Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1349: The Original Story
At the very beginning of the story, there was a very ordinary world, a very ordinary planet, a very ordinary beginning.
It was a small dot in the endless starry sky, a speck of dust in the universe, like every planet that has given birth to life, luck favored this solid planet composed of rock, metal, and sulfur-rich minerals. After a solar storm swept the earth, charged particles and strong magnetic fields penetrated the layers of rocks on the planet’s surface, coincidentally assembling the first silica-sulfur macromolecule capable of self-replication from the hot springs in the planet’s shallow surface. This silica-sulfur macromolecule became the most complex compound the planet had ever seen, and the beginning of the entire story—it survived the transformations of the hot spring’s substances, accurately completed its first replication, and maintained its stability amidst the changes in the hot spring’s temperature. In a slow and purely luck-driven "reproduction," it took tens of millions of years to cover the rocky bottom of the hot spring, then slowly began to spread outwards. It gradually aggregated, mutated, and fused with surrounding other substances or other mutated macromolecules. Symbiosis, struggle, compromise, the seeds of life took root and sprouted, and after mere replication for hundreds of millions of years, the first organism that could be called a "cell" evolved from these endlessly replicating silica-sulfur thick soups.
The primitive biosphere of the Mother Star began underground.
After several hundred million more years, the cell composed of high-molecular sulfide shells slowly "learned" how to unite with other cells to form more complex, more adaptable complex organisms suitable for survival and migration, and for the first time freely roamed the dark geothermal thick soup.
The original underground hot springs were already on the brink of extinction with time, but the underground "water" systems of the Mother Star formed a network, and the ancient organisms that learned to move freely swam from a depleted hot spring to another nutrient-rich hot spring, gradually approached a shallow underground river leading to the surface, and finally settled in an ancient open lake, beginning the next stage of complexity, preparing unknowingly for the fateful day—setting foot on the surface.
The first to run on the Mother Star’s soil were little creatures crawling on the ground, perhaps looking like squashed lizards, perhaps a tail fin degraded into a tail, or perhaps sharp little nails used to grip the smooth hot spring rock beds—even the ancestors could only fantasize about the appearance of these ancient little creatures through speculation and fossil reconstruction. They deduced that these earliest Mother Star creatures would have blue-white scale-like skin, silicon-based bones, fiber-like sulfur-based soft internal organs—they hadn’t evolved eyes yet because the dark hot springs and lakebeds didn’t require such organs—these blind crawling creatures left the ancient geothermal sources, then the nutrient-depleted underground rivers, and now they left the stagnant lake: an epic adventure legend. With their fragile limbs, they cautiously clung to the dry surface rocks, climbed to the surface, with the thick atmosphere of the primitive Mother Star swirling cold winds against the damp skin of these little creatures—perhaps some timid ones retreated, but thank heavens, the brave among them raised their heads to welcome this unprecedented dry air stream. At this moment, it had been two billion years past since the initial solar storm that sowed life on the Mother Star.
As these little creatures ran across the vast desolate land of the primitive Mother Star, gradually breeding and spreading to a considerable scale, a decisive turning point appeared: Ancestor Anses called this turning point the Great Storm Era.
The primitive Mother Star of the Xyrin People was a massive planet, according to data provided by the ancestors, it might be three times the size of Earth and possessed a powerful liquid inner core. Intense geological activity during the Ancient Era caused its surface to be covered with ultra-large mountains and rifts unimaginable on Earth: these mountains and rifts stretched endlessly, meandering across the entire Earth’s crust, almost like corrugated paper in a partition breeding box, dividing the entire planet into several parts. Where the Earth’s crust overall dips, the mountains and rifts can’t continue, yet huge oceans block the paths, naturally dividing the primitive Mother Star into several zones, each with distinct natural environments—the biggest differences even resembling two separate planets—this high-contrast surface resulted in atmospheric turbulence accumulation, complemented by the overly active Sun beside the Mother Star, leading to the Mother Star experiencing intense climatic changes at periodic intervals, and extremely large-scale meteorological events unimaginable on Earth. The scale and intensity of typhoons on the primitive Mother Star were several times those on Earth, a high convection wind even covering four-fifths of the planet—although the cycles between such phenomena were long, each occurrence shook the planet to its core.
And this time, the Mother Star brewed an unprecedented storm: a storm greater than any in the planet’s history and any that would come after—it swept the globe, triggering worldwide rainfall and hurricane weather. The largest storm ocean center of the Mother Star dropped by tens of meters, the resulting impact tsunamis ravaged surrounding continents, floods engulfed inland regions, it seemed destiny wanted to kick this planet undergoing upheaval; thus a large-scale crust collision occurred in the hemisphere filled with mountains: towering mountains developed cracks, floodwaters from coastal areas charged in, coupled with hurricanes and heavy rainfall, this reshuffling-like meteorological event lasted nearly half a Mother Star year.
The primitive biosphere suffered heavy losses in this reshuffle, but did not completely perish—miraculously, this became one of the reasons for the later Xyrin People’s distinct civilization structure: primitive organisms were carried to various corners of the planet and restarted evolution in environments so different they resembled alien planets. The silica-sulfur-based life was robust in adaptability, their tolerance for temperature and humidity often tens or even hundreds of times that of carbon-based life; they survived tenaciously in all corners of the Mother Star, and eventually evolved more than a dozen incredulous life systems.
The differences between each life system were almost like alien creatures!
Then the story of the Xyrin People began—due to the previous "Great Storm Era," global organisms evolved into over a dozen nearly completely isolated lineages, and among them, half the lineages successively developed intelligent life, this was the primitive Xyrin People: that’s right, the Xyrin People were not a singular race, they evolved independently in the bizarre environments of the Mother Star. What emerged were several biologically different entities, although they shared human-like forms and walked upright, that resulted from domain information disturbances—and if you studied two different tribal Xyrin people from the Mother Star Era, you would definitely think they came from two different alien planets!
Perhaps also one of the ancient reasons for today’s Xyrin Apostle generating "sub-clans."
Xyrin Civilization is a relatively rare "multi-species mixed civilization," that is, multiple distinctly different intelligent species originated on the same planet, successively reaching enlightenment stages, and ultimately forming a mixed enlightened civilization. They are siblings, from the same civilization, but have reached the point of mutually considering each other as aliens—it is that exaggerated.
Such "multi-species mixed civilization" might seem novel in the conventional worldview of Earthlings, but for me, this concept has come up before, take the Salvation Army species composition: they are from the same planet. The Xyrin People are just like that, composed of several distinct intelligent species—these intelligent species also served as the origin templates for the later Xyrin Apostles.
Like many ordinary races, the major races on the primitive Mother Star erupted in wars during initial contact, and due to fundamental differences in life forms, these wars were extraordinarily brutal—Ancestor Anses continually mentioned some names when discussing this history: Scorpion, Safa, Storm—these were tribal names during the Ancient Era of the Mother Star. Before the Xyrin Civilization formed a unified entity, the planet was divided by several similarly enlightened species, with splitting and opposition far exceeding Earth’s most chaotic epochs.
Yet like ordinary races that persisted into the Cosmic Era, after experiencing initial war-integration, the Xyrin People successfully transformed from opposing tribes into a unified civilization and began to explore their universe.
"Multi-species mixed civilization" has an inherent advantage; they develop faster in scientific research and exploration, thus the Xyrin People mastered advanced space technology within a short period, and after reaching the limits of the matter world, began researching how to jump beyond their universe—however, disaster suddenly struck at this moment.
The Abyss emerged in an inland colony, nearly instantly destroying this hopeful civilization and transcending the Mother Star’s final barrier within a short time.
This outbreak of the Abyss also marks the initial source of the Xyrin Apostle’s "Origin Hatred."
Although the Xyrin People resisted stubbornly, their power was far from ready to contend with the Abyss as an enemy. Coupled with the massive scale of Abyss Power facing the Original Mother Star at the time, the Xyrin People eventually had to accept a fact: their Universe was collapsing slowly, and any Fleet and artillery were ineffective against such an indescribable enemy.
The Xyrin People used their last resources and the time they desperately fought for to create the Ark that could cross the Void. On the day the Original Mother Star was completely covered by the Abyss, they began to escape their Hometown Universe: this was the first and last complete race retreat of the Xyrin Civilization while facing the Abyss, and the birth of the Xyrin Apostle occurred shortly after.
"During our battle with the Abyss, we retreated step by step against an ’enemy’ that defies conventional explanation, intangible and unanalysable," Anses spent a long time recounting the first half of Mother Star’s history before finally reaching the stage of the Abyss War and the birth of Xyrin Apostle, "We were not even certain if it was a definite evil enemy or just an irresistible natural phenomenon in the Universe. All we knew was that eventually, everything turned into enemies: the longer we fought the Abyss, the stronger the opposing forces we faced became; this was a battle impossible to win from the start. Eventually, the United Government decided to abandon our home and escape the Universe." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎
"That must have been a very risky move at the time," Sandora nodded.
"Yes, risky, extremely risky," Anses breathed a sigh, "We didn’t fully grasp the technology needed to escape the world—such as the precise model of the Multi-universe, the indescribably perilous environment between universes, and how to conduct controllable navigation between worlds. All these technologies were at the exploratory stage. We had just realized there was a broader space beyond our world, just learned how to use Math Rate equipment to generate an Order Field that allowed survival in the Void environment, and the war with the Abyss reached the stage of unavoidable refuge fleeing.
The first batch of Arks departed without a trace; the high-power communication antennas we equipped with them failed shortly in the Void. The second batch of Arks used new discontinuous communication technology and maintained a link with base after leaving, but soon lost signal as well—attempting to jump out of the Universe seemed akin to suicide, yet there was no other option; we had to keep launching Arks. There was no time to research a safe navigation scheme nor resources to launch more unmanned test ships. The United Government had long given up the Mother Star’s Defense Circle; during the final days, the Xyrin race shrank in the Galaxy’s last Colonial Zone watching the Universe collapse slowly before their eyes. Starlight from Deep Space Detectors dimmed day by day, light and shadows between nebulas twisted and grew more frenzied each day, and under such circumstances, we built Ark from whatever we had at hand, indifferent to whether these rudimentary objects could endure the Void till reaching a next safe world; we ran out without hesitation..."
"Hometown World might lie on the boundary of the Void Quadrant," Sandora suddenly whispered, "The only difference between intra-quadrant navigation and cross-quadrant navigation is communication method; the first batch’s communication system was surely designed to work in ’continuous Void,’ hence they went missing after crossing quadrant... don’t mind these, please continue."
Anses nodded, knowing he hardly understood Sandora’s explanation: "Finally, the situation began to improve—the pressure of race extinction could drive mortals to collapse in madness or grant us the explosive force for survival against adversity; we finally grasped the essentials of navigation in the Void and crafted rudimentary Navigation Devices—it sounds laughable, doesn’t it? The earliest launched Arks didn’t even have Navigation Devices; like a primitive canoe made by Primitive People without rudder or sail, only drifting forward in the Void; such is the Original Ark."
After the new technology emerged, it immediately turned into manned Spaceships: as mentioned, we lacked time and resources for unmanned tests. With Abyss closing in every step, any new technology must be immediately converted into tangible objects, and courageous volunteers were sent out. At that time, we couldn’t grasp the transmission pattern of Abyss, its nonlinear spread could turn any day into a doom’s day, so we sent out people whenever an opportunity arose to prevent missing the last ’safe window.’ Eventually, we felt it was the final timing, that annihilative force was half a Light year away from the Final Barrier, leaving no time for developing new navigation technology or building new ships—the United Government decided to launch all constructed Spaceships, packed with everyone possible, leaping into the Void."
Taking advantage of the experiences earned by pioneers at the cost of their Lives, the last batch of Arks barely managed through the Void. We even established contact with several earlier launched Spaceships and successfully merged with them, though many more early ships remain unheard of—they seemed to have been swept away by the Void long since, like buoys tossed into turbulent flows to gauge the water’s power."
Since that day, the Xyrin Hometown Era ended. The United Government announced a reformation; with unanimous approval, we abandoned the mild Federation and Council system; the entire Civilization transitioned into an imperial regime—the Xyrin Empire was founded on the Ark."
For survival, we decided to relinquish individual interests, arming ourselves as a wandering Civilization with absolute efficiency, obedience, unity, loyalty, and valor. Everyone understood, as a wandering Civilization that could capsize at any moment, only this callous approach could ensure survival."
Though having fled the Mother Star, the Xyrin People’s fury for vengeance never quelled. We remembered the harrowing history of the obliterated home and continued to uncover that disaster’s truth—scientists were convinced the Universe collapse wasn’t a natural phenomenon, Hometown World was ravaged by something abnormal, not belonging to that Universe. Through extensive research, they finally ascertained this thing originated from outside the world, from deep within the Void, and upon Ark Fleet encountering cosmic fragments, they confirmed that more than one world fell under this power’s havoc. Lastly, this was crucial: we believed the annihilative force dissipated alongside Hometown World, but it still existed and is a common phenomenon in the Multi-universe, rendering a continuous drive for Xyrin People during arduous exile: vengeance."
Eventually, scientists decided to label this force as: Abyss."
Still, nobody knew the Abyss’s Attribute, nor scrutinized the nature of those patterns adhering to Two-dimensional planes, whether it was matter or Energy or else. Yet at least, the target for revenge became unprecedentedly clear. Meanwhile, other things transpired; we realized many weaknesses as mortals would hinder endurance through exile: we feared, faltered, lost fighting morale over time, most couldn’t be entirely candid with others, humans lacked absolute trust among each other. These weaknesses became increasingly evident as exile progressed—in such light, the perception of Abyss coupled with acknowledging self’s deficiencies led to the new government’s ultimate decision: to craft a new Life Form, instilling all knowledge of Xyrin Civilization into these new lives, allowing them to inherit the Fire Seed."
"In fact, the Original Body plan began back in the Hometown World," Anses paused, revealing more secrets, "During the fight against the Abyss, we observed the Abyss easily infecting normal people with fragile wills, so someone proposed creating an emotionless Combat Soldier to replace ordinary Soldiers in fighting Abyss; the name Original Body was raised back then thus one could consider ’Original Body’ as a project initiated during the Hometown Era. Just the rapid change in war led us unable to craft this ideal Life in time, and in exile’s early phase, as survival took precedence, the plan temporarily halted until later when we gained some respite, and the manufacturing Original Body plan resumed."
"This is the origin of the Xyrin Apostle." Anses breathed out, somewhat fatigued.
(By the way, the Xyrin Empire community is organizing a fan fiction writing event, interested Apostles can check it out—right at the homepage) (To be continued. If you like this work, feel free to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets at Qidian (qidian.com). Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile users please read at m.qidian.com.)
