A thousand years passed in the blink of an eye.
To the vast starry sea, a thousand years was but an instant. Yet for the Shattered Star Sea, now locked in ceaseless warfare, those thousand years had been stained crimson in the memories of countless low- and mid-tier civilizations, earning the name—the "Bloodstained Millennium."
The bloody expansion that lasted more than a thousand years spread madly among the hegemonic civilizations like an uncontrollable plague.
It began with the Shizu Clan and the Abyssal Devil Civilization, followed by the Wizard Civilization, Angel Civilization, Titan Giants... Nearly every old and newly risen hegemon had been swept up in this tide, forced or willing to raise the butcher's blade of conquest.
The star sea's map was violently remade. Countless ancient civilizations that had endured for ages were reduced to cosmic dust beneath the cannon fire of hegemonic fleets, while endless resources were plundered and gathered.
During this Bloodstained Millennium, the Kindling Human Civilization became a dark horse in the wave of expansion, relying on its efficient war machine and the terrifying strategic mobility provided by the Myriad Heavens Market.
Its territory frenziedly expanded from its initial six river-system clusters to an astonishing eighteen. The scale of its fleets multiplied several times over, the number of Kindling captains surged, and the vast resources seized through plunder increased the number of the civilization's core combatants by more than tenfold.
Under such circumstances, the entire civilization's foundation was rapidly accumulating as time passed.
However, the flames of war did not burn only in the Shattered Star Sea. The slaughter on the Chaos Divine Continent had likewise reached a fever pitch. The front lines of the Heavenly Ape Star Realm seesawed back and forth every day, corpses piled into mountains, and even the laws had been shattered