In the grand celestial dome of the Astral Observatory, panic had escalated into a full spiritual emergency.
Seventy-two bronze astrolabes spun with such ferocity that their greased copper gears emitted high-pitched metallic shrieks.
Enchanted water basins, designed to mirror the movements of the stars, sloshed over their carved marble rims, spilling silver-infused liquid across the polished flagstones.
Senior astrologers, master horologists, and planetary scribes scurried across the floor like ants whose hill had been prodded by an iron spear.
Chancellor Valen stood in the center of the chamber, his ceremonial purple robes disheveled, his hands clenched tightly behind his back.
Beside him, Chief Astrologer Corvus was frantically peering into the Grand Celestial Mirror.
"Report!" Valen commanded, his voice echoing under the high vaulted ceiling. "Has the Senior Brother’s ascent halted? Has he established a new orbital sanctuary?"
Corvus wiped a layer of cold sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his robe.
"He... he has bypassed the Third Heaven, Chancellor!" Corvus stammered in absolute disbelief. "He has crossed the Nine-Cloud Threshold! He is now ascending through the Outer Celestial Void at forty leagues per hour!"
"What vehicle carries him?" Elder Wu asked, his voice shaking with dread. "Is it the Nine-Dragons Sun Chariot? Or the Void-Crushing Golden Lotus?"
Corvus hesitated, his spectacles sliding halfway down his nose.
"He remains seated in the wicker porch chair, Elder Wu," Corvus replied softly. "He has finished his first sweet potato and is currently consuming a second. Our divination mirrors indicate that his companion clockwork owl is dozing on the armrest."
A stunned silence fell over the entire observatory chamber.
Seventy-two masters of the stars stared at each other in bewildered incomprehension.
To cross the Nine-Cloud Threshold was the legendary dream of every peak cultivator who had ever drawn breath.
Countless ancient grandmasters had burned their life essence, sacrificed entire sects of blood disciples, and shattered three hundred immortal treasures just to touch the rim of the outer void for three brief breaths before being vaporized by cosmic radiation.
And Senior Brother Vance had drifted past the barrier in a woven wicker lawn chair while eating street food.
"Why?" Elder Wu whispered, clutching his chest in agonized confusion. "Why does he ascend? Does the Great Solar Sovereign seek to wage war against the Star-Devouring Beasts of the Deep Cosmos? Does he intend to conquer the Upper Nine Heavens?"
Chancellor Valen closed his eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath.
His mind recalled the divine words whispered by Senior Sister Lyra Ashford through the communication mirror before the ascent.
*Senior Brother said the mountain air was causing excessive latency. He goes to seek the direct line-of-sight to the universal source.*
Valen opened his eyes, a brilliant, terrifying light of enlightenment burning in his gaze.
"He is not waging war," Valen proclaimed, his voice resonant with boundless awe. "War is the petty obsession of mortal warlords. The Senior Brother has transcended the concept of conflict entirely!"
The elders gathered around the Chancellor, their breaths caught in their throats.
"Explain the divine truth to us, Chancellor!" Elder Wu pleaded.
"The Senior Brother has lived in seclusion on the Seventh Spire for untold epochs," Valen explained, raising his hands toward the dome's crystal ceiling. "During his long slumber, the mortal world grew choked with spiritual smog, mortal grievances, and atmospheric corruption. That corruption was creating a barrier between our world and the Primordial Source!"
Valen leaned over the astral basin, pointing to the golden light trailing behind the ascending chair.
"The 'latency' the Master spoke of is the cosmic delay between the Creator's will and mortal manifestation!" Valen declared, tears of spiritual ecstasy welling in his eyes. "He ascends beyond the atmospheric veil to re-align the grand axis of heaven! He is establishing direct communion with the Universal Dao itself!"
Across the chamber, scribes began writing with frantic, trembling brushes.
*On this day, the Supreme Solar Sovereign ascended upon his Throne of Woven Reed, brushing aside the nine layers of heaven to re-tune the cadence of creation.*
Up in the silent void of the outer atmosphere, Felix Vance let out a small, satisfied burp.
He crumpled the brown greaseproof paper from his sweet potato into a neat little ball and stuffed it into his robe pocket.
"Never litter in space," Felix mumbled to himself. "Space debris is a real hazard. The last thing I need is my own sweet potato wrapper orbiting around and hitting me in the back of the head ninety minutes from now."
He leaned back in his wicker recliner, resting his hands over his stomach.
The view around him was stunning.
The blackness of the cosmos was absolute, studded with millions of cold, piercing stars that did not twinkle.
Below him, the curved edge of Aethelgard glowed with a delicate, luminous cyan halo where the atmosphere met the vacuum.
A gentle shadow fell across his lap.
Felix looked up.
The lead Abyssal Star-Whale had glided directly alongside his wicker chair.
The massive celestial leviathan, over two miles in length, was swimming through the vacuum with slow, majestic beats of its translucent flukes.
Its vast, blunt snout drifted to within twenty paces of the recliner.
The whale emitted a soft, inquisitive twenty-two hertz trill that made Felix's dental fillings vibrate pleasantly.
Felix reached out his hand over the wicker armrest, letting his fingers gently pat the smooth, midnight-blue hide near the whale’s glowing barnacle cluster.
"Easy there, big girl," Felix said in a calm, soothing voice. "Don't bump the chair. If you flip this recliner over, my tea is going to float into deep space."
The star-whale let out a low, contented whistle, rolling slightly to the side to give Felix an unobstructed view of the cosmos.
Felix glanced down at the AetherDeck screen in his lap.
*Connecting to Server... [Ping: 38 ms]*
The signal bar was solid green.
Felix tapped the screen, attempting to load the daily gacha summon portal.
The screen paused.
A small loading spinner rotated once.
*Data Buffer Synchronizing... [Jitter: 14 ms]*
Felix sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Thirty-eight milliseconds with fourteen milliseconds of jitter," Felix muttered, thoroughly annoyed. "It’s better than the porch, sure. But that jitter is killer. The packets are arriving out of order because the receiver on this slate is omnidirectional."
He hovered his finger over the network diagnostics icon.
An Inspector HUD tooltip popped up in crisp white text over the display.
【Target: AetherDeck Signal Reception Array】 【Antenna Type: Omnidirectional Internal Dipole】 【Signal Weakness: High Background Cosmic Radiation Noise】 【Current Efficiency: 68% Capture Rate】 【Inspector Note: An omnidirectional antenna picks up too much stray cosmic background microwave hiss. To eliminate jitter and achieve sub-15ms tournament-grade latency, the user requires a parabolic reflector dish to focus incoming data packets directly into the terminal port. Can be assembled from basic metallic mesh.】
Felix smiled faintly, nodding in agreement.
"A parabolic dish," Felix said, his eyes gleaming with DIY gamer enthusiasm. "Of course. An omni antenna is garbage in the middle of space. You need a satellite dish. A nice big concave bowl to scoop up the signal."
He looked around his wicker recliner.
"Now where am I going to find a giant metal dish in the middle of low Earth orbit?" Felix wondered aloud.
He glanced over at the right armrest.
Barnaby the Clockwork Owl puffed his brass feathers, cocking his head to the side.
Tick... tock... click.
Felix’s eyes drifted toward the horizon, where the 108 Western Sky dreadnought moonlets were drifting along their celestial patrol tracks.
Up on the flagship bridge of the *Sovereign Dawn*, Grand Marshal Vane-Talon and his chief weapons engineer had their telescopes trained directly on Felix's wicker chair.
"Marshal!" the weapons engineer gasped, dropping his brass calipers. "Look at the Master! He is opening a dimensional rift into his private treasury!"
Vane-Talon watched in awe as Felix pulled four massive rolls of shimmering copper mesh and eight long, flexible bamboo struts from his robe pocket.
To the Western Sky engineers, the materials did not look like ordinary hardware store leftovers.
The copper mesh shone with pure solar fire, radiating the sacred mathematical weave of the Golden Proportion.
The bamboo struts arched with the perfect, sacred curvature of the Parabola of Infinite Gathering—a theoretical geometry recorded only in the lost scrolls of the Star-Origin Sect!
"He is constructing a Celestial Focusing Basin!" the engineer shouted, tears of realization streaming down his cheeks. "He intends to gather the unfiltered spiritual radiance of the entire cosmos into a single focal point!"
Down in his wicker chair, Felix had no idea anyone was watching him with a telescope.
He simply snapped the bamboo struts into a circular hub, lashed the ends together with twine, and stretched the fine copper mesh tightly over the frame like an inverted umbrella.
He tapped his AetherDeck inventory screen.
Felix grinned.
"Let's build a satellite dish in orbit," Felix said, tightening the last wire clamp. "If you can't get good Wi-Fi, you make your own."
He affixed an iron c-clamp to the back rail of the wicker recliner, slotting the bamboo base of the dish into the bracket.
With a few quick turns of the thumbscrew, the six-foot concave dish was firmly mounted behind his headrest, curving upward like a golden solar umbrella.
Felix connected the braided silver grounding wire from the dish's focal horn directly into the auxiliary port of the AetherDeck.
The copper mesh vibrated with a faint, musical chime as it caught the first incoming cosmic radio waves.
Barnaby the Clockwork Owl rotated his head in a full circle, clicking in mechanical approval.
Now, all that remained was pointing the dish in the right direction.