A discreet golden chime echoed across the open cedar deck of the geostationary porch.
Felix looked up from his hammock as the AetherDeck screen flashed with a pale amber prompt:
Felix tapped the green [Permit Boarding] button.
"Let’s see what this foreign guild leader wants," he muttered, adjusting the forest-green canvas sunshade so the glare from the primary star didn’t reflect off his slate.
A few seconds later, a tall, imposing figure stepped off a shimmering crystalline shuttle platform and onto the mountain cedar walkway leading toward the porch.
Emperor Heng-Luo had faced world-ending monstrosities and crushed entire star-fleets with a wave of his hand.
Yet as he took his first step onto the splinter-free cedar boards, his knees quivered like dry grass in an autumn gale.
He wore imperial robes woven from the silk of golden void-silkworms, embroidered with nine spinning spirit stars.
In his trembling hands, he clutched a sealed casket carved from the marrow of a primordial cosmic beast—his empire’s greatest heirloom, an extinction-grade origin artifact containing the compressed soul-flame of forty thousand dead suns.
He had prepared himself for horrors beyond mortal imagination.
He expected to find a colossal entity made of pure blinding plasma, seated upon a throne of black holes and crushed moons, surrounded by rivers of sacrificial blood and howling spirit wraiths.
Instead, as he turned the corner of the cedar railing, Heng-Luo froze.
The deck before him was peaceful, quiet, and smelling faintly of dried pine and lavender soap.
In the center of the space hung a hand-woven Brazilian cotton hammock swaying gently at a steady three-point-two-second rhythm.
Inside the hammock reclined a young man wearing loose, faded hemp trousers, an unbuttoned blue cotton tunic, and a pair of worn straw sandals with slightly frayed edges.
A broad straw sunhat rested comfortably over his eyes, tipped back just enough to reveal an expression of profound, undisturbed boredom.
Beside the hammock, a small brass clockwork owl sat upon a cedar railing post, its polished beak firmly sealed with a carved black rubber stopper.
On a simple pine dining table propped up by a familiar rectangular block of dark wood sat a plate of steaming pumpkin buns and a frosted glass pitcher of wild mint tea.
Heng-Luo stood paralyzed. His divine consciousness, which could perceive the movement of electrons across light-years, completely failed to register the man before him.
The young man had no spiritual aura. He possessed no dao-marks, no heavenly halos, and no crushing gravitational pressure.
To Heng-Luo’s senses, the man was an absolute, terrifying void—a blank coordinate in the fabric of spacetime, as if the universe itself dared not acknowledge where he began or where he ended.
Felix lowered his slate, peering at the golden-robed emperor through one lazy eye.
"You're ticket number one?" Felix asked, his voice casual and mild.
Heng-Luo felt the words vibrate directly against his immortal soul, shaking the foundation of his three hundred thousand years of cultivation.
"I... I am Heng-Luo!" the emperor choked out, dropping instantly to both knees and pressing his forehead firmly against the cedar planks. "Humble ruler of the Nine-Star Galaxy! I prostrate myself before the Supreme Sovereign of Solitude!"
Felix blinked, sighing softly.
"Another roleplayer," he muttered under his breath. "The voice acting in these pre-patch expansion events is always completely over the top."
He reached into the wicker side basket, picked up a small wooden clipboard with a sheet of paper clamped to it, and reached over the railing, extending it toward the kneeling emperor.
"Before we discuss whatever faction quest you brought," Felix said, tapping the paper with the stub of a graphite pencil, "you need to fill out this registration survey."
Heng-Luo lifted his head, his hands shaking so violently that the casket of dead suns clattered against his breastplate.
He received the clipboard with both palms raised above his crown, treating the humble paper as if it were a sacred covenant etched in heaven's blood.
"The... the Sacred Survey of Karmic Registration..." Heng-Luo murmured, staring at the clean, printed lines:
【GUEST INTAKE FORM: SECTOR 0-PRIME SANCTUARY】 1. Faction / Organization Name: _____________________ 2. Original Server / Realm Region: _________________ 3. Total Account Population (Souls Onboard): ________ 4. Do you agree to adhere to the 20dB Quiet Hours Rule? [YES / NO] 5. Have you brought any hazardous agricultural pests? [YES / NO]
Heng-Luo swallowed hard. The profound metaphysical wisdom hidden within these deceptively simple inquiries nearly shattered his divine mind.
*Original Server / Realm Region...*
The Sovereign was asking which primordial heavenly coordinate their mortal lives had originated from, determining whether their karmic timeline was compatible with the great Sanctuary!
*Total Account Population...*
He was weighing the karmic burden of the three hundred billion living souls huddled inside the refugee arks!
*Quiet Hours Rule...*
The ultimate test of absolute submission to the Dao of Eternal Stillness!
"I agree!" Heng-Luo cried out, grasping the pencil with trembling fingers and scribbling down the answers with frantic, reverent precision. "The Nine-Star Dominion unconditionally submits to the Great Law of Twenty Decibels! We bring no pestilence, only the humble tears of a dying people!"
He handed the clipboard back with another deep prostration.
Felix looked over the scribbled paper, nodding in satisfaction.
"Good. Nine-Star Galaxy, Asian-Pacific regional server equivalent, clean cargo manifest," Felix murmured, checking off the boxes. "And thank you for agreeing to the quiet hours. Some of these foreign fleets love blasting synthesized battle-hymns through their PA systems."
Felix leaned over the edge of his hammock and gestured toward the plate on the table.
"You look exhausted, man. Take a pumpkin bun. They're fresh out of the steamer."
Heng-Luo’s heart skipped four consecutive beats.
*A pumpkin bun?*
He looked toward the porcelain plate.
Resting upon the blue-and-white glaze was a palm-sized golden bun, radiating gentle waves of steam that smelled of roasted cinnamon, sweet squash, and the pure, unfiltered spiritual essence of a million heavenly dawns.
To Felix, it was a snack Lyra had whipped up using the excess gourd harvest from Solitude Peak.
To Heng-Luo, the pastry was a divine pill of unimaginable cosmic grade—a treasure nurtured by pure stellar fusion and the four-hundred-and-thirty-two-hertz resonance of the planetary soul-lattice.
"A... a reward of divine mercy?" Heng-Luo whispered, his voice cracking with emotion.
"It's just food," Felix said, waving a hand dismissively. "Eat it before it gets cold. Just don't get crumbs on the deck. I sweep this porch once every three days, and cedar is a pain to vacuum."
Heng-Luo crawled forward on his knees, lifted the bun with both hands as if lifting a newborn child, and took a small, reverent bite.
The moment the warm dough touched his tongue, an explosion of pure, untainted solar vitality tore through his meridians.
The terrifying injuries his divine soul had suffered while fleeing through the entropy storm—the fractures in his golden core, the spiritual poison of the void frost, the burning exhaustion of his forty-million-year lifespan—were instantly wiped away.
His aging skin smoothed into youthful jade; his silver hair darkened to deep obsidian; his shattered dantian re-crystallized into an unbreakable stellar diamond.
Tears poured freely from Heng-Luo’s eyes, dripping onto his golden robes.
One bite.
A single pastry handed out like a casual mint at a roadside inn had accomplished what seventy million years of bitter ascetic cultivation could never achieve: total, absolute karmic purification.
"Sovereign..." Heng-Luo wept, setting down the casket containing his empire's greatest extinction weapon. "This humble servant brings the Core of the Forty Thousand Suns. It is the greatest treasure of our dying galaxy. We offer it as tribute to grace your celestial porch."
Felix glanced at the ornate black box.
He didn't open it. The Inspector HUD tooltip popped up automatically above the lid:
【Extinction-Grade Core Casket: Contains compressed radiant heat equivalent to an ancient dead star cluster. Material: Heavy Asteroid Adamantine. Weight: 850 kg. Recommendation: Excellent heavy-duty paperweight for windy afternoons.】
"An 850-kilogram paperweight?" Felix said, his eyes brightening slightly. "Now that's actually useful. The solar wind gusts get pretty strong around two in the afternoon, and the blueprints for my porch expansion keep blowing into the rose bushes."
Felix pointed toward the southeast corner of the deck.
"Set it right there on top of that stack of cedar shingles. That’ll keep them from flapping around."
Heng-Luo choked on his own breath.
An extinction-grade divine weapon capable of burning seventeen star systems to cinder... assigned as a paperweight to hold down spare lumber.
The sheer, boundless immensity of the Sovereign’s realm crushed Heng-Luo’s ego into fine cosmic dust.
"It... it shall be placed with utmost reverence, my lord," Heng-Luo whispered, crawling over to set the box precisely upon the shingles.
"Great," Felix said, yawning and settling back into his Brazilian cotton hammock. "Your paperwork is approved. Go back to your ship, tell your fleet they can stay parked in Bay Alpha-9 until the server maintenance passes, and remember: keep the engines off."
Heng-Luo bowed until his forehead touched the wood three more times.
"The Nine-Star Dominion will guard your quietude with our lives, Supreme Sovereign!"
As the emperor backed away down the cedar walkway with bowed head and reverent steps, Felix pulled his straw hat down over his eyes.
"Nice guy," Felix murmured to Barnaby. "A little dramatic with the prostrations, but he filled out the paperwork without complaining. If all the pre-patch event NPCs are this polite, this update might not be so bad after all."
He closed his eyes, drifting off to the steady, comforting ticking of the clockwork owl, while beyond the porch, the dying universe looked upon Aethelgard with tears of boundless salvation.