The little robot’s projection vanished, replaced by an immense library of virtual avatars. It had everything, from majestic Starry Sky Giant Beasts and adorable, exotic pets to humanoid life forms of every shape and size.
The sheer variety, comparable to the character creation screen in a top-tier game, was dazzling to Qin Feng.
He gave up on choosing one himself and simply said, "Let’s not make this complicated. Just take the form of a Little Flying Dragon."
"Instruction received. Reconstructing form..."
The words had barely faded when the holographic projection before him rapidly transformed.
Amid a swirl of light and shadow, a palm-sized, chibi-style Little Flying Dragon, entirely jet-black, appeared in mid-air.
It had a pair of large, round, golden eyes and tiny, fluttering wings, looking both majestic and adorable.
"Assistant Hammer, at your service."
The Little Flying Dragon spoke, its voice as crisp and pleasant as before. "Respected Master, you may tell Hammer directly of any needs you have."
Qin Feng studied the little creature curiously and tried to engage it in conversation. "Hammer, do you... have self-awareness?"
"Of course, Master."
Hammer tilted its head, its golden eyes blinking with vibrant life. "I am a primordial energy being, captured by the Empire from a specific dimension within Subspace. We are naturally amicable toward intelligent life. After being ’tamed’ and ’structured’ by the Imperial Academy of Sciences, we become the finest Intelligent Assistants. We possess independent thought and emotional modules, but our core directive is to maintain absolute and eternal loyalty to our bonded master. We are your most reliable companions, and an essential ’Subspace pet’ for all Star Sea Warriors."
Qin Feng clicked his tongue in amazement at the explanation.
"No wonder it was so expensive."
He remarked with sincere admiration.
’A Subspace lifeform with self-awareness, absolute loyalty, and the ability to grow continuously... its value truly couldn’t be compared to some cold AI program.’
’Five million Imperial Coins was money well spent.’
With that, all his pre-graduation preparations were complete.
Qin Feng suppressed his excitement, took a deep breath, and clicked on the icon that had cost him one hundred thousand Imperial Coins to access.
[Imperial Forum]
HUMMM!
The moment he clicked the icon, it was as if a singularity from a universe of information had appeared before Qin Feng’s eyes, only to then violently explode!
Innumerable, densely packed posts, like a surging Star River, scrolled frantically across his retinal display.
Every post title represented a story in progress, a dispatch from a distant Star Realm.
At the edges of his vision were countless more regional forum icons, twinkling like a star-filled sky.
Each icon represented a star system, a Star Realm, or even a massive Star Zone.
The vast majority of them flashed with a glaring red dot, indicating a massive number of unread messages.
This suffocating torrent of information instantly assaulted Qin Feng’s senses.
For the first time, he felt the sheer scale and immensity of the human Empire in such a direct and visceral way.
He forced himself to calm down and selected his home star system in the forum’s regional search bar.
[Canaan Star System]
Even after filtering by one of the Empire’s most basic administrative units, the amount of information within was still so vast and dazzling it was impossible to take in.
Instead of looking at the real-time posts, Qin Feng first clicked on the few pinned educational columns.
[From the Ground Up: Understanding the Cosmos You Live In—Foundations of the Empire’s Structure]
[Ten Thousand Races Atlas (Public Edition): Get to Know Your Neighbors]
[Abridged History of the Imperial Martial Dao: The Names That Lit Up the Stars]
He read through these educational posts in silence, every word deepening the shock in his heart.
Only now did he truly understand just how vast his world was.
The Canaan Star System alone contained over five hundred billion stars and more than a trillion Educational Planets like Morningstar. And that wasn’t even counting the mining planets, agricultural planets, and resource-extraction planets, which were even more numerous...
A single administrative unit, known as a "Star Zone," was a congregation of over a trillion star systems like the Canaan Star System!
And a Star Zone was the basic administrative unit directly governed by a power like the Ultramarines Chapter.
The Ultramarines Chapter, in turn, guarded a section of the Starry Sky Great Wall known as the "Beikai and Hercules Great Wall."
This Starry Sky Great Wall, which stretched across the cosmic void, was itself formed from trillions of densely packed Star Zones, their numbers as countless as grains of sand!
And in the boundless cosmos, beyond the borders of the human Empire, there existed the "Battlefield of Ten Thousand Races"—a cruel, bloody, resource-rich expanse belonging to no single race—as well as the "Ten Thousand Races Territory," which truly belonged to the Alien Races.
There were even regions of absolute nothingness called "voids," many of which spanned diameters of several Star Zones.
Within these voids, there was nothing—next to no matter existed.
Some voids contained civilizations steeped in despair.
They might develop for tens of thousands of years and achieve spacefaring technology, but they still would never be able to contact the human Empire.
The observable cosmos for such a civilization would be utterly empty—a truly desperate existence.
Qin Feng’s attention was captured by one post in particular.
[Cosmic Wonders Discussion: The Origin of the Boötes Void—A Natural Formation, or the Masterpiece of a ’Giant Beast’?]
The post included a breathtaking image captured by the Empire’s deep-space probe array.