Chapter 1 Margs Star System

Within the Star Alliance territory, the Margs Star System.

A long, narrow spatial rift ran across the starry sky, as if a knife had sliced open the belly of the universe, spewing out an endless green tide.

Countless World Tree battleships flew out of the wormhole, forming armies that turned into dense streams of light, scattering in all directions to invade the planets on the star chart.

The World Tree fleet traveled at extremely high speed. Before long, a prosperous planet came into view. The planet's defense forces had already taken to the skies, stationed in outer space, ready to resist the invasion.

Buzz—

Just then, a burst of light flashed in the distance. A massive fleet of starships covered in starlight rapidly approached. The outer armor of the ships was engraved with the Star Alliance insignia. This was a rapid support force urgently deployed by the military, stationed at a nearby military fortress, responsible for maintaining the security of the area.

In the flagship of the Star Alliance rapid support force, a capable-looking middle-aged commander gripped the edge of the table tightly with both hands, gritting his teeth as he looked at the enemy forces outside the window, which outnumbered his own countless times. A sense of misery welled up in his heart, and he let out a hoarse roar:

"Seventeenth and eighteenth detachments, land and immediately organize the civilians to board the ships for evacuation! The rest… all forces attack! Stall for time!"

As soon as the order was issued, the rapid support force charged towards the invading World Tree without hesitation.

Facing an insurmountable opponent, the Star Alliance fleet still counterattacked head-on. It was a tragic scene, like an isolated and helpless army enduring the endless siege of countless enemies.

However, tragedy was tragedy. The gap in hard power would not be shortened by it. Their fearless sacrifice could not stop the spread of the rolling green tide. The apocalyptic green tide did not stop, easily submerging this armed fleet.

The Star Alliance fleet's counterattack only stirred up a small wave, which soon disappeared into the endless green tide.

Tendrils tore through the firmament, stabbing into this prosperous urban planet like straws, devouring the matter and energy inside in large gulps, turning them into nutrients for themselves.

In the flagship of this World Tree fleet, the Heart Tree King overlooked the planet, his eyes shining with a faint light. His vast mental power had already covered the entire planet, hypnotizing and guiding all life forms to give up their escape and actively throw themselves into the tendrils, becoming members of the World Tree.

Watching the last few Star Alliance warships explode into scattered fragments under the concentrated fire of the World Tree fleet, the Heart Tree King shook his head.

"Just a futile struggle…"

He turned his head to look at the countless soldiers in the ship's hold, and saw that each of their faces was filled with fanaticism. War was what they were best at.

Noticing the Heart Tree King's gaze, everyone raised their arms and shouted.

"For the Mother Tree! For the Father God!"

After Black Star subdued the World Tree, he became the "Father God" in the hearts of all World Tree members, his will above the Mother Tree.

The Heart Tree King silently echoed the phrase before retracting his gaze, looking towards the starry sky, his gaze seeming to be able to penetrate the infinite distance and lock onto the Star Alliance's mother star.

…

Star Alliance Capital, Joint Conference Room.

Unlike the joyful atmosphere of a few days ago, the room was now filled with gloom, full of negative emotions such as fear, despair, and anxiety.

In the past few days, reports of World Tree invasions had erupted throughout the territory. It was as if overnight, the entire Star Alliance territory was in crisis, and countless planets had fallen.

All the Star Alliance executives present no longer had the high spirits of a few days ago. At this time, they looked haggard and disheveled. They had basically been working around the clock for the past few days, engaging in one fierce debate after another.

"Isn't the World Tree civilization still at war with the three major civilizations? Why are they invading us silently?"

The leader of the Star Alliance frowned, his expression tired, his eyes bloodshot, and his voice already hoarse.

Sai Weinis shuddered slightly and said in a trembling voice, "Could it be that the World Tree civilization thinks it has crippled the three major civilizations, so it wants to fight on two fronts? What should we do?"

Many Star Alliance executives frowned.

They thought that the three major civilizations were still fighting to the death with the World Tree. It was just that they had discovered their location, so they had drawn some troops to fight them as well. It felt like they were happily eating other people's melon, but suddenly they were eating it themselves, completely dumbfounded.

"What else can we do? Since the World Tree has come to attack, we can only resist!" Someone slammed the table hard to hide the fear in his heart.

As soon as he finished speaking, someone immediately objected and said loudly:

"Fight what fight! Even the three major civilizations are no match for the World Tree. They were crippled in a few years. We can't defend our respective territories at all. Let's quickly migrate the refugees, preserve the seeds of civilization, abandon our territory, and run away!"

"How can that be? We still have the power to fight! The World Tree is ravaging my territory. As long as everyone sends troops to support, we can definitely repel the World Tree!" Another person said in a deep voice.

"You're talking nonsense! We don't even have enough troops for ourselves, why would we go to help you?!" Another person shouted.

This argument immediately ignited the fuse. Everyone's emotions had been like a spring compressed to the extreme in the past few days. At this moment, the accumulated dissatisfaction in their hearts all erupted. They were directly divided into two groups, one advocating for war and the other advocating for escape, arguing fiercely.

If most of the people present weren't remote projections, everyone would probably have rolled up their sleeves and started fighting by now.

The Star Alliance was jointly formed by more than forty civilizations. It was not a monolithic entity in itself. Each had its own interests. They could unite in normal times, but in the face of the pressure of a powerful foreign enemy, internal divisions immediately erupted.

The member states could not agree on a unified opinion. Some civilization executives who had never agreed to cause trouble could no longer restrain themselves and began to complain loudly.

"Everyone calm down! Calm down… we still have other options. We can't resist the World Tree on our own, but since the three major civilizations and we are in the same situation, perhaps we can take the initiative to communicate with them and join forces to fight the enemy… As for the past calculations, we can put them aside for the time being. It is most important to repel the World Tree together. They must be able to distinguish the priorities. In the future, we and the three major civilizations will settle our scores separately. Now, we must first protect ourselves before we are qualified to talk about the future…"

The leader of the Star Alliance loudly proposed a suggestion, trying his best to ease the atmosphere, but it was useless. Everyone was speechless at his proposal, directly ignored it, and continued to argue, the scene becoming more and more uncontrollable.

In the past, many Star Alliance members would not have given him so little face, but now, at this moment when the life and death of each civilization were at stake, no one cared about him anymore.

Everyone had a big argument. Many people were furious, stopped nagging, and directly went offline, not intending to listen to the Star Alliance's unified dispatch anymore, and decided to fly away when disaster struck.

Before long, only a mess was left in the conference room. The leader of the Star Alliance sat alone in his seat, full of bitterness.

…

After the high-level officials broke out in an argument, several civilization leaders did not hesitate to issue orders, not listening to the Star Alliance's dispatch at all. They packed up their resources and population on their own, and hurriedly began to migrate and escape, preparing to leave the Star Alliance territory and enter the unexplored universe.

Originally, most civilizations were annoyed and panicked, but had not yet made up their minds to abandon their homes. However, when they saw someone decisively running away, they immediately became anxious—others had already started running, if they didn't follow, wouldn't they be staying behind to help others cover their retreat? How could that be!

The chain reaction happened quickly. One after another, Star Alliance members dared not delay any longer and also began to migrate and escape, no longer caring about the Star Alliance agreement.

When these member states one by one disobeyed orders, the Star Alliance's mechanism quickly became paralyzed. The huge Star Alliance seemed to break apart overnight, and the long-range fleets of each civilization began to flee, going their separate ways.

In the past, many Star Alliance members would not easily violate the Star Alliance's unified order, otherwise they would be jointly isolated by others, but now, who cared so much. With the World Tree's invasion and the Star Alliance's internal disagreement, this united cosmic-level civilization was destined to disintegrate. Everyone did not intend to wait for death as a group, but only wanted fellow Daoists to die instead of themselves.

—This was Han Xiao's deliberate calculation. The Star Alliance's organizational structure had too many obvious weaknesses, that was, too many conflicting interests, and there was no dominant civilization with the strength to occupy an absolute advantage. It was barely united, and it was impossible for opinions to be completely unified.

In normal times, the Star Alliance members had some concerns, but once a crisis of survival erupted, it would definitely be difficult to unite, and there was an 80% chance of division. As long as this collective will was dismantled, then the Star Alliance, this small giant, would be like being dismembered, and its resistance would plummet by several levels, basically losing most of its will to fight.

Back then, the Star Alliance secretly leaked information, wanting to cause internal conflicts in interstellar society. Han Xiao's move was also using their own methods to deal with them, adopting a divide-and-conquer strategy to trigger internal divisions in the other side.

…

The spaceport terminal on the Luer Civilization's mother planet was already overcrowded. One after another, anti-gravity transport vehicles transported batches of supplies onto the fleet. Countless panicked people lined up to board the ships under the orders of armed soldiers. No matter how anxious they were, they could only restrain themselves and obey orders.

Not long ago, a group of people wanted to launch a riot, but they were directly suppressed by iron and blood and executed on the spot. The bloodstains had not yet been wiped clean, so at this time, no one dared to mess around at all.

Before long, the first batch of fleets was finally full. Without waiting for the subsequent ships, they directly took off and escaped into the depths of the starry sky, immediately starting their escape.

Sai Weinis was already in the flagship. As the civilization leader, he did not dare to continue to stay on the mother planet at this moment. The escape fleet was divided into several batches to depart. In order to escort him, more than half of the armed forces followed the first batch of escape fleets with the smallest population load to act together.

"We're finally setting off…"

Sai Weinis breathed a sigh of relief.

He still remembered that in the "war report," the two imperial heads of state were tortured to death by the World Tree, which showed that the World Tree civilization liked to carry out decapitation operations. He was worried that he would follow in their footsteps and be "violated to death." Therefore, he just wanted to run away quickly and did not dare to stay on the mother planet as a target… As far as he knew, other civilization leaders basically had the same idea and had all fled the mother planet.

As the spaceship slowly accelerated, Sai Weinis was finally not so worried and frightened, and muttered to himself:

"It should be temporarily safe…"

However, before he could finish speaking, the spaceship's radar suddenly burst out with an ear-piercing buzzing sound, directly pointing to the front of the spaceship. A source with an energy reaction that broke through the sky appeared out of thin air, blocking the way.

In the next moment, a mechanical deity rose against the wind, its size instantly exceeding the size of the entire fleet stacked together, covering the sky and the sun, and a big hand suddenly covered it.

Rumble rumble rumble—

As ripples of psionic energy bloomed, the entire fleet began a series of explosions like firecrackers. Almost in the blink of an eye, the armed escort fleet was almost completely annihilated, unable to stir up even a wave, and turned into a large area of fireworks in the starry sky, which was quite beautiful.

"This is Black Star?!"

Sai Weinis was shocked and hurriedly turned his head and shouted:

"Run, run…"

But before he could finish speaking, the many spaceship operators were already sweating profusely.

"It's no good, the fleet's intelligent matrix is completely locked, we can't control it at all, the spaceship has been paralyzed!"

"No…"

Sai Weinis suddenly widened his eyes, revealing an extreme look of fear, his pupils reflecting the ever-enlarging hand of the Supreme Heavenly Venerate, the mechanical patterns in the palm of his hand becoming more and more clear.

Kacha!

Han Xiao directly scooped up the flagship in his hand, sucked it into his body, and captured Sai Weinis and a group of high-level officials on the ship.

Immediately afterwards, he suddenly raised his hand and hammered it down, energy bursting out, like a gamma-ray burst, spreading out on a large scale, instantly "evaporating" a large group of warships that were planning to counterattack.

"The first one."

Han Xiao turned around and disappeared in a flash, as if he had never been here before.

His goal was to capture all the leaders of the Star Alliance civilizations, give full play to the advantages of individual power, and capture the king first.

With his current combat power, the success rate of beheading operations against opponents of the Star Alliance's level was almost 100%, a sure hit, and no one could stop him.

"Your Excellency Sai Weinis has been captured by the enemy!!"

Because Han Xiao's beheading efficiency was too fast, when Sai Weinis and other high-level officials were captured, the remaining defense forces on the mother planet did not have time to come to support at all.

The personnel left behind at the ground base looked blankly at the place where Han Xiao disappeared, listening to the busy tone in the command channel, and suddenly fell into a chaotic state of leaderlessness.