The night over the orbital terrace was clear, still, and lit by the endless glitter of a billion distant stars.
Felix Vance adjusted his straw hat, leaning back in his wicker recliner with his warm fleece-clad feet resting against the cedar balustrade.
The thirty-mile-high platform was completely silent, except for the gentle ticking of Barnaby the clockwork owl and the rhythmic, twenty-two hertz hum of the three Abyssal Star-Whales gliding lazily through the vacuum.
Felix opened the network settings on his AetherDeck.
He liked to check his latency before going to sleep, ensuring that no stray packet loss would disrupt his automated macro farming overnight.
The primary connection readout was flawless:
`Primary Connection: Dyson_Solar_Array_5G [11.7 ms] (SIGNAL: 100%)`
Felix nodded with quiet satisfaction.
Just as he was about to close the menu, the device’s wireless adapter completed its routine passive sweep of nearby network spectrums.
A second entry flickered at the bottom of the list.
It was faint, hovering at the absolute limit of reception with only a single bar of signal.
Felix blinked, leaning his face closer to the glass screen.
"Wait a second," Felix muttered, his brow furrowing. "A second network? Out here in orbital space?"
He tapped the anomalous signal to view its connection properties:
Felix stared at the text string with profound suspicion.
"Frost Weaver Five-G Guest?" Felix read aloud, shaking his head. "And what is that weird broadcast beacon? 'Little disciple'? 'Tea kettle burns unattended'?"
An Inspector HUD tooltip materialized above the blinking SSID:
【Network Source: Primordial Frost-Domain Beacon】 【Entity: Grandmaster Vivienne [Master Yu Jingshuang / The Frost Sovereign]】 【Location: The Boundless Glacial Void [14 Billion Light-Years Beyond System Rim]】 【Transmission Nature: An ancient divine consciousness scanning the mortal galaxy, amazed to discover her laziest disciple has crowned the sun with a Dyson Ring】 【Inspector Note: Your missing master just pinged your handheld console from the edge of the universe. Sages would crawl across broken glass for ten thousand years to receive a single syllable of her teachings. Sells for zero gold. Highly recommended to handle with filial reverence.】
Felix read the tooltip, but his modern gamer instincts immediately overrode any mystical interpretation.
"A phishing scam," Felix declared flatly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Classic public Wi-Fi spoofing. Some rogue hacker set up a fake guest hotspot named 'Frost Weaver' with an emotional bait message to trick me into entering my login credentials."
He scoffed at the screen.
"Do people really think I was born yesterday?" Felix grumbled. "You never connect to open guest Wi-Fi networks in public. That is how you get your account hacked, your items stolen, and your farm plots raided."
Without a moment of hesitation, Felix slammed his thumb down onto [2. BLOCK & IGNORE].
*BEEP.*
`SSID [Frost_Weaver_5G_Guest] permanently blacklisted. MAC Address blocked on all local ports.`
Felix immediately pulled up his system security utility:
"A clean machine," Felix nodded smugly, tapping his chest. "Never click unknown links. That is rule number one of internet survival."
Fourteen billion light-years away, in the deepest, freezing heart of the Boundless Glacial Void, an ancient woman sat upon a throne of immortal blue ice.
She wore robes woven from starlight and absolute zero frost, her silver hair drifting in the cosmic solar winds.
In her delicate hand, she held an ancient jade slip identical in shape to Felix's AetherDeck.
The screen of her jade slip flashed with a sharp red notification:
`Ping Rejected by Target Host.` `Status: You have been blocked by [Felix_Vance_Master_Slacker].`
The woman paused.
Then, she tilted her head back and let out a clear, melodious laugh that shattered three frozen rogue asteroids into glittering diamond dust.
"That insolent little brat," Grandmaster Vivienne chuckled, shaking her head as a fond, amused smile touched her frosted lips. "He builds a Kardashev megastructure around a star just to automate his daily chores, and when his own master says hello, he blocks my frequency as spam."
She looked back across the boundless dark, her ancient eyes softening as memories of three centuries ago drifted through her thoughts.
She remembered the day she had chosen Felix Vance on Solitude Spire.
Every other disciple in the Seven Spires had clawed for power, murdering their peers over foundation pills and screaming oaths of bloodthirsty vengeance.
Felix had been sleeping soundly beneath an autumn peach tree, snoring gently with an empty bowl of porridge resting on his stomach.
When she had secretly placed the ancient proto-stellar jade slip into his sleeve, she had wondered if he would survive the cosmic fusion inside.
Now she saw the golden ring circling the sun, the eight concentric continents gliding in effortless harmony, and the white dwarf companion core spinning quietly in his dantian.
"Only a mortal without ambition could tame a star," Vivienne whispered into the void, a warm, misty smile brushing her frosted lips. "If he had possessed even a thimble of mortal greed, the stellar core would have devoured him and burned the galaxy to ash. But he only wanted an idle mobile game."
She lowered the jade slip, letting her divine frost aura settle back into the silent darkness.
"Rest well, little disciple," Vivienne murmured fondly. "Enjoy your porch while the universe is quiet. We shall meet again when the great cycle turns."
Back in the local orbital sector of Aethelgard, the brief passage of Vivienne's divine frost ping had not gone unnoticed by the escort armada.
On the bridge of the Imperial Flagship Moonlet, forty cryogenic sensor alarms chimed simultaneously.
"Grand Marshal!" the chief sensor officer gasped, his hands trembling over the frost-covered telemetry panel. "A localized sub-space transmission just grazed our outer perimeter! The energy signature... it was absolute zero divine frost! It carries the ancient imperial cipher of the Seventh Peak's Founding Master!"
Grand Marshal Vane-Talon rushed to the primary display, his white mustache twitching with explosive shock.
"The Frost Sovereign..." Vane-Talon breathed, pressing his hand against his racing heart. "Master Yu Jingshuang herself! She sent a divine hail from the edge of the universe!"
The sensor officer wiped cold condensation from the crystal slate.
"And... and what was the Sovereign's response, Grand Marshal?" the officer asked in a trembling whisper.
Vane-Talon read the outbound transmission log from Felix's recliner.
`Outbound Packet: REJECT_CONNECTION_BLOCK_SPAM`
The dreadnought marshal stood frozen for three long seconds.
Then, he slowly took off his gold-braided bicorne hat, burying his face in his hands as a half-mad, weeping chuckle escaped his lips.
"He hung up on her," Vane-Talon whispered in delirious awe. "The Lord of Solitude hung up on the Primordial Frost Sovereign because her ping disturbed his evening quiet. Truly, no force in heaven or earth can interrupt that man's tea."
Down on the cedar porch of Solitude Spire, thirty miles below, Lyra Ashford stepped out of the kitchen with an empty wicker tray.
She paused on the porch steps, glancing toward the southern sky.
For a brief microsecond, a cool, refreshing breeze smelling of ancient winter plums had swept through the garden, rustling the leaves of the Sun-Lotus Cabbages.
Beneath the table leg, the Sovereign Heart Seal chimed once with a high-pitched, crystalline note.
"Did you feel that, Groundskeeper?" Lyra asked, her eyes widening in surprise.
Lord Nether-Bane leaned on his iron rake, purple embers flickering thoughtfully in his eye sockets.
"Aye, Mistress Lyra," the skeleton chuckled, clacking his jaw. "Felt like an old friend waving from across a very wide field. The sort of breeze that reminds you to put on a warm scarf."
Lyra smiled, looking up toward Senior Brother Felix’s orbital terrace.
"The Senior Brother's light reaches everywhere," Lyra murmured softly. "Even the furthest cold can feel his warmth."
Up on the high terrace, Felix Vance finished his tea and set the celadon cup down.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out one last dried mountain plum, savoring the chewy, tart richness before slipping the empty cloth pouch under his seat.
He adjusted his linen neck pillow, making sure his fleece-clad ankles were firmly tucked together on the wicker footrest.
He glanced at the AetherDeck screen one final time:
`Network Status: AIR-GAPPED & SECURE` `Macro Execution: 100% RELIABILITY` `Threat Assessment: ZERO RISK`
"No malware, zero lag, and the firewall is secure," Felix murmured, his voice thick with impending slumber. "Another flawless day on the porch."
Beside his footrest, Barnaby clicked softly, his polished brass eyelids dropping shut as his chronometer purred in perfect sync with the cosmos.
The three Abyssal Star-Whales swam lazily above the front railing, their deep twenty-two hertz lullaby vibrating gently through the cedar planks.
Down below, the eight concentric continents turned like a sleeping mandala under the warm starlight.
No alarms rang, no quests intruded, and no distant master could interrupt his peaceful sanctuary.
Felix pulled his straw hat down until it rested against his nose.
He folded his hands across his stomach, closed his eyes, and drifted into the most peaceful, undisturbed sleep in the cosmos.