The remaining soldiers of the combined fleet were all stunned. Officers and enlisted men, scientists and half-illiterate high school graduates, even the critically wounded who were about to be sent to gene therapy pods—everyone who had witnessed this scene was now so bewildered they didn't even know what expression to wear.
The star named Tianshu seemed to have regained its youth, scattering light and heat across every planet in the system as though it were a star in the prime of its life.
The first planet to react visibly was the one in the fourth orbit. It had originally been a gloomy, ash-gray world, as if all life on its surface had been buried beneath volcanic ash accumulated over tens of millions of years. But now, white steam suddenly billowed up between its murky atmosphere and darkened cinders. It was a sign that its frozen gases were coming back to life.
The white steam became enormous currents of air, carrying the gray ash higher and higher into the sky.
Then, beneath the hazy gray ash, a hint of deep blue emerged.
Next came the brownish-yellow terrestrial planet in the fifth orbit. The thick ice caps at its poles began to melt as well. As the water vapor merged into its atmosphere, a thunderous roar shook the world, like the bellowing of countless primordial beasts waking from slumber.
Even more astonishing was the blue gas giant that had "nurtured" the Starplanter juvenile. This blue gas giant, three times the size of Jupiter, glittered with countless overlapping curtains of colored light beneath the spreading auroras, like a spectacular display of fireworks in the dark universe.
Yet few could notice that, beneath all that dazzling brilliance, the blue currents seemed to be drifting away, escaping the planet's gravitational pull and dispersing into the