A brilliant star appeared in one corner of the view. Its sunlight had been weakened and filtered to keep it from hurting the eyes of everyone on the bridge. Hao Ren had the Data Terminal adjust the external monitor's lens, revealing the area around the star.
The so-called "Erem planet" had long since ceased to exist. Thousands of years ago, the planet had been gradually dismantled into fragments. Now it was a vast expanse of floating islands orbiting along the original planetary path, like a string of scattered, similarly sized conical rocks drifting in formation through space. To extract the last of the resources beneath the planet's surface and replenish its increasingly depleted energy cycle as much as possible, those Erem Elves had resolutely dismantled their entire planet, transforming it into a fragmented state that could absorb the maximum amount of solar energy while accommodating more people. Only after the rock layers deep within the mantle had all been dismantled and reshaped into these floating islands did they gain precious living space—and something even more precious: a testing ground.
The floating islands bore obvious signs of artificial construction. Their main bodies were rock from the planet itself, but enormous artificial "hoops" could be seen around their edges. These somewhat dim structures, made of a material somewhere between rock and metal, not only maintained the islands' structural stability but also generated energy barriers to protect the land below. The barriers themselves could be used to filter sunlight. One side of each floating island was flat, while the other was a huge, ugly rocky foundation. Ancient and enormous mechanical structures could be seen among the uneven inverted mountain ranges. They were the floating islands' power systems, gravity generators, energy stations, and material recycling plants. Those machines were probably thousands of years old,