Xi Yujin immediately looked at Gano, worried about potential conflict between the Zerg and the Intelligent Machines. If there was any risk, they would have to find another way to escape.

"It's fine," Gano said softly. "Although the Zerg still use the Intelligent Machine mode during military drills, the war is long over. The Zerg and the Intelligent Machines have signed a peace treaty, and their official relations are in a state of friendly diplomacy."

So the relationship between the Zerg and the Intelligent Machines was similar to that between Blue Planet and the Ctulrt?

Xi Yujin told himself not to make that comparison. It was more like the two great powers on Earth maintaining a surface-level peace and mutual non-aggression. Major powers were entangled in countless strategic games and wouldn't act rashly. As long as Gano didn't do anything out of line, no one would bother paying attention to the actions of a single individual.

Still, Xi Yujin felt uneasy and planned to return to Tidal Peace to discuss things further. They slowly walked out of the base. Suddenly, Xi Yujin overheard a staff member say:

"It's time to get rid of that item. There are too many advanced civilizations here; it simply won't sell. Keeping it will only take up space…"

Xi Yujin stopped in his tracks, remembering the massive water tank that had been displayed in the auction hall.

He felt that the Navigator Colossus was a paradoxical thing: it tolerated unethical trade, yet displayed unparalleled courage while sailing. Perhaps there was no simple right or wrong in this universe. Living beings simply acted according to their own perspectives.

But Xi Yujin still couldn't bear it. He turned to the staff member and asked, "Excuse me… that item you mentioned, can I buy it?"

The staff member was taken aback, then broke into a delighted smile. "That would be wonderful!"

Xi Yujin had earned 9,800 ship coins at the auction and spent over 6,000 to buy out the lower-class black market. Although most of what he bought served no practical purpose and took up considerable space on Tidal Peace, Xi Yujin was very happy.

He spent the remaining 3,000-plus ship coins in one go, purchasing this unnamed race. Out of respect for Blue Planet, the black market staff even threw in a free incubator and life-support circulation system. The 8,000-cubic-meter water tank was placed in Tidal Peace's right-wing warehouse, alongside the virtual library.

"This is their language dictionary…" A staff member handed over a language book. This race had approximately five thousand words, roughly on par with some humans' vocabulary. They could already comprehend relatively complex logic. "And this is a summary of their habits. Have a pleasant journey!" The staff member brought in the gifts and left.

Xi Yujin flipped through the language book and got a basic grasp of the race's language. In their own introduction, they called themselves the Rust Clan. Although the winning bidder of an advanced civilization technically had the power to rename them, Xi Yujin kept the name they had given themselves.

"Gano, why can't I see them?" Xi Yujin pressed himself against the tank wall and asked curiously. "The eggs are gone too."

Gano quickly browsed the introduction, deciphered the underlying logic of their language, and said, "They should be in a state of thermal hibernation. Once the water temperature has fully cooled, they'll emerge."

"Eee!"

A fist-sized coal-ball sprite suddenly stuck itself to the tank wall right in front of Xi Yujin, startling him. Judging by this Rust Clan member's size, it had to be one of their newborns.

Xi Yujin opened the passage on top of the water tank. The little Rust used its spikes to roll upward, swung around the rim of the tank a few times, and then dropped into Xi Yujin's palm.

The Rust Clan had two forms; at the moment, its spikes were hard, which would certainly have left holes in the hands of an ordinary creature. But Xi Yujin wasn't afraid at all, and even carefully adjusted it so it sat more comfortably.

"Hello. I am Yujin of Blue Planet," Xi Yujin said, having already prepared his words. He spoke slowly, trying to make the little Rust understand. "For various reasons, your former home was destroyed. You are now temporarily living aboard my spaceship."

The little Rust slowly softened in Xi Yujin's palm, its taut spikes relaxing into soft fur. It let out a few little whimpers, which Xi Yujin interpreted as sadness.

"Until you find a new home, you can be citizens of Blue Planet here," Xi Yujin said.

The little Rust stretched its fur, indicating it understood. In its world, a terrible lava attack had engulfed its entire race. Afterwards, they were rescued by a colossus descending from the sky, experienced some mythical developments, and finally arrived before Xi Yujin. It could actually understand a great deal and could discern Xi Yujin's goodwill, so it didn't react with excessive alarm.

Xi Yujin took the opportunity to stroke its soft fur. Suddenly, the little Rust bounced away, jumped back into the water tank, and when it came back up, it was wearing a decoration that looked like a Santa hat; apparently, a customary greeting in its race's culture.

Xi Yujin spoke with it several more times to confirm the race's intelligence level, then handed them the translated book. He had no intention of keeping them as pets; it was better to teach them how to fish than to give them fish.

They could first learn other languages, then access the materials in the virtual library. If they could learn Blue Planet's culture, even better; that way, Blue Planet's civilization could live on through another form.

The little Rust said it would study hard, and that when its parents and the neighbor's children woke up, it would already have learned far more than them.

Xi Yujin was finally at ease.

He granted the Rust Clan access to several ship compartments, allowing them to move freely, and then returned to the workshop with Gano. They still had some time before docking in Intelligent Machine territory, so they quickly strategized for any contingency.

"By the way, we can connect to StarNet now." Xi Yujin sent the manuscripts they had agreed upon to the various contacts in the Pangshi Galaxy.

The scale of the universe was simply too vast, so distant Galaxies could not communicate in real time, and information loss was possible. Xi Yujin needed to send them several times over.

He logged onto the Flying Duck Novel Network to check the situation, chaining through several network keys before succeeding, and even then, the page displayed color distortion from the lag.

Other Galaxies' networks couldn't even access the actual novels on the Flying Duck Novel Network. Xi Yujin privately grumbled that even the author himself couldn't read his own novels, and could only browse the comments section.

Following the chronological order, the comments under Xunming's works were first filled with righteous indignation:

 

[

I knew you weren't just a meteorite spirit! You're a black hole writer! Where are you planning to jump to this time?!

—

AHHH, why did you have to write that kind of romance arc for Yongye?!

—

Please, what's wrong with Xunming writing romance? He's clearly very skilled at it. Yongye can just ignore it.

]

 

Then the tone shifted to a detached, bittersweet calm; time is the best filter.

 

[

I've been waiting for Xunming to fill his pits for a hundred years. Now I've decided to pass this wait on to my descendants. Hopefully they can burn me the update as spirit money…

—

The internet is so boring without Xunming. I'm going to stir up a storm in the Blue Planet literary world again!

—

I've already re-read the previous chapters so many times that the pages are worn smooth.

]

 

After waiting three hours, the page lagged even more outrageously, and a flood of comments began pouring in.

 

[

I connected to the Blue Planet official website! So laggy, I even got kicked out.

—

Look what I found! All five of Xunming's biggest pits have been updated! Fully completed! AHHH, am I dreaming?!

—

Welcome, Xunming, finally out of seclusion! Yay!

]

 

On the Flying Duck Novel Network, the ending of Fairy Tale of a Life and Death Romance had finally been posted.

Xiaoming and Lihua missed each other six times, misunderstood each other eight times, had their families interfere three times, and had their exes come back from the dead four times, but at last they made it down the aisle. At the wedding, Xiaoming, holding his bouquet, accidentally smacked Lihua in the face, and the two bickered their way into marriage amid their quarrels.

Countless readers breathed a sigh of relief and even developed a hazy, artistic filter for the original author, Xunming.

The protagonist of Chaos Gale defeated every enemy in his path, successfully averted war, and he and his close friends retired to a quiet life in a small city.

The protagonist of the Starship Management App achieved a life of wealth and set off traveling in a luxurious starship.

The protagonist of House of Lies created an undefeated legend and also went into seclusion after peace arrived.

To the readers' surprise, Xunming had also completed the sequel to Million Gods' Wager. He did not use the setting from Flying Over the Pyramid, and as always, it was thrilling enough to make your scalp tingle.

However, the author's values were evident throughout. Even in the most exhilarating scenes, characters who looked down on the lower classes received their due punishment, while those who dared to rebel had their future fates hinted at through clever foreshadowing. When depicting characters who bowed to the protagonist for money, exaggerated, humorous techniques were used, drawing a knowing smile without making the morality feel warped.

In the end, the protagonist of Million Gods' Wager helped the god Min win, then used all the money to build a weapon that forcibly shut down the hardware system. Without electricity, the god vanished, and the pyramids were plunged into darkness.

What happened next wasn't detailed; the story jumped to ten years later, where a child was studying history and reading about a wealthy man who had given away his entire fortune to support a revolution. Now, no one knew where that man had retired to live in seclusion.

Since most of Xunming's books ended with the protagonist going into seclusion, readers spawned a new meme: the hermit is the strongest.

This in turn gave birth to a new web novel genre: hermit flow, where a seemingly ordinary recluse turns out to be a terrifying former legend. A terrifying prospect indeed.

Meanwhile, different voices appeared in the forums.

"Xunming is too strong. If I were him, I wouldn't have dared to continue writing the sequel after Yujin wrote Flying Over the Pyramid… What confidence and conviction that takes."

"Yujin's Flying Over the Pyramid is excellent, but Xunming knows his domain is web novels, so he cultivates that field deeply. He doesn't feel inferior just because someone else wrote a masterpiece. Does the word inferiority even exist in his vocabulary? And he revised the details too; even after creating so many genres, he's still learning and improving. He proves through his actions that my writing style is meant to be light and exhilarating. What a terrifying human being."

"The third issue of Reader's Digest is out! I went straight to the comments section; so many different languages! Is Xunming chatting with Yongye again?"

"No… Did they have a falling out…"

Readers across the universe always loved gossip about novelists, spinning wild theories from the smallest interaction. Xi Yujin read those analyses with great amusement and decided that whenever he ran out of ideas for new personas, he would just copy the speculation above.

In the Materialist Archive, the comments for The Case Files of Mr. Zhong were a vast ocean, with readers sobbing en masse.

"Yongye has become an unbearable pain in my life. Why? Why did Mr. Zhong have to end up like that? I'm still heartbroken…"

"I hope there will be a sequel for Mr. Zhong."

"Even a new detective story would be great. Other novelists have started writing detective fiction, but the quality leaves much to be desired, and they all follow the same formulas as Yongye. Only through comparison can you appreciate how brilliant Yongye's writing truly is. Yongye! When are you going to release a new work?!"

Xi Yujin, feeling a twinge of guilt, quickly scrolled past.

At that moment, emails from the Flash Empire flooded his inbox like snowflakes, all protesting Blue Planet's alleged abduction of their offspring.

Xi Yujin hurriedly replied, explaining that Blue Planet people just looked like that, so please don't misunderstand. If they didn't believe him, they could check the culture on Blue Planet's official website; it was clearly not the Flash Empire's style.

The Flash Empire sent another question: "Then why did you run?"

Xi Yujin recalled the scene of being surrounded by four or five giant mineral beings. Of course he ran!

After a diplomatic tug-of-war, the Flash Empire agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Blue Planet. Xi Yujin seized the opportunity to recommend their game, Investigator Files, saying there was an offline version that ran perfectly smoothly!

The Flash Empire accepted the recommendation with some skepticism.

Canghai's Ancient Tomb Code was also sent out in full. The ending featured the Fu family twins surviving several life-and-death ordeals, achieving great wealth, and retiring to live a quiet life in seclusion somewhere.

Living in seclusion with close friends; that was Blue Planet's romance. The Flash Empire received the manuscript and even praised how quickly it had been written.

There were other unfamiliar emails in his inbox as well: from a new force in the Pangshi Galaxy called the Workers' Guild, hoping to purchase the rights to new works by Blue Planet novelists. Xi Yujin reviewed the terms and, finding the offer quite sincere, agreed.

Readers in the Pangshi Galaxy also noticed many updates to the Blue Planet website, such as a new list of Official Novelists and newly announced archaeological findings. Their jaws dropped; the Blue Planet that had passed through the Pangshi Galaxy was such an advanced civilization!

A new cultural wave swept through the Pangshi Galaxy.

Some passengers on the Navigator Colossus also managed to access the Pangshi Galaxy's novel websites, browsing the unanimous praise from other readers, and immediately burned with frustration because they couldn't read the actual content.

"Which website will buy the reading rights in Intelligent Machine territory?!"

"I'm so curious about what they wrote. I can’t even understand Blue Planet’s archaeological materials. But now, I’m especially curious about Xunming and Yongye."

The passengers quietly took note of these names.

—

As the Navigator Colossus continued its approach toward Intelligent Machine territory, Xi Yujin was able to connect to their network. The Intelligent Machines' websites were far richer in content and more user-friendly. They possessed a powerful search engine capable of finding the official websites of almost every race connected to the black box. Moreover, the internet speed was incredibly fast.

Blue Planet's black box backend showed a steep increase in direct readership across all websites, exceeding the average from the Pangshi Galaxy. Without any promotion whatsoever, these numbers could only mean creatures were stumbling upon the site by chance. This spoke volumes about the sheer biological traffic here.

Several emails requesting licensing rights arrived in his inbox. Xi Yujin glanced at them and realized they were mass emails. Out of caution, he didn't accept offers from these unfamiliar websites. The novel sites didn't follow up with a second invitation either.

—

The Navigator Colossus had entered Intelligent Machine territory.

Xi Yujin looked out the window, and his first impression was mass crowding.

This was almost inconceivable in the emptiness of space; at such distances, even the largest planets appeared as dim specks.

Yet it was undeniably true: massive orbital tracks crisscrossed the void, linking various mechanical celestial bodies in a dizzying tangle. In the distance, the dense constructions reflected shimmering lights like the Milky Way.

"To maintain territorial security, personal information verification is required to enter Intelligent Machine territory. All passengers, please remain on board…"

The Navigator Colossus broadcast a new announcement.

"The security here seems pretty tight. The Pangshi Galaxy didn't have this many rules," Xi Yujin muttered.

Soon, a small rocket-shaped spacecraft arrived in front of Tidal Peace. Inside sat a crew member from the Navigator Colossus and a robot. The robot's integrated circuits and steel plates were fully exposed, so Xi Yujin couldn't tell whether it was actually an Intelligent Machine or not.

"Now scanning for the number of life forms on your ship," the robot said in a monotone voice, and a thin red light swept rapidly over Tidal Peace.

Xi Yujin's heart nearly leaped out of his chest. This was bad; his alter egos weren't actual life forms. Was he about to be exposed right in front of this crew member?

"A total of forty-four life forms. Please keep your access codes safe," the mechanical voice said calmly.

Xi Yujin then remembered the Rust Clan aboard his ship. It seemed the thermally hibernating Rust Clan members were also counted as life forms. But in the Navigator Colossus crew member's eyes, the Rust Clan were commodities with no rights, so nothing seemed amiss.

This small scare passed with Xi Yujin's heart hammering the entire time.

"Please wait. Are there Zerg here?" The robot seemed to have detected something unusual.

"Z-Zerg?!" The staff member stammered in fright.

Xi Yujin tensed up again. Gano, beside him, was already preparing to load his armor.

"Please, there's no need for alarm," the robot said, its voice carrying a rare tremor. "The war… ended a long time ago. Welcome to our planet."

Xi Yujin quietly breathed a sigh of relief while the robot led the trembling staff member to the next ship.

"So that's what the Intelligent Machines are like…" Xi Yujin said to Gano. "Exactly like the robots I imagined."

"That wasn't an Intelligent Machine," Gano explained, referencing his armor's knowledge base. "The Intelligent Machines' main bodies reside within the Deep Space Prison. Their computing power supports various terminals that help them interact with the outside world. That robot was probably one of their extremely small terminals."

Xi Yujin: "Then why did the Intelligent Machines imprison themselves?"

He knew he was once again revealing his lack of common sense, but in front of Gano, it didn't matter. If he could have found the answers to these questions on his own, he wouldn't have asked.

Gano: "I can only find the official explanation…"

The Zerg and the Intelligent Machines had waged a transdimensional war whose flames engulfed hundreds of millions of Galaxies, and countless civilizations still in their infancy were annihilated in an instant.

In the only surviving official records, the Intelligent Machines and the Zerg recognized that their crimes were too numerous to count. Therefore, the two sides signed a peace treaty: the Intelligent Machine Mother Box imprisoned itself in the Deep Space Prison, and the Zerg Queen entered slumber at the edge of a black hole.

From that point on, the Intelligent Machines and the Zerg became the only two races in the entire universe that never ventured long voyages.

After explaining the official narrative, Gano knew he was an anomaly, but he didn't know how to explain it. Something seemed to restrict him, making his mind go blank.

Xi Yujin, on the other hand, took an open-minded view. "Looks like we're both traveling alone. I'm really glad we met." He was meticulous by nature, but when it came to Gano, he couldn't help focusing on the brighter side.

Whenever moments like these came, Gano always felt an urge to move even closer to Xi Yujin.