It had to be admitted: the sudden voice did sound quite pleasant. It was clear and gentle as rippling water, and every word seemed to have a mysterious rhythm, like a tune that had been precisely calculated. It hit all the right notes for straight men and shut-ins.
To be fair, many people thought that the so-called "cutesy" voice was what appealed most to straight men and shut-ins, but that was a huge misconception. As long as a voice sounded good, they liked it.
But this was a dim, quiet room, lit only by the yellow glow of the lights and the flickering data on a long row of terminal screens. Beyond the forward viewport lay the boundless, fathomless depths of space, where hardly a glimmer of starlight could be seen. Hanging in the distance was a ring of light, the only source of illumination in that deep darkness. Yet its colors kept shifting between pale white and scarlet, and now and then a dark flare seemed to flicker across it. It had none of the holiness or grandeur one would expect of a young, vigorous star. Even one glance at it felt like bad luck.
Of course, this star wasn't young and vigorous. It looked old and on the verge of death. But though it was already collapsing and fading out, its size was nearly the same as the sun's. That really did make it seem like something supernatural was going on.
Yes, Aisen and Xiaobai had been exploring this star system aboard the Jiuzhang for nearly half a year. The strongest impression they'd gotten was that it was steeped in an eerie atmosphere. They truly had the sense that everything was wrong: that strange star, the enormous blue gas giant, the five frozen planets, and the two molten