Chapter 437: A Tangle of Vines and Shadows in the Star River

When Song Chi returned to the Heavenly Ruin, it happened to be right as the jump star chart finished generating.

But after carefully reviewing the star chart, Song Chi frowned.

It was completely different from what he’d predicted.

Floating-land fragments, small void belts, asteroid belts, minor floating continents—the area seemed to have everything.

A star chart covering a thousand light years, with every oddity you could imagine. The sheer variety was surprising.

Still, Song Chi actually understood what was going on. At that moment, the Qiongtian AI brought up detailed descriptions.

[Star River Belt: A special region in the shattered Sea of Stars, swirling with unique energies and containing various celestial bodies, but rarely featuring mid-to-high grade floating continents. Overall, it’s of limited value.]

For most low-tier lifeforms, it might be a decent spot for scavenging. As long as the unique energies in the star river weren’t too extreme, the risk was low and, though opportunities might be modest, staying alive mattered more.

But to Song Chi now, a place like this just wasn’t appealing.

He stayed vigilant. With the Heavenly Ruin’s class and firepower, the drop-in point should never be some random backwater. It should’ve landed him in the territory of at least a mid or high-level civilization.

So this suggested there might be danger lurking underneath the unremarkable surface of this star river belt.

Keeping that in mind, Song Chi refused to let his guard down.

He activated the “Eye of Spirit-Seeking.” Nothing unusual popped up on the jump star chart, so maybe the detection effect would find something—perhaps some rare high-tier star sea treasures nearby.

As soon as the ability finished charging, several dots suddenly flickered on the side radar.

Compared to the floating lands, where star sea treasures littered the landscape, this star river’s treasures were pathetically scarce—and most glowed only white or blue, the lowest ranks.

He wasn’t completely uninterested, but they barely held any allure. The treasure exchange at the Ruin Market already had almost six figures of both of those kinds.

Song Chi’s eyes locked on the only red dot on the star chart.

At his level, red-tier treasures were just passable, but it was still the most valuable thing in range. Better than leaving empty-handed.

……

Three hundred light years away, the Heavenly Ruin dropped out of warp.

The warship had barely shot out of the spatial corridor, not even enough time to scan the surroundings, when the Qiongtian AI’s voice cut in.

[Warning: Gold-attribute energy detected at abnormal strength, far exceeding normal sectors. Energy shield is being eroded!]

Hearing that alert, Song Chi glanced at the ship’s shield. But from the way he quickly looked away, that gold energy didn’t pose much real threat to the warship.

Vrrrrrrm!

The engines thundered. The Heavenly Ruin blasted ahead in a single direction.

On a massive floating continent fragment, a black vine the size of a superstructure stretched out like a snake, spanning hundreds of thousands of meters. You could spot lengths of it on plenty of nearby fragments and asteroids.

A thick gold-attribute energy coiled and shimmered around the dark vine, as if the entire cluster of energy was saluting a king.

In the inky darkness of the star river close by, the Heavenly Ruin cloaked itself, peering at the enormous black vine from afar.

Inside the ship’s control room, Song Chi’s gaze swept over the information the Qiongtian AI had immediately projected.

[Name: Moyun Vine]

[Type: Starspace Flora]

[Current Tier: Peak Tier Four]

[Description: A starspace plant with dual wood and gold attributes, renowned for its formidable potential. Its signature ability, ‘Moyun Goldvine Armor,’ lets it form a flexible, contractible armor over designated biological surfaces. The armor combines superalloy-grade defense with the elasticity of wood—a dream creature to enslave for many Torch Captains. According to records, the most advanced Moyun Vine ever found was tier seven.]

“Moyun Vine, huh…”

After reading the info, Song Chi thought of the tier-five Moyun Vine Heart he’d picked up recently. Who would’ve expected to stumble into a fully-intact Moyun Vine so soon after?

“A peak tier four, that at least explains why the Heavenly Ruin dropped into this particular system.”

Thinking it through, Song Chi wondered whether to attack the Moyun Vine now—or if he should try to enslave it instead.

With the Heavenly Ruin’s power, killing this vine wouldn’t be hard at all. Starspace plants had ridiculous vitality and healing, sure, but the Myriad-Spirit Annihilation Bow—a main cannon—was tailored to beat opponents like this. Its ‘Life-bane Arrow’ trait was brutally effective.

And since this one was only tier four, not five or six, plus the Myriad-Spirit Annihilation Bow was up to level 69 with features like ‘Black Hole Collapse’ and ‘Black Hole Singular Burst,’ wiping the Moyun Vine out in one barrage wouldn’t be a problem.

But here was the problem: Was Song Chi after a clean kill?

Of course not. He wanted to enslave this peak tier-four Moyun Vine.

Other Torch Captains, even if they succeeded at enslavement, would worry about the vine’s slow growth. Unlike star beasts, starspace plants had much longer life cycles, even though a grown one could outlive any flesh creature.

But most captains didn’t live long enough to see their starspace plant mature. More often, the Moyun Vine just became an invaluable artifact-grade support beast for a stage of their career—then eventually, it’d be passed on as an heirloom.

But Song Chi was different. With his portable cultivation domain and the ‘Mystic Domain Accelerator’ trait, he could nurture the Moyun Vine rapidly and keep it ranked up to match his progress.

Given all that, this particular Moyun Vine was wildly valuable to Song Chi.

The catch was, if he couldn’t use lethal force, enslaving a starspace plant became exponentially trickier. And that was the dilemma now.

After weighing it over, he still decided to make a move.

Moyun Vine was already rare, and to encounter both a Vine Heart and a living vine so close together felt like a streak of wild luck. If he passed this up, who knew when he’d see another?

Plan made, Song Chi held back for the moment, instructing the Qiongtian AI to map out the most reliable plan for subduing the vine.

Half an hour later, the Heavenly Ruin shot forward, heading straight for the peak tier-four Moyun Vine.

The moment the warship emerged from subspace, the Moyun Vine reacted at once. Its ebony stem shifted to a pale gold hue, as though a layer of special metal armor had just slid over it.

At the same time, countless tendrils erupted from the fragments and asteroids around it. Charged with the Law of Gold, they seemed to take the shape of razor-sharp arrows.

Whizz! Whizz! Whizz!

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of sparkling gold vine arrows blasted forth, raining on the Heavenly Ruin’s black-and-white energy shield with a force far denser than any downpour.

At that moment, the “Yin-Yang Counter-Phase Annihilation Shield” lost energy at a shocking pace—the shield dropped below 90 percent in seconds and was still dropping fast.

But Song Chi didn’t panic; he knew all about the Moyun Vine’s tricks. He activated the Space-skipping Pearl right away, and the warship vanished from its original spot.

Instead of teleporting straight to the vine’s side, the Heavenly Ruin popped out on the opposite flank—just as the Myriad-Spirit Annihilation Bow finished charging. The next second, an obliteration arrow laced with destructive force sliced through space.

Worried about wiping the vine out completely, he fired a ‘Life-bane Arrow’ without stacking the ‘Black Hole Singular Burst’ or ‘Black Hole Annihilation’ traits. Even so, the Moyun Vine sensed death closing in and instantly scrambled to respond.

Streams of the Law of Gold surged out from its stem, generating a golden barrier around it while the metallic armor layer thickened.

Inside, wood-attribute energies coiled as well, ready to heal any damage in an instant.

Flash!

The obliteration arrow blazed into the golden domain. No dramatic explosion, no epic shockwave—just a flicker of dimming before the arrow pierced all the way through, burying itself deep in the vine.

As for that metal vine armor—against an arrow designed to erase vitality, it might as well have not existed.

In less than ten seconds, the Qiongtian AI reported that the Moyun Vine’s life force was down by more than half.

Its decline in spirit power also drained the metal energy swirling around it. Seizing the chance, the Heavenly Ruin’s twin main guns fired, punching two massive holes in the vine’s golden body.

Even that wasn’t the end; the underslung armor-piercing cobalt launchers on the warship fired two custom cobalt rounds straight into it.

After this brutal barrage, the Moyun Vine’s vitality plummeted even further.

Figuring the vine was just about spent, Song Chi carefully piloted the warship closer. The vine was now at its weakest—if he shone the light of enslavement now, the odds of success looked very good.

Just as the Heavenly Ruin edged closer, subtle spatial ripples suddenly trembled along the ship’s flank.

The ripples were faint—only Song Chi’s mastery over the Law of Space and his Dual Pupils trait let him spot them instantly.

His mind raced and, with the Qiongtian AI’s help, he adjusted the warship’s heading with a tiny shift.

That minute shift made all the difference: the Heavenly Ruin barely dodged one of the two sudden attacks slicing out of the void.

[Alert: Energy shield struck by external spatial cutting attack. Shield strength reduced by 12%—now at 84%.]

Even though only one attack landed, the Yin-Yang Counter-Phase Annihilation Shield still lost another 12 percent.

But Song Chi’s focus was glued to the twin rents in space at the ship’s side, not the shield warnings.

His Dual Pupils’ image crystallized in his eyes—space and light laws swirling at lightning speed within their depths.

He traced the source of those attacks; the real culprits hid deep inside the two spatial rifts.

“Crimson-Gold Shrikes—and there’s two of them…”

The attackers tried their best to hide, but with the power of Dual Pupils and the Law of Light, no trick could escape Song Chi. In a flash of shadow in the rift, he locked onto their identity.

Hiding inside the slits, launching surprise attacks on the Heavenly Ruin, were two Crimson-Gold Shrikes—worse, both were tier five.

That answer sent a chill through him.

Song Chi knew a bit about the breed—star beasts with only mid-grade bloodlines, but much like the Moyun Vine, they were dual-attribute creatures.

Whereas the Moyun Vine specialized in gold and wood, the Shrikes commanded gold and space. That made them unpredictable, always slipping through rifts to attack and vanish before anyone could react.

Their raw firepower wasn’t lacking, either—the Law of Gold gave them a nasty edge.

“Did these two Shrikes just happen to wander by and get drawn to the fighting, or do they already have a connection to the Moyun Vine?”

Song Chi stopped the ship and scanned the area, turning over the possibilities in his mind.

If it really was coincidence, fine—he could just plant a spatial beacon and come back later. But if the vine and Shrikes were linked, he’d never manage to enslave the Moyun Vine unless he dealt with them first.

And it wasn’t just speculation; in the records, connections between vines and Shrikes happened all the time.

Both had gold attributes, and the Moyun Vine could actively draw gold energies from the surroundings, spiking the energy density in the area. So it made sense—they often lived in symbiotic or even mutually supportive relationships.

His family’s records mentioned this sort of partnership more than once.

Resolute, Song Chi made up his mind.

He wasn’t letting this particular Moyun Vine escape.

Two tier-five Crimson-Gold Shrikes might have been terrifying when he only had a cruiser, but now, with the Heavenly Ruin at tier four and two tier-six enslaved beasts aboard, he could counter their spatial powers and even wipe them out if need be.

Resolved, Song Chi spun the ship around and started toward the Moyun Vine again.