Chapter 581: Skirmish on the Sixth-Tier Floating-Land

“Thank goodness I activated Neutron-Star Fission ahead of time…”

Song Chi felt the violent tremor beneath his feet, and despite himself let out an expletive. He could easily picture the cataclysmic explosion erupting outside.

“Did we just crash into a floating-land?”

Glancing at the radar on one side, he confirmed that the Heavenly Ruin had smashed head-on into a Sea of Stars floating-land.

But because of the radar’s limited detection range, he couldn’t tell what tier this floating-land was.

One thing was certain, though—the floating-land definitely had an owner.

Even though the Xian Qin Divine Dynasty’s territory stretched nearly two hundred million light years, centuries of relentless development meant there were no unclaimed floating-lands left within its borders.

The lone good news: this was a resource-type floating-land, not a life-type. No casualties.

Song Chi didn’t dwell on it. Carefully piloting the Heavenly Ruin in its micro neutron-star form, he made a swift ascent.

He’d barely climbed a few dozen thousand meters when the roar of engines echoed from all directions. The Heavenly Ruin, now back in normal combat mode, found itself surrounded by several other battleships.

Through the exterior holo-viewer, Song Chi saw the incoming ships were all cruisers and Zhulu-class cruisers—not a single one could threaten the Heavenly Ruin.

Still, their confident encirclement hinted at a substantial background. Anyone else would’ve kept their distance after spotting a dreadnought sixteen kilometers long. Not these guys.

“This is the ‘Lu-74’ Sixth-Tier Resource Floating-Land under the Eastern Li Royal Palace of the Xian Qin Divine Dynasty! You have damaged royal property. Retrieve your ship and submit to our investigation, now!”

Hearing that, Song Chi’s eyes narrowed. He’d anticipated trouble when coming to the Xian Qin Divine Dynasty and had researched its power structure, including information on the Eastern Li Royal Palace.

The Eastern Li Royal Palace was first granted its lands a hundred thousand years ago. The first Eastern Li King allegedly became a Star River-class captain tens of thousands of years back—a true immortal powerhouse.

Realizing he’d crashed into this family’s sixth-tier resource floating-land, Song Chi felt a headache coming on.

One thing was for sure—no way did he want this incident to snowball. Without recalling his ship, he calmly explained over the speakers:

“My apologies. This was an accident during a warp jump. I assure you, I have no ill intent toward the Eastern Li Royal Palace. I’m willing to compensate for any damage—just name your price.”

His straightforward attitude seemed to satisfy the palace’s Torch Battleship crews. After all, it wasn’t every day you tangled with a dreadnought bigger than most cities—clearly, this was no ordinary guest.

But years of royal backing had made them bold. After a brief huddle, they quoted a downright absurd compensation fee.

“Ten thousand units of Sixth-Tier Floating-Land Origin?”

Song Chi couldn’t help but laugh when he heard it.

Granted, the crash had caused some damage. But there were no casualties, no destroyed ore veins, no crippled mining bases. In those circumstances, even a thousand units would’ve been a stretch—ten thousand was daylight robbery.

Not bothering to argue, Song Chi simply deployed three hundred units of Sixth-Tier Floating-Land Origin from the ship. That, he figured, was more than fair.

Though he had plenty of Origin stashed away thanks to the Market’s Spirit Synthesis Platform, that didn’t mean he was going to let himself be fleeced like a fat sheep.

After leaving the three hundred units, Song Chi didn’t hesitate—engines roaring, the dreadnought sped away from the floating-land.

“Stop right there! If you continue, I will issue an empire-wide warrant in the name of the Eastern Li Royal Palace!”

Song Chi ignored the threat. The Heavenly Ruin surged even faster toward the edge of the sky.

A warrant?

That didn’t faze him in the least. He’d already changed the visible name of the Heavenly Ruin.

“Zhejiang Shaoxing”.

“Good luck catching me—knock yourself out issuing that warrant.”

A minor hiccup cropped up as he was about to leave the floating-land. Song Chi spotted a battleship flashing toward him below. Trying to block his escape, it used some sort of advanced control system—but against the level-80 golden Blood War Stele onboard, it was like a stone vanishing in the sea. Not even a ripple.

Having shaken off pursuit, Song Chi activated the Scarlet Vault Jump Drive, leaving the floating-land—and all trouble—far behind.

Three days later, the Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang, Heavenly Ruin, and Scorching Sea Blazer docked on an official Xian Qin floating-land, where they bought a detailed map of the dynasty.

…

“According to this star chart, the Torch Judgement Court and us are separated by dozens of star systems. If we travel system by system, it’ll take nearly a decade just to reach them.”

Inside the warship magnetic communications group chat, the trio started planning their next move.

With nearly two hundred star systems under its command, the sheer scale of the Xian Qin Divine Dynasty posed a real challenge. The Torch Judgement Court—one of four great human strongholds—sat at the very heart of it: the Xian Qin Star System.

As this came up, all three of them naturally turned their gaze toward a certain system on the map.

“East Frontier Star System.”

“Let’s head for the East Frontier. It’s the hub of dozens of eastern star systems—and, best of all, it has a direct hyper-range dark energy teleportation platform straight to the Xian Qin Star System.”

“Even better, the Eastern Li Star System we’re in offers direct teleportation service to East Frontier!”

With that settled, the three of them didn’t linger. Their ships shot toward the main stargate teleportation hub in the center of the Eastern Li region.

…

Eastern Li Star System, outer space beyond the Eastern Li floating-land.

Entrance to the Eastern Li Central Stargate Teleportation Hub.

“Halt! Routine inspection. Please cooperate with the Eastern Li Royal Palace’s security team.”

Song Chi wasn’t sure if the inspection was standard or triggered by the recent incident. Either way, he wasn’t bothered.

Really?

He was the captain of the Heavenly Ruin, after all.

The inspections finished up and, as expected, all three ships were cleared to enter.

Their luck held. As soon as they bought their teleportation tickets, they were told their departure was the very next day—no waiting at all.

The next day, the three ships sped out of the East Frontier stargate teleportation hub. Before heading for the direct hyper-range platform to the Xian Qin Star System, the trio’s attention was snagged by the sprawling floating-land below.

This was the East Frontier Floating-Land—like the Eastern Li Floating-Land, it was classified as an eighth-tier life-type Sea of Stars floating-land. But while the Eastern Li had only reached that tier in the last ten thousand years, the East Frontier had long since arrived at the very pinnacle.

Size alone made all the difference.

The Eastern Li Floating-Land had only just advanced to eighth-tier and measured just a bit over two hundred thousand light years across.

The East Frontier Floating-Land, on the other hand, had been at eighth-tier for nearly two hundred thousand years. With full support from the local Torch King Court, it now spanned almost five hundred thousand light years.

Five hundred thousand light years—what did that mean?

Just one would take up almost half a whole star system.

Staring up at the colossal floating-land, Song Yan’s voice broke the silence over the group chat.

“An eighth-tier peak floating-land—if we used this to power our family’s Dragon Whale Hall, could we unleash its full potential?”

Song Chi was interested too. “With the mass of a peak eighth-tier floating-land, the sheer energy stored inside would rival a level-nine lifeform in the Sea of Stars. So, yeah, Dragon Whale Hall would certainly hit full power.”

He paused, then added:

“Of course, I’m just talking about the current black supreme-grade Dragon Whale Hall. To fully power a mythic rainbow-grade Dragon Whale Hall after its third restoration…probably not.”

His tone was a bit uncertain—the gulf between eighth and ninth-tier threats was still a bit out of reach for them.

After soaking in the awe-inspiring sight, the trio turned their attention back toward their goal.

According to what they’d learned, the direct hyper-range dark energy teleportation platform to the Xian Qin Star System lay at the core of the floating-land, still tens of thousands of light years away.

It wasn’t a problem, though. Each of their ships was outfitted with at least a silver-grade jump drive. A few jumps, and they’d be there.

The next day, intense spatial ripples spread across the starry sky outside the East Frontier Floating-Land. One after another, the three ships burst out of the warp tunnels.

“Whoa…”

Song Yan stared ahead, speechless.

Song Chi, inside the Heavenly Ruin, managed to keep himself together—but deep down, he was just as shaken.

They’d expected the hyper-range dark energy teleportation platform to look more or less like a regular stargate hub. What they saw instead defied imagination.

Before them wasn’t an ordinary transfer station but a gigantic mechanical city, hanging silently in space.

Its entire bulk was forged from superalloy, sheathed in a high-tier dark energy particle shield. The steel walls, inscribed with mysterious runes, bristled with countless Ash III anti-matter dark energy cannons. Atop the machine city loomed a supermassive orbital truth cannon, more than ten thousand kilometers wide.

The thing was so large, even a Star-Annihilator-class Ship looked like a child’s toy by comparison.

While Song Chi and Song Yan tried to process the sight, Song Wujian’s voice came over the group chat.

“If I recall, this is a Titan-I-class Space Mechanical Fortress—developed by Xian Qin Heavy Industries over tens of thousands of years. It packs tier-eight-level defenses and firepower, and with enough charge, that orbital truth cannon could unleash a tier-nine beam of pure destruction.”

While Song Wujian explained, staff inside the fortress finished verifying the identities of the three ships. The Heavenly Ruin and its companions sailed straight into the mechanical fortress.

Compared to the crowds at other long-distance stargate hubs, the inside of the fortress was eerily quiet.

But that made sense, given what the trio had just learned: every Torch Battleship using the hyper-range platform to the Xian Qin Star System had to pay one hundred units of Seventh‑Tier Floating-land Origin.

That price alone was enough to keep most visitors away.

But compared to a golden all-purpose cooldown-reduction component, it was still worth it. They stayed put.

Half a month later, a hundred captains had gathered in the fortress—the minimum needed to activate the hyper-range platform.

“Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang, Star-Annihilator-class Ship, confirm—do you wish to teleport?”

“Confirm!”

“Please pay one hundred units of Seventh‑Tier Floating-land Origin for the transfer.”

…

At the heart of the mechanical fortress, more than a hundred ships lined up atop a massive black stone platform over a hundred thousand kilometers wide.

When the staff officially activated the teleportation function, three giant dark energy reactors in the fortress’s lower levels ramped up into overdrive.

As time passed, dark energy piled up inside the black stone, building to a breaking point. Violent spatial currents shimmered above it.

In a flash, a ten-thousand-kilometer-wide pillar of dark energy shot skyward, blasting out of the fortress and slicing into distant space.

At that same moment, the hundred Torch Battleships inside began to blur and melt away—vanishing as the fortress teleported them millions of light years to the dynasty’s core.

Xian Qin Divine Dynasty, Xian Qin Star System, Xian Qin Continent.

You could say the Xian Qin Star System was the heart of the dynasty, but more accurately, the Xian Qin Continent itself was the true core. After all, the so-called Xian Qin Star System was just this floating-land—nothing else existed here.

This was the Xian Qin Continent: a peak ninth-tier life floating-land over three million light years wide. It took up the entire star system.

As the dragon-throne homeland of the dynasty, the Xian Qin Continent originally started as a peak eighth-tier floating-land, controlled by a powerful race called the Ghost-Eyed Clan some two hundred thousand years ago.

At that time, the Divine Xia Empire had already stood for millennia, expanding restlessly. Eventually, the Ying Clan’s ancestors cut their way here, defeated the Ghost-Eyed Clan, and claimed the land for their house.

Over the last two hundred thousand years, the Yings of the Pillar King clan poured everything into raising the continent to its current level.