"Rumble—!"
The earth groaned. The land ship that had once been hailed as a miracle, spanning across the crimson riverbed, was now collapsing at full speed.
Under the ravages of S-099, the towering steel hull was like a delicate eggshell being brutally peeled open, helplessly spreading and shattering to both sides.
Tens of thousands of tons of special alloy bulkheads emitted the screeching groan of twisting metal under the dual pressure of gravity and internal force.
Following that, the black tide that had originally filled the entire ship to the brim—leaving no room for resistance—collapsed violently toward the abyssal fault below as the supporting structures failed.
It was a scene of magnificent destruction.
The torrent of black-red flesh roared and curled amidst the ruins, like an ancient behemoth with a pierced heart performing its final death throes.
However, amidst this boundless ocean of destruction, a few details occurred that caught Ren Yi by surprise.
Using the cool radiance falling from the sky as a guide, Ren Yi, who was ascending at full speed, fully released his perception.
Between the falling steel wreckage, the snapping hydraulic lines, and the splashing ink-like black tide, small, sparse dots suddenly burst out.
Against the backdrop of the massive ruins, those dots seemed insignificant, like ants being washed out of their nest by a flood.
Ren Yi extended his consciousness downward, and by the faint pale light, he perceived...
Those figures tumbling and falling in the ruins, even crawling frantically through the mud, appeared to be... Humans?
To be more precise, they were living people.
Among those ragged, blood-stained figures, Ren Yi clearly identified many markings belonging to the Red Ring Tribe and other commoners who had been confined in the lower cabins as "Consumables."
They had not been swallowed by the black-red torrent that had dissolved countless Sky Eye Organization elites and even their heavy exoskeleton armor.
On the contrary, when the massive hull cracked open, they were spat out like indigestible residue from a stomach, battered but miraculously alive.
"I see... S-099's predatory logic seems to have certain preferences."
Ren Yi hovered briefly in the air, the information from S-099's files flashing through his mind.
According to the records, compared to the fragile, low-energy, and impurity-filled bodies of ordinary Humans, this numbered S-099 behemoth was far more interested in "Anomalies" that contained high-energy physical constants, or even the inorganic matter of this world.
As long as they didn't actively cross its path, living people were nothing more than unattractive stones on the roadside to it.
This unexpected discovery solidified a hypothesis that had been faintly forming in Ren Yi's mind.
However, speaking of which, it was currently night.
Ren Yi saw some commotion in the distance from the tents of the Tide-Followers.
In this wilderness night, these people were moving as usual because there was still light beneath the darkness.
Moonlight.
Ren Yi's heart skipped a beat.
Although he had been in this world for some time, he had previously been trapped inside the land ship.
As a result, he had never truly or carefully looked at the "sky" of this world.
Ren Yi shifted his perceptual perspective.
Passing through the floating dust of the explosions, he looked toward the boundless expanse above.
He saw the "Moon" and the "starry sky."
Directly above him, on the pitch-black curtain beyond the edge of the atmosphere, a massive, silver-white celestial body hung high.
"But... can this thing really be called a 'Moon'?"
At that moment, Ren Yi's consciousness felt a slight tremor caused by the shock to his worldview.
With the help of pure perception unhindered by the atmosphere, he saw the true face of that massive celestial body.
It wasn't a normal satellite with a perfect sphere reflecting gentle sunlight at all.
It was a shattered, dying, massive celestial body.
A portion of its massive hull had exploded violently at some unknown point in the past.
Countless fragments, some as large as mountains and others as small as gravel, trailed far into space.
Circling the planet below, a stunning Star Ring of celestial debris—glistening with a blend of ethereal blue and silver-white light—extended through the silence of the cosmos.
That ring was like a magnificent belt, trapping the entire planet within.
The moment Ren Yi saw this Star Ring, countless mysteries about this world were solved in an instant.
He roughly guessed why this world, despite possessing so many unique Anomalies and being able to manufacture advanced technology like the land ship, was a complete blank when it came to basic aerospace technology.
Under the blockade and restriction of such a ring, composed of hundreds of millions of high-speed meteor debris and lingering radiation, no precision human machinery could cross the atmosphere intact.
Any rocket or satellite attempting to ascend would be ground into steel fragments by that never-ending space dust storm the moment it touched the Star Ring.
The sky of this world was locked.
And what was even more hair-raising was the actual structure of that "Moon."
In Ren Yi's vision, the entire "Moon" looked like a hard coconut shell that had been forcibly hollowed out by a giant axe.
It had no solid core; only a thin, rocky outer shell remained, riddled with impact craters and hideous cracks.
On the side facing deep space, there was a terrifying rupture so large it nearly tore the entire planet apart.
Looking inward from that rupture, the interior was a completely hollow, pitch-black, and deathly silent core.
To be more precise, whatever core material that celestial body had originally contained had been thoroughly "hollowed out" over the long ages.
It was like the corpse of a planet hanging over the heads of the beings in the world below.
Like a useless, dead egg that had been ruthlessly cracked open and discarded in orbit after some terrifying existence had incubated within.
Based on the information gleaned from the Sky Eye Organization's files, no further verification was needed; the name of this star corpse was already obvious.
S-002.
The "Primal Mother" that had once undergone a Great Shattering, raining down countless Anomaly rules and alien matter upon the world below.
It was the entity that ultimately brought about the surface disasters and the birth of monsters like S-099.
And right now, it was masquerading as a bright, clear moon, hanging high above everyone's heads.
During his previous period of infiltration and information gathering, Ren Yi had also intentionally learned about some of the calendars widely used in this world.
The calendar of this world was also divided into "years" and "months," with each month being approximately thirty days long.
But their year only had four months in total.
The Pure White Month, the Left Loop Month, the Month of Divine Sight, and the Right Loop Month.
The essence of these four month names, which defied all natural laws, corresponded precisely to the different lunar phases of this "dead star" as it rotated in orbit!
Unlike the Earth-Moon system in Ren Yi's memory, where the moon always showed the same face due to tidal locking...
The rotation logic of this star corpse above his head was extremely abnormal.
In its revolution, it seemed to be permanently locked above this region surrounded by the Black Forest, rotating in sync with the world's planet.
At the same time, it would rotate extremely slowly during its long orbital path.
When the hollow, hideous rupture was rotated toward outer space, leaving the relatively intact, silver-white rocky sphere facing this world...
The surface would experience the most peaceful "Pure White Month."
Later, as the dead star continued to turn and the rupture began to face the world below at an angle...
Based on the visual orientation of the rupture, the people on the surface divided it into the "Left Loop Month" and the "Right Loop Month."
And between the transition of these two, there was one month.
The massive, pitch-black, hollow core rupture at the center of that star corpse would face the ground directly and without obstruction.
Looking up from the surface, that massive void, surrounded by the Star Ring, looked like a gargantuan pupil made of endless darkness, devoid of any white.
It would stare down at the world with a fixed, mocking gaze.
Thus, that month was called the "Month of Divine Sight."
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