Emanator of Propagation

When the energy at his fingertips left his hand, Jingxing first heard a dull thud—like someone striking him with a sledgehammer through a thick layer of cotton.

The energy released landed on the insect cloud where they intended to land. According to Jingxing's plan, this was merely to drive the insects away and make way for them to land.

But when the energy struck, both Jingxing and Fu Xuan were stunned—the impact caused the entire Swarm to sink, and the shock was quite noticeable.

The swarm of insects next to this energy blast first stopped, hanging stiffly in mid-air, and then, after half a breath, the entire layer shattered.

The second layer crashed in, following the same process; finally, the Swarm on the third layer began to disperse to both sides, like the receding tide.

As Jingxing read on, his brows furrowed.

The feeling of that stroke just now wasn't quite right. He had used the Beauty energy of the brush countless times, and he knew exactly what the stroke should feel like: the initial stroke should be clean, the ending stroke should be crisp, and the force should be like a knife cutting into the paper.

But when that last drop fell, there was something extra on his fingertips—very thin, very thick, like ink mixed with a pinch of fine sand.

It didn't cause any problems; in fact, it made the energy even more condensed and efficient, which surprised Jingxing himself.

He made another stroke, landing on the side of the insect cloud, stopping first and then breaking apart, breaking apart even more neatly than the first stroke.

Fu Xuan watched the two strokes of the brush from the side.

"What did you add to that stroke? It feels like there's something extra in it," she asked.

"I don't know." Jingxing turned his hand over and looked at it. "Anyway, it works, and I don't feel like I've deviated from my Path... It shouldn't be a bad thing, right?"

Fu Xuan didn't ask any more questions. She rolled up her sleeves and walked half a step ahead of him to the cockpit to prepare to adjust the landing site. Jingxing behind her, savoring the feel of those two strokes on his fingertips once more.

The spaceship modified by Dongfang Qixing is indeed impressive; it not only flies stably but is also very easy to control.

The spaceship landed steadily on a Stone Beach outside the Light Strip, sending pebbles flying and casually knocking down a few insects.

As soon as the hatch opened, hot air rushed in, carrying with it a dried, fishy smell.

Jingxing glanced outside and frowned. A layer of black insect clouds pressed down on the horizon on this side.

Before leaving, he looked up at the sun. It hung about a fist's width above the horizon, its edges whitish and swollen; looking at it for too long made his eyes sore.

"After losing day and night, is all that remains just eternal twilight?" Jingxing pondered to himself.

After jumping off the ship, he once again prepared to attack the Swarm: "They're coming again."

Fu Xuan spread his hands. "I cast a divination. This planet is affected by the Ancestor of the Locust Calamity, and time on the outside has almost stopped. Unless we can defeat them, time here will probably stop flowing."

"Can the Swarm even affect time?" Jingxing was surprised.

"After all, they are the offspring of the Aeon. Ignoring their appearance and power, their status is actually quite high," Fu Xuan shook his head. "Besides, I feel that the Swarms here seem more Order than those elsewhere."

As soon as he finished speaking, another wave of Swarm rushed up, and Jingxing immediately noticed that these Swarm were different from the previous ones.

The insects in Priva II are only the length of a palm, with thin shells that can be crushed with a single step; the ones here are much larger, darker in color, and covered with a layer of fine hairs, making them look like a moving layer of black sand when they run.

Even more frightening is that they've learned to avoid them.

He swung his weapon eastward, and the Swarm stopped crashing into it. Instead, they veered westward, bypassing the edge of the energy beam, and turned to press down on the Light Strip behind him.

"Get back!" Noticing this, Fu Xuan didn't hesitate to use his divine eye, mixing his Erudition with the energy of the Hunt to "Constraint" the swarm of insects back under Jingxing's "blade," "as if someone were directing it."

Jingxing looked in the direction they were in and saw something.

A gigantic insect rested on the wreckage behind the Swarm. It was many times larger than the surrounding insects, with a white stripe running from head to tail along its back.

It remained still, its wings still. But in the instant the Swarm turned, it raised its head slightly.

The insects turned in unison.

"It's there," Jingxing said.

Fu Xuan stood beside him, raised both hands to his eyes, and after calculating with his fingers, his expression turned grim. "It's the Emanator..."

Jingxing stared at the large white-striped worm in the distance and gritted his teeth.

"That's it," he said. "I've seen it in the data from the Herta Space Station: among the Propagation Emanator is one called the Starcrusher Swarm King. Its mouthparts can gather death rays that can split celestial bodies, using shattered stars as incubators for its offspring."

He stopped himself after saying that.

He had initially thought that the gray half of the planet had been hollowed out.

"So that half is the hatchery." Fu Xuan finished speaking and looked up at him.

"Then let's not hold back." Jingxing clenched his fist, then released it. "Since we've already encountered it, we'd better take care of it here."

"Okay," she answered quickly.

Just before taking action, Jingxing closed his eyes, and the image of Qlipoth appeared in his mind. Although he had only seen the Aeon of Preservation once, in Jingxing's imagination, Qlipoth was raising a hammer high and striking the void in front of him.

When the fantasy ended, Jingxing opened his eyes and found that he had drawn the image he had just imagined— the Beauty Energy had been sketched into a portrait that anyone could see.

Then, the painting came to life.

"Qlipoth" slammed his hammer down on the Swarm, and this blow, mixed with something else, landed with far greater force than usual.

None of the insects that were hit by the hammer were cut or smashed; instead, they were all pressed to the spot—hanging there in the same position they had just been in when they crashed into it, their wings, antennae, and outstretched legs intact; as another layer fell, another layer was caught. Once the Swarm had finally solidified, amber energy enveloped them and then fell from the sky like rain, as if an amber rain had fallen.

As for the last King Bug, it had already escaped before Jingxing swung his hammer.

"Your path is no longer purely Beauty; there's something else in it," Fu Xuan said softly, gazing at the amber rain before him.

"I know, but I don't know exactly what it is." Jingxing looked at his fingers and shook his head.

"It can't be anything bad, right?" Fu Xuan leaned forward and sniffed lightly. "I don't smell anything offensive."

"Perhaps..." Jingxing looked at the motionless insects hanging there, "Maybe it's because we temporarily took on the identity of the Interastral Peace Corporation, so the Amber Lord gave us some help?"

"There are always people in the world who say that the Interastral Peace Corporation claims to be followers of the Amber Lord, but in fact they are not recognized by the Amber Lord. But now it seems that this is simply nonsense." Fu Xuan sighed.

The Propagation Emanator that had fled returned. It stared at Jingxing, its eyes filled with rage.

"What? Want to do it again?" Jingxing asked with a smile, and then began sketching again.

The large, white-striped insect seemed to understand Jingxing's question and immediately flew away in fright.

Fu Xuan pressed down on his wrist. "Don't chase after them yet, locals are coming from behind."

The reconnaissance team came from the other Light Strip. A dozen or so people, dressed in armor pieced together from insect shells and carrying long hooks, moved cautiously, probing as they went. They first cleared away the insect carcasses blocking their path, but halfway through, someone stopped—the group of dead insects, still in their positions, was too neatly arranged, so neatly arranged that no one dared touch them, fearing a trap. A young man squatted down, reached out and touched one of the insect shells, then stood up and stared at the empty space for a long time.

Then he saw Jingxing.

The leader was a woman. She slammed her long hook on the ground and said something. It was a language he had never heard before, but thanks to the Synesthesia Beacon, it was automatically translated—

"Was that hammer blow landed by you?"

"Yes," Jingxing said.

She glanced at him for a couple of moments, then turned and gestured towards the Light Strip: "Two distinguished guests from outer space, please follow us."

The settlement here was built in a dried-up riverbed. The huts were next to each other, and the walls were made of insect shells with mud between them. A row of pits were dug on the slopes on both sides of the riverbed, and lamps were placed in the pits. The wicks of the lamps were made of oil, and the smell was just as pungent as the ones in Pier Point.

As Jingxing walked in, he noticed that there were words carved into the walls made of insect shells at the back. The words were carved very shallowly, line by line, and they were all names.

He didn't stop, he just glanced at the wall.

On that wall, some names were newly carved, the chisels still white; a woman squatted at the base of the wall, traced one of the names with a piece of gravel, and then knelt down and wept.

A long black boat was moored in the middle of the riverbed.

The bow of the boat was raised high, and the hull was painted, with layers of repairs underneath. But the bottom of the boat was wet—a thin stream of water flowed out from the bottom, down the riverbed to the outskirts of the settlement, where it stood upright in mid-air, forming a thin Water Curtain. On the ground outside the Water Curtain, there was a layer of dead insects.

A platform was set up beside the boat, and a row of people stood on it, dressed in dark robes, singing and weeping.

The tune has only four or five notes, going up and down repeatedly, sounding like someone calling a name from a faraway place.

Tears dripped down their chins, fell into the bottom of the boat, and then flowed out from the trough, forming the outer Water Curtain.

Jingxing stood by the riverbed for a while before he realized: the raw material for this Water Curtain was tears.

"We're not here to rescue anyone," one of the people on the platform said.

The man was very tall, wearing an unpainted wooden mask with only a few shallow cuts around his eyes and mouth. He stepped off the stage without making a sound.

"Interastral Peace Corporation, Market Development Department," Jingxing said. "I am Jingxing, and this is Fu Xuan."

Never heard of it.

"We've just opened," Jingxing said. "Our job is to venture into the cosmos, document the areas still being ravaged by pests, and bring everyone into the company's trading system. We'll unite and help each other across the globe to fight off the Swarm Disaster. And we can stop these pests here."

"How should I address you?" Fu Xuan asked.

"Our names will remain in the world we came from," the tall man said, tilting his head slightly towards the ship. "If you insist on calling us something, then call us Actors."

Jingxing was taken aback. He remembered the notice on the door of the Tavern in Dual-Phase Paradise —besides saying "Aha is not allowed to enter," it also had a similar name written on it.

"Mournful Actors?" he tried to ask.

The tall man glanced at him, neither nodding nor shaking his head. "So you knew."

Jingxing looked in the direction the tall man was—the cabin walls were covered with masks, layer upon layer, all kinds of faces: some with horns, some without mouths, some carved from wood, and some whose material was indistinguishable.

"These symbolize the worlds you've visited?" Fu Xuan asked.

"Yes." The tall man raised his hand and pointed to a piece near the center—dark wood, the saw cut still rough, carved in a hurry. "This one was made by us on Maurihis I, a planet full of forests, which was also Destruction by the Swarm, forcing us to leave."

"If you hadn't come, we'd already prepared a representative mask for this place," the tall man continued.

Fu Xuan clenched his fist inside his sleeve. "Then what are you doing guarding this place? No one can blame you if you just leave, right?"

"Once our tears are gone, the people here won't last three days," he said. "Although the revelation tells us to leave, how can we stand by and watch the indigenous people who are still struggling?"

What is the revelation?

"Someone told us to go find the nest of the Ancestor of the Locust Calamity," the tall man shook his head, "But along the way we saw more of a world ravaged by the Swarm."

Jingxing paused for a moment, as if he had thought of something.

"What is the sound of the one who gave you revelation," he asked.

There was a moment of silence behind the mask. "Mischievous and clever."

"Then that's it." Jingxing said thoughtfully.

The Masked Fools cannot receive divine revelation, but the Mournful Actors can; the Masked Fools have no face left.

Fu Xuan glanced at him, not asking what Jingxing was thinking. She rolled up her sleeves and said to the tall man, "Do you need our help?"

"..."

"We will help you protect the native inhabitants here. You can leave according to divine revelation," Jingxing interjected.

"The two of you?" the tall man asked, somewhat suspiciously.

"There are more than just the two of us," Jingxing said. "Once we stabilize this place, we'll report our location, and company employees will come over."

The tall man stared at him for a long time. He reached out and took off his mask, revealing a very ordinary face with two white streaks under his eyes from being rubbed raw by tears.

"That's settled then," he said. "Thank you both for your hard work."

This star has no day or night, and its inhabitants live by ringing bells: one ring of the bell marks one day. The bells are made from hollowed-out insect shells.

Every day after the bells rang, the Actors went back on stage to continue their lament for the planet.

Jingxing sat on a rock in the riverbed and listened for a while. Suddenly, he wanted to paint this scene.

He rubbed his hands on his knees, forming a pen-holding posture, then regretfully put them down—there was no suitable paper or pen here. As for Imaginary Energy? He needed to save it for dealing with the Swarm.