The Hunter's True Form

Boom!

All the crew members were too busy to feel anything about the captain's sacrifice. They remained expressionless at their stations and worked together to activate the Psionic Jump Engine.

Blinding light engulfed the entire galaxy, backed by psionic power so terrifying it could have destroyed nearly half the surrounding galactic region.

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

No one knew how much time had passed—one hundred years, a few months, or a single instant. Or perhaps an entire epoch.

During the jump, the crew could hardly sense the passage of time at all.

When Gonggong completed its jump and reappeared in familiar space, they witnessed something astonishing.

They had actually returned to the Milky Way!

Had they just crossed a billion light-years, broken through the blockade of that terrifying gravitational source, and brought the entire Sky Burning Divine Weapon back to the Milky Way?!

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

As the crew stared in shock, they noticed something even more incredible: the captain stood unharmed in the command room.

At that moment, no—he should have been called he—his body shone as if divine radiance were spilling into the mortal world, glittering with golden light from head to toe.

Immortal light seeped from his eye sockets—

and from every pore of his body!

It was an utterly abnormal sight.

The psionic energy within him blazed like a super-sun, as though it would never go out!

This terrifying psionic energy clearly couldn't have come from the captain himself. The gravitational source that had appeared in the Hou Shen Galaxy was far too powerful.

The captain was a 93-ring psionic.

Under those circumstances,

even if the Psionic Jump Engine had gone undisturbed, a 93-ring psionic could have drained every last bit of energy from his body and still never have sent the entire Sky Burning Divine Weapon a billion light-years back to the Milky Way.

Let alone break through the gravitational source's blockade!

Unless some unknown miracle had occurred.

Thump!

Suddenly, the golden light vanished.

The captain's tall frame slumped. The last bit of biological energy left in his body kept him upright long enough to drop to one knee.

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

Could he really have done all that just now?

It was nothing short of a miracle!

No, not a miracle. It had to be a divine miracle!

But as he slowly gathered his wits, he realized what had happened. Reverence filled his face, and he murmured:

"Great leader of humanity..."

Outside the ship, the starry sky stretched on without end.

The crisis had passed—for now.

Dozens of Federation engineering vessels hurried over and towed Gonggong to a nearby massive dock.

When the Sky Burning Divine Weapon Gonggong had faced the attack of tens of millions of Zerg, its outer armor had suffered some damage, but nothing serious.

The only major issue was that its Psionic Jump Engine had sustained irreversible damage during the jump and needed to be repaired.

Inside the Grand Marshal's office,

the golden flecks in Chen Yu's eyes faded. He stared gravely at the Hou Shen Galaxy on the star map, roughly a billion light-years from the Milky Way.

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

A galaxy fifty thousand light-years across, containing nearly eight hundred billion Star Systems, had plunged into eternal night. Every star had gone dark at the exact same moment.

Life within the galaxy had met its end, and some entity had harvested nearly all the matter there, too.

Beside him, Gray Wind's eyes flickered with streams of blue light as she received information.

Before long, Gray Wind said solemnly:

"According to the crew of Gonggong, they encountered the Presolin Zerg in the Hou Shen Galaxy!"

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

"Was the Anomalous Spacetime Effect that appeared in the Hou Shen Galaxy caused by those Zerg?"

"But when did those bugs become capable of extinguishing an entire galaxy?"

Gray Wind's small face showed her confusion. As far as she knew, aside from their numbers, the Zerg had little that the Federation needed to fear.

How could a swarm like that have caused such a massive Anomalous Spacetime Effect, enveloping an entire galaxy?

The golden light in Chen Yu's eyes faded completely. He gazed at the area on the star map where the Hou Shen Galaxy lay and spoke calmly:

"It was the Hunter. They have arrived."

"The Hunter? They?!"

Gray Wind stared in surprise at the countless galactic structures across the universe, where danger warnings were flashing on the star map.

Besides the Hou Shen Galaxy, a billion light-years away, dozens of other galactic structures scattered across the vast sea of stars had suffered the same fate. Their lights had vanished from the star map.

Clearly, the stars in those galaxies had all begun to go dark one after another at nearly the same moment.

That meant that in the brief instant just past, tens of trillions of stars across the universe had gone out at once.

To the vast universe, this might have been no more than an insignificant event.

But to the civilizations aware of it, it was as if the sky had fallen.

It also meant that this once-peaceful universe was beginning to grow increasingly troubled.

Gray Wind fell into thought.

Was the "Hunter" the Marshal had mentioned the one hunting the Presolin Zerg?

In another universe,

perhaps because the Void Realm had sealed it off, after the Federation wiped out the Zerg there, it never encountered the "Hunter" that the Presolin Zerg had claimed was pursuing them.

The Federation's Sentry Array, too, had only managed to observe vaguely, through the Void Realm's blockade, that the stars in a galaxy nearly thirty million light-years from the Milky Way had all gone dark.

What had happened then was almost exactly like what was happening now!

In this universe,

if the Hou Shen Galaxy had been destroyed by the Hunter, then had a Hunter appeared in each of the dozens of galaxies destroyed at the same time throughout the Known Universe?

What exactly was this Hunter, a terrifying entity capable of extinguishing an entire galaxy?

A warship? A civilization? A group of higher-dimensional life-forms?

Or perhaps a being like a Void God, devoted to destroying galaxies?

Chen Yu's pupils trembled slightly. His thoughts were in turmoil.

Because, in the instant he brought Gonggong back to the Milky Way, his will had descended upon the Hou Shen Galaxy. Using psionic power, he had caught a fleeting glimpse—and seen the Hunter's true form!

Chen Yu recalled the terrifying scene in his mind—

It was a super-organism without any definite shape.

He called the Hunter a "life-form" because he had sensed a vague impression of life from the entity that had appeared in the Hou Shen Galaxy.

It was a super-organism more than twenty light-years in diameter!

Blazing light radiated from every part of it, brighter than all the stars in an entire galaxy combined—more terrifying than ten trillion suns.

And yet, according to the Sentry Array's observations, this terrifying source of light didn't exist at all. It completely defied the laws of the universe, as if blocked by some kind of dimensional barrier.

An immense mass of dust and gas, enough to form an entire galaxy, gathered around this life-form and formed a vast accretion disk.

Centered on the super-organism, whose majestic form stretched twenty light-years across, the accretion disk became an enormous gravitational source. It enveloped an area nearly a million light-years wide, drawing in every nearby celestial structure!

Chen Yu felt a nameless dread. He had never before observed such a terrifying life-form so directly.

Compared to this super-organism, every Federation warship and every celestial megastructure seemed as insignificant as dust.

This was the life-form that had extinguished an entire galaxy in an instant!

No, it wasn't extinguishing the galaxy. It seemed more like it was... feeding!

It was devouring the entire galaxy. The apparent extinguishing of the galaxy was merely how it looked from beyond the galaxy.

Was this the Hunter's true form?