Returning to the hundred-kilometer-wide Space Wormhole, everyone present felt as if a lifetime had passed.
Who could have imagined that in less than a day, everything would be completely reversed.
The World Beasts, which had forced humanity to live in the shadows, silent with fear, had simply vanished into thin air.
Even the Beast Ancestor, a creature that seemed to exist only in nightmares, had been utterly destroyed, as if it had never existed at all.
The brutal war they had anticipated never came to pass. The fighting was fierce, but with the Savior turning the tide, it all went far more smoothly than expected.
So much so that even as they piloted their Super Giant War Armors back to the Space Wormhole, many still felt as if they were in a dream, unable to believe it was all real.
’Perhaps when they wake up, they’ll be back on those precarious Floating Islands, still facing the terror of the World Beasts?’
Fortunately, whenever they saw the Savior—whenever they saw his silhouette—all that bewilderment swiftly vanished.
That figure gave them endless strength, making their hearts unwaveringly resolute.
By now, more than half of the entire Meteorite Belt had been assimilated by the Nanomechanical Cluster under Shen Feng’s control. The sheer number of meteorites here meant the resulting Nanomechanical Cluster was voluminous enough to dwarf Earth, and it was still slowly growing.
Under Shen Feng’s control, this enormous mass was kept dispersed, preventing it from generating excessive gravitational interference.
Even so, the entire Meteorite Belt had been completely transformed.
From the outside, it now resembled a colossal space station—no, it was more like a Space City.
Under the control of Shen Feng and Jingwei, vast portions of the Nanomechanical Cluster had formed interconnected space factories, each performing its own specific function.
Some factories decomposed the corpses of World Beasts to refine Beast Gold, others absorbed energy from the Red Supergiant Star Shield UY, some served as Energy Resonators to link with the Space Wormhole, and others functioned as biological laboratories to study the evolutionary process of the World Beasts.
And so on and so forth.
The area had been completely transformed into a technological space city.
Meanwhile, the human warriors from Earth—the Water World—were, under Shen Feng’s guidance, becoming the administrators of this Space City, learning to manage and operate its various systems.
As for Shen Feng, even though he was eager to return to Earth, it wasn’t something he could do right away.
The Space Wormhole had been temporarily sealed again. Besides, he needed this environment as a testing ground and required more time to prepare.
First, he had to fully understand the Quantum Force Field Core. Mastering this power would be immensely useful in the future.
Second, he needed to completely control the power of the Space Wormhole, preferably by mastering the technology to open and close it at will.
Such technology was of vital importance to both Shen Feng and the whole of human civilization.
With the two super-AIs, Jingwei and Jingwei No. 2, assisting him, Shen Feng didn’t have to worry about most of the details. He just needed to receive the relevant information with his Silicon-Based Brain.
His main task was to search the Star Realm near the Space Wormhole for the Wormhole Generator.
After all, maintaining such a giant Wormhole required a massive and stable energy output, and drawing power from the Red Supergiant Star Shield UY was the most convenient option.
A few days later, at the edge of the Meteorite Belt, the sweeping Gray Tide located a completely hollowed-out meteorite.
Inside this five-kilometer-diameter meteorite was a massive energy absorption and transmission device.
It was clearly the handiwork of that same mastermind.
To Shen Feng, it no longer mattered whether that mastermind was the Whisperer or something else. What mattered was that this machine worked.
The days flew by. In the blink of an eye, dozens of days had passed. It had now been a month since their arrival in the Shield UY Star Realm.
All preparations were nearly complete; all that was left was mastering the final technique to open the Space Wormhole.
"Xiaofeng, we’ve figured out the entire structure of the Space Wormhole! We can’t just create one out of thin air yet, but we can definitely use that machine to get it working. We’ve also mastered the secrets of spatial folding and gravitational waves! According to my precise calculations, in just another two thousand, five hundred seventy-eight years and twenty-three days, we should be able to completely master wormhole-creation technology, and even travel to a Parallel Cosmos!" At this point, Jingwei, who had configured a Nanomechanical Cluster into the form of a young girl in a miniskirt, reported to Shen Feng with an excited expression.
Shen Feng did his best to sound cheerful. "Ahaha, well, that’s practically just around the corner..."
’I’ll probably not even have finished rotting by then,’ he thought.
"Right? Hahaha, our gains this time have been enormous! The quantum configuration technology alone is so useful. And I never expected you could cross-breed viruses like this, making fine adjustments directly at the genetic level! The combinations of just two viruses are endless! Tsk, tsk. It reminds me of an anime I saw from the Neon Country, something about a ’Lust... Infection’? I think it was about a virus that made people... you know, want to..."
Shen Feng suddenly felt his throat tickle and began coughing loudly to cut her off.
"AHEM... Let’s begin! Let’s begin! Everyone is anxious to get back to Earth!"
Hearing this, Jingwei immediately stopped and began diverting most of her processing power to control the Wormhole Generator.
Tens of thousands of meters in front of the hundred-kilometer-wide Wormhole, a massive, ring-shaped machine hovered in space. This device, itself a dozen or so kilometers in diameter, resembled an oversized particle accelerator.
It was the Wormhole Generator.
With a flash of light, a spot on the distant Red Supergiant Star Shield UY suddenly dimmed as the Wormhole Generator began to power up.
With no visible beam connecting them, the Space Wormhole began to glow with a blue light. The seal was broken, and it slowly began to open!
Immediately, a hundred-kilometer-wide mass of the Nanomechanical Cluster moved forward to seal the mouth of the Space Wormhole, completely enveloping the area. It then extended pipes, each ten kilometers in diameter, stretching out toward the remnants of the distant Meteorite Belt.
After a moment, a colossal amount of seawater began gushing from the pipes. Compared to this torrent, the largest waterfall on Earth would be nothing more than a dripping faucet.
Since the Space City built by the Nanomechanical Cluster continuously released heat and gasses, the area was no longer a vacuum at absolute zero but maintained a relatively pleasant temperature.
As the massive torrent of water spewed out, it immediately formed spherical globules in the low-gravity environment, which then drifted off into the distance.
Upon leaving the vicinity of the Space City, the water would rapidly freeze in the cold vacuum of space, condensing into Ice Meteorites and becoming part of a new meteorite belt.
According to calculations by Shen Feng and Jingwei, the World Beasts had brought vast numbers of Ice Meteorites with them when they first went to Earth, causing the planet’s sea levels to rise abnormally.
To restore Earth’s environment and reclaim the lost continents, they had to drain all this excess water, lowering the sea level back to its pre-apocalyptic state.
Watching the ceaseless torrent of water, Witch Tower and the other human warriors were overcome with a complex mix of emotions.
They had always dreamed that one day, Earth’s sea levels would return to normal, that humanity would once again have vast continents on which they could run freely.
That day was now...
The draining process took about a week. Fortunately, the Space Wormhole was massive. Had it been a mere ten-meter-wide wormhole, draining the excess water from Earth would likely have taken thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years.
Once these preparations were complete, the crowd that had long been waiting on this side of the Space Wormhole immediately piloted their Super Giant War Armors inside, passing through and leaving the Shield UY Star Realm for good.
A huge portion of the Nanomechanical Cluster was brought along, but the vast majority was left behind.
After the last human had departed, the remaining Nanomechanical Cluster immediately began its predetermined program: it devoured and dismantled the Wormhole Generator, consuming the massive machine until not a trace was left, as if it had never existed.
Without its continuous energy supply, its energy anchor point now gone, the massive Space Wormhole began to shrink rapidly. It continued to contract until it was completely annihilated, vanishing into space as if nothing had ever happened, as if none of this had ever existed.
Next, the magnificent Space City also crumbled. The massive Nanomechanical Cluster left behind in the Shield UY Star Realm began to self-destruct according to its programming, disintegrating into lifeless, gray metallic dust.
Unlike the original Nanomechanical Insects, these ones, having consumed Beast Gold, remained in a metallic state after self-destructing. They quickly formed a shimmering, silver belt of dust where the Meteorite Belt once was.
Beyond that, only the slowly expanding Red Supergiant Star, Shield UY, remained, hanging in the void as it awaited the day of its ultimate demise...