The vacuum of space was no longer cold to Fang Yuan. To his new, Rank 3 physiology, the void felt like a lukewarm bath. His skin, now a composite of Liquid Alloy 72 and the Solar-Core of Kaelen Vance, pulsed with a rhythmic, indigo light.
Behind him, Mira floated within his Gravitational Anchor. He had wrapped her in a thin membrane of oxygen and pressure—not out of kindness, but because her "Destiny Threads" were still vibrating, pointing toward the next stage of his evolution.
"You... you killed them all," Mira's voice crackled through the telepathic link, broken and hollow. "Millions... billions... gone into your gullet."
"They were never alive, Mira," Yuan replied, his voice echoing like a shifting tectonic plate. "They were just stray mana-particles lent to them by the universe. I simply collected the debt."
Suddenly, a flickering holographic screen manifested in the void. Ethan Vance, now a fragmented ghost within the remains of the satellite network, looked at Yuan with a mixture of horror and cold calculation.
"You think you've won, Fang Yuan? You've consumed your base of operations. You are a king of nothing. Without the Celestial Iron from the core of the Moon, your fractured soul-shell will collapse under its own gravity in seventy-two hours. You are a dying star."
Yuan's eyes, now swirling vortices, locked onto the distant, pale Moon. He could feel it—the Celestial Iron Ethan spoke of. It was the "Stiffness" he needed to reinforce his soul-shell and reach the Pulsar Stage.
"Then it is fortunate," Yuan said, raising his hand. The space in front of him began to warp, folding like parchment. "That I have always been a master of the harvest."
Using Vacuum Flight, Yuan didn't fly toward the Moon; he pulled the Moon toward him. The massive lunar body groaned as invisible threads of gravity latched onto its crust.
"Mira," Yuan commanded. "Focus your sight. Find the 'Forge-Point' in the lunar core. I am going to smelt a new soul tonight, and I need you to be my compass