No sleeping here!

Lian Feng's lips trembled, but under someone else's roof, she had no choice but to bow her head.

She bit her lower lip, her eyes fixed on Du Kao's face, which was contorted in pain, her nails digging into her palms.

After a dozen seconds or so, Tara released his grip.

Like a deflated balloon, Du Kao's knees buckled, and he dropped to the floor with a thud.

His usually dignified, composed face was now as pale as paper, the muscles at the corners of his eyes still twitching uncontrollably.

Tara turned around, a glint of satisfaction flashing through his golden, slit-pupiled eyes.

"My king, I have obtained the access key."

"Then get started."

Tara nodded and walked over to the main console in a few strides, his dark red fingertips darting across the illuminated keys.

Dense lines of code appeared on the screen as one authorization window after another was rapidly cracked.

Finally, a huge red dialog box popped up.

Warning! You are transferring the knowledge base to an unknown Celestial Computer. This operation involves core classified data from the Deno Three system. Please confirm whether you are performing this operation.

Tara paused, then entered the access key he had extracted from Du Kao's mind.

The dialog box flickered, and the word "Confirmed" lit up in green.

Immediately afterward, a cascading torrent of data covered the entire main screen.

A knowledge base transfer progress bar appeared in the upper-right corner, its numbers climbing rapidly.

3%...17%...35%...

At the sight, Lian Feng snapped her head toward Qin Feng, fear and anger mingling in her eyes, her voice trembling with restraint. "Sir, are you a bandit?"

"Our Deno Civilization painstakingly researched all this knowledge and technology! It represents the life's work of countless generations of researchers!"

Qin Feng turned back and spread his hands with an innocent expression.

"How can you call a scholar's business robbery?"

"Besides, wasn't all this stuff given to you by the Super God Academy?"

"You don't seem to have any use for it anyway. What a waste. Why not help me fill out my Celestial Computer? Isn't it better to put things to good use?"

Lian Feng's lips trembled with anger for a long while, but she could not squeeze out a single word.

The progress bar advanced rapidly.

51%...78%...89%...

A sliver of Qin Feng's consciousness sank into the dark plane, where he saw the changes taking place inside the Great Clock.

On the surface of that enormous spherical celestial body, countless luminous particles were brightening at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The previously empty knowledge base area was now being filled with vast amounts of data.

Thousands of years of a civilization's accumulated knowledge were taking root in his Great Clock.

The progress bar jumped to 100%.

A crisp notification tone announced the transfer's completion.

Qin Feng let out a long breath, and his smile finally took on a measure of genuine pleasure.

He turned around, his gaze sweeping over the pale-faced operators in the Command Center before finally settling on Lian Feng's shocked, furious face.

"Thank you for your hospitality."

He raised a hand and lightly pinched his fingertips together.

An invisible ripple spread outward from him.

The ripple swept precisely over every person, erasing all their memories of the past sixty minutes.

Lian Feng's eyes lost focus for a moment, then focused again.

Qin Feng and his companions had vanished, as though everything that had just happened had been a dream.

She blinked twice, looking at Du Kao kneeling on the metal floor, clear confusion appearing on her face.

"General, no sleeping here!"

She crouched down to help him up. "Get up. The floor's cold."

Lian Feng tugged, trying to pull him to his feet.

But Du Kao's body was as heavy as if it had been filled with lead, and he did not budge.

"General?"

Lian Feng called again, her voice rising slightly at the end with a trace of confusion.

She lowered her head, her gaze falling on Du Kao's face, then froze as though she had been electrocuted.

Du Kao's head was tilted back, his jaw hanging slack, his lips slightly parted, a glistening thread of drool running from the corner of his mouth.

His eyes were unfocused and empty, his pupils dilated to twice their size, his eyeballs wandering from side to side without focus, like a shell that had lost its soul.

"Abba... abba..."

Indistinct, breathy sounds squeezed from his throat, as unconscious as an infant's.

In that instant, all the color drained from Lian Feng's face.

"General, what's happened to you?"

She abruptly crouched down, cupping Du Kao's cheeks in both hands and trying to make his unfocused eyes look at her.

But Du Kao merely tilted his head, the drool at his mouth stretching longer, and actually broke into a vacant, witless smile.

"Abba, abba..."

At the sight, Lian Feng whipped her head around and shouted hoarsely at the operators still standing stunned behind her, "Go get someone from the Super God Academy! Something's happened to the general!"

In an instant, the entire command room descended into chaos.

The next day, the sky over Tianhe City was cloudless.

A streak of golden light shot out from the top floor of the Angel International Building, sweeping across the city's skyline at tremendous speed.

The streak left a barely perceptible trail of disturbed air high in the sky. The pedestrians below noticed nothing; only a few birds scattered in alarm.

Angel Yan flew with her wings spread, her white feathers glowing with a pale golden halo in the sunlight.

She had a mission on this trip.

Queen Kaisa had personally given the order-observe the Galaxy Power.

A newly awakened Super Soldier, still in the earliest stage of growth.

"Let your big sister see where you are."

The Eye of Insight activated instantly, vast streams of data unfolding before her eyes.

With practiced ease, she pulled up the Galaxy Power's genetic signal.

Just as she was about to mark its location, her movements suddenly stopped.

"Hmm?"

Yan's slender brows drew together slightly.

Within the dark plane's information layer, besides Ge Xiaolun's bright golden signal, there was another, almost identical waveform.

"What's going on?"

Yan hovered high in the sky, her white wings slowly beating behind her.

She sank into the dark plane again, comparing the two signals side by side and checking them three times.

There was no mistake.

Two Galaxy Powers.

The lazy, casual look in her eyes vanished completely, replaced by the sharpness of a hunter spotting prey.

"Interesting~"

The corners of Yan's mouth slowly rose, the rolling sea of clouds below reflected in her golden eyes.

She pulled up the detailed data for both signals and displayed them side by side.

Ge Xiaolun's waveform had a complete growth trajectory from birth, every step recorded in the dark plane.

But the other one?

Her fingers flipped through several pages of the dark plane's data layer, and she unexpectedly discovered that the signal had no starting point at all, as though it had emerged from the void out of nowhere.

There was nothing.

"A Galaxy Power that appeared out of thin air?"

Yan murmured softly, the keen interest in her tone growing stronger.

She glanced once more in the direction of Ge Xiaolun's signal.

Over in Juxia City, the Galaxy Power named Ge Xiaolun was still at the police station giving a statement.

He had been beaten black and blue the night before, then called in first thing that morning to assist with the investigation.

Yan had no interest whatsoever in such petty nonsense.

By comparison, this Galaxy Power who had appeared out of nowhere was far more interesting.

Yan raised her head and looked west, the curve of her lips deepening.

"Queen Kaisa told me to observe the Galaxy Power. She never specified which one."

She said this softly, as though talking to herself, then turned, her white wings tracing a smooth arc through the air as she accelerated toward the location she had locked onto through the signal.