In the imperial capital, within Yandong Garden.
It was Saturday, bathed in bright sunshine. Many elderly residents in the neighborhood were strolling downstairs with young children. Most of these seniors were faculty, staff, or family members from Jingda. They carried a gentle, amicable air, smiling and exchanging pleasantries whenever they crossed paths before continuing their leisurely strolls under the spring light.
The children were lively and had no patience for slow walks. They darted all over the place—some chattering beneath leafy, verdant trees with neighborhood playmates, others dashing into the park to romp and frolic with friends. Crisp laughter carried far through the warm spring day.
"These kids only know how to cause a ruckus! Far too naughty," an old man remarked, shaking his head helplessly.
"Haha, children are just like that. Loving to play and romp is their nature."
"Loving to play isn't a bad thing. What worries me is when they play so wildly that they refuse to take their studies seriously at school. Just yesterday, my little Bao's homeroom teacher called, telling me to discipline him properly. Sigh, what can I do? His parents are busy at work, and I was re-hired by the university to teach classes. Where would I find the time to keep after him?"
"You're just far too set on wishing for your son to become a dragon and your grandson to become a prodigy. A person only lives once—isn't happiness the whole point? If you pressure him now and deprive him of joy in childhood, it'll be even harder for him to feel happy when he grows up. Besides, your family's situation isn't bad at all. You can easily provide him a safety net. Don't overthink it."
"Pardon me, but I beg to differ. Though a person is born to experience the joys of life, one must also create value uniquely one's own for this life to hold meaning. Furthermore, our entire family graduated from Jingda. If he fails to test into Jingda in the future, where will I put my old face?"
"Haha, you don't seriously think an aptitude for studying is purely hereditary, do you? Take Huang Tian, who just moved into our neighborhood—his talent certainly wasn't inherited, was it?"
"Oh, speaking of Young Professor Huang, I haven't seen him around the neighborhood yet. Doesn't he usually stay cooped up inside without coming out?"
"That's normal. Folks doing pure mathematics research often shut themselves in a room for months whenever they hit a difficult problem. He's already among the better ones; I still run into him on the Jingda campus once in a while."
With their hands behind their backs, the seniors strolled along at an easy pace. Suddenly, one of them let out a surprised murmur. "Isn't that Young Professor Huang over there?"
The others looked up and saw a young man in a light beige jacket walking along a pebble pathway.
"It really is him!"
"It's rare to see him out and about."
"This young fellow is handsome—two shades handsomer than I was back in the day. I wonder if he has a girlfriend? My grandniece..."
"All right, all right, save it. He has a girlfriend. She's currently studying for her master's degree at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Both of them did their undergraduate studies at Changda. My granddaughter was heartbroken over that for quite a while—"
The chatter and laughter of the elderly residents reached his ears, but Huang Tian simply followed the pebble path into the neighborhood park. He sat down on a brown bench, leaning halfway back against it as he soaked in the warm sunlight.
"Young Teacher Huang?"
"Professor Huang, you're out enjoying the sun too? It's rare bumping into you in the neighborhood. When you have time, come over to my place for a meal! We're all neighbors."
"Come on, Xiaolin, say hello to Professor Huang. Call him Big Brother—"
From time to time, people in the park approached to speak with him. Huang Tian replied with a smile, occasionally patting a few children on the head.
Once they had dispersed, Huang Tian looked up toward the sky, quietly pondering. *Since returning from the nightmare world, my cultivation predictably stepped into the Dharma Idol realm.*
*With my true body stepping into the Dharma Idol realm, my innate ability underwent another change. Though it is only a small tweak, allowing me to divide an extra wisp of spiritual thought to descend into another realm, it is still quite useful to me—*
Previously, in order to travel to the Five Directions Realm, he had no choice but to withdraw the wisp of spiritual thought from the late Han world. If it were now, there would be no need for such compromise; he could entirely divide a second wisp of spiritual thought to descend into the Five Directions Realm.
*Additionally, with my true body's current realm, all technological weaponry on Blue Star has become useless against me. Even a high-yield hydrogen bomb could not possibly get close to me, let alone harm me.*
*Furthermore, according to my recent investigations, there are no immortal cultivators, superpowered individuals, or extraterrestrials on Blue Star. Therefore, I can essentially be considered invincible.*
*However, there is still one place—*
His gaze shifted toward distant space, settling upon the Moon.
In countless legends, the Moon had always been shrouded in mystery. Some claimed immortals, gods, and monsters dwelled there; others said it was an alien base—no matter what it truly was, a look in person would settle it.
With this thought, he hesitated no longer. Standing up, a layer of immortal radiance naturally swirled across his body, completely concealing him from all sight and any conceivable detection. Then, with a gentle tap of his toes, his entire person transformed into a streak of flowing light, rocketing straight toward the clouds!
Flying at high altitude, fierce winds whipped around him. The temperature plunged rapidly as layer upon layer of clouds was pierced through by his ascent.
As he climbed higher, the sky shifted from azure to deep blue, and then to an inky indigo. This was already the stratosphere. Standing here, an expansive blanket of clouds could be seen unfurled below, and gazing into the distance, one could spot massive airliners cruising steadily along.
Huang Tian did not linger, continuing upward through the mesosphere, the thermosphere, and the exosphere—
When he fully entered outer space, his first impression was silence. Everything was plunged into an infinite, deathly stillness.
His second impression was that space was indeed brutal. It was inundated with solar electromagnetic radiation and cosmic rays of every kind—a purely hostile environment of intense radiation. If an ordinary mortal remained here for any extended period, their physiological functions would inevitably fail, leaving them unable to survive for long.
"So this is Blue Star—"
Huang Tian lowered his head to gaze at the planet below. White clouds drifted lazily, veiling vast expanses of ocean, while the contours of continents peeked through the gaps in the clouds, dotted with green forests and yellow deserts.
The entire planet resembled a blue glass marble, its outer rim shimmering with a soft, pearl-like halo.
This was his first time truly laying eyes on Blue Star in this manner. In the past, he had only known its general appearance through books and television. Looking at it now from space, the feeling was profoundly different.
After observing it for a moment, an emotion welled within his heart. On the scale of the universe, humanity was simply too minuscule.
Beneath his feet, upon the night side of Blue Star, the lights of countless cities clustered into glowing swathes. They resembled silver-white and golden dust scattered across a black curtain, imparting a remarkably warm and tangible feeling.
For this signified that people were there—humanity existed there, and civilization thrived there.
Yet raising his head toward the infinitely distant expanse, one could see the Milky Way unfurling majestically, with innumerable stars coalescing into a river of white light stretching across the pitch-black celestial vault.
Beneath his feet lay human civilization, rising with the sun and resting at dusk.
Above his head were stars measured in spans of tens of millions or billions of years.
Standing in outer space, Huang Tian felt as if he stood in the crevice between human time and cosmic time.
In a single thought, he could sense dawn and dusk; in a single instant, he could gaze upon eternity.
A faint melancholia naturally arose in his heart. Yet following that melancholia came an even firmer resolve toward the Dao.
Without cultivation, a mortal life spanned no more than a century.
If one embarked upon the path of cultivation, it could be centuries, millennia, tens of thousands of years, billions of years, or even eternal immortality!
When that time came, what would it matter if the stars were ancient and everlasting?
A blink of my eye would mark the birth and demise of a universe—
Calming his mind, Huang Tian turned his head toward the Moon, which was not exceedingly far away, and resumed his flight!
The Moon was over three hundred thousand kilometers away from Blue Star. Even with Huang Tian's flying speed, reaching it would still take some time.
As he flew, he mused to himself. *Setting aside the universe, an entire star system alone is far too vast. Before attaining True Immortality, there is no need to consider exploring other planets—*
The journey itself was thoroughly monotonous. After all, the space environment was virtually uniform, devoid of any variety.
After a long while, the Moon finally loomed ahead.
At a glance, it conveyed a hollow sense of barren desolation. Its surface was pockmarked with craters, larger rings encircling smaller ones, looking like a patch of mud that had been stamped repeatedly.
The color was a grayish brown. Areas hit directly by sunlight were blindingly bright, while shadowed areas were pitch-black as ink.
Taking a single stride, Huang Tian landed weightlessly upon the Moon, without kicking up even a speck of dust.
*This place truly is desolate.*
Casting his gaze across the terrain, Huang Tian shook his head silently. He then rose into the high sky and circled the Moon, releasing his vast divine sense to sweep over the surface in a mighty wave.
Powdery lunar soil, rigid bedrock, low mountain ridges, impact craters of every kind—
After sweeping through the far side of the Moon as well, Huang Tian finally came to a halt, standing atop a piece of dry, hardened rock. "Sure enough, nothing out of the ordinary. Well, no, that's not quite right—at least I spotted a few lunar rovers."
In particular, on the far side of the Moon where he currently stood, there was Xia's Yutu-2. At this moment, it was actively operating, crawling along at a snail's pace.
It truly was at a snail's pace.
Moving no more than a few centimeters per second.
Of course, this was entirely understandable. The lunar environment was brutally harsh and the terrain was complex, riddled everywhere with meteorite craters and rocks. If it did not move slowly, it could easily sustain damage.
Apart from several lunar rovers belonging to major nations, the entire Moon showed no anomalies whatsoever.
Huang Tian paused in thought, then extended his divine sense as deeply underground as possible, sweeping through the regolith and the deep subterranean bedrock—
"Still nothing."
Huang Tian thought to himself, *It really is just an intensely tedious, lifeless celestial body. But that is for the best. If it truly were the dwelling of immortals and demons, or an alien outpost, it would only be a headache.*
Then again, thinking it through, such possibilities had always been unlikely. If either were the case, how could Blue Star have remained so peaceful and ordinary?
Having confirmed that the Moon was free of bizarre anomalies, Huang Tian set his mind at ease. Looking back at distant Blue Star, it was time to return!
With a shift of his body, he shot away from the Moon like a streak of flowing light, crossing the boundless expanse of space as he headed back toward Blue Star.
It was another dull and monotonous journey. While flying, Huang Tian quietly studied several cultivation methods and numerous secret arts he had obtained from soul-searching Fu Di.
Time slipped past, and finally, Blue Star came into view.
This time, Huang Tian did not cast any spell to evade detection as he had upon departure. Instead, he flew straight toward Blue Star without the slightest concealment!
Very quickly, satellites across nations detected a "humanoid unidentified flying object" piercing the atmosphere, plunging swiftly toward the surface.
In an instant, an uproar broke out on all sides!
First, because this "object's" flight speed was absurdly fast, far exceeding every known craft on Blue Star.
Second, it was actually humanoid!
A human shape!
This was utterly preposterous!
"What on earth is that thing?" Inside NASA in the United States, experts and researchers held their heads in their hands as they stared at the blurry images of the humanoid flying object transmitted by satellite, their eyes filled with utter disbelief.
"Could it be an extraterrestrial? But even if aliens arrived on Blue Star, shouldn't they be piloting a spacecraft?"
"Couldn't it be some technology beyond our imagination? For example, a humanoid mecha capable of flying through space?"
"You might as well say it's God!"
"Why couldn't it be God?"
"Fuck you! I'm not joking around with you! Mobilize all other satellites and radars immediately—track that thing's movements at all times!"
"Ahem, yes, sir!"
While NASA was gripped by shock and dread, relevant agencies in other nations were in a similar state.
All manner of resources were deployed to monitor the humanoid unidentified flying object's trajectory.
Yet the ones scrambling the most were the researchers at CNSA, because they discovered that the object appeared to be heading straight for Xia!
"What exactly is it?! It couldn't possibly be some high-tech weapon aimed at us, could it?"
"Impossible. If another country had launched a weapon, we would have detected movement long ago—"
"It's too fast! The satellites can't capture a clear image at all!"
"Never mind whether the images are clear! Keep a tight lock on it, map its general trajectory, and see where it's going to hit. I'll contact leadership immediately. Your job right now is to stay steady. Don't panic! Whether this thing is an alien, a meteorite, or some weapon, stay calm!"
"Understood!"
"..."
Having sequentially pierced through the exosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, and troposphere, Huang Tian came to a stop several hundred meters in the air, quietly hovering above the city.
"That thing stopped! It halted midair—it didn't crash into the ground!" someone shouted inside an emergency command center.
With those words, everyone present breathed a small sigh of relief. The fact that the object had suddenly braked to a halt instead of plummeting straight down basically ruled out the possibility of it being some special, catastrophically destructive high-tech weapon.
A broad-faced, middle-aged man said calmly, "Are the drones in position? Send two over, no more."
"Yes!"
With the order given, two drones rapidly climbed into the sky, flying toward the humanoid unidentified flying object.
*Buzz, buzz—*
Accompanied by a whirring hum, the two drones approached swiftly. Huang Tian allowed them to draw close. Roughly a minute later, the two drones hovered steadily about a dozen meters in front of him.
Facing the cameras, the corners of Huang Tian's mouth curved slightly upward as he nodded in greeting.
The video feed was transmitted simultaneously back to the command center. Everyone who witnessed this felt an electric shock race from their tailbone to the top of their scalp, making their entire bodies shudder!
This "thing" was actually a human!
Not some humanoid flying craft—it was purely a human being!
A person, relying on nothing at all, had plunged straight toward the ground from outer space at extreme speed, and just before hitting the earth, had braked abruptly to hover suspended in midair!
How utterly preposterous was this!
More importantly, nearly everyone present recognized who was smiling at them on the screen.
"Huang Tian?!"
"Professor Huang!"
Every single person stared wide-eyed, frozen in place, lost in stunned silence for a very long time!
Chapter 180