Xyrin Empire

"Bang!"

A sudden loud noise brought everyone's actions to an abrupt stop and attracted all the eyes in the living room.

I turned my head towards the sound and saw Visca, sitting not far away, lifting her head from the coffee table in bewilderment. She was rubbing her red forehead, her gaze innocent and confused, while on the table in front of her was a shallow dent and a bunch of radiation-like cracks.

It was very apparent that Visca had just slammed her head onto the unlucky coffee table, and the marble surface couldn't withstand the steel headbutt of my meter-tall girl, thus turning into a turtle shell.

"Uh, what grievance do you have with this coffee table?"

Lilina asked timidly, as clearly, headbutting a dent into marble out of anger is quite rare, especially given Visca's tendency to turn into a mad persona at any moment; the Archbishop is now very worried about her safety: she just sneakily ate a piece of Visca's cake at dinner, of course, the act was quite clumsy, everyone at the scene except Dingdang saw it.

"I… I don't know…" Visca still looked around confusedly, seemingly searching for the sneak attacker who had just given her a hit. But her bright blood-red cat eyes ultimately found nothing. She rubbed her slightly red forehead, crawled off the coffee table, and pitifully drew close to me, "Brother, brother, someone hit me from behind."

I looked into Visca's watery blood-colored slit eyes, feeling she wasn't lying, so I turned my gaze to Pandora who was on standby: "Pandora, did you bully your sister again?"

"It wasn't this fool this time," Visca twisted and turned, worming her way from me to the sofa, and then to the coffee table, like a cute caterpillar. The little girl rubbed her forehead, then the back of her head, puzzledly looking at the coffee table surface, which had thinned due to Anwina's care, "Strange, just now suddenly felt… wow!"

"Bang!"

With another short surprised shout, another loud noise followed, as Visca's little head once again slammed onto the coffee table, this time even stronger than before: from now we have two coffee tables.

"Who's hitting me! Someone's hitting me!" Visca shouted while covering her forehead, and this little cat-eyed girl was really like an exploded little wild cat now. She jumped up on the sofa while rubbing her head but found that the two closest to her were me and Sandora, leaving her a bit dumbfounded. After a while, she sat down pitifully, no longer rubbing her forehead but her back head, looking over here with tears in her eyes, "Brother, brother, did Visca do something wrong?"

What a good sister, what an obedient sister, even after such grievance, the first words she said to me was "Did I do something wrong?", which is really worlds apart from that little brat Lilina who speaks without filtering three layers before even I find it annoying!

"It's alright, it's alright." I quickly tenderly rubbed Visca's little head, but was even more confused than her because what just happened was indeed too bizarre: at first, I thought it was Visca, playful by nature, pulling a prank again, but the aggrieved reaction she had both times ruled out that guess, and when she slammed down it was quite strange as if someone really hit her hard on the back of her head, so rather than Visca crashing into a rock, it was more like some external force was using her head to crash into the rock, the whole process was quite clear and smooth, unless Visca had studied acting for three to five years, I'm certain my judgment is correct.

"What's going on?"

I continued to comfort the slightly bewildered Visca while turning my head slightly to lowly inquire Sandora.

"Uncertain, there's no external power fluctuation at the scene," Sandora's eyes were subtly glowing golden, and she gestured to Anwina with her eyes not to disturb Big Sister who had already gone to rest in her room, "Visca's spiritual power is stable too, it shouldn't be the mad persona losing control."

"Madness?" Visca's ears were sharp, she lifted her head from my embrace immediately, "Is it going mad again? Brother, quickly lock me up!"

"Scram!" I pinched the little girl and continued to hold her: mind you, the little loli is soft enough, no waste as a pillow. Now Sandora and I can talk about Visca's mad persona right in front of her because after so much time living together, Visca has whole-heartedly accepted all of her family, and knows that the family cares about her. So when we occasionally mention her out-of-control persona, the little girl knows it represents that she is cared for, so she does not get sad about it, but might rather banter with us about the topic — it's a blend of Qianqian's dimwit style and Lilina's carefree style.

Visca took the chance to legally act spoiled and randomly squirmed on me when her sister wasn't around to stir up trouble, then started rubbing her head deep in thought. Although none of us saw the "suspect," she firmly believed someone hit her from behind. Everyone remained in confusion, feeling Visca was truly strange now, Sandora began contacting Shadow City to arrange for Visca to undergo a physical check-up, while I gestured to Pandora: "Doesn't your model have a vibration mode?"

Pandora's belly made a "beep" sound, clearly misty unfocused eyes, but I distinctly saw a slight indefinable resignation from them before she ran over to pinch Visca's cheeks, woodenly raised a hand to point directly upwards.

Visca paused, lost in thought.

Sandora and I exchanged puzzled glances, unable to comprehend the unique communication method of this sister duo: often, Pandora and Visca don't need any form of information exchange to discuss things, they can understand each other's complex ideas that require at least five hundred characters to explain just by pinching each other's faces. Last time, when there was a fight, Pandora flicked her sister's forehead, and Visca described it to me balabala for fifteen minutes…

"So strange, I didn't know it had this function," Visca rubbed her head and looked towards the sky, when I couldn't help my curiosity to forcibly interrogate she finally came to and pulled my arm, "Brother, brother! Quickly check the dark side of the moon! I got hit by a meteorite!"

My whole body clattered into the bottom of the coffee table.

"What the heck is this!" After being pulled up messily by Sandora and the two little ones from the ground I was still dazed, my mind full of the phrase "I got hit by a meteorite," those six… seven words, and Visca was still gesturing: "Not necessarily a meteorite, but definitely something big, 'bang', really powerful, crashed into the dark side of the moon, which is, crashed into me… wow!"

"Bang!"

Now not only do we have two coffee tables, but we also have two sofas.

"Brother, brother, third one, third one! Bigger than the previous two!" Visca's whole face was buried in the sofa back, her small arms waving outside while shouting muffledly.

Though I still don't quite understand what's happening here, at least one thing I reacted to: there's an issue with the moon up there!

What is the moon? It's Visca Barrier Star! Hanging over humanity for seven hundred thousand years is the Imperial Planet Battleship, and it's the most ferocious model. It's one heart and one body with Visca. Now the anomaly with the little girl directly points to this magnificent starship—even though Visca thinks she was hit by a meteorite, she feels something is not quite right.

After the Barrier Star was activated, we sent a considerable number of troops inside, including scientific researchers responsible for investigations and elite fleets guarding this valuable starship. Therefore, even though the Barrier Star's own anti-aircraft guns are now in lockdown, its belly is still full of numerous intercepting forces and early warning radars. But were they all asleep when the meteorite came?

As I was pondering, a report from the Moon Base happened to come in. Okay, it seems the people inside were indeed not asleep.

The living room at home was transformed into a small command center by Pandora two years ago. With a casual wave from the little girl, a holographic projection appeared mid-air along with an Imperial Officer dressed in military uniform: "Your Majesty, the Barrier Star just suffered three impacts, and a chain explosion occurred in the moon's shadow zone. External detection devices have lost contact, and reconnaissance troops are approaching the impact point."

"Explosion?" Sandora immediately caught that word, then frowned and glanced at me, "This can't be a meteorite."

"Wow, how do I end up dealing with such crap while just staying at home?" I rubbed my forehead in frustration, then turned to look at Visca, who was whispering with Pandora. The Moon Base experienced continuous impacts, chain explosions in the shadow zone, Visca smashed the coffee table and sofa with her head—how do you connect these events?

There were four of us: Sandora, myself, and the Pandora Sisters, plus Dingdang who was a bit out of it and Anwina who stood beside us pretending to be a lamp. We were all clustered together, holding our breath, waiting for new intelligence from the Moon Base. The probe dispatched by the reconnaissance soldiers sent back a very clear video signal, showing us the desolate, silent lunar surface and a large amount of dust in the air.

"There is a very strong ghost energy reaction around," a reconnaissance soldier appeared in the image, pointing behind him into the darkness and reported to us. His voice was directly uploaded through the spiritual connection to the information link, "It seems a lunar energy conduit was severed. This impact was extraordinary; conventional meteorites shouldn't cause damage to Barrier Star. And if it were a heavy artillery capable of attack, it should have triggered the early warning systems to intercept it. Yet in truth, it wasn't until the impacts occurred that we realized the situation. The squad is approaching the first impact point, and the energy reaction is becoming more intense."

"Be careful, something doesn't seem quite right this time," I advised, and the reconnaissance soldier nodded, waving for other soldiers and the surrounding probe cluster to follow.

Once they got within a certain distance of the impact point, the soldiers released the probe cluster, enveloping the entire impact point and beginning data collection. In the image, the reconnaissance soldier extended a control panel in the air and quickly operated it, reporting: "Your Majesty, at this distance we're still unable to activate nearby information terminals; it seems they were all destroyed in the past explosion…"

The soldier didn't add his analysis to the report; he merely reported the scene's condition and left us to judge. Sandora pondered a moment and told me: "That should have been a ghost energy explosion. Regular explosions can hardly destroy information collectors buried in the lunar shell's middle layer. Only an overdose of ghost energy radiation can ignore the moon soil and easily burn the detectors below. But now the issue is the extent of damage to the Barrier Star. Its 'sensory organs' have already been burnt out, and we still don't know the deep structure of that armor. Taville initially planned to explore it next month."

Visca clung tightly to my arm, pursing her lips without saying a word. I looked down and squeezed the little girl's cheek: "Don't worry, nothing happened inside the base; at most, just some armor plates are damaged. Isn't the Glory Starship able to repair itself…"

Visca gave me a bitter look, her tone dejected: "Brother, I just forgot what that place was for; I'm trying to remember."

To be frank, I think whenever Visca's confused, she's no different from Qianqian!

"We've found the impact crater!"

The voice from the communication device interrupted my series of forehead flicks on Visca. Everyone's eyes unintentionally focused on the distant image, our gaze like lottery players eagerly awaiting the results. In the holographic projection, the reconnaissance soldiers had reached the edge of a brand-new circular mountain, and as the camera zoomed forward, an enormous pit appeared.

It was a gigantic impact crater with an unmeasurable radius; the wide-angle image could only present part of it. The crater walls were pitch black, which was not the moon soil's original color. Evidently, a previous high-energy shockwave had melted the moon soil into this black crystalline state. The crater walls, already crystallized and emitting hot smoke, had web-like cracks spreading from the impact point to the edge of the circular mountain. The cracks flickered with a faint blue glow, akin to the stars in the sky accidentally dropping into this new basin. I immediately deduced that these were burn marks left by a massive dose of ghost energy.

And at the very center of the impact point lay the culprit for this huge pit: a horribly twisted, fiercely emitting blue electric light and burning with intense white flames (burning in an oxygen-free state? I absolutely don't believe this thing is a meteorite!), vaguely cylindrical in shape, appearing to be made of metal.

"This is the first fragment that impacted," the reconnaissance soldier reported, "Probe analysis results are out… it carries ghost energy reaction! My Majesty, this is a remnant of an Empire artifact!"

"Pfft!" I was about to take a sip of water to soothe my throat, but ended up spraying it everywhere. Dingdang, who was poised at the broken sofa half, eager to practice bungee jumping, reacted nimbly, immediately conjuring a large trumpet flower on his head while bouncing around gleefully: "It's raining, it's raining!"

I mourned Dingdang's intelligence for a moment, then quickly turned to the communication device: "Get closer! Big lens! Close-up! Then tell me what that thing is!"

As I said this, the soldiers were already in action. They cautiously yet swiftly approached the twisted remains at the center of the impact crater. The remnants continued to burn fiercely, occasionally erupting with massive sparks. It looked as if a secondary explosion could happen at any moment, prompting even the seasoned veterans to act cautiously. As they closed in, the mysterious object came into clearer focus, and the reconnaissance soldier transmitted the object's first analysis data.

It was a colossal structure stretching 1.5 kilometers long and over 400 meters in diameter, with one-third buried in the crater. As for its material, it was confirmed to be made of high-strength interstellar alloy. The interior was teeming with a strong ghost energy reaction. The structure was cylindrical, with many twisted mechanical structures on its surface. Broken lines from these mechanical structures protruded, pouring out the unreleased energy within. Some crystal-like substances that had changed state flowed out from its middle, cooling mid-air into crystal columns as sharp as swords.

"Severely twisted, and it's still a general modular component," an old soldier applied brute force to pry open the alien object's shell, only to find a mess of half-melted material inside, "Your Majesty, we can't determine where this thing came from; we can only ascertain it came from a spacecraft. We need support from technicians."

"A group of scientists is already en route; wait on site," I nodded in response, then turned to Sandora, "Fortunately, it hit the shadow zone; otherwise, I'd have to go preserve world peace. Wouldn't the Americans declare it a terrorist attack if they saw the moon being hit?"

Sandora pinched my ear: "The Koreans would take responsibility for it—they always do. But enough with this nonsense; this is serious business. This is the Imperial Capital! The Capital! If we don't figure out why something like this suddenly came crashing down, I won't even be able to eat."

I was stunned: "Are you serious?"

Sandora hesitated: "Okay, I won't sleep well."

Me: "…"

"Let's see what's going on at the other two impact points later. Looks like another restless night," I shook my head as I sat on the couch, feeling the sway beneath: Visca had split the couch back with her head earlier, and the coffee table was still in two pieces… Speaking of which, what's with my bad luck? Just staying at home, and I get forceful evictions by my sister. Speaking of my sister, I focused my attention back on Visca, "Now, let's study this little girl's condition…" (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, feel free to visit qidian.com to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)