Present Me With the Laurel Crown of Victory

As soon as Wuma Xiu entered this star region, he spotted the Insect Nest lurking deep in the starry void.

It looked like a rotting heart.

It writhed with a dense mass of movement, swallowing every trace of light around it.

He was in no hurry to act.

Instead, his mind wandered to a few random things.

Wuma Xiu had read plenty of novels and played plenty of games, and almost every character called a "Moon God" in them was a goddess.

Crescent Moon Goddess, Silver Moon Goddess... no matter how the names changed, they always came with skirts and a gentle glow.

And the weapons of those Moon Gods were invariably a bow and a quiver of arrows.

Wuma Xiu lowered his head and looked at himself.

Fortunately, this Moon God was a man.

Otherwise, he really wouldn't have been able to face his fellow men.

As he mused, Wuma Xiu held out a hand and spread his fingers slightly. In an instant, starlight scattered throughout the star region streamed toward his palm, trailing wisps of light.

The points of light gathered...

The outline of a bow gradually took shape amid the flowing light, growing solid from an illusion, as though someone had plucked an entire galaxy from the sky and bent it into the arc of the bow.

The bow was pitch-black from end to end, but tiny flecks of light flickered within it.

Like a sky full of stars reflected on a lake at night.

Wuma Xiu examined it, the corners of his lips curving upward.

"How mischievous. The starlight really does take after its god."

Wuma Xiu had originally only intended to draw on the power of moonlight, but there were so many stars here that their light had reached his hand first.

The starlight reminded him of his younger brother, the Star God.

"I'll call you the Star-Moon Bow."

He had already made plans for when his younger brother, the Star God, woke up.

If his brother ever got angry, he could use the bow to coax him. He also had to think of something to give his older brother, the Sun God.

Otherwise, if one got something and the other didn't,

he would be the one with a headache when they started making a fuss.

Wuma Xiu raised his hand and placed his fingertips where the bowstring should have been.

There had been nothing there.

But when his fingers touched it, a strand of moonlight was drawn from an immense distance away and obediently wound itself around his fingertips.

Then it gathered.

The moonlight itself took the shape of an arrow.

Its shaft was silvery white, its glow restrained.

"Since it's called the Star-Moon Bow, you'll be the Star-Moon Arrow. Go, and present me with the laurel crown of victory."

He drew the bow into a full moon.

Wuma Xiu released the string.

And at this moment, the bow and arrow he had created together—

their thoughts were far less composed than their Creation's.

The Star-Moon Bow was humming and trembling ever so slightly.

Although it carried Lord Star God's power,

the moment it was born, Lord Moon God had held it in his own hand, drawn it himself, and even given it a name.

What an immense honor that was!

The Star-Moon Bow felt as though every inch of it was about to catch fire.

Lord Star God, I'm sorry.

Now I love only Lord Moon God!

The Star-Moon Bow had no such misgivings.

After all, it had been formed entirely and purely from moonlight.

There had only ever been one being in its heart: its creator, Lord Moon God.

Now, the Star-Moon Arrow tore through space as a streak of silver light, with only one thought left in its mind.

Star-Moon Arrow: Blast these lowly insects apart. They mustn't be allowed to sully Lord Moon God's eyes. And most importantly, bring Lord Moon God the laurel crown of victory!

"Hello, everyone. I'm Yunhuo."

On the screen, a young face grinned at the camera.

There was a touch of deliberate composure in the curve of his lips.

But the excitement he couldn't hide in his eyes gave him away.

A porthole was behind Yunhuo.

Outside were the pale blue plumes from the spaceship's engines and, in the distance, a star region drawing ever closer.

"We're about to head to the border between the Federation and the Zerg."

The bullet comments had already started rolling in.

One after another.

They swept densely across the screen from right to left, so fast their contents were almost impossible to read.

Only a few recurring words could be caught now and then.

"Border," "Zerg," "crazy," "Moonlight Clan."

Out of the corner of his eye, Yunhuo glanced at the constantly changing number in the upper right.

Five hundred thousand.

And it was still rising.

A thin layer of sweat coated his palms, and his fingers tightened on the control stick before loosening again.

I made the right choice coming here.

The thought flared like a flame in his chest, leaving Yunhuo's whole body faintly burning.

He had toiled away in his little livestream room for three full years.

Even at its peak, his follower count had never reached five digits.

Every day he spoke to the same few dozen familiar faces, until in the end even he no longer knew what else there was to say.

To Yunhuo, it was like shouting into a dry well: no matter how hoarse he became, all he could hear was his own echo.

So when he saw the news in his group chat that the Zerg had broken through the border, Canghai Star had nearly been destroyed, and the Moonlight Clan had appeared,

Yunhuo's first thought was, An opportunity!

"I'm sure everyone already knows that the Zerg suddenly broke through the border and appeared near Canghai Star. The entire planet was almost wiped out. It was the arrival of the Moonlight Clan that saved them."

As Yunhuo said this, another thought was turning over in his mind:

The whole Federation was now talking about Canghai Star, the Zerg, the Moonlight Clan...

These were all hot topics.

And hot topics meant traffic, while traffic meant the thing he hadn't managed to obtain in three years of hard work.

A sense of presence.

The bullet comments exploded again.

[Holy shit, he's really going to the border? Does this streamer have a death wish?]

[Moonlight Clan fan here to watch. Also, the Moonlight Clan is awesome.]

[Isn't the border crawling with Zerg? I know Federation troops are stationed there, but I still have to ask: is this guy going to deliver himself as takeout?]

[Can someone do something? This looks like a suicide livestream.]

Yunhuo glanced at the bullet comments and smiled.

Five hundred thousand people were watching him.

Five hundred thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on him, on a person named Yunhuo.

He hadn't felt this way in three years.

No, to be precise, he had never felt this way.

"Thank you all for your support. We're almost there, so please give me a follow."

Yunhuo's fingers tightened slightly on the control stick, and the spaceship picked up speed again.

Outside the porthole, the color of the star region was changing.

The starry sky within Federation territory was a reassuring deep blue.

Scattered stars dotted it like crushed diamonds sprinkled over velvet.

But as the spaceship drew closer to the border,

it was as though something had seeped into that deep blue from the other side.

The color began to darken and grow murky.

Finally, it became an indescribable, ominous gray.

It was as though someone had thrown a basin of dirty water over the velvet, and the stain was slowly spreading.

They had reached the border.