The Providence Hub was divided into three distinct layers, each separated by massive barriers. The outermost layer, where Adrian currently walked, was the Outer Commercial Continent. It was a sprawling, chaotic metropolis of wandering cultivators, independent merchants, and minor sect delegates haggling over artifacts and resources.
Beyond the towering energy shields lay the Outer Private Continents, exclusive domains consisting of fortified estates, lavish auction houses, and heavily guarded territories reserved for high-ranking traders and subsidiary sect members.
And hovering at the very center, anchored to the massive golden spire, were the Inner Continents. These were the forbidden grounds, the sanctuary of the Major Sect's disciples and elites.
Adrian navigated the crowded commercial area, his eyes sweeping over the myriad of beings passing him by.
Meanwhile, far away from his location, deep within one of the Outer Private Continents, a much darker scene was unfolding.
The architecture here was much grander. Grand halls constructed from void alloy and graviton steel loomed over private docking bays. Through one of these luxurious but oppressively cold corridors, the same winged prisoners Adrian had briefly observed on the starship were being dragged forward.
There were six of them in total, and the imposing figures dragging them were clad in dark violet armor.
The prisoners resisted as much as their battered bodies allowed. One of the men dug his heels into the floor, his jaw clenched in defiance, but a violet-armored guard simply backhanded him across the face with a gauntlet. The sickening crack of bone echoed in the corridor, and the prisoner was hauled upward by his bound wings, a muffled groan escaping his lips as he was dragged mercilessly onward.
They were hauled through a set of towering double doors and thrown roughly onto the floor of a vast room.
The chamber appeared to be a high-level conference room. A long, rectangular table dominated the center of the space. Seated comfortably around the table were eight humanoid aliens. They were high-ranking trader faction who managed illicit trades beneath the Major Sect's overarching shadow.
Seeing the six bruised and battered prisoners being dragged into the room, one of the aliens seated near the middle of the table shot up from his chair. His dark eyes widened, and a predatory grin split his face.
"Hahaha! Six Elyrians?" he shouted, his voice echoing with excitement as he slammed his hands on the table. "The void truly favors us today. We've hit a jackpot!"
He stepped away from his chair, his gaze raking over the trembling forms of the winged captives like a starving beast inspecting a feast. "I couldn't care less about these wings," he continued, licking his lips as a cruel glint entered his eyes. "But the blood! The vitality flowing through their veins... I claim the blood!"
Before he could step any closer to the captives, another alien seated near the opposite end of the table abruptly stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.
"Shut your mouth, Dravok!" the second alien, Vane, shouted, his aura flaring with sudden irritation. "There are six of them, and you think your stomach is large enough to swallow all that essence yourself? With the volume of blood flowing through those six, we can refine thousands of Life-Blood pills! Aren't you letting your greed rot your brain?"
Dravok spun toward Vane, his own divine concept beginning to leak into the room. "Greed? It was my intelligence network that tracked their transport ship through the asteroid belts. If it weren't for me, these birds would still be flying freely through the intergalactic void!"
As the two aliens bickered over the spoils, one of the Elyrian prisoners, a young woman whose wings had been brutally clipped, forced herself up onto her knees. She glared at the alien beings, her voice shaking with a mixture of exhaustion and hatred.
"You are nothing but monsters..." she gasped out, coughing up a spatter of blood onto the floor. "The heavens... will not forgive you."
At the far end of the table, a third alien, who had been lazily spinning a condensed mana-dagger between his fingers, paused his movements. He didn't even look at the Elyrian woman. With a casual, almost bored flick of his wrist, he threw the dagger.
Thwack!
The blade tore through the air and buried itself deep into the shoulder of the male Elyrian beside her, intentionally avoiding a fatal spot but ensuring maximum pain. The man cried out in agony, collapsing onto the floor as shimmering, incredibly pure crimson blood spilled from the wound.
The alien who had thrown the dagger finally turned his head, his eyes entirely devoid of empathy. He looked at the bleeding captives disdainfully.
"Materials do not deserve to speak," he said, "Keep your mouths shut, or I will start harvesting you right here on the floor."
He then turned his head toward Dravok and Vane, who were still glaring at one another. "And you two, do not waste my time with this petty squabbling. If you cannot split the materials properly, then we will put them up for an internal auction right now. Let the highest bidder take the lot."
Before Dravok could retort, a heavy, suffocating pressure suddenly descended upon the entire conference room.
The ambient mana in the air froze, growing so dense that it felt like deep water. The oppressive weight did not come from the third alien who had thrown the dagger, but from the figure seated at the head of the table.
The Head Alien had his eyes closed, his arms crossed over his chest. He slowly opened his eyes.
"He is right. Do not waste our time," the Head Alien commanded, "We will settle this via auction, now."
Sensing the overwhelming Peak Rule Stage aura emanating from the head alien, Dravok, Vane, and the other seated aliens immediately clamped their mouths shut. They nodded in submission, quickly taking their seats around the table once more. Even Dravok, despite his greed, knew better than to challenge the authority of a Peak Rule Stage superior.
"Fine," Dravok muttered, sitting back down and tapping the interface on the table. "I'll open the bidding at five hundred thousand UNI-Coins for the..."
BOOM!
The words had barely left Dravok's mouth when an explosion tore through the eastern side of the building. The massive wall, forged from high-density void alloy composites, shattered inward as if it were made of brittle glass.
A shockwave of violent spatial distortion swept through the conference room. Dust, smoke, and jagged shards of metal cascaded across the space.
Yet, the eight aliens seated at the table did not so much as flinch. They did not dive for cover or move away from their positions. In perfect unison, their individual divine domains flared to life instinctively, creating overlapping barriers of authority that deflected the incoming debris, leaving the table and their seats entirely untouched.
Dravok stood up instantly, his domain erupting with violent, burning heat as the dust began to settle.
"Who is the fool that dares to cause problems in our hub?!" Dravok roared, his voice echoing through the ruined wall and out into the skyline of this Outer Private Continent. "Do you have any idea whose territory you've just breached?!"
As the thick smoke from the explosion began to clear, the silhouette of the intruder was revealed.
Stepping forward through the jagged hole in the wall was a female figure. She possessed the same magnificent wings as the prisoners on the floor, but hers were not broken or bound. They were pristine, spanning wide behind her back, and glowing with an ethereal starlight. Behind her, floating in the open air of the breached wall, were dozens of other heavily armed winged beings of the Elyrian race, their weapons drawn and their auras locked onto the room.
Dravok's furious expression shifted into one of cruel recognition.
"Ah," Dravok sneered, his sharp teeth bared in a wicked smile. "So, the queen bird finally comes out of her hiding place. You and your little resistance have been such a fuss these past few years, constantly slipping through our nets."
He cracked his knuckles, his Mid Rule Stage divine essence gathering around his fists, "To think you would deliver yourself right to our doorstep. How convenient. You will all die today, and your blood will fill us!"
Dravok bent his knees, preparing to launch himself across the room to crush the female Elyrian.
But before Dravok could even push off the ground to attack, the female winged figure simply raised her hand.
Immediately, the domain surrounding Dravok was snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. Dravok's eyes widened in terror as he realized he had lost all control over his own body.
He flew across the room, dragged through the air by an invisible, overwhelming force, until the female Elyrian caught him effortlessly by his throat.
Dravok choked, his hands clawing desperately at her grip. He tried to summon his domain or at least ignite his divine concept. But nothing worked. The space around him was locked, governed by a will so vastly superior to his own that he was reduced to a helpless mortal.
The female Elyrian looked into his panicked eyes with an expression of emptiness.
With a single, effortless twist of her wrist, she snapped his neck.
The sharp crack echoed in the silent room. She released her grip, and Dravok's lifeless body dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, his unseeing eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
For the first time since the wall had been breached, genuine terror seized the remaining aliens seated at the table.
They stared at the dead body of their comrade, then up at the glowing wings of the Elyrian woman. To completely nullify a Mid Rule Stage cultivator's domain and crush him without even deploying a visible domain required a level of power that defied the Rule Stage entirely.
"She... she has ascended!" Vane stammered, his chair falling backward as he scrambled away from the table.
"Astral Stage!" another alien shrieked, his composure completely shattering.
"Run! Trigger the spatial alarms! Inform the elders in the Inner Continent!"
The room erupted into chaos. The remaining aliens, alongside the armored guards who had dragged the prisoners in, abandoned all thoughts of combat and scrambled wildly toward the exits, desperate to escape the presence of an Astral Stage being.
The female Elyrian did not chase them. She merely raised her hand once more and snapped her fingers.
SNAP.
An invisible, crushing wave of willforce rippled outward from her form. The wave washed over the fleeing aliens and the armored guards. Instantly, their eyes rolled back into their heads. Their domains collapsed, and their bodies crumpled to the floor, knocked entirely unconscious by the mental pressure of an Astral sovereign.
The room fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the groans of the bound prisoners.
The only one left conscious among the captors was the Head Alien seated at the head of the conference table.
Unlike his subordinates, he had not panicked or attempted to flee. His Peak Rule Stage mind was strong enough to withstand the casual wave of willforce she had just released, though it had forced him to grip the edges of the table to steady himself.
He remained seated, his eyes locked onto the female Elyrian. He wasn't terrified. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed, a harsh, grating sound that revealed rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth.
"Impressive," the Head Alien sneered, his voice dripping with arrogance. He glared at the female figure, refusing to bow even in the presence of someone who had crossed the threshold of the Astral Stage. "You actually managed to fuse your cores and survive. But don't delude yourself into thinking an Astral Core makes you a god in this place."
He leaned back in his chair, tapping a hidden rune beneath the table. "Don't think you can escape just because you are an Astral Stage being. This is the Providence Hub. You are standing in the shadow of our Major Sect! My elders from the Inner Continent will be here before the dust from that wall even settles, and you will die just like the rest of your pathetic flock."
The female figure did not reply to his taunts. Her cold gaze swept past the table, landing instead on the floor where the captives lay.
There, amidst the bound and battered survivors, her eyes caught the collapsed body of the male Elyrian prisoner.
An extreme, uncontrollable anger rose within her.
She moved at a blurring speed, crossing the vast room in a fraction of a microsecond. Before the Head Alien could even register her movement or deploy his Peak Rule Stage authority to defend himself, her hand struck out like a spear. Her fingers, coated in dense essence, pierced directly through the violet flesh of the Head Alien's throat.
He gagged, his eyes bulging with sudden, agonizing shock as his arrogant threats were choked in his own blood.
The female figure didn't just stop with that. A roar ripped from her throat as she wrenched her hand free and began to pummel him. Her fists, wrapped in divine essence, rained down upon him in a relentless, brutal barrage. She punched him again and again, shattering his skull, caving in his chest armor, and crushing his Peak Rule Stage foundation into dust.
"Stop this, Princess Mariska. He is already dead. We don't have much time."
The urgent voice of a winged being from the force hovering near the breached wall echoed through the chamber.
The words pierced through her fury. Mariska's chest heaved as she stopped punching, her hands drenched in blood. She took a shuddering breath, her aura stabilizing as she pulled herself away from the mangled, unrecognizable corpse of the Head Alien.
She then moved swiftly toward the prisoners. With a wave of her hand, the suppressive runic cuffs binding their wrists shattered into dust, freeing them. Carefully, she knelt and gathered the body of the collapsed Elyrian into her arms, cradling him.
"Quick," she ordered, "Let's return to our safe place."
The team behind her helped the battered prisoners to their feet. With a final flash of spatial distortion, Mariska, carrying the collapsed Elyrian, alongside the other prisoners and her team, vanished through the shattered wall.
They quickly escaped into the sprawling, chaotic skyline of the Outer Private Continent, disappearing into the shadows long before the elders or higher-ups from the Providence Hub could descend upon the ruined chamber.