Chen Kuan was dead.
He hadn’t managed to finish what he wanted to say.
With his death, that pea plant seemed to release its very last breath, withering away in an instant.
The harsh wind rising from the planet’s core carried the withered leaves into the air, where they shrank into tiny, invisible specks.
Lin Xiaohe floated midair, the wind whistling sharply past her ears, while the cliffs on either side stood cold and solid.
The mountain of corpses on Planet X had shaken Lin Xiaohe to her core.
She had witnessed countless brutal massacres—especially the wanton destruction the Zerg had wrought across this star sector—but none of it had affected her the way this mountain of corpses did.
The Zerg treated all races and all civilizations equally. In their eyes, everything was edible; everything was for survival, for continuation.
But this mountain of corpses was different!
It was specifically aimed at humans, and it was filled with pure malice.
Lin Xiaohe couldn’t put her feelings into words. Anger smothered her frustration, and in the end, all she could muster was a single question: Why?
That question seemed to flip some kind of switch. Planet X, which had shown no signs of life, suddenly emitted an incredibly faint life fluctuation.
This time, Lin Xiaohe moved with extraordinary speed.
In the blink of an eye, she had reached the deepest part of the fissure.
The farther down she went, the more tangled and chaotic the energies became.
Lin Xiaohe frowned. When she used the [Source Body] inherited from the Rock Clan to push deeper into the planet’s core, she encountered something like an invisible net—a considerable resistance.
This was unusual.
Lin Xiaohe hesitated for only a second before deciding to press on toward that life fluctuation.
The straight-line distance from her position to the life fluctuation was only fifteen kilometers, yet it took her three full hours to get there!
What she found was a person on the verge of death.
A cute little girl, her face deathly pale, her lips purple, her eyes shut tight, her breath barely there.
Lin Xiaohe didn’t have any medical equipment on her, but she could see the girl’s internal condition clearly through her fourth-dimensional perspective.
And what she saw left her speechless.
This little girl had no stomach, no intestines—just a heart-like organ. In her shriveled abdomen, Lin Xiaohe spotted a peculiar crystal that had been swallowed.
The crystal wasn’t large, about the size of a finger, but the energy it contained was enough to make even Lin Xiaohe take notice.
It was incredibly pure!
Lin Xiaohe reached out, intending to take the crystal from the girl’s abdomen.
But her hand passed right through it, as if through a holographic screen. She could see it, but she couldn’t touch it.
Lin Xiaohe thought for a moment, then shifted into the fourth dimension. Surges of primal energy swirled around her, and the tiny crystal fell into her palm.
She studied the small crystal carefully. It radiated a dazzling light that illuminated the dark underground space as if it were broad daylight.
Lin Xiaohe could say with absolute certainty that she had never seen a crystal like this before—not in any prehistoric civilization, and not in the Federation!
Even the Rock Clan’s [Source Body] contained no information about it.
The Zerg might have known something, but among the Zerg memories Lin Xiaohe had inherited, there was no trace of it either.
What was it? Why was it buried deep beneath Planet X? Why had this young alien creature swallowed it?
And where had this young alien creature come from?
The moment the crystal left the young girl’s body, she immediately awoke. Her eyes flashed with a fierce glint, and she opened her mouth as if summoning something.
A low, rumbling boom echoed from deep underground, as if some creature was stirring from its slumber.
Lin Xiaohe narrowed her eyes. Crimson battle armor covered her entire body, and a long, pitch-black spear materialized in her hand. The [Unspeakable Existence] coiled around the spearhead as three wisps of black smoke.
An overwhelming aura of death, a terrifying force that could annihilate all things, spread through the cramped underground space.
The young girl’s gaze instantly cleared. Her little brownish curls perked up slightly.
She dropped her aggressive posture, knelt down with her hands folded over her knees, and wore an innocent, harmless expression.
“Amani bala hong?” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
The girl tilted her head and made a low-frequency sound: “Honglong wan bolong?”
Lin Xiaohe still didn’t understand, so she decided to call in some backup.
Because the population of Kyushu Star was rather diverse, with each civilization having its own language and script, ordinary humans had invented a translator to help them integrate better into life on Kyushu Star.
It was a two-piece patch—small, practical, and highly effective.
Lin Jingqiu had prepared several for Lin Xiaohe, precisely for situations like this.
After all, in just a few short years, more alien civilizations had popped up across this star sector than the Federation had encountered in millions upon millions of years combined.
The young girl obediently let Lin Xiaohe attach the translator to her.
“Who are you? Are you the legendary Destroyer?”
Lin Xiaohe didn’t answer her question. Instead, she asked, “Who are you?”
“My name is Gaia.” The young girl’s eyes sparkled, making her look sweet and endearing.
But Lin Xiaohe wasn’t fooled by her cute appearance. “Why are you here? Do you know what happened here?”
At that, Gaia grew a little annoyed. “Of course I can be here! This is my body. Argh, I’m so mad! Why did they pile all those carbon-based corpses on top of me? So filthy.”
Lin Xiaohe’s train of thought momentarily derailed.
What?! Whose body?!
“You’re saying that Planet X is you? That you are Planet X?”
“No, I’m not called Planet X. I’m Gaia.” The young girl looked indignant but dared not show it too much—she had a peculiar stubbornness about her name.
“Oh… alright, Gaia.” Lin Xiaohe kept a straight face, but inwardly, she felt a bit awkward.
The thought that Planet X had once been a tourist destination they’d considered visiting now felt… strange.
Seeing that Lin Xiaohe’s attitude was relatively friendly, Gaia asked, “Are you the legendary Destroyer? Was it you who wiped out our civilization?”
“Probably not.”
Lin Xiaohe said no, and Gaia believed her.
After all, the long spear in Lin Xiaohe’s hand gave her an overwhelming sense of danger. She had a feeling—this spear could destroy everything!
Someone so powerful had no need to lie.
Gaia pouted, and two golden teardrops rolled down her cheeks.
Literally golden teardrops.
“Great Honored One, I’ve been asleep for too long and I’ve lost my contractor. Could you… help me find him?”
Lin Xiaohe: “I’ll do my best to help you. But first, tell me—what happened here? Who killed the humans and piled them into those mountains of corpses? What were they trying to do?”
Gaia’s eyes flickered, and a hint of guilt crept into her voice. “I saw ships… lots of them, bringing humans here. They were locked in cages. After that… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Great Honored One, I’m not lying. We’re a long-lived race—most of our time is spent sleeping. That was just something I happened to catch during a quick nap. Ah… honestly, I saw those little squirts weren’t fighting or causing trouble, they all seemed pretty well-behaved, so I didn’t bother with them and went back to sleep.”
Gaia explained weakly.
Truth be told, their kind did love to sleep—but not that much.
Gaia was the sleepiest of them all. Her clan used to call her Sleepyhead Gaia!
