Those alien tin cans loved to swagger around and stick their noses into everyone's business, but they were shrewder than anyone.
The moment they ran into someone they genuinely couldn't handle, they vanished faster than anyone.
Take Galactus, who ate planets for breakfast. He had destroyed countless star systems, yet the Celestials hadn't dared make a peep.
They were bullies who backed down the moment someone fought back.
But today was different.
Ren had forcibly reversed the passage of time across the entire known Universe. A disturbance that massive had finally drawn out those cosmic busybodies.
No one could count all the Celestials, but roughly a hundred were active in the current Universe.
One of them, known as Judge, was responsible for passing judgment on planets.
If he decided a species deserved to die, he would summon others to carry out an extinction order. He was the Celestials' chief arbiter.
Deep in the Sea of Stars.
Judge floated in the vacuum, absorbing energy.
Suddenly, a strange ripple of time swept across him.
As one of the oldest living beings, he immediately sensed that something was wrong.
Someone was forcibly rewriting history!
"Without my approval, someone dares turn back the river of time? Unforgivable!"
"Has another lesser civilization created a forbidden weapon?"
"This cannot be allowed to continue!"
Judge sent out a cold, merciless telepathic signal and searched the entire Universe. In an instant, he found the source.
"Earth?"
Surprise flashed through Judge's enormous electronic eye.
He had lived a very long time, and his memory was excellent.
A million years ago, Earth had barely had any intelligent species to speak of. Only because the Celestials had wandered over and meddled had humanity's ancestors gained intelligence.
After a mere million years, those upright apes had already built an artifact that could