Pushing Them Into the Fire Pit

"Commander Han Feng..." Lin Tianxiao's voice lowered, filled with complicated emotions. "He looked even more stern than usual, like an emotionless iceberg. But deep in his eyes, I caught a trace of exhaustion and... reluctance, almost perfectly concealed. He didn't waste any words. He directly opened the holographic projection in the center of the conference room."

Lin Tianxiao's gaze turned vacant, as if he were seeing that heart-stopping scene from years ago all over again.

"The projection showed neither Blue Star nor the Solar System, nor even any star chart we knew. It was a vast and bizarre map of stellar energy flows, made up of countless shattered points of light, twisted lines, and swirling darkness. Commander Han Feng pointed to several dark-red spots that were flickering violently and converging on a central point. In a cold, matter-of-fact tone, he told me these were abnormal spatial ripples and energy emissions detected over the past seventy-two hours by the 'Watchers' series of deep-space probes, at the edge of the Solar System's third spiral arm. After the highest-level analysis and comparison with the scattered records preserved in ancient ruins... we'd essentially confirmed that this was a sign that some kind of large-scale, cross-dimensional 'beacon' belonging to the Outer Realm Sky Demons had been activated."

"Outer Realm Sky Demons..." Though he'd been mentally prepared, hearing his father confirm that this race had extended its tendrils to the edge of the Solar System ten years ago made Lin Hao's heart sink.

"It wasn't just a sign." Lin Tianxiao's fist clenched unconsciously, his knuckles cracking softly. "Commander Han Feng brought up another image fragment, so blurry it was almost impossible to make out. It was the last image a probe had forcibly captured and transmitted just before self-destructing. Though it lasted only 0.3 seconds and