The night sky above Beiluo was blocked by the purple shimmer of the Spirit Barrier, but inside the Stellarium—the newly renovated observatory in the Polytechnic University—the view was clear.
Jiang Chen stood with Ye Bai and a group of young mortal students. The holographic projector in the center of the room displayed a spinning globe. It was blue, covered in clouds and oceans, but the continents were shaped differently than the maps Ye Bai knew.
"This is our world," Jiang Chen said, zooming out. "We call it the Great Spirit World. The Ancients called it Terra-Nova."
He spun the hologram further out. A grey, cratered sphere appeared, orbiting the blue planet.
"And that," Jiang Chen pointed, "is not the Palace of Chang'e. It is not the bed of the Moon Goddess. It is a rock. Diameter: 3,474 kilometers. Gravity: 16% of standard. It is a satellite."
Ye Bai stared at the moon. "A rock? But the legends say the Moon Essence comes from a divine tree."
"The 'Moon Essence' is reflected solar radiation," Jiang Chen tapped the console. The view zoomed out further, showing the Red Planet (Mars), the Gas Giant (Jupiter), and the Ringed Planet (Saturn).
"Look at the constellations, Ye Bai. The Tiger. The Dragon. The Spoon. They match the star charts of the Pre-Era civilization. We are living on the same planet they did, just... broken by time and Qi."
One of the students raised a hand. "Administrator, if the Moon is just a rock... why does the Ancient Data say there is a base there?"
"Because," Jiang Chen smiled, "before the Qi came, men walked on it. They built a house there. And they left the lights on."
High above the atmosphere, far beyond the reach of the Spirit Barrier or the clouds, a structure drifted in the silent vacuum.
It looked like a floating island made of white jade, but underneath the magical facade, there were thrusters and solar arrays. This was the Star Palace, the observation post of the Upper Realm Envoys.
Envoy Azure sat on a throne that doubled as a sensor interface. He was watching the purple dome covering the Northern Region of the blue planet below.
"The barrier holds," Azure reported into a glowing communication crystal. "The mortal ants are trapped. They will starve soon."
Beside him, Envoy Crimson was looking at a different screen—one that showed heat signatures.
"Are they starving?" Crimson frowned. "Look at the thermal output of their city. It has increased. They are generating massive amounts of heat. And light. They turned night into day."
"Desperation," Azure scoffed. "They are burning their furniture to stay warm."
Suddenly, the proximity alarms of the Star Palace blared. Not a magical chime, but a harsh, mechanical buzzer left over from the station's original construction thousands of years ago.
"Contact!" Crimson shouted. "Objects leaving the planetary orbit! Are they attacking us?"
Azure zoomed the view. He saw hundreds of small, metallic cylinders ejecting from the ancient "Sky-Net" satellites that orbited lower than the station.
"They aren't firing at us," Azure realized, confused. "They are firing... back down?"
On the ground, outside the purple barrier, the disciples of the Myriad Swords Sect were miserable.
The siege had lasted a month. While the Elders claimed they were starving out the demons, the reality was grim for the low-ranking disciples. The blockade had disrupted trade routes. Food prices in the Sect territories had tripled.
Disciple Li sat by a campfire, gnawing on a dry ration cake that tasted like sawdust. He watched the purple dome of Beiluo in the distance.
"I heard they are eating each other in there," Li whispered to his sworn brother. "I heard the Iron Prince grinds up babies to fuel his machines."
"At least they have meat," his brother grumbled, stomach rumbling. "We haven't had pork in three weeks. The Elders get the spirit fruit. We get the crumbs."
Suddenly, a whistling sound cut through the night air.
"Incoming!" Li shouted, diving for cover. "Artillery!"
But there was no explosion.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Hundreds of metallic canisters, slowed by parachutes, slammed into the ground around the Sect's encampment. They were painted bright orange.
Silence fell. The disciples waited for poison gas. They waited for fire.
Nothing happened.
Li crawled forward, his sword drawn. He approached the nearest canister. It had a latch. Written on the side in bold, common script were the words: "COURTESY OF IMPERIAL INDUSTRIES."
"It's a trap," his brother warned.
Li was hungry. He popped the latch.
The canister hissed and opened.
Inside, there were no bombs. There were vacuum-sealed packages.
Li picked one up. It was soft. He tore it open. The smell of Spiced Beef and White Rice hit him like a physical blow. It was a self-heating ration pack, steaming hot.
"Meat..." Li whimpered.
He dug deeper. There were bottles of clear, sweet water. There were bars of chocolate. And at the bottom, small, cheap radios.
"What is this?" his brother asked, staring at the bounty.
Li turned on the radio.
"...Citizens of the Alliance. Your Elders tell you we are starving. They tell you we are monsters. But ask yourself... why are we the ones feeding you?"
The voice of Jiang Chen was calm, reasonable, and utterly devastating.
"We have so much food in Beiluo, we ran out of warehouse space. So, please. Have a snack. We baked it fresh this morning in our hydroponic towers."
Across the siege line, chaos erupted.
It wasn't a battle. It was a riot. Disciples threw down their swords to scramble for the chocolate. Elders tried to stop them, shouting about "poisoned minds," but you cannot argue with a starving man holding a self-heating beef bowl.
"It's real!" a disciple shouted, his mouth full of synthetic silk-smooth chocolate. "It tastes better than the Sect meals!"
"They have so much they are throwing it at us!" another cried. "Why are we fighting them? They are rich!"
In the Administrator's Office, Ye Bai watched the drone feed of the chaos.
"You didn't drop bombs," Ye Bai noted, shaking his head in disbelief. "You dropped lunch."
"A hungry soldier fights for his general," Jiang Chen said, sipping his coffee. "A fed soldier questions him."
He looked at the holographic globe again.
"The blockade is broken, Ye Bai. Not physically, but ideologically. By tomorrow morning, half those disciples will be deserting to the nearest outpost to trade their swords for a meal ticket."
He tapped the Moon on the display.
"The ground is secured. The Envoys in the sky watched that drop. They know we have orbital capabilities."
"So, do we go to the Moon now?" Ye Bai asked, looking at the grey rock.
"Not yet," Jiang Chen zoomed in on a specific crater on the moon—Tycho Crater. "The Ancient Base is there. But to get there, we need a ship that can cross the void."
He turned to the STC Database.
"I don't want to build a rocket that throws itself away. I want a Space Elevator."