The Hunter's True Face

Chapter 24: The True Face of the "Hunter"

Boom!

None of the crew had time to process the emotional shock of the captain's sacrifice. Expressionless, they remained at their posts, coordinating the activation of the Psionic Jump Engine.

Intense light engulfed the entire star system, driven by a psionic force so terrifying it could nearly obliterate a small portion of the nearby star domain.

The Sky Burning Divine Weapon, Gonggong, broke free from the encirclement of the seemingly endless swarm.

No one knew how long it took—a hundred years, a few months, an instant, or an entire epoch.

During the jump, all crew members lost all sense of time.

When the Gonggong completed its jump and re-emerged into familiar space, they witnessed an astonishing sight.

They had returned to the Milky Way Galaxy!

Crossing a billion light-years in an instant, breaking through the blockade of that terrifying gravitational source, sending the entire Sky Burning Divine Weapon back to the Milky Way?!

When had the captain's psionic power become so terrifying?

Just as the crew marveled at this, they discovered something even more astonishing: the "captain" stood unharmed in the command room.

At this moment, he—no, It—seemed like a divine radiance scattering across the mortal world, its entire body shimmering with brilliant golden light.

Immortal light poured from Its eye sockets—

And from every pore on Its body!

This scene was extremely abnormal.

The psionic energy on Its body blazed like a super sun, seemingly inextinguishable!

This terrifying psionic power clearly could not have come from the captain himself. The gravitational source that had appeared in the Hou Shen Galaxy was far too fearsome.

The captain was a 93-ring psionicist.

In that situation—

Even if the Psionic Jump Engine had been completely undisturbed, a 93-ring psionicist burning every last shred of their own psionic energy could never have sent an entire Sky Burning Divine Weapon across a billion light-years back to the Milky Way.

Let alone breaking through that gravitational source's blockade!

Unless some unknown miracle had occurred.

Thump!

Suddenly, the golden light dissipated.

The captain's tall frame went limp, the last remnants of biological energy in his body barely supporting him as he fell to one knee.

When he raised his head, his eyes were filled with disbelief. He looked at his own hands, trembling uncontrollably.

Had he really done all that?

It was a miracle!

No, not a miracle—a divine act!

But as he slowly came to his senses, he realized something. Reverence spread across his face, and he murmured softly:

"Great leader of humanity..."

Outside the ship, the starry sky stretched endlessly.

The crisis had temporarily receded.

Dozens of Federation engineering ships rushed over, towing the Gonggong into a nearby giant shipyard for docking.

The Sky Burning Divine Weapon Gonggong had suffered some damage to its outer armor while fending off the swarm's assault, but it was negligible.

The only critical issue was that during the previous jump, its Psionic Jump Engine had suffered irreversible damage and required complete repair.

Inside the Grand Marshal's office.

The faint golden light in Chen Yu's eyes faded. His gaze was heavy as he stared at the star map, which displayed the Hou Shen Galaxy, roughly a billion light-years from the Milky Way.

The Sentry Array Matrix showed that approximately ten nanoseconds ago, the entire Hou Shen Galaxy had been destroyed!

A galaxy spanning about 500,000 light-years in diameter, containing nearly 800 billion star systems, had experienced an eternal nightfall—all its stars had collectively extinguished at the same moment.

Life within the galaxy had entered its final end, and even the vast majority of matter within it had been harvested by some entity.

Beside him, Gray Wind's eyes flickered with a series of blue lights as she received information.

After a moment, Gray Wind spoke solemnly: "According to the crew's response from the Gonggong, they encountered the 'Presolin Zerg' in the Hou Shen Galaxy!"

"Strange. Weren't the last survivors of the Presolin Zerg completely wiped out by the Federation in another universe?"

"Was the anomalous spacetime effect in the Hou Shen Galaxy caused by these bugs?"

"But since when did those bugs have the ability to extinguish an entire galaxy?"

Gray Wind's small face showed a look of deep confusion. In her impression, aside from their sheer numbers, those bugs had nothing that should make the Federation fear them.

How could a swarm like that possibly trigger such a massive anomalous spacetime effect, enveloping an entire galaxy?

The golden light in Chen Yu's eyes faded completely. He gazed at the position of the Hou Shen Galaxy on the star map and said calmly, "It's the 'Hunter.' They have arrived."

"'Hunter'? 'They'?!"

Gray Wind was startled. She looked at the many galactic structures on the star map, all flashing crisis warnings.

Apart from the Hou Shen Galaxy, about a billion light-years away, dozens of similar galactic structures in the vast sea of stars had also experienced the same phenomenon, completely losing their light on the star map.

Clearly, the stars within these galaxies had all begun to go dark at nearly the same moment.

That meant in the brief instant just past, tens of trillions of stars across the universe had been extinguished simultaneously.

For the vast cosmos, this might be nothing more than a trivial matter.

But for any civilization aware of this situation, it was nothing short of the sky falling.

At the same time, it also meant that this once calm universe had begun to grow fraught with calamity.

Gray Wind fell into thought.

The "Hunter" the Marshal spoke of—could it be the same "Hunter" that hunted the Presolin Zerg?

In another universe.

Perhaps due to the Void's blockade, after the Federation wiped out the Zerg in that universe, they never encountered the "Hunter" that the Presolin Zerg claimed was pursuing them.

The Federation's Sentry Array, under the Void's blockade, had only vaguely observed a galaxy nearly 30 million light-years from the Milky Way where all its stars collectively went dark.

The situation back then was almost identical to what was happening now!

In this universe.

If the Hou Shen Galaxy had been destroyed by the "Hunter," then did the dozens of galaxies simultaneously annihilated in the known universe all have "Hunters" appear?

A terrifying entity capable of extinguishing an entire galaxy—what exactly was this "Hunter"? A warship? A civilization? A group of higher-dimensional beings?

Or perhaps a being akin to a Void God, obsessed with destroying galaxies?

Chen Yu's pupils trembled slightly, his mind far from calm.

Because in the instant he brought the Gonggong back to the Milky Way, his will had descended upon the Hou Shen Galaxy. With a brief glimpse through psionic energy, he had seen the true form of the "Hunter"!

Chen Yu recalled that terrifying scene in his mind—

It was a super-lifeform with no specific shape or form.

The reason he used the term "lifeform" to define the "Hunter" was because he had sensed this vague concept from the entity that appeared in the Hou Shen Galaxy.

It was a super-lifeform with a diameter exceeding twenty light-years!

Its entire body radiated an intensely blazing light, brighter than the combined luminosity of an entire galaxy's stars, more terrifying than ten trillion suns.

Yet this terrifying light source was completely undetectable by the Sentry Array, defying all cosmic laws, as if obstructed by some dimensional barrier.

A supermassive amount of dust and gas, enough to form a galaxy's mass, gathered around this lifeform, forming an enormous accretion disk.

This accretion disk, centered on the super-lifeform with its twenty-light-year colossal form, created a massive gravitational source, spanning nearly a million light-years, pulling in all nearby celestial structures!

Chen Yu felt an inexplicable dread. It was the first time he had so directly observed such a terrifying lifeform.

Compared to this super-lifeform, any Federation warship or celestial engineering megastructure seemed as insignificant as dust.

This lifeform had extinguished an entire galaxy in an instant!

No, it wasn't extinguishing a galaxy—it was more like... feeding!

It was devouring the entire galaxy; the extinguishing of the galaxy was merely how it appeared from the outside.

Was this the true face of the "Hunter"?