Festival!

"Gaia?"

I stared at the pale blue figure before me in surprise. She gave me a gentle smile. "We meet again, Your Majesty."

"You can leave the homeworld now?"

Gaia's sudden appearance here caught me completely off guard, though I was more delighted than anything else. For some reason, Gaia had been conceptually anchored within the deep crust of the homeworld. Normally, she could only appear outside as a translucent phantom and could not leave the atmosphere by more than fifteen kilometers. This was not something technology could solve, so her absence from this festival celebration had been a great regret. But now, it seemed Gaia had found a solution?

I reached out, wanting to touch the Shilin Girl I had first met and confirm whether she was real. My fingers passed effortlessly through her cheek. There was no sensation at all. She was only a shadow.

"Unfortunately, Your Majesty," Gaia said with an apologetic smile, "I died in an accident millions of years ago. Now, I am merely the ghost of a planet. Death on a conceptual level cannot be repaired through technology. Retaining even the shadow of a soul is already a miracle."

"What stands before you now is only an image created through the Holographic Projection system in the square. I have also built an enormous virtual environment on the homeworld, and what I see now is exactly the same as what you see. I cannot touch anything, but this still counts as participating in the festival celebration, doesn't it?"

Gaia smiled calmly, clearly already satisfied with this outcome.

I froze for a moment, then could only shake my head helplessly. On that distant homeworld, the lonely girl could only keep herself company with illusory images around her. That made this festival seem far too bleak.

"It