A mere insect, how dare you act so brazenly!

Tianyang saw light.

At first it was silver, then it shifted to orange, then red, followed by blue, black, purple...

Colors of every kind, strange and dazzling, formed rich swathes like an oil painting by an Impressionist master.

Before long, all the colors merged, swirling into a yellow glow tinged with red, like the sky at dusk.

Within that twilight glow, a brilliant river of stars faintly emerged. Formed from billions upon billions of stars, it stretched across his vision.

Tianyang strained his eyes, yet still could not see where that river of stars began or ended.

Behind it, hidden deep within the gauzy twilight radiance, lay a dense shadow.

Its outline was blurred, but he could still make out a human shape. If it was a "person," however, it was far too enormous.

After all, each of those stars was as tiny as a grain of sand before it...

Tianyang could not tell whether he was imagining things, but he kept feeling that the shadow had moved, that it was raising its arm.

Then he knew it was no illusion. The shadow's arm had already reached the river of stars. As it passed through, countless stars vanished into the darkness.

A black gap abruptly appeared in the brilliant river of stars.

That hand reached toward Tianyang, seemingly slow yet impossibly fast. The distance between them spanned untold billions of stellar paths, yet beneath that hand, it dwindled without limit.

As it approached Tianyang, it extended a finger.

That shadowy finger filled Tianyang's entire field of vision. He could no longer see the river of stars or the twilight radiance.

All he saw was the deepest black.

Strangely, Tianyang felt no fear. Instead, he found himself looking forward to its touch.

As that finger, so immense that even a planet could not support it, drew closer, Tianyang finally saw other stars twinkling within the shadow.

That shadow seemed to be another universe unto itself.

A universe was hurtling toward him.

Then, gently, it met the boy.

At the moment of contact, Tianyang felt his head swell. Countless streams of information poured into him like rivers and seas, nearly bursting him apart!

Ethereal whispers reached his ears, like voices from another universe. Tianyang could not understand them at all, yet merely listening to them dealt an incomprehensible shock to his senses.

Just as Tianyang heard those mysterious whispers, the Spreader attacking the Star Marrow Pillar in the tunnel suddenly stopped.

The hideous thing recoiled like a frightened beast, retreating so abruptly that the powerful rush of air stirred by its movement sent a piercing whistle through the tunnel.

A moment earlier, it had sensed a will quietly descending. That will was so vast that even the lightest brush from its outermost fringe made the Spreader want to disintegrate itself.

In human terms, self-disintegration was suicide.

The Spreader would rather kill itself than come into contact with that will. Fortunately, the will's attention was not on it, but on the human boy lying on the ground.

When the Spreader realized this, it finally noticed that Tianyang's hand was gripping one of the Star Marrow Pillar's roots.

At that moment, the silver radiance transmitted by the Star Pillar was surging through Tianyang's blood vessels, his nerves, and every cell in his body.

It soon encountered the black mist.

The Spreader had injected that black mist into Tianyang's body. The substance could contaminate living creatures, transforming them into entirely new, terrifying life-forms entwined with darkness.

Now, however, the black mist and silver radiance met, as incompatible as fire and water. Using the boy's body as their battlefield, they clashed like two armies, tearing each other apart...

The boy's body began convulsing uncontrollably. These two forces were almost opposite in both nature and governing laws, and the shock of every collision ravaged his body.

The fragile body of a mere human could not possibly withstand the clash of these two forces.

Originally, the silver radiance transmitted into him by the Star Pillar would have acted only on instinct, savagely annihilating the opposing black army without regard for whether Tianyang lived or died.

But the consciousness watching Tianyang quietly separated off a signal so faint it was almost imperceptible, merging it into the silver radiance sweeping through the boy's body.

Then, like a skilled commander, it maintained relentless pressure on the black mist while diverting part of the silver radiance into the damaged cells, tissues, organs, and bones.

The silvery glimmer silently liquefied, wrapping the damaged areas in something like a layer of mercury, then forming a biological matrix to repair and strengthen them.

Starting at the roots, Tianyang's black hair gradually turned silver-white.

In the blink of an eye, the boy's entire head of hair had turned pale silver, every strand giving off a hazy glow as faint as mist!

On the battlefield within his body, the black mist gradually lost ground. The silver radiance swept through it with unstoppable force, scattering, dividing, and devouring it.

The black veins on the boy's face gradually subsided. Even his skin became considerably smoother and finer than before.

The silver radiance was on the verge of total victory, but one final clump of mist remained, the densest and darkest of all. Only the size of a fingernail, it suddenly contracted to nanoscopic dimensions just as the silver army was about to engulf it, forming a pictographic symbol resembling a black goat's skull.

It flickered, then vanished.

The symbol was too small, and the will had sent only a peripheral signal into Tianyang's body, so it went unnoticed.

Once the silver radiance had fully occupied Tianyang's body, data began flowing through his brain. These were signals humans could not decipher. Rendered in human language, they conveyed the following information.

...Will data download complete. Beginning integration with the host's deep consciousness.

...Full scan complete. Host damage: 57%. Repairs initiated. Repair progress: 46%.

...Threat signal detected. Threat level: three. Elimination recommended.

...Host functions temporarily unavailable. Puppet system activating.

...Mental integration commencing. 10%, 20%, 30%...

100%!!

Tianyang suddenly raised his head. The boy's only remaining eye snapped open, pinpricks of starlight now scattered through its once-dark-brown iris.

He pushed himself up little by little, swaying unsteadily like a newborn infant.

Yet the Spreader kept retreating.

This member of the Children of Darkness sensed a threat. Though Tianyang still looked human to it, its instincts were screaming a warning: beneath that human shell lurked something else.

Something wondrous, mysterious, and powerful!

The Spreader's beautiful female face let out a shriek. A cluster of tendrils shot from beneath its cloak, their kinetic force rivaling rounds fired from a heavy autocannon!

"A mere insect, how dare you act so brazenly!"

Tianyang murmured, swaying as he raised a hand. Pale silver radiance shone through his protective suit. The energy spilling from his body even lit up his right eye in an instant, making it blaze with dazzling starlight.

His hand swept sideways.

A barrier as thin as paper instantly appeared between the boy and the Spreader.

The vast barrier divided the tunnel in two, its surface patterned with a mesh of diamonds.

The Spreader's tendrils slammed into the barrier. Every one of those armor-piercing tendrils was deflected, then burst apart section by section!

All the tendrils managed to leave behind were tiny sparks of energy thrown up by the impact.

For the first time, this member of the Children of Darkness felt helpless, and utterly powerless...