The shattered moon was a jagged tooth of bone-white rock, its atmosphere long since stripped away by the cosmic winds of the Silver Nebula. As Fang Yuan descended, his 1st Star: Nova aura flared, a pale indigo radiance that pushed aside the micro-asteroids orbiting the lunar corpse.
His senses, now expanded to a planetary scale, detected a strange anomaly. The moon wasn't just dead; it was hollowed out. Deep within its crust, the ancient Forge-Star—a miniature white dwarf contained in a magnetic cage—was flickering like a dying candle.
Beside the forge, he found Lia.
She was suspended in a pillar of crystalline ice that vibrated with a frequency he recognized: Rank 2: Stasis Weaving. Surrounding her were three figures in silver-plated armor, their faces hidden behind masks of shifting mercury. They weren't Demons of the Abyss, but Star-Scavengers—remnants of a fallen Rank 3 civilization who had regressed into predatory nomads.
"The girl is a prime conductor," one of the Scavengers spoke, his voice transmitted via a short-range radio burst. "Her soul has been touched by the Void. If we throw her into the Forge-Star, the ignition will last another century."
Fang Yuan landed silently behind them. He didn't use his threads; he simply let his Gravity Anchor settle.
The ground beneath the Scavengers groaned. The 10x Earth-gravity he projected instantly forced them to their knees, their silver armor cracking under the sudden, invisible weight.
"You speak of souls as fuel," Fang Yuan's voice resonated through the very rock of the moon. "But you forget that a Nova consumes everything in its path."
One Scavenger managed to look up, his mercury mask reflecting Fang Yuan's indigo-black silhouette. "A... a Galactic Overlord? In this dead sector? Impossible!"
"Nothing is impossible," Fang Yuan said, stepping forward. With a flick of his finger, a Vacuum Pulse erased the air and mana in a 500-meter radius. The Scavengers gasped, their internal organs collapsing as the pressure they relied on vanished into the void.
He didn't kill them immediately. He needed their knowledge of the Forge-Star to begin his ascension to the 2nd Star.
"Lia," he whispered, touching the ice pillar. His indigo mists seeped into the crystal, unraveling the stasis threads with the precision of a master surgeon. "Wake up. Your Master has found a furnace, and it requires more than just scrap metal to ignite."