Chapter 1000 – Return to Earth

The beacon trembled faintly, and in the next instant, a teal beam of light appeared in her field of vision.

“Clack! Can you see it?” Mo Lan looked toward Clack in the pilot’s seat.

Clack tilted his skull to one side, fished a wooden placard from the spatial ring on his finger bones, and held it up — a large “?” painted on its surface.

“You can’t see it?” Mo Lan turned and called out to Zhizhi and Sentai. “Can you two see it? The teal light!”

“Where? What teal light?” Zhizhi bounced up and down, looking every which way.

Sentai didn’t even have eyes. His roots swayed back and forth, feigning busyness.

“…” Mo Lan sighed softly. “It seems I’m the only one who can see it.”

She patted Clack on the scapula. “I’ll take the helm this time, Clack!”

Clack rose silently, yielding the seat. The soul fire inside his cranium flickered.

“What’s up?” Zhizhi looked at the bony fingertip Clack was poking toward her.

Clack produced his writing board: “Teal light?”

“I can’t see it either,” Zhizhi scratched her head.

Clack: ( )

Once Mo Lan sat down, the seat adjusted automatically to fit her frame. The control light-screen ahead displayed the scene within the boundary membrane of the Valen world.

Yet what dominated her vision was not the screen before her.

A gentle teal beam extended silently from the space between her brows. It ignored all material barriers, piercing straight through the mirror space’s boundary membrane, then passing without pause through the Valen world’s boundary membrane — like an arrow parting the clouds, shooting in a straight line into the cosmic depths beyond.

Mo Lan shifted the mirror space, which had been stationed within the Valen world’s boundary membrane, into Starsea Skiff mode and jumped in the direction the teal light extended.

In the blink of an eye, the Valen world had shrunk to a tiny point of light behind her, instantly replaced by the pitch-black void and far more distant stars.

After tens of thousands of jumps, a gray, dim, utterly lifeless planet hung alone in the void ahead.

Its atmosphere was thin and shattered, its surface scarred with crisscrossing ravines — a tableau of deathly silence devoid of any sign of life.

Mo Lan shot to her feet. Her heart felt as though an invisible hand had seized it in a vise grip.

She couldn’t be mistaken. This was the Earth of her previous life.

Under her control, the Starsea Skiff drifted slowly toward the dead star.

As the distance closed, the control light-screen captured an ever-clearer picture: buildings that once soared into the clouds had become jagged ruins, pointing silently at a dim sky; dried riverbeds scarred the land like wounds; across vast plains, nothing remained but wind-eroded dust and rock…

Just then, the teal beam that had been extending straight ahead suddenly changed direction.

It no longer pointed toward the planet’s surface. Instead, like a spirit-serpent, it spiraled and coiled gracefully through the void beyond the planet, ultimately converging on a point that appeared to contain nothing at all.

There, the texture of space exhibited an extraordinarily subtle, unnatural distortion — like a whirlpool on the verge of dissipating across an otherwise calm surface of water.

Mo Lan’s gaze sharpened. Every emotion was pressed down to the deepest recesses of her heart as she initiated a spacetime jump to that anomalous point.

Across the mirror space’s boundary membrane, the luster of Eternal Gold Sand flowed past like ripples on water. An instant later, the entire mirror space seemed to be gently “pinched” by an invisible hand and vanished from its position.

The scene on the control light-screen collapsed, twisted, and stretched in a single instant, transforming into a corridor of shimmering, iridescent light that no color could accurately describe.

Violent spacetime forces surged through this place. Strange, incomprehensible whispers resonated directly in the depths of consciousness. Fragmented visions flashed past and were annihilated like bolts of lightning.

Mo Lan focused with absolute concentration, her psychic power at peak intensity, eyes locked on the direction the teal beam extended as she jumped again and again. Inside the wormhole, every clock had stopped running. Time had lost all meaning as a measure.

She had no idea how long had passed when the teal beam plunged into the silhouette of a planet flashing by. Mo Lan swiftly maneuvered the Starsea Skiff and jumped toward it.

At last, the streaming light ahead parted sharply to either side, as though a curtain had been drawn open.

The Starsea Skiff was “spat out” by an invisible force, instantly freed from that weightless, warping sensation.

The violent distortions on the control light-screen settled rapidly, and the image became clear and stable once more.

There, amid the stars, a beautiful planet swirled with blue and green, wreathed in white clouds, floated serenely in the dark void.

Through the thin boundary membrane, azure oceans, verdant continents, and polar ice caps were all clearly visible.

Though it was merely a zero-level world, it brimmed with life.

Mo Lan stared at the beautiful planet on the light-screen, and for a moment, she felt almost dazed.

The beacon’s light now fell gently upon the planet, confirming its identity.

This was the Earth of another timeline.

Not yet ravaged by war, not yet collapsed from civilization’s wrong turn — at this moment it was bathed in starlight, quietly breathing with life.

Under Mo Lan’s control, the Starsea Skiff slipped silently through Earth’s exceptionally thin boundary membrane. Its power was reduced to the bare minimum needed to maintain concealed suspension, like a mote of cosmic dust coming to rest within the membrane layer near low orbit.

Mo Lan turned and left the control room, returning to her own quarters, where she changed into a simple outfit of a short-sleeved shirt and long pants.

Then, recalling her original self — the girl with black hair and dark eyes — she drank a bottle of transformation potion.

She walked to the full-length mirror and locked eyes with her reflection.

The face was identical to her previous life’s, yet the feeling was completely different.

Her bearing had changed considerably.

The experiences of these years had, after all, left indelible marks upon her.

“Zhizhi, Clack, Sentai — wait for me in the mirror space. I’ll be back soon!”

Mo Lan’s voice rang through the mirror space. In the next instant, she was gone.

Xia, Jiang City.

Early morning, seven-forty. The rush hour arrived like clockwork, a tide sweeping across the entire city.

On the main roads, traffic had already merged into a long, sluggishly crawling dragon.

The growl of engines, impatient blaring of horns, and electronic announcements of arriving buses blended together.

On the sidewalks, office workers in suits or professional attire hurried along, biting into baozi or jianbing while staring at phone screens; students with backpacks shuffled by, still bleary-eyed; elderly people carrying vegetable baskets carefully dodged weaving electric scooters; fashionable young people held up coffee cups, snapping selfies or firing off voice messages on their phones…

Right there on that bustling street corner where no one paused, an almost imperceptible spatial ripple gently spread outward.

Mo Lan’s figure, as though rising from beneath water, appeared silently at the edge of the sidewalk — in front of the window of a convenience store that had long since opened and was playing the morning news. (End of Chapter)