Planet Kielsa Nine.
This was a planet the Blood-Eclipse Civilization had cultivated for countless years.
Song Chen stood high in the clouds.
Kielsa Nine had an extremely thick atmosphere. Seen from space, the entire planet looked wrapped in a mass of translucent orange-red cotton.
Song Chen had chosen this place because, according to the patterns he had worked out earlier, the Flesh Station here was medium-sized.
It was much larger than the smaller stations he had encountered before, and held more juveniles.
Looking down through a gap in the clouds, he could clearly see the enormous dark-red pillar thrusting from the surface straight into space.
That pillar was thicker than any he had destroyed before. Its base vanished entirely beneath the orange-red horizon, with no end in sight.
Its trunk pierced the clouds and extended all the way to the planet's low orbit, where an umbrella-shaped crown slowly spread through the thin upper atmosphere.
Those spreading branches were not dead matter. Every one of them writhed slightly.
Like countless dark-red hoses, they traced exceedingly slow circles in space.
An immense complex of buildings encircled the station's roots.
The buildings had no uniform design. Most were semicircular or shaped like flower buds.
Their dark-red outer walls glistened with moisture, and their heights varied wildly. Some stood only a few stories tall, while others rose like small hills.
Dark-red pipes connected the buildings, crisscrossing between them.
The entire network resembled a web of blood vessels spread across the ground.
The central plaza was vast, its floor a dark carpet of flesh packed firm by years of foot traffic.
Countless members of the Blood-Eclipse Clan moved across it. Some carried things, some gathered in small groups and whispered, and others stood still.
What drew Song Chen's attention most was their auras. Once he