The Immortals existed—or rather, the Ancient Thousand-Headed Worm King had been born—for one simple purpose.
That was to ensure the alien civilization would continue to survive.
For a civilization to endure, it needed living beings as its foundation. Thus, finding a way to resurrect the aliens who had perished in the apocalypse became the goal it pursued for its entire existence.
The vast cosmos was far larger than the aliens had ever imagined.
Beneath its boundless expanse, before mastering Space-Time Channel technology for traversing the stars, a civilization wishing to travel from one world to another would need centuries, millennia, or even tens of thousands of years—even if, on a cosmic scale, the two worlds were practically next door.
And over such a long journey, it would have to withstand meteorite impacts in the depths of space, oil-film-like substances, surges of dark energy, penetrating ultraviolet rays, particle storms, and countless other disasters hostile to the survival of civilization. Even the flying device, the most intricately constructed object the aliens had ever made, suffered catastrophic malfunctions over the long years. Some of the damage was beyond even the black jar's ability to repair.
Of course.
The "black jar" was merely the name the aliens had originally given the Immortal. It meant "eternal storage vessel."
And so the flying device carrying the Nine Underworlds Crystal and the black jar gradually went out of control.
The aliens' genetic samples had been sealed inside the Nine Underworlds Crystal. Before the apocalypse wiped them out, the alien elite had done everything in their power to devise the "New Era" Plan.
Their observations had shown them that the universe was simply too vast.
Recognizing this was the first step toward becoming an interstellar civilization: they had to understand how insignificant they were, and how boundless the