A World Worth Protecting

However… within this three-dimensional map, the Earth wasn’t blue in color but yellow!

The moon was green!

Mars was yellow in color as well. The other stars were all various shades of green and blue. Only… the Sun and Pluto, which wasn’t one of the eight major planets, had unexpected colors.

Pluto was orange!

The Sun was red!

As the colors appeared, the sight instantly shocked the three excited and greedy men inside the black jellyfish. They widened their eyes, which were colored with incredulity and disbelief, before gasping and falling silent.

A long moment later, one of them finally gasped while breathing heavily and quickly.

“What’s going on here? Why is it red? My god, red represents an Eternal Star realm…”

“You’re wrong. The color red doesn’t represent an Eternal Star realm. It simply… suggests the presence of an Eternal Star realm. As for whether the legendary Star realms truly do exist, that is beyond what our instruments can detect.” The cultivator with a centipede on his face had doubt in his eyes as well. He spoke slowly, then stared at Pluto.

“Red, orange, yellow, cyan, green, blue, purple… red represents at least the Eternal Star realm. Orange represents the Planet realm, yellow the greater Full Spirit Immortal realm, green the Nascent Soul realm… seems like we’ve either underestimated this civilization, or there’s some great secret hidden here!”

The three stared at one another. Their earlier greed had vanished almost completely. With their capabilities, they might be able to lord over some lowly civilizations, but in the face of this bizarre Solar System, even they felt fearful.

This was simply too bizarre. Based on their combined experiences, they had never heard of such a civilization existing in this part of the universe. This defied all logic. This was because a civilization with an Eternal Star realm should gain relative fame throughout the entire universe.

Secondly… if there really was an Eternal Star realm, even if it were a Planet realm, they wouldn’t have been able to approach. They would have been expelled and pushed away a long time ago when they had still been a far distance away. If they had come as close as they had now, they should have been destroyed.

But now, they appeared to be safe. They narrowed their eyes. They seemed deep in thought. It was then that the centipede-faced cultivator suddenly formed a series of hand seals. He pointed at the compass again. The light from the compass shone and dazzled once more.

It seemed to be conducting a more thorough search. The image that was displayed on the compass showed a clearer image of the Sun. It revealed the huge sword stuck on the Sun. It was this sword that was giving off the red light!

“This object!”

“This doesn’t belong to this civilization. This is just too terrifying. To think that there is actually a treasure of the Universe realm here!”

“I finally understand why the cultivation realm in this civilization appears relatively primitive yet bizarre!” When they saw the giant sword, they all gasped. No greed stirred within them for the giant sword though. They knew that even if the ancient elders of the Planet realm were here, they too wouldn’t dare to cause trouble in the face of this giant sword.

Every treasure of the Universe realm had its own will and spirit. Without its express permission, no one may enter!

They began to twitch. They hastily examined Pluto again. Their eyes widened with that second look. They seemed to have discovered within Pluto, another sun.

The energies exuding from the sun sent them gasping. They dared not continue to look at it.

“It’s too dangerous. This place is too dangerous!”

“How do the cultivators here survive? If this had happened in our civilization, it would have collapsed long ago! All these are just disasters waiting to happen!”

The three of them continued to tremble in fear. They looked at the other planets. The energies pulsating subtly on Earth didn’t seem as horrifying as that of Pluto, but that made them hesitant as well. The moon was the same. Even Mars was similar. The remaining planets seemed ordinary. Mercury, especially… seemed extraordinarily vulnerable.

They were torn and fell silent. The three of them looked at one another, and the centipede-faced cultivator gritted his teeth.

“I suspect that this place is so peaceful because there are a few extremely terrifying and awesome powers that are in slumber… did you notice the Stellar Source here is slightly different from those that we’ve encountered before…”

“I think… we should enter this place, quickly dig out the Stellar Source as soon as possible, then leave. With our grand elder’s jade pendant, we should be able to conceal our presence. As long as we’re quick, we should have a high chance of succeeding!” The centipede-faced cultivator pointed at Mercury and said in a hushed tone.

The other two hesitated for a moment before gritting their teeth and nodding. They continued to plan and play out what would happen. There was no hesitation as they steered the black jellyfish and dashed towards the Solar System.

As they traveled, the jellyfish began to turn invisible. Finally, it seemed to have merged with space itself. It was invisible to the naked eye. In fact, without a certain level of cultivation, one wouldn’t be able to sense it even if he tried to.

The black jellyfish approached the Solar System steadily… it passed the starry skies and entered the realm of the Solar System. Once it entered, the jellyfish stopped. It seemed to be observing and waiting.

After half an hour, it realized that no one within the Solar System had discovered and reacted to their presence, and they grew confident in their judgment. Despite the fear racing in their hearts, they couldn’t control their rising greed. The two emotions intermingled and formed a certain excitement they hadn’t felt for many years. Viciousness and violence appeared on their faces. They steered the black jellyfish and headed straight for Mercury!

Even though Mercury was but a few steps away from the Sun, they continued to inspect the surroundings while racing towards it. They were prepared to react to any possible scenarios. Things might have gone too smoothly however. When the black jellyfish reached the outskirts of Mercury, and as they realized that the civilization in this Solar System hadn’t reacted to their presence, they grew bolder.

“Attack!” Outside Mercury, the centipede-faced cultivator spoke solemnly. The black jellyfish immediately showed itself and spat a beam of light at Mercury. As soon as the light appeared, it blanketed the entire planet. The black jellyfish moved and entered Mercury’s outer atmosphere, landing on its surface!

Mercury was one of the eight major planets in the Solar System. The Federation had colonized it in the past, but after they had entered the Spirit Inception Era, the Federation had placed a greater importance on Mars instead. That was why the setup on Mercury remained sparse and minimal.

There wasn’t even a colony city on this planet. Due to Mercury’s proximity to the Sun, the Federation had marked Mercury as a stepping stone in their series of plans to land on the ancient green-bronze sword!

The colonization on Mercury had kicked off due to those plans. However, they still had quite a long way to go. The colonization of Mercury had only begun and was halfway to completion. Despite that, hundreds of thousands of cultivators had gathered on the planet and were continuing the colonization works.

This very day… would be a calamitous day for all cultivators on Mercury. It would incur the greatest wrath the Federation had ever experienced since the beginning of the Spirit Inception Era!

Mercury became a graveyard… near eighty percent of all cultivators died of mysterious causes. They didn’t die in battle but from a mysterious virus!

The virus seemed to be transmitted via light and was beyond bizarre. It would result in mass unconsciousness in a split second. Bodies would wither and turn into an energy source that could then be reused.

Such an overwhelming invasion took less than an hour before it ended.

An hour later, when the black jellyfish left, there remained few bodies on Mercury. All of those who had died had become the energy source that would aid the three cultivators in acquiring the Stellar Source.

Almost seventy percent of Mercury’s Stellar Source was dug right out of it, while the remaining was embedded too deeply in its core and thus escaped excavation. However, Mercury, with only thirty percent of its Stellar Source left, wasn’t left unscathed. Signs of decomposition and shriveling appeared, and an aura of death spread across the planet. It seemed as if the planet had gone through its full life cycle within that hour and entered the final stages of its life.

It was six hours before the Federation discovered something was amiss on Mercury…

Following the deaths of hordes of cultivators on Mercury and the shriveling of the planet, the remote images of everything that happened were transmitted back to the Federation. Rage and fury erupted in the Federation. It was impossible to hide what had happened as hordes of media agencies immediately started reporting on this matter. The entire Federation was flooded with terror and rage instantly!

“A Mercury massacre!”

“There’s a possibility of an extraterrestrial invasion!”

“A virus has spread across Mercury. The means of its transmission are unknown!”

“Mercury… is dying!”