Chapter 51 — A Faint Halo

In the higher-dimensional void, the flow of starlight seemed to have lost the measure of time.

Around the star-weaving loom in the Sanctum, countless dazzling golden silk threads were slowly gliding along massive geometric orbits. However, within this sea of light constructed from absolute order, a suffocating tension was quietly surging. The higher-dimensional residual might left behind by the projection of Jupiter, Chief Minister of the Cabinet, still vibrated in the void, pressing heavily on the heart of Astra, the God of Light, like an invisible black cloud.

Astra knelt alone on the crystal-clear star-carpet, her pale hands tightly gripping the starlight spindle.

She looked down at the projection representing the destiny of the entire LinBoo universe. In the dark coordinates of the blind spot, Orion's dark gold lifeline, representing the operation of the Orion demigod, was being strangled layer by layer by the cold, dark red gravitational net of the "Saturn-Pluto opposition". In macroscopic physical calculation, that trajectory, locked jointly by Saturn and Pluto, was like a steel floodgate about to close shut; no power could pry it open by force.

"The Law of Star-tracks... cannot be violated."

Astra muttered to herself, a trace of deep agony flashing through her clear golden eyes. Jupiter's warning still rang in her ears—any direct intervention would detonate the gravitational balance of the entire Aries star sector, turning tens of billions of mortal lives into ashes in the karmic backlash. That sea of golden flames that once raged within the core of the Tartarus mining planet rolled frantically in her mind once again.

But looking at that thin dark gold line struggling within the dark red noose, yet still stubbornly flickering, she knew she could not stand idly by.

It was not just a line. It was that confidant deep within the cold, lonely heavenly realm who had silently gazed at her from across the edge of the observation tower, understanding all her exhaustion; it was that arrogant hunter who would rather destroy his own divine core and bloodily tear away her protection than see her divine core damaged.

"What if... I don't forcibly break this gravitational floodgate?"

Astra's fingertips trembled, a trace of resolute light flashing in her golden eyes.

She could not fight Saturn's order and Pluto's annihilation on a macroscopic scale, but as the Law-Incarnate and system administrator god of the LinBoo Astrolabe, she possessed the supreme privilege to make fine adjustments at the thousandth decimal place in the microscopic algorithms. That was a minuscule "rounding remainder" that the laws of the star-tracks could not fully cover.

She slowly raised her left hand, and on the tip of her slender index finger, an extremely pure, almost tangible pale golden light, white as milk, began to quietly condense.

That was the divine light of her origin, the soul origin that maintained the immortality of her divine core.

"Orion... I cannot untie this Saturn-Pluto dead knot for you." Astra softly chanted the ancient and low true words of the law, her voice pulling out countless faint echoes in the empty star-temple. "But I will cover your death-omen star in a garment of light. In the instant it falls, this halo will block one thousandth of a second of the law's lock-on for you."

Her fingertip slowly pressed toward that fate-track projection flashing with dark red light.

The instant her fingertip touched the edge of Orion's lifeline, the massive golden astrolabe, which had been rotating steadily, suddenly let out an extremely ear-piercing, muffled sound of metallic friction. Countless golden strings of light vibrated violently in an instant, letting out a sharp howl like a gale blowing past steel wires.

"Buzz——!"

A cold, violent, and intensely tearing higher-dimensional backlash energy traveled along the projection of the fate-track, instantly piercing Astra's fingertip like a needle, sweeping up her arm and through her entire body like lightning.

"Ugh..."

Astra let out a muffled groan of pain, her delicate body shuddering violently. In that instant, she felt as if her soul had been forcefully stuffed into a high-speed rotating gravity juicer, and continuous, crisp sounds of shattering came from deep within her divine core. Her divine core, under the punishment of defying the celestial orbits, once again cracked with a tiny but extremely deep fissure.

A drop of golden divine blood slowly overflowed from the corner of her mouth, sliding down silently to wet the collar of her golden robe, dissipating into a wisp of pale golden smoke on the pure white star-carpet.

But she did not withdraw her hand.

She gritted her teeth, a trace of unprecedented stubbornness igniting in her golden eyes. She stared fixedly at that dark red intersection representing destruction, the milky-white divine light on her fingertip slowly but unshakeably seeping little by little into the very forefront of Orion's lifeline.

Within the bottom-layer data of the Star-network, around the originally tightly locked dark gold string of light, following the infiltration of this wisp of origin divine light, a layer of extremely pale, extremely thin, and almost impossible to capture milky-white halo began to quietly ripple.

This halo could not stop the Aries vanguard fleet's gravity purification field, nor could it eliminate the physical shattering brought by the Saturn-Pluto opposition.

But it could cause the causality algorithm of the Aries fleet's main cannons to produce an extremely faint physical deflection the instant it locked onto Orion's divine core fluctuation—in the microscopic time of a thousandth of a cycle-day, or fractions of a second, causing his life fluctuation to bizarrely deviate from the radar by a few micrometers.

This fraction of a second of vitality was the sole path to survival she had snatched for him at the cost of cracking her divine core.

"Hah... hah..."

When that wisp of origin divine light completely merged into the fate-track, Astra fell backward as if completely drained, the starlight spindle clattering to the floor beside the star-weaving loom. She gasped for air, her face as pale as bones on the wasteland, her entire right arm convulsing violently and uncontrollably, the divine power within her plummeting by nearly a tenth in an instant.

But as she looked at that faint halo flickering within the dark red dead knot, her pale lips slowly curled up into a relieved and gentle smile.

---

Meanwhile, tens of light-years away, in the Grand Canyon of the astrological blind spot.

The cold midnight wind howled through Emberfall Camp, and piercingly cold rain battered the iron outer shell of the cargo hold.

Leaning against the abandoned transmission shaft, Vespera (Umbra) suddenly changed her expression. Her deep violet eyes, hidden in the shadow of her hood, abruptly narrowed. Deep in her mind, the Twin God consciousness origin that shared the same source as Astra generated an extremely faint, yet intensely stinging sympathetic tremor in that instant.

She even faintly smelled the fragrance of divine blood on the tip of her tongue.

Astra...

Vespera slowly raised her head, her gaze seemingly piercing through the thick iron walls and the twisted radioactive clouds above the blind spot, stabbing straight toward that unreachable pure white Sanctum.

A highly complex sneer, intertwining disdain and a tremor, slowly emerged on her cold and beautiful face.

You foolish woman... you finally made a move.

Did you think your faint light could block the causality iron cage woven by Saturn? This thousandth of a second you bought with a cracked divine core is simply like dropping a dry, fallen leaf in front of a raging fire on this cruel battlefield constructed of physical gravity.

However, despite sneering at her sister's stupidity in divine logic, Vespera's five fingers hidden inside the cuffs of her trench coat involuntarily clenched tight.

In her divine perception, around that dark gold point of light destined to be reduced to nothingness in three days by the astrolabe's algorithms, there was indeed a warm remainder that did not belong to this cold system.

It was a faint halo.

It was like a small question mark, abruptly hanging at the end of a death sentence that had originally been filled with periods.

Beside the stone table on one side of the cargo hold, Elias, who had his head down wiping a heavy cutting knife, suddenly stopped his movements. He subconsciously raised his left hand, pressing against the cold, rough half of a star-core pendant on his chest. In that instant, he seemed to feel an extremely faint gravitational fluctuation, like a pinprick, coming from this pendant salvaged from the ruins of Tartarus.

"What's wrong, Elias?" Lyra, who was organizing the star-maps nearby, keenly noticed the boy's pause and asked somewhat nervously, her voice still carrying the lingering echoes of her previous worry.

"Nothing." Elias withdrew his hand, his lake-green eyes looking exceptionally deep in the dim red light. "I just felt that for an instant just now, the gravity wind in the Grand Canyon seemed to stop."

"Stop overthinking, the combat readiness radar shows the outer polarized magnetic field is perfectly normal." Caleb sat nearby, checking a newly assembled Orbit-breaking Meteor Shell warhead while speaking gruffly. "Go rest quickly, Commander-in-Chief. Starting tomorrow, we have to push all the cannons up to the pass. No matter how the stars in the sky turn, we have to smash the brains out of these Aries wolves right here in this mud."

Elias nodded, turning his head to look out the window at the pitch-black, profound night sky suppressed lifelessly by the purification field. Deep within his lake-green eyes, that unyielding wildfire burned even hotter.