4 a.m., Aerospace City.
The plane broke through the clouds and slowly descended. The slight shaking woke Xiang Xiaotong.
Song He had been awake for a long time. Leaning against the headboard, he read papers on his phone—not top journal papers or famous old papers, but speculative papers on alien creatures submitted by the students of the Interstellar Exploration Academy.
Recently, the Interstellar Exploration Academy had been receiving a steady stream of impressive papers. The alien creatures they theorized about were more bizarre or magnificent in appearance than the last, and many of the papers contained incredibly grotesque concept art. The alien creatures challenged every notion of normal appearance. Song He felt conflicted—disgusted, yet unable to stop looking.
Xiang Xiaotong was groggy for several seconds. She turned to look at her focused husband, raised a hand to touch his face, and finally became somewhat conscious.
"Water!" Song He called out.
A flight attendant hurried over and handed Xiang Xiaotong a glass of water. After drinking it, she was fully awake. She stretched, lay on her husband for a while, then moved to the window and looked down.
"Oh!" she said softly. "Is that the Rocket Well?"
Song He put down his phone and leaned over to look out the window as well.
Only a sliver of sunlight had appeared on the horizon, while the land remained shrouded in darkness. In the distance lay Aerospace City's Main City. The roads could be faintly seen, traced by streetlights. Under normal circumstances, most buildings would have their lights off at four in the morning, yet many brightly lit skyscrapers were still visible. The scale of the lights was astonishing—Aerospace City even seemed grander than Magic City!
Nearby, especially directly beneath the plane, was a massive ring of lights!
There were four such rings