Endless stellar ion energy poured along the channel into the Palm Universe, forming a crimson ion energy column ten kilometers in diameter within the cold, pitch-black starry sky inside the Palm Universe, illuminating a vast stretch of the void.
The crimson firelight and scorching heat injected a massive amount of light and energy into the starry sky of the Palm Universe, which had lain dormant for hundreds of millions of years.
But Li Qing didn’t pay much attention to this.
What concerned him now was that this stellar energy, after pouring into the Palm Universe, did not dissolve into nothingness like the battleship wreckage had before.
Instead, it surged directly into the Palm Universe, feeling like a warm current flowing into a cold body.
“What’s going on?”
Li Qing stood up in considerable surprise.
This was genuine mass.
As the owner of the Palm Universe, he could clearly feel this powerful mass pouring into his Palm Universe.
Substantial, not illusory.
“Could it be… this star is real?”
“No, this isn’t normal stellar matter.”
Li Qing frowned as he watched the scorching ion column pour endlessly into the Palm Universe, while outside, at the channel’s opening, he could clearly sense that something strange was happening to the star.
“I need to go deeper and try.”
Li Qing decisively controlled the Palm Universe’s channel, slowly descending along the star’s gravity.
Soon it drew close to the star’s surface.
Although he couldn’t see outside from within the Palm Universe, he could clearly feel that the speed of the ejected ion flow was increasing.
From the outside, it was just a normal eruption on the star’s surface, only with a slightly weaker intensity than usual.
If there were a science ship or observation station nearby, the anomaly might have been noticed.
But within a range of over a hundred thousand kilometers around the star, apart from the warring fleets, there wasn’t even a single Industrial Ship.
The two sides were locked in fierce combat and would never notice such a small anomaly, let alone discover a tiny Destroyer sinking into the star.
As the Palm Universe slowly sank into the star, massive amounts of stellar hydrogen, helium, and other matter poured continuously into the Palm Universe, transforming into a surging ion column that sprayed into the depths of the starry sky.
Eventually, influenced by the inherent gravity of the High-Dimensional Fortress ‘Witness of the Stars,’ it traced a long arc across the pitch-black void, falling toward the Witness of the Stars.
But as it approached the Witness of the Stars, while passing a cold, extinguished stellar core, a wisp of ion energy drifted toward it, affected by the residual gravity of the stellar core.
And this wisp caused the stellar core, which had been extinguished for who knows how long, to suddenly brighten under some kind of stimulation, shifting from black to dark red and emitting an even stronger gravitational pull.
The ion column, falling along its arc toward the Witness of the Stars fortress, was affected by this suddenly strengthened gravity.
Midway, it veered off course, heading straight for the dark red stellar core, plunging fiercely into it.
“Boom!”
Flames exploded across the stellar core.
Stimulated by this, a layer of dark red fire actually ignited on its dark red surface, reacting with the incoming stellar hydrogen and helium, instantly blazing up into a boundless sea of flames.
“This… it can be ignited like that?”
Li Qing was quite astonished, but after the surprise came wild joy.
If he could ignite a star, that would be a different matter entirely.
Not only would the Palm Universe gain more energy and mass, but more importantly, it would provide him with a new approach to repairing the Palm Universe and the High-Dimensional Fortress [Witness of the Stars].
These extinguished stellar cores orbiting the [Witness of the Stars] High-Dimensional Fortress were originally part of the fortress’s weapon systems.
If he could ignite them one by one, it would represent a small step forward in the fortress’s restoration.
Perhaps even if he repaired all of these millions of extinguished stars, it wouldn’t amount to even one ten-thousandth of the Witness of the Stars being restored.
But even that one ten-thousandth would provide him with tremendous assistance.
To put it plainly, even just one ten-thousandth would possess power beyond ordinary imagination.
Even now, having ignited just a single extinguished star, he could use that one star to accomplish many things.
It was a pity he had discovered this too late.
If he had found out earlier, he wouldn’t have needed to do anything special—just enter the Instance and head straight for a star.
Or if he had thought of this earlier, he wouldn’t even need to enter an Instance—he could just grab any random star out in the wild.
“Boom!”
After absorbing an unknown amount of stellar matter, the energy it had drawn finally reached a certain critical point, and the extinguished stellar core was completely ignited.
In common terms, the star’s halted Stellar Fusion Sequence had been restarted.
The stellar matter that had degenerated into unknown substances upon extinguishing was re-ignited, transformed into hydrogen and helium, restarting the fusion processes within the star.
To put it simply, at this moment, even without external stellar energy to stimulate it, this reactivated star would continue burning on its own.
“Boom!”
The star, its nuclear fusion just restarted, erupted with boundless energy, as if venting grievances accumulated over hundreds of millions of years.
From the massive fireball, streams of incredibly hot plumes continuously spewed forth, surging into space millions to tens of millions of kilometers away.
At this moment, the star was like a newly born star—violent and terrifying—and the extreme stellar weather it produced affected an enormous area.
Affected by this, Li Qing also noticed that the Witness of the Stars High-Dimensional Fortress seemed to be undergoing some changes, though for a moment he couldn’t tell what had changed.
He frowned and fell silent for a moment, then suddenly spoke to the Destroyer captain nearby, who was staring slack-jawed at the reignited star:
“Watch out for the eruptions. I’ll be back.”
With that, his figure flickered and vanished, leaving the senior crew members even more astonished.
With a thought, Li Qing had already entered the Witness of the Stars fortress.
The moment he entered, he immediately sensed the changes.
First, the central core area had expanded from its original one thousand square meters to ten thousand square meters—a full tenfold increase.
Beyond that, inside the fortress, a small new area had been unlocked at the edge of the sole intact section—the small shipyard.
With another thought, he left the fortress core and reappeared in the newly restored area, at the boundary with the shipyard zone.
At a glance, he could see that ahead, besides the small shipyard—which appeared to be an extension of the current shipyard—there was also a vast area containing an enormous warehouse district stretching over a thousand kilometers.
Roughly a thousand kilometers in length, width, and height, divided into large levels every hundred kilometers, with each large level further split into smaller levels of varying heights.
Inside were countless warehouses of different functions, as well as clearly designated living quarters.
Li Qing entered the warehouse district with delight and anticipation, only to find it completely silent—nothing there at all, and the warehouses were empty.
This surprised him somewhat.
He had thought there might be leftover supplies from before, but everything was spotlessly clean, as if it had just been newly built.
After a quick look around, Li Qing was quite satisfied.
Such a huge warehouse was perfect for storing large quantities of materials—no longer would he have to dump everything into space like before.
In a while, when he went out, he could move all his shipbuilding materials inside, and make use of the living quarters as well.
Worth noting was that this warehouse district was clearly only a portion of the space; presumably, in the surrounding locked areas, there were even more enormous warehouse districts, or shipbuilding zones.
Moreover, a small part of this newly unlocked area was an extension of the previous shipbuilding zone.
This unlock added some new dry docks, bringing the total construction capacity of the docks from 2,300 to 3,100.
Overall, Li Qing was fairly satisfied with this unlock.
It was better than if it had all been shipbuilding zones—at this stage, he couldn’t possibly use that much construction capacity anyway.
“Huh?”
Li Qing, who was inspecting the newly added areas inside the High-Dimensional Fortress, suddenly raised his eyebrows, a hint of surprise flashing in his eyes.
He quickly opened his panel.
The notifications column was rapidly scrolling:
“Due to your actions, an enemy Destroyer was destroyed. Points +0.5.”
“Due to your actions, an enemy Escort Ship was destroyed. Points +0.1.”
“Due to your actions, an enemy Escort Ship was destroyed. Points +0.1.”
“Due to your actions, an enemy Battleship was destroyed. Points +20.”
“Due to your…”
In an instant, countless notifications flooded the screen, too many to even read.
Li Qing simply checked his current points, and his eyes went wide:
“What’s going on?”
In the total points column, a number—225.4—came into view, and it was still ticking upward.
“What’s happening? What did I do?”
Li Qing scratched his head, momentarily unable to figure out what had happened.
He hadn’t done anything, so how did he suddenly have so many points—over two hundred, enough to exchange for two Flagship Construction Blueprints?
“No good, I need to go see what happened.”
With a thought, he returned to the Destroyer.
Facing the astonished gazes of the crew, he waved his hand and said:
“Get ready, we’re leaving.”
A passage suddenly opened ahead of the Warship, and even more violent ion energy surged in.
The captain jumped up in fright:
“Turn! Turn now!”
Li Qing hurriedly adjusted the angle, and the violent ion column scraped past the ship by a hair’s breadth before the captain sat back down, clutching his chest.
Li Qing felt a little guilty.
Fortunately, they didn’t really understand what had happened.
He closed the passage, letting the violent ion column that had just been sprayed into the Palm Universe slowly dissipate into the void.
He didn’t dare reignite another dead star like before.
Based on the feedback from the Palm Universe, that kind of action couldn’t be repeated for the time being.
The reason was simple: if he ignited another star, the process of the extinguished star reigniting nuclear fusion would produce terrifyingly violent energy.
At this point, the Witness of the Stars had barely been repaired—its most important propulsion system and gravity control system were still nonfunctional—so it simply couldn’t contain multiple stars.
If he forcibly ignited several at once, the fortress would be unable to restrain them.
These stars would either crash into the fortress or break free and fly wildly around the Palm Universe, colliding with everything.
The consequences would be severe.
He had to wait for the nuclear fusion reactions inside the currently ignited extinguished star to gradually weaken before he could ignite a new one.
For now, he could only ignite them one at a time.
But if he was lucky enough one day to repair and unlock the core region or the gravity control system, then he could ignite a whole batch of stars at once, or even collapse a new black hole into existence.
Unable to go outside, he had no way of finding out why he had earned so many points.
Still, he could guess: most likely, his use of the Palm Universe to siphon stellar energy had thrown off the star’s internal pressure balance, causing the star to erupt in turmoil.
The violent energy from that turmoil had then swept over the fleets battling near the star.
Since the stellar upheaval was caused by him, the warships destroyed by the star were counted against his tally.
He had no idea how many warships had been affected, but after waiting a while, Li Qing noticed his total points had already passed three hundred.
“This is an absolute money-maker!”
Li Qing wasn’t just thinking about this time, but the next, and the one after that.
Come in once a month, pull off a stunt like this—couldn’t he farm points indefinitely?
However, when his 24 hours in the Instance ran out and an invisible force expelled him along with the Palm Universe, the joy on Li Qing’s face vanished instantly, and his expression fell.
“Damn it!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me?”
The moment he was expelled, he instinctively knew he would never be able to enter this Instance again.
Because of his actions—siphoning a massive amount of the Instance’s Origin Source and severely damaging it—he had been rejected by this Instance space.
To put it in plain terms: he had been blacklisted by the server for cheating.
His head was full of dark lines, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“If I’d known this would happen, I should have fleeced it harder just now.”
Of course, he didn’t regret it.
So this Instance had blacklisted him—fine, he’d just switch to another.
Jinmen alone had several Instances, and beyond that, many Legions and large teams had Instances or Immateriums at their headquarters.
He could pay a small price for a ticket and go fleece those too.
He checked his panel: 372.8 points in total.
Seeing this, Li Qing sighed again.
If he’d known, he should have pulled off something even bigger.
But on second thought, this wasn’t bad either.
Three hundred-plus points could be exchanged for three Flagship Blueprints—a massive windfall.
Next came the much-anticipated exchange.
The Destroyer hovered near the Instance.
With a thought, a Light-screen popped open before his eyes.
He flipped to the points exchange page and immediately spotted at the top a Dreadnought Blueprint and an Interstellar Mothership Blueprint, each requiring one hundred points.
Without hesitation, he spent two hundred points to redeem both.
Then he noticed a countdown had appeared next to the two Blueprints.
Looking closely, the numbers read: 1824 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.
“Five years to refresh one? Wasn’t there supposed to be no limit?”
Although this thing had only been redeemed a handful of times over the past few centuries, it was certain that this restriction hadn’t existed before.
Now it did, which meant—
“Could it be because I extracted too much Origin Source?”
“But I only extracted a single star. The Instance map contains dozens of star systems—there’s no reason extracting just one system would… wait, no.”
Li Qing suddenly realized that this star system was apparently one of the three major battlefields, its critical importance far beyond that of the surrounding star systems with little warfare.
He had extracted so much of the core star’s mass from this system, which was equivalent to directly extracting the Origin Source of the Instance world.
The Jinmen Naval Battle Instance wasn’t like other Instances, which were converted from Immaterium Rifts—it was projected from a special historical event.
If its Origin Source were extracted, it would naturally be affected.