Chapter 675: Starfall
"SW-137 pass approved. Attention: after entering our airspace, deactivate the gravity protection device..."
"This is truly... a miracle." Scott exclaimed.
Within the airspace of the Land of White, universal gravitation was nullified.
Originally massive flagships, once they got close enough to Earth, a terrifying gravitational pull should have existed between them and Earth. The gravity protection device was precisely to protect the Federation's Great Thousand-class flagships from colliding due to their mutual gravitational forces.
These behemoths, with internal spaces specially modified by Sky Profound Crystals to simultaneously accommodate hundreds of millions of people, would have long since crashed due to the gravitational pull generated by their close proximity if not for the gravity protection device.
The internal space of a single Great Thousand-class flagship was comparable to several provinces of the former Hua-Ya Federation.
After decades of effort, the Federation progressed from an initial twenty-odd flagships to ultimately constructing over a thousand Great Thousand-class flagships. As for the hereditary flagships of the nobles, their number approached a hundred thousand.
But Mars was gone.
Mars had been dismembered.
These lands, filled with Martian material, were called "cultivated land" by the Federation people. Their price was quite cheap, as there would be no more mineral deposits beneath them, nor could they be used for cultivation.
Building houses was feasible, but most of this "cultivated land" was far from cities and differed little from barren deserts.
The Sky Profound Crystals embedded within Mars were enough to construct over ten thousand Great Thousand-class flagships. Half of these, in accordance with the Mars development agreement of that year, were sent to the Land of White.
Of the other half, the Federation used less than a third, with the remainder kept as strategic reserves.
As a civilization intent on transforming into space nomads, the Human Federation, over these decades, continuously invested in the technological tree of planetary resource extraction, striving to completely strip every planet they occupied.
Mars was their first prey.
And Venus, their second.
...
Twelve Great Thousand-class flagships, at the request of the Federation Council, arrived in Earth's orbit, encircling the planet like the twelve main hour markers on a clock.
Of course, they weren't here to start a war. Flagships were never warships; they were mobile territories.
The belly of one of the flagships slowly opened, and a small spacecraft flew out.
The spacecraft's speed was incredibly swift. In less than three minutes, it had already reached Earth's surface-level nanometer atmosphere.
At that moment, a golden light shot out from within the spacecraft, quickly enveloping the entire vessel.
The golden light seemed to have an excellent decelerating effect. It enveloped the spacecraft, bringing its speed to a complete halt precisely one-tenth of a second before landing.
...
"Welcome."
When the first woman, gleaming with golden light, stepped out of the cabin, it was as if a voice from an incredibly high and distant place spoke across the land.
"Thank you."
She was none other than Xu Xuanling, the current Radiant Sun Councilor of the Federation.
Following her were the captains of the various flagships, along with their attendants: the bearded Scott, and young Dalton, who were also among them.
The last to exit the cabin was the commander of the Blood Prison Legion—the Blood Battle God Xi Liu, accompanied by several of his senior officers.
"Long time no see." Xu Xuanling said to the arriving group.
To greet this lavishly arrayed Federation delegation, the Land of White had dispatched only a single individual.
She recognized that the person who had come to greet her was an avatar of Bai Mo.
Or rather, it was a Holy Progenitor's body temporarily taken over by Bai Mo.
"It seems you've adapted to life here."
"It's certainly much more entertaining than the Manghuang Realm." Xu Xuanling retracted the golden light enveloping her body, revealing her exquisitely beautiful face.
High-level cultivators possessed many methods to alter their appearance; unless they intentionally neglected it, they were universally handsome men and beautiful women.
However, Xu Xuanling was different. This face of hers was a gift from Bai Mo back when she first transmigrated to the Moon.
As a visitor from another land, she was also one of the very few high-ranking Federation officials who held a friendly attitude towards Bai Mo.
The man who had forced them to abandon Earth and embark on the path to the sea of stars was destined to remain an eternal sore spot for the Federation.
Only Xu Xuanling, who had never lived on Earth and whose homeland was not this azure planet, harbored no hatred for Bai Mo.
"What can I offer to exchange for that body?" she suddenly transmitted to Bai Mo, "The body with that faithless man's bloodline."
Xu Xuanling's first order of business upon arriving was to acquire the physical shell Bai Mo had once possessed in the Manghuang Realm.
It was the son of the man she once loved, a person whose face bore an eighty to ninety percent resemblance to her faithless lover.
Although Xu Xuanling now had a new love, she still wished to commemorate her previous, unfulfilled first love.
"Would you test this Dao pill for me?" Bai Mo did not refuse, merely proposing a peculiar request of his own—to act as a test subject.
That "shed husk" from the Manghuang Realm still lay quietly within the White Month.
To Bai Mo, that thing held no other significance beyond serving as a memento.
But for outsiders, if they could conduct a sufficiently detailed analysis of it, deducing a divine cultivation technique from it would be no difficult feat.
After all, it was an incredibly complete body of a cultivator, perfected at the sixth stage, and had even briefly hosted the power of a seventh-stage Immortal.
"Understood." Xu Xuanling mused for a moment, then agreed to the trade.
She didn't ask what the Dao pill was, nor if it had any side effects; she simply nodded.
Compared to the Federation's people, she still trusted Bai Mo more, believing he wouldn't trick her too badly. After all, it was he who had given her the chance to ascend to Immortality back then.
...
The others, watching the two exchange covert transmissions with knowing glances, clearly looking like old acquaintances, couldn't help but form certain ideas.
Yet no one dared to speak, fearing they would be "cooled off" in the next second.
Let alone the sovereign of the Land of White; even a mere Radiant Sun Councilor could eliminate everyone present without much effort.
"Personal matters end here." Xu Xuanling noticed the disapproving glances from her team members behind her and realized she might have appeared a little too enthusiastic.
They had come this time at Bai Mo's invitation to the Federation, to jointly partition the Water Blue Star.
The Water Blue Star had a population of approximately two billion. According to the Land of White's consistent principle of self-determination, at least several hundred million people would choose not to join them. These individuals could not remain on the Water Blue Star, yet they entirely lacked the capability to travel into space.
As for slaughtering them on the spot, Bai Mo wouldn't be so wasteful. He might as well do a favor, act as a human trafficker for a while, and package these hundreds of millions of people to sell to the Federation.
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