The World Coordination Forum was held in the Hall of Harmonious Heavens, a structure specifically renovated for the occasion within the heart of the Imperial Capital.
It was a masterpiece of the new era's architecture. The hall was a dome of transparent spirit-glass reinforced with titanium lattice, allowing the twin suns to flood the interior with light. The floor was a mosaic of rare stones representing the continents of the world, and in the center stood a circular table large enough to seat fifty delegates.
Wei Jin sat at the table, his posture relaxed but his awareness sharpened to a razor's edge. He represented the Qinghe Engineering School and, unofficially, the entire progressive faction of the world. To his left sat Princess Li, now Empress Dowager, her hair streaked with gray but her eyes as sharp as ever. To his right was the Sect Master of the Golden Sword Sect, a stern man named Feng Jian, whose initial resistance to technology had softened after his sect's disciples began using railguns to hunt demons.
The room was a microcosm of the world's tensions.
"The emission standards are unacceptable," declared the representative from the Western Federation, slamming his fist onto the table. He was a mortal general, his chest adorned with medals, his eyes hard. "You ask us to throttle our industrial output by thirty percent? Our economy runs on spirit-steam! While Qinghe enjoys unlimited energy from its fusion reactors, we are still burning coal and low-grade spirit stones. This is economic warfare disguised as safety."
"It is survival," Wei Jin said calmly. His voice was not loud, but it carried the weight of a Spirit Severing cultivator, silencing the room. "The atmospheric spiritual density has risen by 0.05 units in the last year alone. We are becoming brighter. Louder."
"Louder to whom?" scoffed the Elder of the Crimson Fire Sect. "We are the masters of this world. Who are we hiding from? Ghosts? Legends?"
"From things that eat legends," Wei Jin replied.
The debate raged on. The Traditionalist sects argued for sovereignty and the right to cultivate freely. The mortal nations argued for economic equity. The progressive factions tried to broker a compromise involving technology transfers and tiered emission caps.
It was the messy, chaotic, frustrating business of human politics.
Wei Jin watched them, his Iron Mind analyzing the arguments, predicting the objections, formulating rebuttals. He saw the threads of pride, greed, and fear that wove through the room.
Humans, he thought, not with disdain but with a weary affection. We face extinction, and we argue about profit margins.
He was about to propose a new incentive package—subsidized Void-Damping arrays for the Western Federation—when the light changed.
The twin suns, shining brightly through the dome, dimmed.
It wasn't a cloud. It was a shadow.
A shadow so massive it swallowed the entire capital city.
The arguments stopped. Fifty heads turned upward.
Above the dome, blocking out the sky, hung a vessel.
It was not like the ancient Ark found in the desert. That had been a desperate lifeboat, a refugee ship. This was a warship.
It was shaped like a spearhead, sleek and aggressive, its hull a matte grey that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was at least three miles long, hovering silently in the upper atmosphere, defying gravity with an ease that made the Spirit-Steam engines look primitive.
The air pressure in the hall dropped. The protective formations of the capital—arrays that had stood for a thousand years—shattered with a sound like breaking glass.
Panic erupted.
"Attack!" the General screamed, reaching for his sidearm.
"Shields!" Feng Jian roared, his Golden Sword flying out of its sheath.
"Silence!" Wei Jin's command was a pulse of Spirit Severing will. It slammed into the minds of everyone in the room, forcing them into their seats. "Do not provoke it."
He stood up, his eyes fixed on the leviathan above.
His perception scanned it. The technology was advanced—far beyond anything Qinghe possessed. The energy signature was tight, contained, efficient. It wasn't leaking spiritual radiation; it was utilizing it with 100% efficacy.
"It's not the Silencers," he whispered to the Empress Dowager.
"How do you know?" she asked, her hands trembling.
"Because we're still alive."
The Silencers struck from orbit with beams that bypassed matter. This ship had parked. It wanted something.
A hatch opened on the underside of the vessel. A beam of blue light shot down, striking the plaza outside the Hall of Harmonious Heavens.
"We go out," Wei Jin said. "To meet them."
"Are you mad?" the Crimson Fire Elder shouted.
"If they wanted us dead, we would be ash," Wei Jin said. He walked toward the doors. "If they want to talk, we listen."
Reluctantly, terrified, the delegates followed him.
—————
The Arrival
The plaza was silent. The Imperial Guard had formed a perimeter, their modern assault rifles and enchanted spears leveled at the center of the square.
The blue beam faded.
Standing on the cobblestones was a group of figures.
In the center was a young man. He looked human, mostly. He was tall, lithe, wearing a uniform of dark blue fabric that shimmered with integrated circuitry. His hair was a shock of white, cut short. His face was handsome, arrogant, bored.
Flanking him were four robots.
These were not the clunky automatons of the Qinghe Engineering School. These were works of art. Liquid metal limbs, floating torsos, eyes that glowed with a cold, red intelligence. They hovered silently, weapons tracking the guards with impossible speed.
But it was the young man who drew every eye.
Specifically, the top of his head.
Twitching slightly in the breeze were two triangular ears, covered in soft white fur.
And behind him, a long, feline tail lashed back and forth.
"Cat ears?" muttered the Western General, his voice incredulous.
The young man stepped forward. He didn't walk; he blurred. One moment he was by his ship's beam, the next he was standing ten feet from Wei Jin.
The pressure hit them.
It wasn't the crushing weight of spiritual power. It was the sharpness of intent. This being was a predator.
Wei Jin analyzed him instantly.
[Target Analysis][Species: Unknown (Humanoid Variant)][Cultivation Level: Spirit Severing (Mid-Stage)][Age: Approx. 80 years][Threat Level: Extreme]
He was young. Younger than Wei Jin. And he was stronger.
The young man looked around the plaza, his nose wrinkling as if he smelled something foul. He looked at the trembling guards, the terrified politicians, the haughty sect masters clutching their swords.
Finally, his gaze landed on Wei Jin.
His eyes were vertical slits, golden and piercing. He smiled, revealing canines that were just slightly too sharp.
"So," he said. His voice was melodic, amplified by some unseen technology so that the entire city heard him. "This is the source of the noise."
He looked at Wei Jin. "You're the big fish in this little pond, aren't you? The only one who isn't wetting his pants."
Wei Jin bowed slightly, a gesture of equal to equal. "I am Wei Jin. President of the Qinghe Engineering School. To whom do we have the honor of speaking?"
The young man laughed. It was a bark of genuine amusement.
"Honor? Don't flatter yourself, primitive. I am Commander Zale of the Felixian Dominion. Third Fleet, Patrol Division."
He paced back and forth, his tail twitching.
"Listen up, you dumb humans," Zale announced, addressing the crowd but looking at the sky. "I don't care about your little wars. I don't care about your pathetic sects or your adorable little steam engines. You can kill each other until the suns burn out for all I care."
He stopped and pointed a finger at the ground.
"But I do care about noise."
He tapped the side of his head. A holographic projection appeared in the air above him—a chart showing a rising red line.
"This is your planet's energy emission signature for the last fifty years. See that spike? That was your little atomic firecracker. See this curve? That's your industrial revolution."
He glared at them.
"You are getting loud. You are leaking spiritual radiation like a broken reactor. And in this neighborhood, noise attracts… pests."
The crowd murmured. They didn't understand. But Wei Jin did.
"The Silencers," Wei Jin said.
Zale looked at him, surprised. "Oh? The monkey knows the name? Impressive."
He walked up to Wei Jin, invading his personal space. He smelled of ozone and antiseptic.
"Yes. The Silencers. The Void-Eaters. The Galactic Janitors. Whatever you want to call them. They patrol this sector. And my home system is only four light-years away."
Zale bared his teeth.
"If you attract them here, they won't just eat you. They'll scan the local cluster. They'll find my home. And I don't want a stupid neighbor to ruin my life."
He poked Wei Jin in the chest. It was a physical poke, but it carried the weight of a mountain. Wei Jin's Reality Editing flared automatically to disperse the force, keeping him grounded.
Zale's eyes widened slightly. "Oh. You have some tricks. Good."
He stepped back.
"Consider this your first and only warning. Keep it down. If your energy signature goes higher than Level 4 on the Galactic Scale—and you're currently at Level 3.8—I won't wait for the Silencers."
He gestured to the massive ship above.
"I will glass this planet myself. I will burn your atmosphere and crack your crust. I will erase you to save my own people. Do you understand?"
The silence in the plaza was absolute.
"We understand," Wei Jin said. "We have been trying to limit the emissions. We have developed masking technologies."
"They're garbage," Zale sneered. "I saw through your 'Void-Damping' arrays from the edge of the system. You're trying to hide a bonfire with a paper napkin."
He reached into his uniform and pulled out a small, metallic disk. He tossed it to Wei Jin.
"This contains the specifications for a Class-C Planetary Cloak. It's old tech, obsolete in the Dominion, but it's better than whatever rocks you're banging together. Build it. Install it. Use it."
Wei Jin caught the disk. It felt warm.
"Why help us?" Wei Jin asked.
"I'm not helping you," Zale spat. "I'm putting a muffler on a noisy generator. If you can't build it in five years, I'll come back and finish the job."
He turned to his robots. "Let's go. This air smells like unwashed monkeys."
As he stepped into the blue beam, he looked back at Wei Jin one last time. His expression softened, just a fraction.
"You're walking a thin line, human. You want to ascend, but you're afraid to fly. Make a choice. Grow up, or shut up."
The beam retracted. The figures vanished.
The massive ship engines flared—a silent pulse of gravitational distortion. In a blink, it accelerated upward, vanishing into the clouds in seconds. The sonic boom arrived a moment later, shaking the city again.
Wei Jin stood alone in the center of the plaza, holding the alien disk.
The crowd erupted into chaos.
"Aliens!" "Demons!" "Beasts!"
Wei Jin didn't hear them. His mind was racing.
Four light-years away.
That was close. In cosmic terms, it was next door.
The Felixian Dominion.
A civilization of beast-human hybrids. Advanced. Powerful. Spirit Severing cultivators acting as mere patrol commanders.
Class-C Planetary Cloak.
He gripped the disk tighter.
We have neighbors, he thought. And they are terrified of the same thing we are.
—————
The Aftermath
The World Coordination Forum resumed, but the agenda had changed.
There was no more arguing about profit margins. No more debates about sovereignty. The existence of an extraterrestrial threat—one that had just threatened to "glass the planet"—had a way of focusing the mind.
The Western General was pale. "He… he had a tail."
"He was stronger than the Sect Master," the Crimson Fire Elder whispered. "Did you feel his intent? He could have killed us all with a thought."
Wei Jin took the podium. He placed the disk on the table.
"This," he said, his voice calm, "is our survival."
He looked at the delegates.
"We are not alone in the universe. We knew this from the ancient records. But now we have seen it. There are civilizations out there that view us as a noise complaint. And there are predators that view us as prey."
He activated the disk. A holographic schematic projected into the air above the table—a complex web of satellites, ground stations, and atmospheric dispersers.
"This is the technology he gave us. A Planetary Cloak. It will mask our spiritual signature. It will hide us from the Silencers. And it will satisfy our neighbor."
"Can we build it?" Princess Li asked.
"With our current resources? No," Wei Jin admitted. "It requires materials we do not mass-produce. It requires coordination we have never achieved. It requires every nation, every sect, every factory on this planet to work together."
He leaned forward.
"We have five years. If we fail, Zale returns. And I do not think he makes idle threats."
The vote was unanimous.
The Global Defense Initiative was born.
—————
The Analysis
Back in Qinghe, Wei Jin retreated to his cavern.
He handed the disk to Zero for analysis.
"Decrypting…" the artificial soul hummed. "Language structure: Felixian Standard. Translation matrix: Establishing… Done."
Wei Jin dove into the data.
Zale hadn't just given them a blueprint for a cloak. The disk contained a treasure trove of incidental data. Cultural logs. Navigational charts. Technical manuals for the maintenance of the cloak.
Wei Jin learned about the Felixians.
They were a race of uplifted felines. Evolved from apex predators on a high-gravity world. They valued strength, territory, and elegance. They were part of a loose coalition of "Hiding Civilizations"—worlds that had survived the Silencers by keeping their heads down.
They weren't evil. They were pragmatic. They survived by being ruthless about noise discipline.
Wei Jin also analyzed Zale himself.
Spirit Severing Mid-Stage. Age 80.
It was terrifying. Wei Jin was nearly two hundred, and he had barely reached Early Stage Spirit Severing. Zale was a prodigy among prodigies. Or perhaps, the Felixian cultivation methods were simply superior.
"Or their resources," Wei Jin mused. "Four light-years away… their system must have a higher ambient spiritual density."
He looked at the schematic for the Cloak.
It was brilliant. It didn't just block energy; it recycled it. It captured the waste radiation from factories and cultivators and fed it back into the planet's ley lines. It would actually increase the ambient qi density on the surface while hiding it from space.
"It's a greenhouse," Wei Jin realized. "It keeps the heat in."
This was good. Higher density meant faster cultivation.
But it also meant that once the cloak was up, there was no going back. If the cloak failed, the accumulated energy would blast out into space like a flare, instantly alerting every predator in the sector.
"We are building a pressure cooker," Wei Jin said.
He sat down on his platform.
"Zero. Initiate Simulation: Felixian Diplomatic Contact."
He needed to know more about his neighbors. Were they all like Zale? Were there factions? Could they be traded with? Could they be allies against the Silencers?
He entered the simulation.
He found himself on the bridge of a Felixian ship. He wasn't Wei Jin; he was a diplomat. He faced a council of cat-eared elders.
"Why should we not destroy you?" an elder asked.
"Because we are useful," Wei Jin's avatar replied. "We are inventive. We solve problems you have given up on."
"You are noisy monkeys," another hissed.
The simulation played out a thousand times. In most, Earth was destroyed. In some, Earth became a vassal state, a slave colony.
But in a few—rare, precious few—Earth became a partner.
Wei Jin exited the simulation.
Five years.
He had five years to turn the planet into a fortress that even a cat-man would respect.
—————
The Domestic Reaction
Wei Jin found his family in the main hall. They had seen the broadcast.
Wei Long, now twenty, was pacing. His eyes were wide with excitement, not fear.
"Did you see the ship?" he asked. "The drive system? It didn't use thrust. It manipulated the gravitational constant. I saw the distortion waves!"
"Focus, Long," Wei Jin chided gently. "The ship is impressive. The threat is real."
"But the tech, Father! If we can reverse engineer that drive…"
"One thing at a time."
Ruyi was quiet. She sat by the window, looking at the stars.
"Beast cultivators," she murmured. "I always thought the Thousand Beast Sect were playing at being animals. But these… they are the animals. And they have conquered the stars."
"They are just another civilization," Wei Jin said. "Stronger, yes. Older. But not gods."
"Zale was strong," Ruyi said. "Stronger than me. Stronger than you."
"For now," Wei Jin said.
He looked at his family. They were frightened, yes. But they were also energized. The existence of aliens made the world bigger. It made the petty squabbles of the empire seem insignificant.
"We have a new curriculum," Wei Jin announced. "Wei Long, you are leading the team to decode the gravitational drive data from the disk. Wei Lan, you are integrating the Cloak designs into the global grid. Wei Feng, you are retraining the defense forces to fight… aerial threats."
"And you?" Lin Mei asked.
"I am going to cultivation," Wei Jin said.
He had a theory.
Zale had sneered at them. Called them primitive.
But Zale had also given them the disk.
Why?
If he really wanted to silence them, he could have done it. A single asteroid redirected at the planet would have solved his noise problem permanently.
"He wants us to succeed," Wei Jin realized. "He's lonely."
The Felixians were hiding in the dark, just like everyone else. They were terrified.
If Earth could stand up… if Earth could become strong… maybe they wouldn't have to hide alone.
Wei Jin went to his chamber.
He activated the panel.
[CULTIVATION SYSTEM v4.0][Project: PLANETARY CLOAK - Progress: 0% -> 15% (Blueprint Acquired)][Project: FELIXIAN DIPLOMACY - Initiated]
He closed his eyes.
The universe was full of monsters. But it was also full of neighbors.
And neighbors could be managed.
—————
End of Chapter Two, Book Five