At the end of a remote spiral arm in the Triangulum Galaxy, about three million light-years away from the Milky Way, a star with a mass similar to the Sun and in the prime of its life was continuously pouring light and heat into the cold void.
Orbiting it was a star system with a rather 'classic' structure.
Several terrestrial planets were in the inner orbits, and two gas giants roamed the outer edges like silent guardians, interspersed with an asteroid belt made of ice crystals and rocks, as well as a few dwarf planets with elongated orbits.
Everything appeared so 'standard'.
And on that terrestrial planet located within the star's 'habitable zone', a vibrant yet 'utterly despairing' scene was unfolding.
This planet, called 'Saraso' by its indigenous inhabitants, was extremely similar to Earth in terms of volume, gravity, and other environmental factors.
Viewed from a distant orbit, it was absolutely a beautiful planet, covered with vast azure oceans, while its continental plates featured dense green vegetation, expansive golden deserts, and polar ice caps covered in snow.
White clouds rolled and flowed in its atmosphere, sketching a dynamic climate map.
Judging solely from its natural landscape, this was undoubtedly a 'lucky star' that had nurtured life.
However, in the tranquil low orbit of this peaceful planet, there were dozens of unsettling behemoths.
They were not metallic creations, but 'living' entities.
Each was about six kilometers long, shaped like infinitely magnified, segmented space worms.
Their 'bodies' presented a dull, grayish-brown color that seemed capable of absorbing light. The surface was covered with an exoskeleton resembling chitin, yet the writhing of muscle tissue underneath was faintly visible.
These biological ships had no visible thruster nozzles or portholes; they just remained bizarrely in orbit, like giant bloodsucking worms attached to the planet, casting their massive shadows over the world below.
They were a type of biological ship belonging to the Qu civilization.
If the 'perspective' was brought closer to the surface of Saraso, the traces of civilization were clearly visible.
This planet had indeed nurtured intelligent life, and its technological level was roughly equivalent to the mid-twentieth century of human civilization in the main universe.
Towering but slightly rugged-styled skyscrapers lined the coastal cities, and a crisscrossing network of highways and railways connected the cities and the countryside.
Aircraft powered by turboprops or early jet engines occasionally swept across the sky, and the trails of some small artificial satellites could also be observed in low orbit.
Their armies were equipped with gunpowder-based firearms, towed artillery, tanks, and early rockets. The form of warfare was still at the stage of chemical energy and the dawn of nuclear fission.
The intelligent creatures here, the Sarasoans, also bore a striking resemblance to humans in appearance—walking upright, possessing four limbs and a head, using tools, and building societies.
However, looking closely, the differences were still very obvious.
Their facial skeletal structure was more prominent, with a nose bridge as high as an eagle's beak and cheekbones as sharp as a knife cut. Additionally, their hands had only four slender fingers.
Their skin was completely smooth, lacking obvious body hair, and only on the top of their heads grew a type of flexible fiber bundle resembling aquatic algae in various colors, serving the function of hair.
Their civilization, their cities, and their technology tree all seemed to be subtle variants of human civilization in another parallel spacetime.
But at this moment, the civilization the Sarasoans were so proud of was on the verge of collapse, and a cloud of despair enveloped the entire planet.
They were engaged in a life-and-death struggle against an incomprehensible 'bug tide' from outer space.
The invaders were precisely versions of the giant worms in orbit, shrunk down countless times.
These ground combat units of worms ranged in length from two to ten meters, maintaining the same basic worm-like form, but multiple pairs of sharp, spider-like arthropod limbs had evolved on both sides of their bodies, granting them astonishing movement speed in complex terrain.
Their exterior appeared soft but was actually covered with a highly resilient biological cuticle. Standard rifle bullets from the Sarasoan army hitting them would only spark insignificantly or bounce right off.
Only continuous strafing from heavy machine guns, direct hits from large-caliber autocannons, or close-range explosions from rockets could inflict effective damage on them.
They surged toward cities and military bases like a tide, tearing through steel with their strong mouthparts, corroding fortifications with acid, and crushing all resistance with sheer physical force.
"Ahhh!!!"
An officer with a face covered in gunsmoke and blood screamed hoarsely behind a ruined barricade. The automatic rifle in his hands spat tongues of fire, but the bullets hitting a five-meter-long worm charging at the forefront only produced muffled thuds, failing to stop it in the slightest.
Screams, explosions, and the roaring of collapsing buildings intertwined into a doomsday symphony.
Just as the defense line was about to be completely overwhelmed—
A bizarre, low hum that did not travel through the air but acted directly on the perceptual level of all living creatures suddenly rang out.
Immediately after, in the direction of the city center, a point of extreme white light suddenly flared up, quickly expanding into a massive fireball hundreds of meters in diameter, radiating terrifying light and heat comparable to a miniature star.
Boom! Rumble!!
The blinding light eclipsed the rays of the midday star, followed closely by an all-destroying shockwave and the iconic, churning mushroom-shaped smoke cloud rising into the air.
The Sarasoans, pushed to the brink of despair, had used their ultimate weapon... an atomic bomb, or nuclear bomb.
Judging from its explosive yield and effects, the power of this nuclear bomb was roughly equivalent to 'Little Boy', falling into the category of early nuclear weapons.
Destructive energy swept through everything within several kilometers around the epicenter.
Reinforced concrete vaporized, and those ferocious worm creatures instantly carbonized and disintegrated under temperatures of thousands of degrees, while the intense shockwave tore enemies further away into pieces.
The central area of the nuclear explosion was cleared out entirely.
However, when the scorching fireball dissipated and the lethal radioactive fallout began to drift with the wind, a deeper despair descended.
At the edge of the blast's area of effect, the worm creatures that hadn't been directly vaporized or shredded merely had their movements become somewhat sluggish. Their peculiar life forms seemed to possess an extremely strong tolerance to high-intensity radiation, and it could even be said to be...
Immune.
Shaking their bodies that were scorched by the high temperatures but were regenerating at a visible rate, they moved their arthropod limbs once again. Ignoring the still-burning wreckage and off-the-charts radiation doses on the ground, they continued advancing toward the outskirts of the city, toward the direction where the survivors were gathered.
As for the Sarasoans, the situation was even more tragic.
In order to stop the main force of the bug tide, this nuclear bomb was detonated almost at the frontline of their own defenses.
The garrison troops bearing the brunt, along with the fortifications they had painstakingly built, were reduced to ashes in the nuclear blast.
The follow-up troops were also heavily devastated by the shockwave and nuclear radiation. The command system was paralyzed, the soldiers were either dead or injured, and most of the survivors had lost their combat capabilities.
Their method of mutually assured destruction failed to buy victory; instead, it accelerated the collapse of their own defense lines.
Above this ruin and despair, in the sky dyed a dusky yellow by the nuclear blast, a bizarre entity was silently hovering.
It did not have a worm-like form but looked more like a giant moth full of an eerie 'beauty'.
With a body length of about six meters, its four broad wings flapped slightly in the air, maintaining a hover.
It had a long, fleshy tail that swayed elegantly behind it. Its head had no obvious facial features, only two compound eye structures emitting a faint glow that seemed to be constantly adjusting their focus, looking down indifferently at the purgatory-like battlefield below.
This 'moth' creature exuded an invisible pressure from its entire body,
It was fundamentally different from those worms on the ground that only knew how to slaughter and devour.
It was a higher-order existence, the on-site commander of this invasion, and the direct controller of those worm creatures.
It was precisely a Qu.
It was a member of the culprit race that had treated the human civilization of the 22nd Universe as experimental material, inflicting the ultimate desecration and subjecting them to unimaginable suffering.
At this moment, in this unfamiliar star system, in the homeland of the Sarasoans, it was repeating its customary 'work'—
Observe, test, then 'modify'.
For the Qu, this might just be a routine 'pasture management', but for the intelligent life beneath its feet, this was an absolute, irresistible doomsday.
Its complex compound eye structure accurately captured every tiny corner of the battlefield below.
Even though the aftermath of the nuclear blast was still raging and radioactive dust filled the air, the surviving Sarasoan soldiers were still using their last ounces of strength to resist.
It saw a soldier who had lost his left arm tightly hugging a worm creature's arthropod limb with his remaining right hand, creating a precious shooting opportunity for the comrades beside him until he was bitten in half at the waist by another worm's mouthparts.
It saw a group of civilians trapped in the ruins of a collapsed hospital; a few soldiers who could have evacuated resolutely turned back and charged at the surging bug tide, using their flesh and blood to build a final, brief barrier before ultimately being completely swallowed by the swarm.
It saw a mother tightly shielding her child beneath her body, while the father raised a crude entrenching shovel to face the invincible enemy...
These behaviors, within the highly rational—or rather, extremely twisted—cognitive logic of the Qu, were 'inefficient' and 'meaningless'.
Sacrifice?
Dedication?
These concepts were completely incompatible with their pursuit of 'biological form perfection' and 'overall population evolution'.
This Qu couldn't help but lightly shake its head, and this movement seemed to contain a condescending, almost pitying sigh.
It could not understand why these 'primitive' intelligent creatures so stubbornly rejected the 'gift' of the Qu, a biological modification that would allow them to break free from the restraints of fragile flesh and blood and move toward a more 'advanced', more 'adaptable' form.
In the Qu's cognition, accepting the modification, integrating into the 'harmonious' ecology they designed, and becoming part of a more 'perfect' life form was true happiness and the ultimate destination.
Resistance was nothing more than the senseless struggle of lesser life forms on the path of evolution, the ignorant clamor before reaching the 'truth'.
Since it could not be understood, there was no need to understand it anymore.
A cold thought flashed through the Qu's thought core.
The observation phase had collected enough 'abnormal behavioral data', and now it was time to advance the 'project progress'.
The tip of its long, fleshy tail suddenly lit up with a ring of faint purple biological halo, and an invisible command wave instantly spread out from it to the entire battlefield area.
Immediately after, a bizarre 'meat rain' seemed to fall from the sky.
Countless small units about the size of a basketball, shaped like flying meat balls, swarmed out from the bellies of those worm ships.
Their surfaces were covered with writhing blood vessels and nerve bundles, emitting a faint biological fluorescence. Making scalp-tingling buzzing sounds, they blotted out the sky as they surged toward the still-resisting soldiers and the terrified, fleeing civilians below.
!!!
A soldier raised his muzzle in horror, but the bullets passing through these soft meat balls could only punch small holes, which healed instantly.
The next second, an even more terrifying thing happened.
These meat balls, like living nanomachines, quickly attached themselves to the bodies of the Sarasoans, the weapons in their hands, and even their damaged armor.
They spread and infiltrated like active slime.
"Ah!!!"
Miserable screams instantly echoed across the battlefield.
A soldier's right hand began to fuse with his tightly gripped rifle. Metal and flesh twisted and intertwined; his fingers deformed and elongated, gradually merging with the barrel, while his bones emitted the teeth-setting sounds of shattering and restructuring.
Under the wrapping of the meat ball, his legs also violently deformed. The joints twisted backwards, eventually forming a structure similar to insect limbs, supporting his already mutated body.
Another heavily armored officer felt as if his armor had come alive. The cold metal grew inwards, piercing into his skin and forcibly fusing with his ribs and spine.
His head was wrapped by the meat ball; his vision was modified, his hearing twisted, and the position of his mouth was stitched shut.
Within moments, the soldiers who had been fighting heroically just before were transformed into various bizarrely shaped, twisted creations that vaguely fit the cruel logic of war.
Some became half-man, half-gun mobile turrets; some turned into four-legged, bone-armor-covered assault beasts; and some fused with vehicle wreckage to become slow-moving, multi-legged fortresses.
They might still retain some lingering consciousness, but their bodies had already become tools of war in the hands of the Qu.
The fate of the civilians was much 'milder', yet also much more pathetic.
Wrapped by the meat balls, their bodies were rapidly softened and reshaped.
Some were elongated and solidified, merging with the surrounding building wreckage to become 'living sculptures' with twisted postures and frozen faces, decorating this wasteland.
Some were transformed into docile, harmless, and bizarre-looking 'animals', losing all the light of wisdom, leaving only biological instincts as they wandered blankly through the shattered streets, becoming part of the landscape in the 'new ecology' designed by the Qu.
This Qu 'gazed' at its handiwork quite with satisfaction.
It was modifying this area into a form it deemed 'harmonious' and 'efficient', according to its own aesthetics and logic.
Just as it immersed itself in this creator's sense of control— Whoosh—!!!
An incomparably dazzling 'pillar of light' composed of destructive energy, like a sword of divine punishment, accurately struck a six-kilometer-long biological ship in low orbit without warning.
Boom!
There is no sound in space, but the light that erupted in that instant, more blinding than a star, heralded the arrival of 'destruction'.
That massive worm ship failed to even make a struggle. Under the absolute energy bombardment, its tough biological armor was easily pierced and torn apart like paper, immediately triggering an internal chain explosion.
Massive chunks of biological tissue scattered and disintegrated in the vacuum, burning and turning into a brief and brilliant firework of death.
?
The thought core of the Qu hovering over the city was instantly filled with immense astonishment and incomprehension.
It raised its eerie head, its compound eyes locking onto the cluster of light from the wreckage rapidly expanding and dissipating in orbit.
What happened?
The biological ships of its 'pets' were destroyed?
How could this be possible?!
How could the Sarasoans possess technology and weapons capable of harming, let alone instantly destroying, their ships in low Earth orbit?
Their nuclear bombs could not even effectively breach the atmosphere!
However, reality did not give it any time to think.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
One after another, equally terrifying pillars of energy light shot over from deep space like a violent storm.
These pillars of light were precise, cold, and efficient, each one locking onto a biological ship of the Qu.
Boom—! Boom!
Explosions played out one after another in the low orbit of Saraso.
Those mountain-sized biological ships were as fragile as children's toys before these attacks, sequentially detonated and torn apart.
The burning, massive fragments of biological tissue began falling into the atmosphere like meteorites, rubbing against the air to produce glaring flames, tracing a magnificent and deadly 'meteor shower' across the Sarasoan sky.
This Qu completely fell into a stupor.
Its compound eyes reflected the continuously blooming 'clusters of death' in orbit...
______
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