Fifty years passed in the blink of an eye.
Purgatory Sulfur Plane, side hall of the main control room.
The dark crimson glow of lava filtered through the dome crystals, casting a layer of slowly flowing light and shadow across the reception room floor.
Benjamin reclined against a long bench, with dozens of pale-blue light screens floating above the Magic Network Terminal at his side. Countless streams of data slid silently across them. Opposite him sat Lu Li, the former planetary governor of the Tentacle Tree Civilization.
When he had surrendered fifty years ago, this old tree man's crown had already begun to wither.
By the Tentacle Tree Civilization's average natural lifespan of one hundred and twenty years, he should have become a piece of rotten old wood thirty years ago. Yet now, although the cracks in his bark remained deep and ancient, the ends of his tentacles had regained a healthy emerald sheen, and even the light in his crystal eyes had stabilized considerably.
The reason was simple: he had taken the Wizard Civilization's cheapest basic life-extending potion.
That low-grade Alchemy solution, which could even be handed out in bulk as a holiday gift in the Star Ring Federation, was enough to be called a "miracle" for a lifeform from a Level 6 technological civilization.
"The final batch of my people has completed the migration."
Lu Li spoke quietly, his tentacles neatly folded before his knees as he continued to maintain the standard gesture of submission he had learned over fifty years.
"This batch totaled three hundred and twenty million people. All have been settled in the Seventh Resettlement Zone of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane. The basic faith-adaptability screening has been completed, and they have now been incorporated into the secondary faith network of the Incense Divinity Path system."