In a certain world, a carbon-based race left starlit footprints across the Milky Way and numbered in the hundreds of billions.

They began in a corner called the Solar System, and bet everything on Infinite Power. They shed their old shells, like cicadas sloughing skin under moonlight.

Across hundreds of thousands of years, they honed flesh into a lattice both fragile and supreme, like glass that could bear mountains.

It was a complete respec. Every point in muscle and bone was wiped, pushed into affinity with Infinite Power, like river water diverted to one bright channel.

With that historic leap, they climbed the ladder of evolution, rung by rung, into the vast sea of stars.

They became an Infinite Power civilization that wore the galaxy like a crown of lightning.

It was their golden age. Spiral arms became district names. Countless ships stitched glittering constellations, trading travelers, materials, and goods like a loom weaving light.

Optimism felt natural, like spring wind at dawn. Humanity would keep marching deeper into the starfield, happy forever in a grand realm of equality and freedom.

Then the universe went mute to them, like a drum skin torn in a single breath.

An unshakable edifice of Infinite Power collapsed without warning. Their brilliant civilization stalled, like a city whose lights all died at once.

Chaos flooded space. The familiar sky turned dark and cold, like frost over black water.

Why? Did their evolution stray? No one held the answer, only silence thick as dust.

In the end, the Federal Council hurled Solar-3 into the Eye of the Universe, like casting a spark toward night.

They chose one representative from the people, to helm and guard the motherworld that birthed humanity and their first star-dreams. Or, if hope failed, to witness the end.

“Prosper to the peak, then get abandoned by the very Infinite Power you live on…” Yekase murmured, a shadow crossing her face like passing cloud.

Cracking that truth now was wishful thinking. At least the humans here kept human bodies. Lose Infinite Power, and they’d only drop back to the electric age.

No—this galaxy shattered like a broken plate.

It felt uncomfortably close to the Neptunians’ fate. Spacefaring species, abandoned by evolution and Infinite Power, ended in ruin, like ships wrecked on unseen reefs.

The Neptunians put all their points in survival. They drifted asleep, naked in space, like seeds on the wind. Not getting hauled home as firewood counted as a win.

In fact, Neptunian extraction kept declining every year. Too costly to mine, with no bright road ahead, like digging a well in dry stone.

But the humans in this universe ascended on Infinite Power, one per person, like flames rising off a field. They lacked bodily needs, and used mental tendrils for daily life.

It was hard to picture how they reproduced. You wouldn’t hand-craft nucleotides and do semi-conservative replication, right?

The Warden of Paradise finished his tale and returned to now. “When I first observed your activity, I was curious. You have Old Humans, dragons, and energy beings, yet live in harmony.”

“What surprised me most is your use of the Bond.”

“The Bond?”

“That Infinite Power born when partners’ hearts resonate. It exists only in ancient legend. I never thought it was real, or that you could use it across species.”

“You can cast aside racial divides and walk together, like rivers meeting at the sea.”

Got it—xenophobic currents. Yekase kept her voice mild, like silk over steel.

It was a unique strength of the Sidonia Dragon Fortress. Under Aurora’s leadership, they formed a philosopher-king ideal in miniature, like a lantern city against night.

Elsewhere wouldn’t look this rosy. But they couldn’t even resonate with fellow humans? They seemed easy to talk to. Was there a mental ravine no bridge could span?

Yekase made an offer. “Come with us. To our world. Leave this Cosmic Bubble, and you won’t be erased.”

She didn’t hope much. Miao’ao once said they’d be buried with the Federation. This giant plasmid—this Warden—wore the air of someone who had laid down his will to live.

“Thank you for the kindness, but I won’t go.”

Of course. Yekase smiled wryly, like tasting cold tea.

“My duty is to witness our final end. I must watch to the last. After that, my molecules will shatter and return to the cycle of matter.”

“If you vanish with the Cosmic Bubble, you may not return to any cycle,” Yekase warned, a thin line between her brows.

“I’m also obligated to protect mass-energy conservation in your universe,” he said, like a gatekeeper refusing a shortcut.

“Then there’s no way…”

Wait.

Statistical mass-energy conservation—Yekase had never considered this angle. If they carried spoils from the Bubble into the main world, matter would increase out of thin air.

That would break conservation, like an account that suddenly minted money.

“But we’ve brought materials back from Cosmic Bubbles all along. Why—”

Her eyes widened. The premise behind conservation is a closed system. Reverse that premise, and you get this: her universe might never have been closed.

Cosmic Bubbles.

Tiny wormholes born of dimensional distortion. Matter falling into a black hole elsewhere left residual information, projected inside the Bubble like shadows on silk.

The main world was a ball punctured with a thousand pinholes.

Return to the first question.

Why did Cosmic Bubbles appear? Within human observation, why only Earth and the Moon?

The answer was likely heavy use of Infinite Power, like repeatedly striking the same drum until the skin thinned.

In that instant, Yekase woke as if from a dream. “Infinite Power itself is a textbook break of mass-energy conservation.”

When Yekase came back to camp, Aurora and Sandryon asked what she had seen up high.

She only shook her head, like a willow shedding rain. She said nothing.

The two were surprised by her quiet. They watched her drift into her tent, steps light as dust, and exchanged looks.

Yekase holed up all afternoon and through the night. She skipped dinner; logistics brought it inside like a tray at a sickbed.

By morning she pulled the flap open and stepped out with toothbrush, paste, and enamel mug, like a soldier on routine.

As usual, she squatted by the river to wash, water flashing like fish scales.

After tidying up, she went to the command tent and laid out yesterday’s findings to Aurora, detail by detail, like placing stones in a pattern.

The revelation hit like thunder, but calm study showed reality stayed the same. Theory would quake, life would keep moving, like ants crossing a tremored field.

Infinite Power causes dimensional distortion and micro wormholes. So what? Should everyone stop using it? Even if you don’t, micro wormholes flicker and die in the micro world all the time.

Infinite Power only scales the effect, like turning ripples into waves.

So everything went on.

Reverse-engineering the effect to build controlled wormhole engines for space travel? That wasn’t their line to plow.

They would witness and bless that day when it came. In centuries, they might be common interstellar residents, but they wouldn’t walk that far road themselves.

Leave the era to those who belong to it. That’s the Longlifer way.

Exploration reached Day 23.

Confirming this parallel Earth had the same mineral makeup as the main world, the team ignored cheap veins and dug one rare-earth belt to bring home.

Day 25.

Yekase finished the bionic system diagram and handed it to Aurora. The agreed payment went by Sandryon to Liu RuoYuan, like a sealed letter crossing a river.

Day 28.

Everything neared its end. The team packed up, preparing to exit the soon-to-fade Cosmic Bubble, like campers pulling up stakes before fog swallowed the valley.

When the dimensional curtain closes, where do things inside go?

Even the Sidonia Development Company, veterans of the Bubble trade, couldn’t say. Answers scattered like leaves.

Yekase stayed for last watch. Arms folded, she stood by the curtain and gazed long at this lush world of mountains and rivers, life vibrant as spring moss.

She saw a world’s remains, bright as embers.

“May you, in a world no longer closed, find a peace and order that is yours.”

She tightened the nylon strap on her staff bag, waved at the sky like a farewell to swallows, and stepped through the curtain.

One month.

Jiang Bailu stared at the virtual streets outside the window, neon flowing like rain.

Today Ling Yi had make-up classes. Liu RuoYuan would teach her. No matter who rose up or rebelled, unless the sky fell, school went on.

Lu Yao, jobless drifter, sat beside her scrolling a phone, thumb flicking like a metronome.

Since Jiang Bailu’s passphrase checked out, Lu Yao’s barbs toward her had dulled. Or maybe she just got used to the taste.

“She’s coming back,” Jiang Bailu added, voice soft as smoke.

Lu Yao stayed silent, a stone in a stream.

“With her temperament, she’ll solo the Huaxia Branch. Cutting in and out is fine, but she won’t plan to leave. What do we say then?”

“Raid the execution ground.”

Lu Yao spoke flatly, like tapping a nail. “You’ve been with her this long. You still don’t see what she wants?”

“What?”

“A livestream of Fang Tang’s execution.”

“As the public culprit, Yekase will be on the ledger. Think she’ll keep quiet and wait to die?”

Right—the execution broadcast. Could it be—

“She’ll borrow Shadow Curtain International’s cameras and declare to all of Huaxia?” Jiang Bailu could hardly believe the words she said.

It was exactly a thing Yekase would do.

“But they won’t let her speak freely! And after that? We don’t know the execution security. How do we get in? How do we pull anyone out? We don’t even know how many cadres the Huaxia Branch has—”

Lu Yao’s hand slid into her face, a small player pressed to her nose like a button.

“Your doc in Siberia scraped the Huaxia Branch’s full cadre intel.”

“What—”

“Signed ‘Xiaose,’ a broker active for at least forty years.”

“That esports one?”

“The fighter.”

Oh—Xiaoyuan, the one who can’t play without rolling dice. Fine. She did win a championship.

Jiang Bailu was used to Yekase pulling “connections” from forgotten corners, and didn’t bother to ask why Lu Yao had the intel first. She plugged the MP3 into the computer and started reading.