Super Mothership
The dozens of high-power thruster arrays installed at the base of the Immortal roared at full power, pushing its massive body to continuously accelerate, leaving behind a long, faint-blue comet-like tail.
Several powerful tractor beams shot straight toward the nearby star, exerting an immense pulling force on the Immortal. As the distance closed, the star’s gravity began to assert itself, like an invisible rope pulling the Immortal’s huge body closer…
The course Nie Yun had chosen for the Immortal was risky, but the acceleration effect was proportional to the danger. Coupled with thrusters comparable to planetary-class engines, the Immortal’s acceleration was not much slower than that of the Sea Clan flagship.
In fact, midway through their journey, the Immortal and the Sea Clan flagship had already begun to diverge, their trajectories differing only slightly in the angle at which they cut into the star’s influence, yet still roughly neck and neck.
After all, the Sea Clan flagship had no need to endure such an extreme trial, and Nie Yun had no desire to test the Sea Clan ship’s heat resistance…
At this moment, the Immortal’s appearance had changed dramatically. Above its canopy, like a dead tree coming back to life in spring, a massive number of green leaves sprouted and reached full growth in just five or six short hours.
Now, a huge green umbrella canopy had fully formed, like an enormous straw hat overhead, shielding the fierce light of the star ahead.
Each of these newly-grown green leaves was as large as a washbasin. Under microscopic inspection, one would see they were performing photosynthesis at an astonishing level of efficiency.
What’s more, the fine pores on the surface of these leaves were actively absorbing free-floating cosmic dust in space.
The vastness of outer space is not a perfect vacuum — it’s filled with all sorts of cosmic dust of varying composition and density, technically referred to as interstellar matter.
The composition of interstellar matter is very complex. A large part of it consists of neutral hydrogen atoms or hydrogen molecules.
In terms of density, on average there’s about one atom per cubic centimeter — meaning an ordinary soda can, if placed in space, would contain roughly 330 atoms inside.
Hydrogen is not only the main fuel for nuclear fusion but also an essential raw material for photosynthesis to produce water, making it an indispensable element for the Immortal, this self-sustaining biological fortress.
The vast canopy, stretching hundreds of kilometers across, acted like a giant broom, sweeping up all the interstellar dust and particles along its path, completely absorbing them as nutrients!
Though the density of material was pitifully small, the principle of “grains of sand make a tower” still provided significant benefits to the Immortal’s internal material cycle, greatly extending its endurance.
Although outside the Immortal it was a hell of fire and water, inside was an entirely different world — full of vibrant life!
Old cells were eliminated and decomposed, gradually replaced by more powerful new cells. As the Water of Life was consumed in large quantities, the Immortal’s tissue functions became increasingly refined, slowly adapting to the harsh environment of space.
The metabolic waste produced by nearly two million Karla people, along with all kinds of industrial residues manufactured by the internal mechanized factories, was once again recycled through the Immortal’s powerful digestive system, turning back into its nutrients and raw materials for photosynthesis.
The oxygen produced by photosynthesis not only met the Immortal’s own consumption but also sustained the internal ecosystem.
Within the living space of the Karla civilization clinging to the Immortal, oxygen levels were rising rapidly. Like spring returning to the land, patches of green quickly grew strong, and under the astonished gazes of all the Karla people, even the crops in the food bases visibly shot up by a small margin.
Then Nie Yun was stunned to realize — if this development continued, they might even be able to shut down the ecological maintenance systems altogether, and rely entirely on the Immortal’s own biological cycle to make this ecological space fully self-sustaining!
The star was the source of life. As the Immortal drew ever closer, the massive solar energy was being rapidly converted into various stored forms of energy, circulating inside it as chemical energy to power its daily activities.
This abundant energy supply allowed the Immortal to gradually break free from its dependence on internal mechanical energy sources, and begin to take strides toward evolving into a truly complete cosmic lifeform…
Just as the Immortal itself had said — the harsher the environment, the stronger the evolutionary effects of the Water of Life!
Stronger — and still growing stronger!
If one had to put the Immortal’s feelings into words at this moment, it would be… completely addicted to the ecstasy of evolution, unable to extricate itself!
But the joyful time of evolution was short-lived…
Proxima Centauri — a main-sequence red dwarf star, with only 1/8 the mass of the Sun and 1/7 the volume, its internal hydrogen burning slowly and steadily, giving it a lifespan of tens of billions of years.
If it were likened to a pile of slow-burning charcoal, then the Sun would be a fiercely burning torch.
And because its burn is stable and its radiation intensity low, Proxima Centauri’s habitable zone lies just 7 million kilometers from the star.
Karla itself lies within this habitable zone, only about 6.5 million kilometers away from Proxima Centauri — whereas the distance between Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers, a difference of nearly twentyfold.
In fact, it was precisely because Karla was so close to its star that it became completely tidally locked by Proxima Centauri, just as the Moon is locked to Earth, forcing Karla to always keep the same “face” toward its star.
According to internal research from the Twin Stars, perhaps a very long time ago a massive celestial body collided with Karla, imparting some rotational energy — which gave rise to the unique miracle of life seen on Karla today.
But Karla’s rotation was slowly being lost due to this lock. Without external interference, in another few hundred thousand years, Karla would completely stop rotating and eventually become a dead world!
On a cosmic scale, 6.5 million kilometers was hardly a great distance. And so, after a full two days of travel, the crimson starlight had already begun to fill the Immortal’s entire field of vision…
The once-warm, gentle sunlight was now becoming unbearably hot. The leaves at the top of the canopy were starting to yellow from the heat, and even the trunk exposed to the sunlight was beginning to blacken and carbonize.
Nie Yun’s extreme trial had entered its most dangerous stage!
“…Boss, are you sure this is supposed to be my trial, and not just a way to turn me into a giant lump of charcoal or something?” the Immortal asked, its voice a little shaky.
Although it was indeed quite eager to evolve and grow stronger, the thought of skimming right past a star in such an extreme way made the tree break out in a cold sweat just imagining it!
This wasn’t just rubbing shoulders with the sun anymore — it was practically a face-to-face dance, pushing the boundaries to an utterly insane level!
“What choice do you have? You’re so big, and accelerating burns so much energy. If you don’t take an extreme approach, you’ll be caught and destroyed by the Feathered Clan fleet behind us before you even have time to link up with my forces.
If you’re confident you can handle an encirclement of over fifty warships and countless mechs and fighters all on your own… then by all means, let’s turn around right now and launch a heroic counterattack. What do you say?” Nie Yun said coolly.
“Uh…” The Immortal was speechless.
Surviving the trial was already a one-in-ten-thousand chance — but turning around… that would be certain death!
What Nie Yun said was the truth. The Immortal’s mobility could never compare to a fleet of warships. The two sides were like the tortoise and the hare — even though the tortoise had a head start and the distance between them wasn’t short, if they followed the same flight path, the risk of being caught was still very real.
And in a sense, this “extreme trial” was also… an extreme escape.
Even though Nie Yun sounded casual on the surface, his hands were moving quickly. Not only did he shut down all the power furnaces, but he also mobilized all the mechanical insects inside the Immortal, fortifying its central core and the Karla survival zones, along with several other vital areas.
After investing so many resources, if all he got in the end was a strange lump of charcoal, that really would be a total loss.
At this point, the Immortal also understood that this gamble was unavoidable — and so it threw itself into pushing its own potential to the limit, consuming the Water of Life at a speed visible to the naked eye.
As the distance closed, the temperature on the side of its canopy facing the star kept climbing.
500°C… 1000°C… 1500°C…
Magma was only about 700–1200°C, and yet now, just absorbing the star’s energy alone made the Immortal feel, for the first time ever… overstuffed.
It had no choice but to gradually lower and fold in the canopy at its top, like a gigantic green umbrella drawing its ribs closed.
This reduced its exposed surface area while allowing the more heat-resistant layers of greenery to shield the trunk itself.
Even so, the distance to the star kept shrinking. The Immortal’s leaves began to wither and curl under the intense heat, and some even caught fire.
But each time a layer of leafy canopy was burned away, the Immortal would immediately grow another. The newly-grown leaves became darker and darker in color — until eventually they turned an inky green, with a faint metallic sheen on their surface!
Its bark became denser and tougher, its internal organs grew ever more powerful, surging with life force — and still continuing to shed and evolve…
Then, under the astonished gazes of its pursuers and of Isar, the Immortal, with unstoppable momentum, plunged headlong into the star’s outermost corona layer along a tangent!
It… it really went in?!
Under the violent radiation interference, the Immortal’s silhouette vanished completely from their optical detection range…
Life nurtured within destruction — calamity forged transcendence!
At this moment, the Immortal had undoubtedly reached its own… “Tribulation Crossing”!
TL Note- Immortal one?
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