Chapter 14: Ultimate Crisis (Part 1)
— Multiverse Star River, Bloody Star River —
The massive upheaval triggered by Joshua began to spread through countless nodes that had previously accompanied the Restorative Pillars he had dispersed. Naturally, the Bloody Star River, where the duo of Ke Lei Le and Ai Er Ma were stationed—equipped with the ‘Crisis Management System’ specially created by Joshua—was no exception.
Four beams of Emotion Force swept across the border star domains of the Amos Royal Court, stirring up endless waves. In that instant, all intelligent lifeforms felt the call of a vast will, sensing the most distinct and active emotions burning within themselves. They instantly understood their true hearts and found the most sincere motivation deep within their souls.
If this had occurred in a world that valued mental cultivation, the Transcendent Beings there would likely have experienced a collective wave of enlightenment or even advancement—after all, in a sense, this was a direct elevation from an Ultimate Being.
However, despite this, there was not a single individual within the Amos Royal Court capable of awakening Emotion Force.
Perhaps the exceptions were Ke Lei Le and Ai Er Ma, who were closest to the impact of the upheaval. They did gain some benefits—for instance, their talents in Psionic Energy were unlocked. If they chose to specialize in Psionic Energy or mental power in the future, this experience would greatly aid them.
But that was all. Neither of them were experts in Psionic Energy or Life Energy. Although Ke Lei Le had practiced Battle Qi for a time, he had not yet reached the point of returning this derived Transcendent power to its essence.
If even the two who were the sources of the Emotion Force upheaval in the Bloody Star River were like this, it went without saying for other Amos individuals. After all, this was not the Mycroft World or its colonies, where Joshua had laid down numerous foreshadowings and Restorative Pillars. He himself was not here, nor was there the Psionic Energy network of the Starry World or the Restorative Pillars that could quickly and conveniently transmit information and popularize Emotion Force cultivation.
A flash of insight does not become actual power. Most Amos individuals swept by the Emotion Force light merely felt a stir in their hearts, gaining the potential and possibility to cultivate Emotion Force in the future, with no other changes—just as in the past, when the Sage created Holy Light and tried to promote it in the Mycroft World, but only the dozen or so Holy Disciples and acquaintances around the Sage could truly cultivate it immediately.
Moreover, the Amos Royal Court was currently overwhelmed with its own troubles.
Although the upheaval of Emotion Force seemed grand in scale, it was insignificant compared to the rapidly spreading, dangerously escalating Transcendent plague, the ‘Extreme Virus’.
The prevention, isolation, treatment, and eradication of the plague were the most important matters for the Amos Royal Court.
Bloody Star River, Amos Royal Court, Central Great Star Domain, ‘Assembly Zone’.
Some time had passed since Ke Lei Le and Ai Er Ma had investigated the truth behind the Royal Court’s abnormal situation in the border star domains, learned of the existence of the Extreme Virus, and were then requested by the Imperial Guard to assist in transferring infected structures to another safe area.
Now, Ai Er Ma, as a commander-level general-rank Amos individual, had been formally conscripted. The high-ranking officials of the ‘Assembly Zone’ required her to continue similar large-scale teleportation and transportation work for ‘infected structures’ and even ‘infected regions’.
The Assembly Zone was one of the few thinking blocks within the Amos Royal Court where the power of Emperor Amos had descended for protection. In this area, the vast majority of residents were thinking-type individuals responsible for thought, research, and experimentation. Dozens of worlds were entirely large-scale scientific laboratories, along with various affiliated factories, raw material sites, and warehouses—the ‘brain’ of the entire Amos Royal Court.
Ai Er Ma had previously worked in this area as a thinking individual. This time, she was noticed by an old superior and specially conscripted, temporarily becoming a member of the ‘Hazardous Material Transport Brigade’. Her task was to travel to various star domains, transport buildings contaminated by the Extreme Virus back to the Assembly Zone, and seal them for observation and research.
“Honestly, a rebellion among the high-ranking officials is the most terrifying thing…”
Inside Ai Er Ma, Ke Lei Le, who shared visual senses with her and had witnessed her chatting and laughing with her old superior, couldn’t help but sigh. “Look, he has no idea you’ve already turned against him. Instead, he explains the latest plague information to you and even grants you high-level clearance to pass through various guards!”
“No wonder they say back home that the damage caused by a hundred spies can’t compare to the choice of a single high-ranking enemy official!”
“First of all, I haven’t rebelled, nor have I betrayed the Amos people, nor have I destroyed anything. I just want to be independent of Emperor Amos and live for myself.”
To this, Ai Er Ma, whose internal form appeared as a semi-transparent human, reminded him, “Secondly, having this clearance is useless. We still have to complete our tasks, and we don’t have much time to use it to explore anywhere… And to be precise, I’m the one doing all the work, while you just stay inside me, eating the food I secrete. In your Mycroft terms, Ke Lei Le, you’re living off me.”
“This… cooperation between comrades can’t be called living off someone?!”
Hearing this, Ke Lei Le’s face flushed red. He retorted loudly, “It’s called mutual help!”
That said, Ke Lei Le had indeed had nothing to do these past few days.
Since Ai Er Ma was conscripted, he could only stay inside her, eating and drinking for free—but his flushed face wasn’t due to shame. As he said, what was there to be ashamed of in mutual help between comrades?
Ke Lei Le’s face was red because he recalled something too embarrassing… After all, to his senses, Ai Er Ma was a special female, but the food secreted by Ai Er Ma’s ship looked a lot like milk.
At this point, no further explanation was needed. Just thinking about how the ship beneath him was Ai Er Ma’s true body made Ke Lei Le’s expression twist with shame while drinking milk.
This special cross-world mammalian feeding method was undoubtedly a bit too stimulating for a pure-hearted Mycroft youth.
Currently, Ai Er Ma’s true body, a Void Warship, had just teleported back from a border star domain, carrying a small Void settlement infected by the virus. It was rapidly traversing the Assembly Zone.
In the Assembly Zone now, most thinking individuals had stopped their plans for war and weapon development, instead turning to study this malignant Transcendent plague from their neighbors. After all, even a system of ultimate centralization like the Amos Royal Court couldn’t indefinitely block all traffic between star domains.
Many worlds, due to extreme development, had resources that must be imported. Some had no farmland, others no processing plants. Without the Royal Court’s internal resource coordination and merchant circulation, these worlds would inevitably fall into a crisis of critical resource shortages. For now, they could rely on reserves and temporary cultivation to survive.
Official resource allocation could barely quench their thirst, but in the long run, it would be unsustainable. After all, the Royal Court was too vast; even Transcendent Beings couldn’t cover everything in a short time.
This was another drawback of a Void empire.
The Assembly Zone had at most three months. After three months, the isolation order would be lifted, and normal resource operations and trade would resume, greatly increasing the possibility of plague transmission.
One could see a multi-tentacled creature drifting through the Void, dragging an entire small Void settlement. It navigated through a peculiar star domain, where each world was layered with over a dozen rainbow-colored barriers, separated by numerous runic arrays. This was Ai Er Ma, carrying her mission objective, preparing to deliver experimental materials to the many thinking individuals as she advanced toward the central zone.
Recently, the great plague caused by the Extreme Virus had affected 136 star domains. This number might not seem large, but if converted to over 1,700 inhabited worlds and a total population exceeding 400 billion, anyone could understand its terror.
The Amos people were not individuals who relied on population for victory. They were large in size and powerful in strength. An individual who survived the initial trial at birth possessed formidable combat power. Thrown into an ordinary non-Void civilization world, such a juvenile, as it grew to adulthood, could become a local overlord (large-sized Gold-rank). A normal life-sustaining world could support tens of billions of humanoid lifeforms but only a few hundred million Amos people.
However, the Amos people had advantages. Their adaptability was extremely high; they could survive in any environment, even establishing settlements in the Void. This meant that within a star domain, a dozen or even dozens of worlds could all be Amos colonies, without needing to find life-sustaining planets.
This high population density was once an advantage for the Amos people, but in the face of a plague, it became a major flaw—if one individual was infected, the entire star domain and all its worlds had to be isolated.
The infected settlement Ai Er Ma was carrying came from a large material transit star domain, a traditional commercial center. Over three billion Amos people lived there, allocating resources and transporting goods to dozens of surrounding star domains. If it were locked down for a long time, it would undoubtedly cause major trouble.
“Thankfully, those Takur bastards next door are worse off than us…”
Ke Lei Le could hear Ai Er Ma muttering softly, “They lost one of their Sanctuary Worlds, and most of their core star domains are infected… Fortunately, otherwise, given the Royal Court’s current situation, those few Void Behemoths from the Star Shepherds back then would have been enough to trouble us.”
As she spoke, Ai Er Ma’s true ship delivered the infected Void settlement next to a world. This world had thirty-three layers of completely different, independent isolation arrays stacked layer upon layer. On the world’s outer layer, there was a large teleportation array. Ai Er Ma sent her dragged cargo into the teleportation array, watched it disappear, and then let out a ‘sigh’: “I hope those big heads can develop a corresponding vaccine soon.”
Ke Lei Le watched this scene. Having worked with Ai Er Ma recently, he naturally understood what this world, tightly sealed and covered with what looked like seven or eight layers of magical neon, was: it was a specially modified sealed world created by the Amos people to study the Extreme Virus.
Inside this sealed world, there was a blue star at a critical point and twelve ‘temporary research worlds’ locked by tidal forces. Around these worlds were piled all infected items discovered from the beginning of the Extreme Virus outbreak to the present. Many Amos thinking individuals who voluntarily entered the world for research studied the Extreme Virus’s mysteries up close, trying to find a way to create a vaccine or how to eliminate or prevent it.
The only advantage of researching in such a world was absolute safety for the outside. If something went wrong—an experiment error or a virus mutation—the Amos people could instantly trigger a supernova explosion of the blue star, directly destroying all material existence inside the world and resetting the entire sealed world. In 99.99999% of cases, this was an absolutely safe defensive measure.
As for the current research progress, it could only be described as grim. The Extreme Virus’s genetic information was encrypted with Transcendent power, employing techniques including Life Energy, Arcane Power, Elemental Force, and Aether, and even some Psionic Energy. This made decryption difficulty increase by at least five orders of magnitude compared to encryption with a single Transcendent power.
“…This Transcendent plague… is truly terrifying.”
Even though he knew, through the Crisis Management System left by Marshal Radcliffe, that the information about the great plague had been sent to the Mycroft homeworld side, Ke Lei Le still felt a chill—during this time, he had witnessed the various horrors caused by the Extreme Virus: a planet where everything from bacteria to plants, all Amos people and local lifeforms, turned to dry bones, none surviving the Extreme Virus’s devastation. Even the starlight of an entire star domain dimmed, all life extinct, and the worlds themselves began to decay.
Ke Lei Le was not a saint with excessive empathy who would feel great sorrow over the deaths of other civilization individuals, but the terror brought by the Extreme Virus transcended race. It was something all ‘life’ feared. Even blood enemies like the Amos Royal Court and the Takur Order had to temporarily cease hostilities in the face of such a plague, let alone him, a Mycroft person who hadn’t experienced much war.
“How did the Takur people come up with something like this?”
Thinking this, Ke Lei Le was very puzzled. He scratched his head and asked Ai Er Ma beside him, “They connect to other worlds with Psionic Energy every day. Didn’t they think they might encounter this situation?”
“…They did think about it and took precautions. Even we know that.”
Ai Er Ma was silent for a moment before slowly replying. This Amos person, who had clearly said she would defect from the Royal Court, had a serious expression. She said softly, “But obviously, the world they connected to this time had a power beyond their common sense.”
“Ke Lei Le, do you know? This Multiverse Star River of ours seems infinite and vast, but in reality, it is far from the entirety of the Multiverse.”
With that, Ai Er Ma changed the subject, or rather, delved deeper into the topic, intending to summarize her recent work. This Amos person turned her head and spoke to Ke Lei Le in fluent Mycroft common language she had learned recently, her tone serious: “Rather, everything we see now is merely fragments of the former infinite Multiverse. The Multiverse Star River is just one of the larger pieces.”
“…I…”
Ke Lei Le was about to say he knew, as the high-ranking members of the Mycroft civilization had also speculated about this, and the exploration of the Steel Serpent had proven it—that the seemingly calm Silent Void around the Multiverse Star River was once an endless collection of World Star Rivers. If all the Void that could be seen now once had worlds existing there, then the Multiverse’s vastness far exceeded the current Multiverse Star River.
But before Ke Lei Le could speak, Ai Er Ma continued on her own: “Actually, we Amos people don’t care much about such overly large problems. We focus on practicality. But those Takur bastards have always been researching. Their race, when studying Psionic Energy back then, encountered some strange… ‘incidents’—peculiar events that couldn’t be explained by our existing theories. Because of this, their entire race believes in the prophecy that ‘the final annihilation is coming’.”
“They believe that even the seemingly eternal Multiverse Star River is destined for destruction. Before that day comes, they must gather all their power to forge a sanctuary for their race, or rather, a ‘way out’ to leave this Multiverse Star River and still live normally.”
“Now it seems… although it’s a bit like reaping what you sow, the danger I sense from the words ‘prelude to annihilation’ is unprecedented.”