Chapter 1 The Rifts Nebula

Those who live on Purgatory Star, when they look up at the night sky, see an unusual starry sky unlike anything seen elsewhere in the universe. Here, most of the celestial bodies they see are hazy, because the Rifts Nebula's space clouds and the gravitational distortions around the Great Rift interfere with starlight from deep space. The largest and clearest space vista they can see is the Great Rift at the center of these hazy celestial bodies. This rift is located in the very center of the entire nebula, and when viewed from Purgatory Star, its shape is like a slightly deformed eyeball. Endless chaotic light and shadows surge in the center of the "eyeball," while the eyeball is surrounded by a ring of radial space rifts all year round.

For a long time to come, the Children of the Sun and the Twilight Remnants would revere this immense cosmic rift as the "Overseer's Eye." Some of them believed that this rift was the eye of a god monitoring the universe, and this eye maintained the balance between the two worlds.

In some ways, this belief of theirs was not entirely unfounded—because in the process of building the gate, Hao Ren did install thousands of listening devices in the "eye of the storm" of the Rifts Nebula, and these devices were used to monitor the state of the Wall of Reality.

The eye of the storm, or rather the Great Rift, is a giant void spanning the core of the Rifts Nebula. This "void" is difficult to describe in ordinary physical terms, and can only be generally regarded as a "gradient melt-through" produced in the process of two cosmic rules merging. At the edge of the void, the conflict between the two cosmic rules is relatively gentle, and this area manifests as various powerful energy radiations vying to erupt. As one approaches the core of the void, the conflict of rules becomes more and more intense, and the stability of space and time decreases and gradually tears. At the very core of the void, the logic of space and time no longer exists, and the boundary between the two universes infinitely approaches a terrifying "zero value." Although this "core" only accounts for one percent of the entire void's volume, the information surge generated in the core is equivalent to ninety-nine percent of the information in the entire void. In order to build a controllable gate, Hao Ren first needed to set up a giant computing center here to parse and reconstruct the information at both ends of the gate.

It's like setting up a compatible protocol between two computer systems with different architectures, this protocol will ensure that files can be safely transferred between the two systems.

After a spatial distortion caused by a hyperspace jump, three starships appeared almost simultaneously above the eye of the storm in the core of the Rifts Nebula. These three starships had similar shapes: silver-white paint, a long axis of more than five hundred meters, a heavy superstructure, and four symmetrically arranged mounting bays. Every galactic civilization living in the multiverse would be familiar with this style of starship: it was an inspector's flagship.

In order to carry out the next major project, Anthony and Galazriel made a special trip back to their old homes and drove out their own inspector flagships—their starships also had a large number of construction units stored on them, and the powerful shipboard mainframes could provide sufficient computing support. In this way, Hao Ren would not have to specifically apply to his superiors for additional technical support.

After all, the technical support provided by Raven 12345 has never been very reliable...

Although the three starships looked the same, there were still some differences. The leading starship had a huge husky head painted on the aft deck (the result of Lily's relentless nagging), the second starship was covered with useless but impressive-looking magic symbols on its armor belt, and the third starship had a rather conventional appearance, except that a huge golden dragon was lying on its armor belt. The dragon used its two thick and powerful hind legs to tightly grip the starship armor, raised its upper body high, and flew out as if surfing on the starship...

Although this surfboard was a bit too big.

Hao Ren watched the situation in space from the bridge of the Petrified Tortoise. He expressed his amazement at Galazriel's unique driving skills: "...Dragon Queen's way of driving a starship is quite unique."

"I'm telling you, it feels especially awesome!" Galazriel's voice came from the communicator. Hao Ren saw from the monitor that the Dragon Queen was waving vigorously at him while standing on her own starship—waving in dragon form, which meant waving her short front paws vigorously, "You guys who can only huddle in the bridge and press keyboards will never understand the joy of galloping through the stars!"

Anthony's voice suddenly cut in: "Didn't you say you wouldn't be reckless anymore after being hit by an asteroid last time?"

The Dragon Queen immediately burst into a barrage of curses in the communication channel: "Get lost! Did you summon that asteroid last time?"

Hao Ren listened with a blank expression as his two seniors revealed each other's dark history, and his heart was filled with pessimism about the corporate culture of the gods.

What interrupted the two old timers from exposing each other's dark history was a flash of light from the depths of the Great Rift.

"Was that just the 'annihilation flash' of the Great Rift?" Anthony asked with a serious expression.

"That's right, the core of the Great Rift is constantly exchanging information between two worlds every minute and every second, and when this incompatible information collides, it will produce annihilation," Hao Ren nodded. "What we have to do is to throw a 'core' into the annihilation point. The core will guide the establishment of the passage. At the same time, twenty-one 'control bolts' must be set up around the Great Rift during the opening of the gate. These control bolts can ensure the stability of the gate and prevent the crack on the Wall of Reality from expanding excessively."

"Also, there should be some 'filtering' measures," Galazriel said, "to prevent foreign objects from falling into the gate."

Hao Ren didn't think too much for a moment: "There are no celestial bodies around the Rifts Nebula, and the matter near the Great Rift has long been cleared by the space storms. The remaining cosmic dust is basically harmless."

"The 'foreign objects' I'm talking about are some cosmic explorers who are courting death," Galazriel shook her head. "I know this place in the Rifts Nebula. Although civilizations in their right minds will exclude this place from their routes, there are still explorers who want to challenge life here every year—in fact, they are just pirates and smugglers who have reached the end of their rope. Their challenges only make our universe lose mass in vain. In the past, it didn't matter if they fell into the Great Rift and died, but if someone falls in after the gate is built here...it will break the equipment."

Hao Ren then realized: "Oh, that makes sense, that makes sense. We can arrange a circle of sentry guns full of humanitarian concern near the Great Rift to prevent people from accidentally entering it..."

Galazriel and Anthony said one after another that Hao Ren was indeed a model new employee that was hard to find in a hundred years, and that he was a promising talent...

The three inspector starships anchored their positions around the Great Rift and then began building.

Swarms of autonomous machines poured out of the starship ejection channels, and silver-white box-shaped building units also flew to the preset anchoring points under the traction of drones. Anthony and Galazriel's starships specially carried high-power material converters this time. They planned to place these converters near the rift to provide a continuous supply of materials for the subsequent construction project.

Of course, these were not all of the production factories. More production bases were set up in Yggdrasil—Hao Ren planned to make Yggdrasil the space monitoring station for this "new gate," so he had arranged more than half of the construction and control facilities in the Nine Realms. During the construction of the gate and in the days after it was opened, Yggdrasil would become a living monitoring station, cooperating with a large number of various automatic monitoring devices to monitor this gate for a long time.

While the two old inspectors were installing various large-scale equipment, the Petrified Tortoise slowly left the formation and accelerated towards the core of the Great Rift.

The mechanical structure at the front of the Petrified Tortoise gradually opened, and a huge, irregular crystal shimmering with colorful light was pushed to the front of the starship by the force field traction device.

This was the "core" in Hao Ren's mouth.

This kind of super awesome thing could not have been developed by Hao Ren himself, and his crystal nucleus research station and starship laboratory did not have such research and development capabilities. In fact, this core came from Raven 12345—although the goddess was a bit unreliable, she had not completely forgotten her job. She still remembered that Hao Ren was going to build a gate in the Rifts Nebula, so when Hao Ren sent the report to her, she directly sent this crystal to Hao Ren's personal space.

There was also a user manual sent with the crystal, and the content was quite concise:

"Just throw it in."

Hao Ren made a great determination and decided to believe the goddess's instructions.

The Petrified Tortoise flew to the closest position to the core of the rift. Here, the starship could directly touch the powerful force released by the terrible world annihilation point. All kinds of light and matter were constantly released from the chaotic core of the rift, and these light and matter disappeared in an instant. Unobservable and unmeasurable information rose and fell here. The shield system of the Petrified Tortoise was even passively activated in the environmental radiation here, and Nolan jumped directly from the control panel: "Scared me to death, scared me to death, scared me to death..."

Hao Ren asked Nolan to stop the starship, and then used the force field beam to slowly push the crystal core towards the information annihilation peak area calculated by the shipboard computer.

Galazriel's voice came from the communicator: "By the way, where will the gate lead to after it is opened?"

"I don't know," Hao Ren told the truth, "Maybe it's a galaxy in the Plane of Dreams? Anyway, the mapping relationship at the rift is too chaotic, and I can't determine where the other side is after the gate is opened. In short, it's in the Plane of Dreams."

Lily was originally dozing off next to Hao Ren, but at this time she suddenly heard half a sentence and immediately became nervous: "Then what if something dangerous comes in from the other side?"

"Don't worry, the core has self-destruct protection," Hao Ren patted Lily's head, "With one instruction, it can destroy the gate. And even if something runs in, it doesn't matter, our universe still has a true god sitting in charge. Anyone who is reckless enough to come in will have to go head-to-head with Raven 12345. We can just watch the show from the side."

As Hao Ren was saying this, the crystal core had gradually reached the predetermined position.

Chaos surged within the Great Rift, and light and matter swirled into endless storms. The small crystal core was like a starlight, and although it was dazzling, it was quickly swallowed by the chaos.

Then there was no movement.

Three minutes later, Galazriel sent a message: "Um...how long do we need to wait?"

Hao Ren quickly operated the control panel in front of him, and the corner of his eye twitched faster and faster.

Half a minute later, he wiped his cold sweat: "Holy crap...I don't know why, but it seems to have fallen straight through..."