The hibernation pod's lid slid open without a sound, and Hao Ren abruptly sat up inside. "What's the situation now?"
The Data Terminal had transferred the hibernation pod from the basement at home to the bridge of the Giant Turtle Rock Platform. Now, as soon as Hao Ren opened his eyes, he saw the familiar sight of the spaceship's control room. A large holographic projection floated above the console ahead, with a planet slowly falling into the sun at its center. Beside him, Lily reached out and pulled him from the pod. "You can see for yourself. Anyway, I've never seen anything this spectacular in my life..."
Hao Ren came to the console, adjusting the viewing angle of the external monitors as he asked, "Where are we now?"
"Above Zom, fifty thousand kilometers from the surface, on the tangent between the sunlight and the planet. From here, we can clearly see the planet being ignited by sunlight," the Data Terminal immediately replied. "Judging from its current orbit, the planet was gradually captured by the star two thousand years ago, after which it underwent a full twenty centuries of slowly decaying orbit. Everything on the planet's surface has now been burned away. The dayside temperature has reached several thousand degrees, and the crust has melted and split across a vast area... The sun's gravity is tearing it apart. Before it is burned to ashes, it will probably be ripped into fragments first."
Hao Ren said nothing, merely watching the scene outside the ship with his brows tightly furrowed.
A young star with roughly three times the mass of the sun was illuminating this region of space. Because they were so close, its magnificent corona, a brilliant sea of fire, occupied nearly a third of the external monitors' field of view. At