Chapter 860 – The Dark Gold Energy Pillar

“Clack!” Clack immediately let out a short, sharp bone-cry.

Sentai received the command and immediately mobilized the tree root closest to Zhizhi, transmitting the message “rare material discovered” through several quick, specific swaying motions.

Zhizhi, who had been dozing on the green moss lawn, snapped awake instantly. With a quick nod of her little head, she used her teleportation ability and appeared in Mo Lan’s study.

Mo Lan was immersed in a book of ecological hypotheses about Void Whales. The moment Zhizhi appeared, she reported in the most concise 《Valen Common Language》: “Master, rare material discovered. Not on our current route. Should we retrieve it?”

Mo Lan’s gaze finally lifted from the pages, a flicker of interest crossing her eyes. She merely directed her attention toward the main control room and immediately recognized it was meteorite iron. “Of course. When materials come knocking at our door, there’s no reason to let them go! Tell Clack to change course and prepare the capture net.”

Zhizhi nodded toward the tree root on the study’s Windowsill, and almost in the next second, Clack had received the order.

The soul fire in its skull blazed with excitement as its phalanges rapidly input the new coordinates.

Minutes later, a Spatial Card containing the meteorite iron appeared on Mo Lan’s desk.

Sentai’s tree root picked up the quill pen once more and added a new line to the log: “Unexpectedly discovered meteorite rich in star-fallen iron. Capture successful.”

With Clack, Zhizhi, and Sentai’s help, even though the Starsea Ark had entered unknown star regions, Mo Lan didn’t need to stay in the main control room watching the control screens at all times.

Time slipped quietly by in the daily routine of scanning, evading, and short-range jumps.

The yearly calendars hanging in the Living Room had been replaced several times over when, in the main control room, the world detector that had lain dormant for years suddenly lit up once more with its familiar pale blue glow.

After Zhizhi notified Mo Lan, she appeared in the main control room in an instant.

Gazing at the image projected on the light screen, Mo Lan’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.

Before her was a peculiar planar world. Its boundary membrane was fully intact, and its energy fluctuations were not weak either—nearly approaching the level of a third-tier world.

Yet, bizarrely, not the slightest trace of world consciousness could be detected upon the boundary membrane.

This was extremely unusual.

Even in endangered worlds, the world consciousness was like a dying person’s breath—faint, yet still discernible.

Unless… all intelligent life within this world had already gone extinct.

But if that were truly the case, a world devoid of intelligent life should have rapidly degraded into a “dead plane,” and its boundary membrane’s energy level could not possibly maintain at such a level.

Moreover, a dark gold energy pillar, like a colossal spear thrust from the depths of the star region, had brutally pierced through this world’s boundary membrane!

The energy pillar itself radiated clear fluctuations of world consciousness, giving Mo Lan the impression that it resembled a cylindrical segment of boundary membrane.

She observed carefully and discovered that this world’s boundary membrane was weakening at a rate visible to the naked eye, with the areas closest to the dark gold energy pillar losing energy the fastest.

The energy fluctuations of a boundary membrane were intimately connected to a world’s source power.

The scene before her looked exactly as if this world’s source power was being continuously extracted and siphoned away by that dark gold pillar extending to parts unknown!

“Draining a world’s source…” Mo Lan murmured to herself, her expression growing somewhat grave.

Apart from Star Refinement, she had never heard of any other ability that could directly drain a world’s source power. And this dark gold energy pillar didn’t resemble Star Refinement at all—it looked more like the boundary membrane of a higher-tier world.

How could a world’s boundary membrane stretch across the void, attach itself to another world’s boundary membrane, and drain that world’s source! Such a thing was utterly unheard of.

She didn’t rashly approach the plane that was being drained of its source power. Instead, she gave a decisive order:

“Clack, adjust course. Follow this dark gold energy pillar back to where it came from!”

She would go to the source and see for herself exactly what kind of existence was devouring a world’s source power!

Clack acted on her word. Its phalanges flew across the control screen, rapidly inputting a series of commands, locking onto the trajectory of the dark gold pillar as it extended through the void, and setting new jump coordinates for the destination.

The Starsea Ark entered jump state once more, tracing upstream along this dark gold energy pillar.

After several jumps, the detector sounded another alert—another “target world” had been discovered.

However, when the image sharpened, the atmosphere in the main control room grew even heavier.

Yet another world had been pierced by the same kind of dark gold pillar. Its boundary membrane energy was similarly bleeding away, its world consciousness equally silent—the situation was identical to the previous world.

These two dark gold pillars, one thick and one thin, both originated from the same direction.

Mo Lan’s expression remained calm. She simply gave the order again: “Continue forward.”

As they pressed deeper, one heart-stopping scene after another appeared in succession.

Similar worlds grew more and more numerous, like pearls strung upon countless golden threads. In some places, a dark gold pillar even threaded through two adjacent worlds simultaneously.

At the end of one jump, in the instant the Starsea Ark had just exited jump state, the exit point happened to be abnormally close to one of the dark gold pillars, and the detector captured an extremely high-resolution close-up image.

“Clack!” Clack suddenly let out an exceptionally shrill cry.

Mo Lan had kept this eerie dark gold pillar on her mind the entire time and had remained in the main control room throughout this period.

Hearing Clack’s unusual alarm, she shot to her feet and in the next instant had teleported to the main control screen.

“You’re saying there was… just now, a person inside it?” Her voice was full of disbelief.

After deciphering the urgent information Clack transmitted through its soul fire, Mo Lan personally pulled up all the images the detector had captured over the previous three minutes, playing them back frame by frame at an extremely slow speed.

Her gaze was locked on the images on the light screen. As the surging torrent of dark gold energy enlarged in the frame, a blurred humanoid silhouette truly did flash past within the image!

“Stop!” Mo Lan immediately paused the playback, locking onto this single frame and continuously magnifying it.

The figure was extremely blurry, wrapped and battered by the violent currents of source energy within the dark gold pillar. Details were impossible to make out, but the overall outline—head, torso, limbs—was indeed remarkably similar to a human!

The dark gold energy pillar devouring a world’s source power was terrifying enough, yet within this channel that plundered life itself, there existed what appeared to be a human presence?

The mystery in Mo Lan’s mind deepened further, but that enigmatic silhouette had appeared for only that single instant before vanishing completely into the surging torrent of dark gold energy. No matter how she replayed or magnified the footage, she could capture no further clues.

She knew well that lingering here any longer would be pointless.

“Continue forward,” Mo Lan ordered Clack, suppressing the layers of doubt weighing on her heart. “Stick to the original plan. Head straight for the source of this pillar.”