Two spacecraft departed from Tydar Star on the seventh day, carrying all surviving inhabitants of the planet.
The two vessels were identical in configuration, with the only difference being the people aboard them.
Ye Bai gazed into the distance where the Ark of Doom had vanished, recalling how the new humans had left Blue Star ten thousand years ago after an asteroid impact. Now, influenced by the Stellar Alliance, they had diverged into two ideological factions: the Empire and the Federation.
It remained to be seen what kind of future awaited the two newly separated branches of the Tydar people, who had just escaped their home planet.
Perhaps, like Blue Star, they would find a new world and become one of the countless civilizations in the cosmos. Or perhaps, due to cosmic disasters or internal strife, they would perish on their journey to a new home.
From the perspective of a civilization's development, it was difficult to judge whether this kind of "assistance" was right or wrong.
Saving them once wouldn’t guarantee a second chance, and it might even stifle their potential to overcome adversity on their own.
Yet, for any living being, survival was the foremost priority. If Blue Star faced such an extinction-level catastrophe, Ye Bai would undoubtedly hope for humanity to endure.
So, even though she had donned the guise of a "Harbinger of Doom" for the mission, driving the Tydar people to the brink, it was all to minimize suspicion and ensure the complete migration of their species.
Only when survival became the greatest threat would doubts and internal conflicts take a backseat.
Releasing the floods while offering the Ark of Doom had been Ye Bai’s carefully planned strategy to evacuate the Tydar people. After all, she wasn’t truly a demon who had traveled light-years just to bring doom upon a fledgling civilization.
Still, if this artificially orchestrated "doom" could spark true awakening among the Tydar people, it would be a positive outcome.
The rising seas submerged Tydar Star’s sole continent.
As Ye Bai ascended into the sky, she checked the mission status.
[Current Survivor Migration Rate: 100%]
[Time Remaining: 54 minutes]
[Task Completers: 2]
The "Current Survivor Migration Rate" was a rather ambiguous metric, making Ye Bai wonder if mass depopulation was also a viable way to complete the mission. But if that were the case, this task wouldn’t have been so unpopular among operatives in the Chaotic Star Sea...
Meanwhile, due to Tydar Star’s unique orbital speed, the gamma-ray burst was less than an hour away.
With two flashes, Ye Bai reached the upper atmosphere, where she rendezvoused with Lynn in his cosmic combat armor.
Seeing Ye Bai effortlessly defy gravity and teleport through space, Lynn’s face inside his helmet flickered with awe and envy before he quickly flew forward to greet her. "Senior."
Ye Bai raised an eyebrow, noting that Lynn’s attitude had grown even more deferential than before.
Having witnessed Ye Bai’s power to manipulate Tydar Star’s oceans, Lynn was both terrified and eager to curry favor with the high-ranking operative.
Noticing Ye Bai’s gaze lingering on the second Ark of Doom, Lynn scrambled for something to say. "The first ship already had enough people, but you still prepared a second one! Truly meticulous."
Maintaining her persona, Ye Bai replied coolly, "I prefer to go all the way to 100%."
Lynn shuddered, feeling as though he had glimpsed some profound truth—though upon reflection, he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He could only marvel inwardly: As expected of a top-tier operative. Their mindset is on another level...
After a pause, Ye Bai studied Lynn’s shifting expression—oscillating between "I understand" and "Wait, do I?"—and asked, "Still no word from the third operative?"
"No!" Lynn snapped to attention, answering without hesitation.
The sudden question had his spirit tensing, and he seemed too intimidated to lie.
Truthfully, both of them were keeping tabs on the third operative. But while Ye Bai harbored suspicions, Lynn—who believed he had hitched his wagon to an ultra-powerful A-rank—was more concerned about the freeloader who would claim credit without lifting a finger.
Fortunately, the mission interface only recognized two completers so far, suggesting the Jade Terminal had its own evaluation criteria.
Receiving another negative response, Ye Bai mused briefly. "Then let’s proceed to the marked location."
"Understood," Lynn replied immediately.
Though their mission progress already showed as complete, the actual point distribution—like last time with the wormhole closure—would only be finalized after they reached the designated coordinates and waited for the gamma-ray burst to arrive, followed by the Church of the Stars’ representatives.
The two soon breached Tydar Star’s atmosphere, venturing into the void of space.
Lynn’s cosmic armor could match a military-grade starship in short bursts, but compared to Ye Bai’s speed, he was still lagging.
By the time he arrived at the marked location, his thrusters flaring, Ye Bai was already floating serenely in the vacuum, untouched by exertion.
...
"It’s here."
As the seconds ticked away, a devastating gamma-ray burst arrived precisely on schedule. It bypassed Tydar Star’s neighboring planets and central sun, striking Tydar Star at the perfect angle.
The cosmos was awash with electromagnetic waves and radiation, most of which Ye Bai could now perceive with her enhanced senses—though she usually filtered them out to maintain a human-like perspective.
But now, faced with this rare cosmic spectacle, she expanded her vision further, even activating bullet time to witness the event in all its terrifying grandeur.
A concentrated beam of unimaginable energy struck Tydar Star, lasting less than a second. Yet in that fraction of a moment, it unleashed energy equivalent to a star like the sun radiating for fifty thousand years.
In that instant, Tydar Star experienced an extinction event unlike any in its history. Its atmosphere was nearly obliterated, and the once-habitable world—home to intelligent life and civilization—would need untold millennia before new life could emerge.
The cosmic spectacle lasted only a heartbeat, but its impact was beyond words.
Especially Ye Bai, compared to Lynn beside her, she could 'see' and perceive much more. Uncontrollably, her mind flooded with countless thoughts, even imagining whether Blue Star had witnessed a similar spectacle when it was struck by a gamma-ray burst 540 million years ago during the Ordovician period...
"...What's going on?"
It wasn't until a moment later that Lynn's mental fluctuations snapped Ye Bai out of her daze. She jolted back to reality and quickly realized Lynn was referring to their mission.
Ye Bai frowned slightly and turned her gaze to the mission terminal.
The mission was marked as complete, and they had reached the designated endpoint, yet no one from the Stellar Alliance Church had arrived to finalize it.
Given the advanced technology of the Chaotic Star Sea, there was no need for anyone to 'travel'—micro wormholes made it instantaneous. So, what was the hold-up?
Failure wasn’t a possibility either, as the two departing spacecrafts weren’t in the path of the gamma-ray burst. Their trajectories were still observable, and after the destruction of Taida Star, the gamma-ray burst had exhausted its energy and vanished entirely, posing no further threat.
"Senior, do you know what’s happening? What should we do now?" Lynn, conscious of her status as a novice mission-taker, immediately looked to Ye Bai, adhering to the principle of asking the expert first when in doubt.
'...How would I know what’s going on?'
Ye Bai’s eye twitched imperceptibly as she internally grumbled. When it came to mission experience in the Chaotic Star Sea, she might even be less seasoned than Lynn...
But outwardly, she could only reply, "Let’s wait a little longer."
Lynn responded, "Understood!"
The two waited in silence, but even after nearly ten minutes past the expected settlement time, no one showed up.
The mission status remained stuck on 'completed,' frozen at the final settlement stage. It felt eerily like a system glitch, yet given the Stellar Alliance Church’s technological dominance in the Chaotic Star Sea—and Lynn’s presumably richer mission experience—this anomaly suggested something unusual was at play.
Ye Bai’s frown deepened as she pondered the possibilities: Was it the Stellar Alliance Church? The mission itself? Or... could it be linked to that third mission-taker who had accepted the task at the last possible moment but never appeared?
Mid-thought, Ye Bai suddenly felt her jade terminal buzz with four rapid-fire messages:
[Assessing...]
[User star rating meets criteria.]
[Temporary free access to exchange zone activated.]
[Mini wormhole activation in progress. Countdown: 10, 9, 8, 7...]
The barrage of notifications left Ye Bai stunned. The moment she focused on the terminal, she saw their previously stalled mission pushed aside, replaced by a new one—automatically accepted without her input.
[Emergency Mission]
Objective: Eliminate the target at all costs (coordinates 89.89.455-89.89.955).
Target: B- to A-class psychic.
Reward: Highest-tier Stellar Alliance technology upon success, plus 10,000 Stellar Points.
"Senior... I’ve been auto-assigned an emergency mission," Lynn spoke up, sharing her own notification.
Like Ye Bai, her mini wormhole had activated automatically, with weapons temporarily unlocked. However, likely due to her lower combat rating, Lynn’s objective wasn’t elimination but tracking or delaying the target until reinforcements arrived. Her reward was mid-tier Stellar Alliance tech and 4,000 bonus points.
An auto-accepted mission, a free exchange zone, and a 'at all costs' directive—who was the Stellar Alliance Church targeting, and why?
[...3, 2, 1.]
Before she could dwell further, the mini wormhole finished forming.
Under such ambiguous circumstances, Ye Bai had no intention of stepping in. But everything happened too abruptly—this wasn’t a standard wormhole. It was more like the collapse of the very space around them.
Despite her desperate resistance, Ye Bai felt like someone sinking into quicksand, helplessly dragged down as the space itself imploded around her.
