Chapter 1549 A Desert of Stars

A huge, magnificent World Gate stood silently in the dark, deep space, but this one was noticeably less crowded.

The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace appeared from a curtain of light. There were no other ships in sight. The bustling traffic they encountered on the other side of the Gate seemed to have been transported to other worlds. The Datastream Terminal controlled the ship, accelerating forward for a short distance, then using external monitors to transmit the scene behind them. Hao Ren saw a space facility that looked slightly smaller than the previous one, but equally incredible, and near this World Gate was also a planetary fortress called a "Sovereign Nexus." However, there was only one Sovereign Nexus here, which clearly indicated that this universe was something of a backwater compared to his homeworld.

The ship's public channel was still open, receiving broadcasts from other ships within a light-year radius. But there were only a few scattered signals, some from beacon facilities near the World Gate, and some from starships passing by in a hurry, of unknown civilization but certainly unrelated to their purpose.

"This place looks a little deserted," Hao Ren said, looking out at the starry sky. There were unfamiliar constellations, and the universe glowed with a faint brown light. A relatively bright nebula was visible in the upper left corner of the bow, but when he focused on it, the system automatically reported that it was hundreds of millions of light-years away—the scale of space was truly astonishing.

The Datastream Terminal was confirming the next course. Hearing this, it explained, "There are many ungoverned areas like this in the Macro-World. They originate from an emergency expansion ten thousand years ago. At that time, a catastrophe occurred in the Void, and many worlds vanished in an instant. Only universes under the protection of the three major god systems of Xiling, Starfield, and Huron could survive. We learned of this in advance and did everything possible to deploy countless probes throughout the Void to search for new worlds, hastily incorporating them into the Macro-World's network. These newly added universes are merely registered, and follow-up construction hasn't caught up even today. Of course, some universes simply aren't worth building up. The Void is so vast that no one has the time to bring it all under control."

Hilda stared blankly at the starry sky outside the ship, but she couldn't recognize any familiar star charts, "How far is it from here to my home?"

"...Very far. This unit is still comparing routes," the Datastream Terminal's voice was somewhat perplexed. "Just what kind of place do you live in? The route prediction from the Space-Time Administration is very clear, but this unit just scanned and found that the route leads to a completely empty star region."

Hilda sighed, "That's right, it's just an emptiness. That's my hometown."

The Datastream Terminal didn't say anything. It activated the ship's FTL engine. The stars on the exterior view twisted again, and the red and blue "tunnel" phenomenon reappeared, quickly sinking into darkness. Hao Ren knew that all they could do now was wait quietly. When the space outside the ship opened again, Hilda's hometown should appear before their eyes. Vivian noticed that Hilda's expression was constantly changing, mixed with excitement, unease, anticipation, and a hint of timidity. To divert the Elven Queen's attention from her near-home anxiety, she took the initiative to break the silence, "Hilda, tell us about your hometown. You've never really introduced it to us."

Hilda's eyes were a little dazed, but she nodded, "My story may be a bit long. I'll start with the origin of the Irim Elves. I hope this journey is long enough for me to finish the story..."

In the Elven Queen's quiet narration, Hao Ren learned a story about survival and destiny that took place in the depths of the distant starry sky.

In the Elven Queen's native language, Irim meant "fertile soil and plants." A short translation would be similar to a nursery or garden.

Their ancestors gave their home planet this name to praise its abundance and generosity.

The story began with a beautiful pastoral time, telling of sunshine, fertile soil, forests, streams, and an intelligent race.

Long, long ago, when the Irim Elves still lived in the forests, thriving around several lakes, their lives were full of abundance and happiness. They were a peaceful, united, intelligent, and ambitious race, the first on the planet to develop intelligence, create tools, develop writing, live in harmony with nature, and in the process, find a way to develop civilization.

The forests of Irim were full of food, the atmosphere was full of active energy, and the rules of the entire universe supported simple and easy-to-learn primitive magic. Under the guidance of the primitive religion called "Spirits of the Stars," the elves built cities in the forests driven by magic and amazing technology, rapidly constructing their civilization. And what was truly amazing was that these rapidly developing intelligent beings maintained a respect for nature even as their civilization advanced rapidly, something that many other mortal races failed to do. From the beginning of their upright walk, they realized that all resources came from the generous gifts of nature, and therefore strived to ensure thrift and resource recycling, a good quality that has been maintained from the beginning of civilization to this day.

These amazing creatures, whose talents were so perfect as to be unbelievable, loved peace, but at the same time, they also knew how to compete with other creatures, using various means (including war) to protect their homeland and civilization. Other powerful races had appeared and disappeared on Irim, but in the end, the powerful and intelligent long-eared beings gained dominance on the planet.

Those powerful races were not exterminated by the elves, but chose to submit after the war, and were eventually highly assimilated by the elves, becoming members of the Irim Elves after several generations of genetic modification.

Thus, during the development of their homeworld, the elves walked out of the forests, entered the plains, crossed mountains and rivers, spreading the seeds of civilization across the globe, assimilating and integrating all the intelligent beings they encountered, and quickly revitalizing the primitive planet of Irim. The flowers of civilization built by advanced intelligent beings bloomed everywhere on the planet.

The Irim Elves spent thousands of years completing their full control of their planet, developing from primitive beings living in the forests, only knowing primitive magic and simple tools, into a high-tech race with fully developed intelligence. They used their unique magic-guide technology to build their homeworld, covering it with a civilization cloak woven from intra-atmospheric aerial routes, surface high-speed rail networks, global data chains, and free energy broadcasting systems, while maintaining natural balance.

After completing the technological accumulation of their homeworld stage, like all intelligent races that realized the limited resources of the cradle, the Irim Elves began to explore places to live outside their home planet—they only needed to find a suitable foothold outside their homeworld, find suitable resource locations in space, and then everything would develop naturally.

At that moment, they were proud, proud, and full of confidence.

They believed that they possessed sufficiently intelligent brains, an exceptionally generous homeworld, and abundant technology and resource reserves, and that all of this was enough to support them in completing this journey of exploration.

Yes, they believed they were affluent, and in fact, their homeworld did possess an unprecedented abundance of all types of resources, something that any race would envy.

Even from the perspective of an observer, these elves themselves had the qualities to enter the starry sky: thrift, diligence, ambition, unity. No race was as naturally perfect and suitable for development as they were.

Except for one thing:

Irim was the only planet in its star system.

And their star system was sixty million light-years away from the nearest solid celestial body.

In that vast journey of sixty million light-years, there was only a wasteland, and a few piles of hot embers left after the collapse of stars, useless.

If their world was created by a god, then this god had played a cruel joke on these elves: he gave these elves all the good talents that a mortal race could possess, making them impeccable from mind to body, making them hardworking, brave, kind, intelligent, resilient, and united, and he also gave them such a beautiful and fertile home planet as a cradle—

Finally throwing it all into a desert.