The time spent with family was warm and fleeting, but this ordinary human warmth was a precious anchor for Zhou Qi on his journey of rapid evolution and expansion, reminding him of his initial resolve to protect.
Most of the time, Zhou Qi still resided in the White Snake Mountain Insect Farm.
He was not idle; his consciousness sank into his Mental Inner World, operating the Taiji Refinement Method.
He continuously refined, purified, and compressed the massive torrent of faith brought by the daily reproduction of billions of Bug Clan Family members by the Queen Ant and the Iron-Blooded Queen, as well as a portion of the Mental Energy gains converted from the Evolution Points constantly flowing in from all global insect farms and the Iron-Blood World.
The massive Mental Energy of a Planetary-level being became increasingly pure and condensed under this continuous refinement, like a hundred-times refined steel, with a deeper sense of inherent power.
...
October 4, 2017
Current Origin Points: 6500 points.
A month passed amidst the silent yet immense expansion of the Bug Clan.
Zhou Qi's life strength quietly increased by 3 points, reaching 105 points.
That night, all was silent.
Zhou Qi stood alone on the peak of White Snake Mountain, gazing up at the sky.
In the deep night sky, a silver crescent moon hung high, its cool moonlight illuminating the earth and reflecting in his profound eyes.
A long-lost impulse, purely out of curiosity and exploration, surged in his heart.
This past month, his power had grown, and his territory had expanded, but his footsteps had not yet left the planet beneath him.
"The Moon..."
Zhou Qi looked up at the starry sky and murmured, a slight curve forming on his lips.
That was once a dream place humanity looked up to; now, in his eyes, it was merely a step away.
With a slight thought.
Planetary-level Mental Power instantly covered his entire body, forming a perfect energy barrier that distorted light and shielded heat sources, making him completely "invisible" in the physical world.
The next moment, he moved!
There was no sonic boom, no air current; the air on the mountaintop merely twisted slightly.
Zhou Qi's figure had transformed into an invisible, formless stream of light, tearing through the atmosphere at a terrifying speed of hundreds of times the speed of sound!
The strong push-back feeling did not bring discomfort; instead, it ignited a thrill of breaking free from constraints.
The Elementary Immortality granted him the ability to survive in a vacuum, making him impervious to drastic environmental changes.
The azure planet beneath his feet rapidly shrank, becoming a colossal gem embedded in the inky black sky.
Just over three hours later, that invisible stream of light gently "landed" on the desolate surface of the Moon.
His feet sank into the fine lunar soil, raising a silent cloud of dust.
Zhou Qi removed part of his Mental barrier, and his Planetary-level perception, like invisible radar waves, instantly swept across thousands of kilometers.
The silent, cold, ancient land covered in craters was revealed in every detail to his "eyes."
Meteorite craters, like giant scars, spoke of billions of years of vicissitudes.
The gravity was only one-sixth that of Blue Star, but this had no effect on his powerful body.
He walked at will, his powerful Mental Energy field acting like a probe, penetrating beneath the lunar crust, sensing the structure of the strata, the distribution of minerals, and even the faint activity of the core.
Here was an absolute vacuum, a virgin land never before trodden by the Bug Clan Family, and it also contained cosmic information different from Blue Star and the Iron-Blood World.
Just as Zhou Qi's Mental Energy swept across a rugged highland located in the shadow of a colossal crater, an extremely faint, yet unusually "hard" abnormal fluctuation was captured!
It was not a natural fluctuation of geological structure or energy radiation, but rather... some unnatural, regular barrier reaction containing faint residual energy characteristics!
A sharp glint flashed in Zhou Qi's eyes, and his figure instantly vanished from its original spot, crossing hundreds of kilometers in a few blinks, appearing in that shadow-shrouded area.
The scene before him made even a Planetary-level powerhouse like him slightly hold his breath!
A massive structure, composed of unknown dark black material, was half-buried beneath the lunar soil and broken rocks, with only a portion of its top exposed.
It presented a perfect quadrangular pyramid shape, its edges sharp as if cut by a knife or axe; even after unimaginable ages of erosion, its surface remained smooth as a mirror, with only a few tiny impact marks.
The surface of the structure was covered with complex, dizzying geometric patterns.
These patterns were not merely decorative; inside, extremely dim, almost extinguished, eerie blue flowing light moved incredibly slowly.
It was these lights that formed that faint yet tenacious energy barrier, isolating the inside from the outside, and also isolating it from the erosion of time.
The strength of the barrier far surpassed any energy shield technology Zhou Qi had seen on Blue Star and in the Iron-Blood World; its structure was exquisite, as if it contained the rules of space itself.
What astonished Zhou Qi even more was that behind the side of this colossal pyramid-shaped structure, half-buried in the lunar soil, were several immense metal remnants, clearly from the same source!
The edges of these remnants were torn, and their material also appeared a deep black, but unlike the dark black of the pyramid, they shimmered with a cold metallic luster.
The remnants were covered with a thick layer of cosmic dust.
But partially exposed areas showed extremely advanced engine nozzle structures and armor plate patterns that were already twisted and broken, whose scale far exceeded any spacecraft built by humans!
These scattered gigantic ship remnants, like prey torn apart by ancient beasts, silently told of a tragic interstellar war that occurred in the distant past, either in lunar orbit or on its surface!
The pyramid stood silently, like an eternal tombstone, or like a dust-sealed treasure trove.
And those massive warship remnants were its silent guardians, or... the challengers it destroyed?
"Cosmic civilization..."
Zhou Qi murmured, his Planetary-level perception carefully probing the eerie blue barrier, attempting to analyze its structure and touch its core.
A cold, ancient, and infinitely 滄桑 fragment of information flowed back through his Mental Energy, mixed with warnings, seals... and a hint of an indescribable... summons?
The Moon was far from as simple as imagined.
Beneath its desolate surface lay secrets capable of subverting cognition.
Zhou Qi realized that this impromptu moonwalk might have unveiled a cosmic chapter far grander, older, and more dangerous than the Iron-Blood World.
............