In the vast darkness of space, a strange fleet of exiles sailed silently onward. They consisted of more than a dozen massive flying vessels traveling in formation, and they appeared to have been traveling for many years. Their shapes were striking: short, thick hulls covered in heavy gray-black armor. Neat, scale-like structures covered the armor, curling upward like countless blunt, triangular spikes. Each vessel was astonishingly large, spanning over a hundred kilometers. Wrapped in that heavy, gloomy armor, they looked from afar like a group of enormous asteroids drifting through space.
No one knew how many years these vessels had been traveling through the universe. Without exception, they appeared ancient and dilapidated. Objects in space did not weather, but these enormous ships had clearly endured countless impacts, extreme heat, corrosion, and plasma clouds. Their uneven armor was riddled with scratches and missing sections of all sizes. On the most badly damaged vessel, a severe wound had even torn away part of the armor layer, exposing a sponge-like support structure beneath. Hao Ren believed it was probably the result of a powerful meteorite impact—possibly something worse. Yet despite their terrible condition, the vessels remained structurally intact. Sparse lights dotted their pitted surfaces, blinking various signals in the darkness. Rather than making the fleet look more alive, those lights only made it seem stranger and more miserable.
But the lights also proved one thing: these ancient vessels were still operating.
The fleet was moving at a very slow speed. Based on the traces discovered earlier, it had probably left hyperspace several decades ago, then decelerated several times before continuing onward at this low speed until today. The reason it had left hyperspace was still unknown, because there was nothing in this sector that could have made it stop. There were no celestial