The Ice Citadel was solemn and silent, the ice cold and uncaring. Still, the only inhabitant liked it like this. Less distractions.

Pef Xi sighed sadly at the latest development in his cultivation. Devouring souls. The potential for abuse was enormous, as was the temptation. Still, it was fast, much faster than anything else he had tried.

'These messengers...they are alive, aren't they?' he asked inward.

'In a sense. The words you speak are the same. Ideas and concepts, given form and shape. If you were a poet...' the glove replied with a bit of sarcasm.

Pef nodded and continued his exploration, not really satisfied.

Strands of divinity, and memories of old beings who had ascended to the first tier of godhood.

But packed and assembled into a working construct, like a poem made while musing on a lost love.

'So it's like reading a book. Except with divine pages...' he mused inward, while refining the last messenger, strand after strand.

The glove remained silent, and watching. The Aspirant was creating a new cultivation method, purifying and incorporating the bits of divine soul from the Tier 1 godlings into himself.

It was possibly blasphemous and heretical to the Legion manual, and yet not. The General did the same thing, only with a more complicated and circumventing style, extracting bits of souls and upgrading the cultivation levels of her Soldiers, once they had killed an enemy.

There was another way to obtain ascension and energy after, the classical approach. Create a religion and be fed the results of the worship. Lady Winter's method.

The concept of winter included the cold and harsh weather as components of her mythos, while snow and ice were presented as defenses and protection against outside forces. It even worked, to some degree. If you had millions of years to waste.

The glove checked its own energy reserves, now holding steadily at over 1 percent. The recharge occurred during the heavenly tribulation on the moon, but it wouldn't last a million years. Not if the Aspirant kept indoctrinating thousands of new recruits, every year.

'Like any book, most information will be redundant and even harmful. The information is filtered and distorted by a different intelligence, and imbued with concepts poorly understood.' the glove said after a long pause.

Pef smiled as if he understood, but continued refining the messenger, day after day, until a month later it vanished completely.

More energy coursed through his meridians, strengthening and nourishing his body and his cultivation.

His left hand tingled, for some reason, and he glanced at the sword tattoo. With a thought, the sword sprite flew out and danced around him, then stopped, in front of his eyes. "You want to be used, don't you, little guy?" Pef asked curious.

The Legion knife flew out of the glove and started chasing the other sword in a mock fight.

Sparks and noises filled the Ice Citadel, as the two minions fought their duel, exchanging move after move and parry after parry.

Lady Winter's sprite was much more skilled though, winning every bout with ease, even if the Legion knife was faster and a higher tier construct.

Pef checked his inner map, looking around to locate his family. Lady Yuan was still at Etna, doing whatever with her grand-grand father, while Lady Mia was doing a tour of the Patriarchy, searching for more recruits.

Lady Xie and Aria were constructing a railway along the coast, aided by a thousand Guardians. At the other end, a new port was being built a dozen kilometers away from the ruins of Port Li. Lady Lin and Blossom were there, with another thousand Guardians.

And his dear oracle Lia, wasn't anywhere on the planet.

Things were going well.

He checked his own status after, checking for disease or injury, finding none. His cultivation was progressing slowly now, lacking enemies to kill. Or rather, lacking means of actually killing them.

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He held his hands out and the minions flew back. The sword sprite was a one-use card, while the knife still needed to heal and grow.

A woman made of golden light appeared next to Pef, her face beautiful but stern.

"You finally came out of your trance, husband. And it seems you have succeeded." the oracle spoke in a soft tone, while checking Pef from head to toe.

"Yes Lia. I can devour souls now, if you care." he said with a sad smile.

"At least you don't need worms for that. Come to the moon, and bring the glove." the light clone said in an urgent tone, then disappeared into thin air.

Some experiment gone wrong? Or maybe gone good? 'You know what's all about?'

'Yes, I do.' the glove replied in a superior voice.

Pef gritted his teeth and flew away, accelerating to his maximum speed while decreasing his mass and shielding himself with an ice barrier.

In ten minutes, he arrived at the Lunar Energy Labs in the Rabbit crater. A dozen spacecrafts of various types were parked next to the labs, and hundreds of Guardians in spacesuits were working inside and outside them, preparing the ships for launch, or repairing them.

He ignored the activity and entered the airlock of the pressurised lab of his wife, the one marked Light Emission and Modulation. Made of ten centimeter thick steel plate, the walls of the lab were rated to with stand most micrometeors.

The inside of the walls were still lined with Sky ranked leather, just in case something worse managed to pierce the outer shell.

The airlocks were adapted from Lara's palace doors, since those survived intact even the horrors of the worm invasions. Unlike Lara herself, or the palace walls.

Then, he took an elevator and descended a hundred meters towards the experiment cavern.

Here he at last met his wife, and her staff, who were going over some instruments and notes. From various rulers and telescopes, to microscopes and precision forged mirrors, the labs did have the best technology the Monarchy had at this time.

Light came in from the sun, again via orbital mirrors and various lenses making the interior of the cavern bright as day.

"Hey everyone, don't salute. Just tell me the news." Pef said in a pleasant tone, while his senses expanded to map the entire cavern.

Nobody would have saluted anyway, but it was nice to pretend.

"Okay people. Let's start it up again! You, my beloved husband, go up the stairs and stay on the platform." Lia demanded in a commanding voice, which was immediately obeyed.

The technicians ran in a shuffling way to their posts, their Gecko leather shoes making crackling noises as they returned to their stations. They looked awkward, but not everyone was a Sky rank, able to manipulate gravity. In fact, none of the lunar scientists were even cultivators.

Pef suspected that smart people were much too rare in the cultivating community. Thus, he ignored the metal stairs and just flew up on the platform above, and looked down on the level below.

Then Lia glowed brightly and shot a beam of light into a ruby, and then somehow condensed her glow into that single beam, reducing the cavern to darkness while the beam of red light bounced off various mirrors and prisms.

In front of the platform the beams intersected, creating a grid on a metal panel. There was a small triangular distortion in there, messing up the pretty lights.

Pef blinked and then scratched his head, pretending to understand. 'So, beams of light. Not quite lasers but close enough. The pattern is almost perfect, but there's an imperfection there. Like there's an obstruction of some kind...' he mused inward.

'Well...yes. That's exactly what's happening, Aspirant. And since the beams are powered by entangled qi and soul source, the obstruction is also of the same nature. Ask her how big it is.' the glove answered in a wary voice.

"How big is the obstruction?" Pef spoke after a minute. This science thing wasn't so hard after all. He'd managed to reach the correct answer on his first try.

The red light went out, and Lia flew up on the platform. She hesitated for a second before answering. "We are not sure. But at least the mass of a galaxy, if it's very close. If it's further away, like say in another galaxy...then it's the mass of a universe."

'Any idea what it is?' Pef asked his glove, while going over various possibilities in his mind. Triangles with the mass of a galaxy? He drew a blank on that.

'It could be many things. Like a damaged Legion glove or mentally defective Tier 5. But it's most likely a translation formation array. Or as you humans call those, a door.' the glove replied after discarding a thousand less probable answers.

Pef grinned. 'You mean a gate, to another universe? That's great!'

The glove didn't bother to reply, as it was busy constructing a workable plan to deal with this problem. It was a universe gate, but why did it have a signature? On the inside.

In this tier 1 universe, there was nothing capable of emitting so much metaphysical mass, unless it was brought from outside.

"So, my glove says it's a gate array. Like a door." Pef said in a cheerful voice, hugging Lia and twirling her around.

For once, he was happy. A door! Leaving the universe and rejoining the Legion was on the table now.

"Hmmm. A door constructed by someone. Leading to some place we know nothing about. The materials to build such a construct..." the oracle said in a soft whisper, and poked the orange glove with a thoughtful finger.

"Yeah. It's most likely made from the other glove. These things are very durable." Pef said in a concerned voice, patting his glove and his wife's hand.

"That's not the real problem, Pef. These gloves are very, very strong. And someone managed to unfold one and remake it into something else." Lia remarked in a more frightened tone.

Pef stopped grinning.