Star Gate

Star Gate. At one in the morning.

Ji Xinghuo opened his eyes in bed. He had gone to sleep early at ten that evening. Though he had only slept for three hours, he still felt fully refreshed.

He did not turn on the lights. In the darkness, he ate a late-night meal and filled his stomach.

Then he changed into a set of casual training clothes, slung his bow case over his back, and silently left the apartment. Rather than taking the elevator, he went down the stairs to the parking garage.

Along the way, Ji Xinghuo avoided the surveillance cameras as much as possible.

Over the past few days, through Magnetic Field Induction, he had gained a clear grasp of the locations of the several swordsmen the Sharp Sword Bureau had stationed inside and outside the building, and had also figured out their shift schedules.

These swordsmen were not there to monitor him. Their purpose was to protect him and wait for the extremely unlikely appearance of a suspicious person.

This kind of stakeout work was exceedingly boring.

Even though the Sharp Sword Bureau's swordsmen possessed exceptional discipline and focus, after three or four consecutive days of high-intensity surveillance, they inevitably became lax.

The longer it went on, the less focused the swordsmen became.

Especially in the early hours of the morning.

Ji Xinghuo got into a Maglev Car in the parking garage. Its owner also lived in the building, and Ji Xinghuo knew him. Ji Xinghuo had borrowed it for a day at a price far above the market rate. The owner had parked it here the previous night as Ji Xinghuo requested and given him the unlock code.

After entering the destination into the navigation system, the Maglev Car soon drove out of the garage.

Ji Xinghuo sat in the back seat. The opaque windows concealed him from view, but his Magnetic Field Induction locked onto a room on the third floor.

There were two swordsmen inside, responsible for monitoring the vehicles entering and leaving the building.

The car left without incident, and neither of them reacted.

A faint smile appeared on Ji Xinghuo's face. Looking out the window, he saw that the Maglev Car had already entered the Superconducting Highway and was speeding south.

A short while later.

Ji Xinghuo arrived at Chang'an West Station. After getting out, he had the Maglev Car return automatically.

The Asia-Pacific Community had extremely well-developed infrastructure, and all kinds of transportation were convenient. Citizens generally had three options for travel. For commuting within a city and intercity travel of less than a thousand kilometers, taking a Maglev Car on the Superconducting Highway was sufficient.

For journeys over a thousand kilometers, they could take the Vacuum Tube Maglev Train, which people were accustomed to calling the Vacuum Train.

For international travel or distances exceeding five thousand kilometers, hypersonic aircraft were the fastest option.

Chang'an West Station was a vacuum station.

Starting in the 1980s, the Asia-Pacific Community had poured countless funds and resources into constructing a vacuum tube transportation network with a total domestic length of over one million kilometers.

Supporting vacuum stations were spread throughout the Asian Commonwealth, stretching east to Hokkaido, west to the Caspian Sea, north to the Arctic Ocean, and south to Java Island on the equator. Every city with a population above five hundred thousand had at least one vacuum station, while larger cities had even more.

Ji Xinghuo entered Chang'an West Station and bought his ticket on his phone.

Destination: Chaka Star Gate!

A few minutes later, he boarded the train without issue.

Even in the middle of the night, the carriage was more than half full. Most of the passengers had the same destination as Ji Xinghuo.

The seat beside Ji Xinghuo was empty. He quietly looked out the window.

The train had not yet departed, so he could see the situation inside the station. He scanned every passenger entering through the ticket gates, trying to spot any swordsmen who might be hiding among them.

However, there were none.

At last, the carriage doors closed, and an announcement sounded.

Ji Xinghuo let out a breath of relief. Then he felt the seat beneath him tremble lightly. The train had begun moving.

The scenery outside the window rapidly receded as the train accelerated. In an instant, it entered the enclosed underground vacuum tube, and the windows switched into screens, making it impossible to see outside.

The screen displayed the train's current speed.

The numbers jumped rapidly, climbing without pause. In the blink of an eye, they went from two digits to three, then soon broke into four digits!

In the end, the speed stabilized at around eighteen hundred kilometers per hour!

Although the displayed number still occasionally fluctuated, the variation was minimal, never exceeding thirty kilometers per hour.

The entire acceleration process was quiet and smooth. The passengers could feel the force created by the acceleration, but it did not interfere with their movements.

Ji Xinghuo was no stranger to Vacuum Trains. He had ridden them many times.

But this time brought an entirely new experience.

Within his Magnetic Field Induction, the rail system beneath the train was an enormous magnetic field. Its magnetic induction intensity was second only to the Earth Magnetic Field, the two differing by roughly tenfold. Even so, the strength of the maglev system was five orders of magnitude greater than that of a human magnetic field!

In the magnetic field projected into his mind, the maglev rail system shone as brilliantly as the sun, even giving him a dazzling sensation.

If Aberrants could wield such power...

Ji Xinghuo could not help indulging in the thought.

More than twenty minutes later, an announcement rang through the carriage. "Chaka Star Gate Station has arrived."

Ji Xinghuo perked up. Once the train came to a steady stop, he stood and walked out of the station, where he saw a brightly lit metropolis.

Chaka City! It lay in the Chaka Basin, more than eight hundred kilometers west of Chang'an. Two centuries ago, it had been a barren Gobi wasteland with only a somewhat famous salt lake scenic area.

To the north of Chaka City was Qinghai Lake, while the northern branch of the Kunlun Mountain Range lay to the south.

In 2033, one of the thirteen Star Gates that had suddenly opened on Earth appeared in a wilderness area in the Chaka Basin known to locals as Wolf Cave Pit. Over the following century or so, this region went through countless wars and was eventually turned into a wasteland by nuclear explosions.

It was not until 2147 that Chaka Star Gate came fully under the Asia-Pacific Community's control.

The Asia-Pacific Community invested manpower, material resources, and funds to eliminate the nuclear contamination. It built massive fortifications around the Star Gate, stationed an army group there permanently, and deployed an array of Nuclear Weapons.

From then on, Chaka Star Gate became one of the Asia-Pacific Community's stable passages into the Star Realm.

The Asia-Pacific Community possessed three Star Gates in total. The other two were Xianglian Star Gate, located in the heartland, and Jukang Star Gate in Sumatra.

Chaka Star Gate was the closest to Chang'an.

That was why Ji Xinghuo had chosen to enter the Star Realm from here.

He got into a car and sped through the city, heading straight for the Star Gate.

The entirety of Chaka City had been built around the Star Gate. Its urban area was roughly trapezoidal, covering more than three thousand square kilometers. Its permanent population exceeded ten million. Though the population density was not high, nearly every aspect of the residents' lives and work revolved around the Star Gate.

The Star Gate stood at the very center of the city. From the car, Ji Xinghuo saw a colossal structure rising beneath the night sky from afar.

As he drew closer, the structure grew larger and larger before his eyes.

When he got out and stood before it, it was as though he were standing beneath an enormous City Wall. It was over three hundred meters tall, with sides around five hundred meters long. Square and blocky, it looked like a box enlarged countless times and set over the earth. Grayish white in color and built from composite cement and alloy, it was majestic and imposing enough to inspire fear at a glance.

"Star Gate Fortress!"

Ji Xinghuo had seen it in videos before, but only seeing it in person allowed him to feel the fortress's solidity and grandeur.

Just as its name suggested, Star Gate Fortress was a genuine war fortress.

It could withstand attacks by Nuclear Weapons, and it also housed an arsenal of extremely high-yield Nuclear Weapons. They were intended both for enemies on Earth and for terrifying enemies emerging from the Star Realm.

Everything within five kilometers of Star Gate Fortress had been cleared, leaving an unobstructed field of view.

Even at night, Ji Xinghuo could see the thousands of gun turrets constructed across the open ground. More powerful firepower was hidden within military camps scattered in every direction.

Star Gate Fortress had many entrances and exits.

These entrances varied in size. The largest were dozens of meters high, like city gates, but normally remained shut. Not all of the smaller entrances were open either, and security was strict. Only three were open now.

After passing identity verification and security screening, Ji Xinghuo entered the fortress.

The fortress interior was not completely open. Instead, it was divided into many layers, like nesting dolls, each layer embedded within another. Every wall was more than fifteen meters thick. The spaces between them formed indoor pedestrian streets wide enough for seven or eight tanks and armored vehicles to travel side by side.

Shops lined both sides of the street, while crowds of pedestrians flowed past. Everywhere he looked, there were Aberrants! Ji Xinghuo had never seen so many Aberrants in reality. In his Magnetic Field Induction, human-shaped magnetic fields moved about, every one of them far stronger than ordinary people.

He stood by the street and watched for a moment.

It was truly eye-opening.

"Super Giant General!"

A giant over two meters tall wore heavy armor weighing several hundred kilograms and carried a massive battle-axe on his back. Each step he took seemed as if it would make the ground tremble.

Beside the Giant General walked a woman with a blurred figure. She seemed shrouded in mosaic pixels, making her features impossible to discern.

"At least a high-rank Phantom Sound Master."

Ji Xinghuo sighed, then turned and saw another tall warhorse.

A man rode atop the crimson warhorse, which had a horn on its head and scales covering its belly. A blue-green hawk stood on his shoulder, while two fierce beasts of different forms followed alongside the horse, one on each side, guarding the rider. It was an imposing sight, as though he were the keeper of a zoo.

"Master Controller!"

Ji Xinghuo watched the man depart with a touch of envy.

If there was a Class Template that was powerful and impressive, with a reasonably accessible threshold, versatile abilities, and great convenience, it was the Master Controller.

Master Controllers could communicate with creatures of the Star Realm and tame them into battle pets to fight for them.

Master Controllers were highly sought after, accounting for ten percent of all professions.

Generally, the more people there were in a profession, the greater the influence of its association.

The Asia-Pacific Community's two largest professional associations were the Martial Artist Association and the Master Controller Association.

Every year, the Master Controller Association held the Battle Pet Competition. Its audience was no less numerous than that of the Super League, and at times it was even more popular.

Countless games, films, and books had arisen around Master Controllers. Over the years, this had formed a Master Controller culture that swept the world. Related industries such as battle pet breeding, boarding, grooming, animal training programs, veterinary medicine, ranches, pet food, pet beauty contests, and more made up a massive market worth tens of trillions.

Ji Xinghuo had once considered becoming a Master Controller, but he did not particularly enjoy keeping pets, so he had no choice but to give up on the idea.

As he went deeper into the fortress, he observed his surroundings.

Aberrant after Aberrant passed by him.

Some were travel-worn, bearing traces of battle. They had just returned from the Star Realm and were carrying their spoils into shops along the street to sell.

Others looked freshly equipped, traveling in groups of three or five as they prepared to enter the Star Realm together.

Along the way.

Ji Xinghuo saw more than ninety percent of the over forty known professions on Earth. The ones he did not see were all the rarest Class Templates.

He even saw a Super Masses! More accurately, not one, but a group.

Four men with identical faces walked down the street. Though they wore different clothes, carried different weapons, disguised their faces, had different hairstyles, and kept their distance from one another, their magnetic field signatures were completely identical in Ji Xinghuo's Magnetic Field Induction.

These four people were actually the same person!

Ji Xinghuo could not suppress his curiosity and turned to glance at one of them.

Super Masses was one of the rarest professions on Earth.

At present, only sixty-six Super Masses were known worldwide, fewer even than Magnetic Field Maniacs. Only Astral Travelers and Chosen Prophets were rarer.

The core ability of Super Masses, Clone Gemini, could create a duplicate completely identical to the original body, but it took away half of the user's Stellar Force.

Each time Clone Gemini leveled up, both the original body and the clone could each create another clone.

Likewise, each new clone took away half of the Stellar Force.

The clones possessed all of the original body's abilities and shared synchronized thoughts. Whether in one-on-one combat or a group fight, they possessed tremendous advantages.

This Super Masses had four bodies including the original, which meant his Clone Gemini was Level Two.

Ji Xinghuo shifted his gaze away before the other person noticed.

"Super Super Masses!"

His Magnetic Field Induction identified the other's Rank. However, since his Stellar Force was divided into four portions, each of the Super Masses' clones was weaker than a Super Esper of the same Rank.

The greatest advantage of Super Masses was still group fights.

Thus, other Aberrants had given Super Masses a rather amusing nickname—the hooligan gang! Ji Xinghuo silently remembered this Super Masses' appearance and continued onward. After passing through seven layers of walls, he finally reached the deepest part of the fortress.

The view suddenly opened up, revealing a broad and brightly lit space.

"Star Gate!"

Ji Xinghuo immediately looked toward the gate in the fortress hall. In truth, it did not resemble what people imagined a gate to look like.

The Star Gate was a sphere!

It was around thirty meters in diameter, a perfect sphere without the slightest error. Its surface was smooth and seamless. It appeared black to the human eye, but it actually had no color. It simply reflected no light at all, like a black hole without suction.

Multiple circular platforms had been built around this gigantic black sphere.

People entered and exited on every level of the circular platforms. They walked along passageways onto the platforms, approached the Star Gate, and vanished the instant their hands touched its surface.

At the same time, people emerged from the Star Gate, appearing as if from nowhere on the platform on the other side.

Whether entering or leaving, there was no process.

It happened instantly.

Ji Xinghuo watched curiously for half a minute as Aberrants came and went, while everyone around them had long since grown accustomed to it. He did not line up to enter the Star Gate. Before that, there was still something he needed to do.