Chapter 13: A bird

In the garrison hangar, where the main fleet starships are docked, serviced, and repaired, a colossal flagship, several times larger than the flagship of a scout fleet, is stationed.

An officer responsible for communications receives a message from the main communications department. After reading the message, he abruptly leaves his post and rushes towards the bridge. Though it's referred to as a bridge, it seems more appropriate to call it a throne room. A gigantic and tall throne occupies the center of this room, facing the endless void glittered with billions and trillions of stars through massive windows.

Atop this throne sits a man who is 1.5 meters tall. From a physical standpoint, he doesn't appear strong, despite being quite muscular. His size and build don't look intimidating, coupled with his average looks that are neither handsome nor ugly. Setting aside the man's appearance, the pressure he naturally exudes is no joke. After all, this man, who is also the admiral of the main fleet, is at the Daoist-sage level of cultivation.

The officer enters the bridge and stands beside the throne at the center of the room. "Admiral, we've already received the report from the scout fleet that was sent to investigate the source of the communication signal we received from the Orion Arm sector." 

After swiping on the tablet the officer was holding, a hologram displayed all the information to the admiral sitting on the throne.

"That scout fleet was wiped out? Such guts to tarnish the reputation of the empire." The admiral reacted solemnly. 

"Prepare to depart! Annihilate all who dares to defy the empire!" The admiral ordered domineeringly. 

Just a few last checks and loading of the supplies, all the starships of the main fleet embarked and entered hyperdrive travel towards the solar system. 

Earth, Xu Han's residence. Xu Han was playing a MOBA game on his smartphone. "These things that humans created are really entertaining. Not even my old empire has tiny boxes called smartphones that are capable of multiple functionalities, and you can even entertain yourself endlessly. No wonder, since the dawn of the internet age, the development of these creatures stagnated. Almost everyone is just tied up with these social media, games, and other addictive things that people with real power feed to the public. Widening the gaps in power even more than before. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer."

After fiddling with his phone, Xu Han stood up and stretched. "It's a Sunday today. I have classes tomorrow, supposedly. I doubt there'll still be one, though."

Xu Han looked at a certain point in one direction. He looked like an idiot staring at the ceiling of his house, but in truth, Xu Han could see the main fleet of the Milky Way galactic empire traveling faster than the speed of light, heading towards the solar system and Earth.

Pondering, "They'll arrive in two days at most, which is a bit too long for me. Let's speed it up a bit, shall we?"

Xu Han focused his senses and locked onto the spatial coordinates of the wormhole channel that the main fleet is using. In the next second, using his unimaginable mental strength coupled with spatial laws, two gigantic hands appeared outside this wormhole channel on the void and grabbed both ends of it. Then, he compressed the entire channel from end to end, shortening the travel time of whatever is inside the wormhole channel. 

What Xu Han did was incredibly dangerous, at least for anyone other than him. A wormhole channel is incredibly stable on the inside, but the same cannot be said for the outside, especially if it gets affected by some contact with external factors. The slightest mistake can blow up the entire wormhole channel, sending countless fragmented space blades everywhere, ripping whatever is inside the channel to shreds. Alternatively, the object inside the channel may remain unharmed, but it could be transported to an unknown distant or near place somewhere within the dimension, or it may be forever stuck within the blank void, devoid of anything.

Xu Han's control over the spatial law has already reached such a remarkable level that manipulating things that are products of spatial laws is child's play for him.

"I've already shortened the travel time to a single Earth day. Give me good entertainment." Xu Han smirked and started to play with his smartphone once again.

Meanwhile, as Xu Han was manipulating the wormhole, "Sir, the system made a recalculation and says that our travel went from 2 days down to 1 day." The navigation officer reported to the admiral.

"Are you sure about that? Isn't our system malfunctioning? Re-check everything again. There has never been an instance that the system made a recalculation during the hyper-travel." The admiral ordered with skepticism.

"There's nothing wrong with the system, sir. Our travel was indeed shortened to only 1 day. I could only conclude that something strange might've happened here with this spatial channel that we are using, causing the time to shorten. It might be one of those mysterious spatial anomalies that have also been recorded in the past." The navigating officer explained.

"Is that so? Then I guess we're lucky that we didn't suffer a terrible incident and vanish into space," the admiral replied.

Then in his mind, "Not that I'll be affected; only you ants will be the ones to die."

The admiral's confidence stems from his talent in manipulating spatial elements, aside from his talent in thunder elements. He has a stronger talent in manipulating spatial elements, hence he was confident in surviving in this dreadful wormhole channel in case anything goes wrong.

A day has passed, and the main fleet arrived just outside the solar system near the orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto, directly exiting the wormhole channel from hyperdrive.

"Based on the report, the planet they tried to investigate is the blue third planet from the star in this system. It is protected by some sort of force field or array that prevents external attacks from entering its atmosphere. Also, the number of powerhouses residing on this planet is currently unknown, aside from the recorded person covered with a dark mist. According to the estimates, this person's strength has reached the Daoist sage level, sir." The assistant behind him reported the data from the message sent by the scout fleet.

"This is going to be interesting. Prepare the Dyson sphere and extract energy from that star," the admiral replied and gave instructions.

The purpose of the energy that will be extracted from the Dyson sphere is to power up the death ray commonly used to break through force fields or arrays that might be protecting planets or certain areas. This energy weapon uses an immense amount of energy, hence the fleet has no choice but to use nearby stars as an energy source to be able to use this weapon of absolute power a couple of times until the star used as an energy source is sucked dry.

With that, three starships broke away from their platoon and approached the sun to set up the Dyson sphere and charge up the weapon. The three starships are only a couple of thousand kilometers away from the sun when space trembled, and observing the surface of the sun, a giant head poked out of it, its eyes as big as Earth's moon locked onto the three approaching starships.

Without any suspense or warning at all, the two eyes of the giant creature released a concentrated beam of primordial fire toward the three starships. It was so fast and instantaneous that even the sensors of advanced technology couldn't give warnings at all.

The three starships were obliterated on the spot without even a single dust remaining to float in space.

A majestic voice then reverberated in space, accompanied by a suffocating aura, 'You ants dare to approach my home? Did you even ask me? Provoke me once more, and I'll go to the center of this galaxy to annihilate the so-called empire of yours using my primordial flames!'

On Earth, everyone was surprised by the sudden flash of light, but because the distance is too far, none of the humans saw any explosion at all, except for the fleeting glimpse of light that suddenly appeared.

The voice and aura of the creature were also not heard and felt on Earth, most probably because the forcefield or array protecting this planet from external threats blocked all of it. The only downside is, if one were to observe closely, the protective film covering the Earth dimmed considerably from the impact of the aura pressure.

Of course, that is only limited to normal humans. Everything happening outside in the void cannot escape Xu Han and Yu Xue's eyes and ears.

"The sun star of this system is actually the home of an ancient phoenix? In this lowly mortal world? Not even the mortal realm level world has such powerhouses." Xu Han was really surprised this time around because the ancient phoenix residing on the sun already has the cultivation level of a divine ascendant, only half-step away from an immortal paragon.