Lin Yi strode to the main control screen, where images and data analysis from the reconnaissance system were displayed in clear detail.
A vast fleet was hovering silently beyond the defensive perimeter, like a mute interstellar behemoth.
They made no attempt to break through and sent no hostile signals. They simply held formation, as if waiting for something.
Was it an official guiding fleet from the Purple Gold Star Alliance? A major power that had heard the news and come to investigate? Or all of them?
"At last. They're here."
Lin Yi took a deep breath, suppressing the emotions churning inside him.
Seventeen years of peace had come to an end. The real test was only just beginning.
He straightened his robes, and his gaze regained its familiar calm and depth.
"Xuanji, notify all senior officials. Activate the 'Class-A Diplomatic Reception Protocol.'"
"Send a standard friendly identification signal to the unknown fleet and state our identity."
"Also..." Lin Yi paused, feeling the talisman token his master had given him, tucked close against his body. "I'll take the Shanming-class Ship and go meet them."
The following day, at 9 a.m.
It should have been a sunlit morning, but the sky presented an unusual sight.
It wasn't cloudy. A moving mountain range had blotted out part of the sky, casting a vast shadow that crawled slowly across the ground.
More than fifty starships hovered silently in near-Earth orbit, like behemoths escaped from a mythic epic.
They came in all shapes and sizes. Some were angular, like cold fortresses of war; others had sleek lines, like leaping marine creatures. Source Energy glimmered across the hulls of some, and each bore its own insignia.
The Purple Gold Star Alliance's nine encircling stars, the crossed starblades of the Human Race Star Realm Legion, the