At his words, Shelly fell silent for a long time, slowly twisting her fingers together as she wrestled with her thoughts.
Song Chen added, "You don't need to call me master. My name is Song Chen. Just call me by my name from now on."
After a long while, Shelly said quietly, "I'll help you."
Song Chen nodded. "Good. Tell me something you think is valuable."
Shelly didn't speak right away.
Song Chen didn't rush her. He poured two glasses of water and set them in the middle of the table.
The water came from the Shadowglide's purification system and carried the faint, clean sweetness unique to psychic energy filtration.
Shelly glanced at the glass, slowly picked it up, and took a sip. It seemed she hadn't had clean water in a very long time.
"Our star system wasn't originally called the Blood-Eclipse Star System," she finally said.
"It used to be called the Azure Galaxy."
"When I was little, the elders in the organization told me it was a beautiful galaxy. There used to be many civilizations. They interacted with one another, traded, and fought wars, but at least they lived normal lives."
"The Blood-Eclipse Clan suddenly rose to power thirty million years ago. They were originally just a small race living on a remote asteroid in the western part of the galaxy. No one paid them any attention back then."
"But they grew stronger, incredibly fast. In just tens of thousands of years, they covered ground that other races couldn't cover in millions."
"Then they began their conquests, fighting their way out from their homeworld and taking one star sector after another. They fought for ten million years and conquered the entire Azure Galaxy."
"They fought for ten million years?" Song Chen was inwardly shocked.
"Yes, ten million