civilization did not completely collapse in the initial chaos. In 2332, after paying a heavy price, the surviving human regimes barely managed to stabilize themselves. The three existing powers coordinated like never before, deciding to take the initiative—dispatching a joint exploration team to simultaneously enter the worlds beyond the three spatial gates! They were eager to understand the source of the disaster and seek resources for retaliation or survival.

The exploration team brought back preliminary information, and also a spark of hope:

Opposite the Zhongzhou Gate of Huaxia lies the vast and boundless Zhongzhou continent—an endless plain and towering, cloud-piercing mountains, where no large-scale traces of intelligent civilization have yet been discovered.

Opposite the Western Holy Light Gate lies the vast Holy Light Domain—an ocean world composed of countless scattered islands.

Across from the interstellar gate to the Americas lies a desolate and lifeless desert—like a breathable Mars, a barren wasteland.

So, in 2334, humanity established outposts in the otherworld: the Cape of Good Hope Base (Holy Light Islands), the Observation Base (Central Plains), and the Columbus Base (edge ​​of the desert). Did this signal the start of humanity's counterattack?

No, this is the prelude to an even greater disaster.

The Cape of Good Hope base in the Holy Light Islands was the first to suffer. Surveyors encountered an intelligent amphibious aquatic race, leading to conflict. Subsequently, swarms of humanoid aquatic creatures landed on the island, destroying facilities and slaughtering humans. Next, the observation base on the Central Continent was attacked by a humanoid race wielding melee weapons and bows and arrows, and even capable of manipulating strange energy (magic). A "mage"-like figure appeared in the group! The Columbus base in the Americas was also not spared, overwhelmed by a diverse horde of mutated beasts emerging from the desert, capable of using energy attacks.