Moon

Yang Zhi shook his head hard, forcing the inexplicable impulse down. Yet his gaze remained fixed on the porthole, as though something had caught hold of it. He couldn't bear to look away.

He wondered:

Could I have fallen under some kind of mental charm?

As soon as the thought surfaced,

Yang Zhi instinctively drew on what little Psychic Power he had left and carefully searched his sea of consciousness.

It was perfectly clean, with no trace of outside intrusion.

He hadn't been influenced or controlled.

Those surging feelings and that inexplicable impulse had come entirely from his own heart.

But that was precisely what he found most unbelievable.

With his current level of Psychic Power, only a handful of people in the entire Alliance could rival him.

Let alone influence his mind without him noticing.

Even Marshal Bai couldn't possibly charm him without a sound. Besides, he'd be lucky if Marshal Bai didn't freeze him to death. How could that man do such a thing?

And yet, that laugh just now...

Yang Zhi hadn't even seen the person's face. A single sound had so easily thrown his mind into turmoil,

leaving him dazed and impulsive for a moment.

It was absurd!

Yang Zhi pressed his lips together, suddenly realizing that his body was warning him. Back in the spatial rift, he had pushed his Psychic Power far beyond its limits to protect the ship.

Opening the rift, fighting the turbulence, forcibly dragging the ship out—

Every one of those actions had burned through his Psychic Power. The only reason he'd held out this long was sheer force of will, like a bowstring drawn to its limit, seemingly taut and steady but ready to snap at any moment.

And now the danger had passed.

The owner of that voice had driven the Starry Sky Beasts away for them.

With hope suddenly descending upon them in their desperate plight, the string stretched to its limit could hold no longer.

The instant he relaxed, weakness surged through every part of his body. Darkness washed over Yang Zhi's vision in waves, and the sea of stars beyond the porthole blurred together with the figure he had never managed to see clearly, becoming a haze of multicolored light.

Yang Zhi raised a hand, seemingly trying to grasp the edge of the console to steady himself, but his fingertips had barely touched the cold metal panel when the last of his strength deserted him.

Before his vision went completely dark, one final thought crossed Yang Zhi's mind:

Who on earth was the owner of that voice?

Then he knew nothing more.

When they woke again, Li Ze slapped someone. Naturally, he hadn't slapped himself.

"Fuck, who the hell hit me?! That fucking hurt!"

A man clutched his face and shot upright.

His whole face burned as though someone had pressed a hot iron against it. He glared furiously, eyes wide, and was about to unleash a torrent of curses when his vision focused.

He found himself staring at his captain's expressionless face.

"...Captain, sorry. I wasn't cursing at you."

The man sheepishly rubbed his nose, most of his anger vanishing in an instant.

"It's fine." Li Ze waved a hand. "Did that hurt?"

At the question, the man nodded like a chicken pecking at grain.

Did it hurt?

Don't you know your own strength?

His captain's physique was a genuine double-S grade, among the strongest in the Alliance. Even a casual slap from him would ordinarily shatter a solid block of granite into rubble on the spot. The man had only gotten off with a burning pain because he had thick skin and was born able to take a beating.

"You felt pain." Li Ze's eyes lit up. "That means we're not dreaming. We're alive! We're still alive!"

At his shout, the entire ship erupted. The wild joy of surviving the ordeal swept over everyone like a tide.

Some slapped their thighs and roared with laughter.

Some clenched their fists and slammed them hard against the bulkhead.

Others simply plopped down on the floor, grinning as they laughed and cried like madmen.

Bai Yang, however, had no time to join the celebration.

He suddenly remembered something dreadful and hurriedly opened his Lightbrain.

In an instant, the notification sounds nearly made his Lightbrain explode like a firework. Messages from his dad, his mom, his grandpa, his grandma, all his aunts and other relatives, and his wife... Red dots crowded the screen, and when he opened them, every message was asking what had happened to him.

—Was he still alive?

—What was that farewell letter about?

I'm done for.

He was alive, but he'd written that farewell letter too quickly.

Bai Yang's mouth twitched, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

How am I supposed to explain this when I get back?

His relatives had probably already mourned him.

His wife might even have considered remarrying.

Bai Yang turned his head with a troubled look, instinctively wanting to ask Yang Zhi for advice.

"Little Yang, what do you think I should—"

He stopped halfway through.

He saw that Yang Zhi was still lying on the floor, eyes tightly shut, with no sign of waking. The young man's face was as pale as a sheet of paper, his chest rising and falling faintly, his breathing so shallow it was almost imperceptible.

"Little Yang! What's wrong?"

Bai Yang's shout scattered everyone's joy at surviving the ordeal.

They all turned to look.

Only then did they realize that Yang Zhi, who had risked his life to pull them out of the spatial rift, was still lying there unconscious.

A crowd rushed over,

anxiously reaching in from all sides to check on him.

"He is fine."

An exceedingly cool voice rang out beside them.

It wasn't loud, but it flowed across their eardrums like a handful of snowmelt drawn from beneath the ice in the depths of winter, carrying a chill that made them hold their breath involuntarily.

Startled, they turned toward the voice.

A slender figure was leaning against the doorway.

A faint halo like moonlight enveloped the young man. Though he stood in the brightly lit cabin, it was as if an invisible veil separated him from everything around him.

Cold and distant, far beyond their reach.

"He merely needs rest."

The young man tilted his head slightly, his gaze passing casually over the unconscious Yang Zhi.

Everyone froze.

When did this person appear?

Not one of them had noticed anything amiss from beginning to end.

It was as if he had always been there,

and they simply hadn't been worthy of seeing him.

"Who are you?"

Li Ze was the first to recover and asked in a deep voice. His voice was thick with wariness.

The man raised his eyes unhurriedly.

His long silver-white hair fell like a waterfall, flowing with a cool, soft radiance under the cabin lights, as if the moonlight of an entire galaxy had been broken into fragments and woven through its strands.

His features were too exquisite to seem real, with an air of cool detachment about them. He was like a flower seen through a thin mist: though close at hand, he seemed impossibly far away.

"My name is Moon," the silver-haired young man said.

Yet those lightly spoken words made the hearts of everyone present clench.

Moon.

That name, that word, had long since become something people dared not speak of in the current interstellar age.

Because of the Moonlight Clan's near-mad obsession,

everyone treated anything connected to "moon" with extreme caution, avoiding it at all costs.

People in ancient times had gazed at the moon in remembrance, sung long songs to it, and poured out their sorrows beneath it. All that poetry and wine, all those feelings entrusted to its clear light, had become a dream of the past that no one dared mention.

People nowadays felt uneasy at the sight of the moon.

Their first instinct wasn't to compose poetry,

but to pull out their Lightbrains and check the interstellar news to see which unfortunate planet the Moonlight Clan had blown up today.

In this day and age, who would dare take that name?

Did he have a death wish? Or perhaps it was just a homophone?

Whether it meant "surpass," "mountain," or "joy," any character with the same sound would do, so long as it wasn't "moon." Otherwise, he really was worried that the Moonlight Clan would go ahead and humanely exterminate them too.

Although the clan was usually rational, they were far too fanatical about this matter, perfectly willing to kill a thousand innocents rather than let one offender go.

Li Ze stepped forward without betraying his thoughts, his broad shoulders shielding the teammates behind him. Every muscle in his body tensed as he asked warily:

"Which yue?"