Volume 1 Chapter 9: Apostles and Floating Cities

Shattered Starry Sky was a strange and fantastic world, with many intelligent races and powerful high-ranking beings. These native races formed many different civilizations on some giant floating continents.

According to the Goblin Elder’s memory, when he was young, he visited many floating continents. During his adventures, he saw many kinds of racial civilizations. Among these civilizations were mechanical lifeforms similar to Transformers, a fantasy world resembling Azeroth, and even breathtakingly beautiful eastern paradises.

Various civilizations mixed together in Shattered Starry Sky, looking like the Creator’s experimental field. But in the Goblin Elder’s words, it was more like a dumping ground abandoned by the Creator. Because the intelligent races in Shattered Starry Sky never felt the favor of gods, but only experienced conflicts and chaos among the major racial civilizations.

The floating continents in Shattered Starry Sky were not eternal; they also had their own life cycles. Small floating islands generally only had lifespans of thousands of years, while some large floating continents as big as planets had decay cycles measured in hundreds of millions of years.

Every so often, some floating continents would break apart, turn to dust, and disappear into the endless starry sky. Meanwhile, other floating continents would slowly form cores in the starry void and grow rapidly, gradually becoming new floating continents.

Although floating continents remained in fixed positions in Shattered Starry Sky and didn’t collide with other continents, due to limited resources, different floating continents had to engage in trade and war. In fact, this was the root cause of most world-ending disasters in Shattered Starry Sky.

When an intelligent race on one floating continent was ready to invade another continent, they would use the unique Starry Sky Gates of Shattered Starry Sky for continental teleportation. This teleportation wasn’t space-time travel, but was limited to the internal space of Shattered Starry Sky, ignoring distance and type, with the only limitation being the size of the Starry Sky Gate.

Small Starry Sky Gates could only teleport individual lives, while large Starry Sky Gates could transport entire city fortresses to other floating continents.

“So, those powerful high-ranking races like immortals, demons, gods, Buddhas, angels, and dragons are at the top of the racial pyramid in Shattered Starry Sky?” Lili couldn’t help interrupting the Goblin Elder’s story out of curiosity, then immediately turned pale with fear.

However, the serial killers present clearly wanted to know the answer too, so for the moment no one paid attention to her rudeness.

“No, those high-ranking beings are mostly in seclusion and don’t show themselves easily. The dominant races in Shattered Starry Sky are those that aren’t individually strong but have large populations and great potential. For example: humans, elves, orcs, dwarves, undead, mechanical lifeforms, elemental beings, and so on!”

The Goblin Elder shifted to a more comfortable sitting position, his expression turning strange as he said, “Actually, this situation has a lot to do with you cross-world travelers…”

Everyone’s eyes lit up slightly, sensing that the Goblin Elder’s next topic would probably reveal why the Lu-Lu Tribe valued cross-world travelers.

It turned out that the floating continents of Shattered Starry Sky not only had internal Starry Sky Gates, but also contained unpredictable Space-Time Portals. Often, some cross-world lives would be absorbed into Shattered Starry Sky through these Space-Time Portals.

Unlike the native creatures of Shattered Starry Sky, these cross-world lives, once they successfully passed through the Space-Time Portal, would combine with World Law of Shattered Starry Sky, forming unique Law Bodies with their Soul as the core.

The cross-world travelers’ Law Bodies were initially no different from normal people – they could get sick, bleed, and even get injured or die. However, because of the special nature of Law Bodies, cross-world travelers had almost unlimited potential. Some powerful cross-world travelers could destroy heaven and earth, with combat power comparable to gods and demons, and wouldn’t die immediately even if vital organs like brains or hearts were severely damaged.

However, cross-world travelers weren’t native residents of Shattered Starry Sky, so they were constantly rejected by Shattered Starry Sky. This rejection grew stronger over time, so every so often, these cross-world travelers would be teleported by Shattered Starry Sky to other worlds.

This space-time teleportation was highly random, and nobody knew where cross-world travelers would be sent. With each space-time teleportation, cross-world travelers would receive Otherworld Missions in their minds, and even they themselves didn’t know the source or motivation of these missions.

If they failed to complete the missions, cross-world travelers’ Souls would grow weaker, eventually leading to death. Most cross-world travelers died during these Otherworld Missions. However, if they completed the missions in their minds before being teleported back to Shattered Starry Sky, they would receive great benefits.

It was as if Shattered Starry Sky had signed employment contracts with cross-world travelers – one side provided labor to complete missions, while the other granted them lifespan and abilities. Therefore, cross-world travelers were also called Contract Apostles by the native lives of Shattered Starry Sky.

Apostles lived in constant danger, and all experienced Apostles had extremely powerful combat capabilities. Some exceptionally talented Apostles could become beings comparable to gods and demons in just a few years. Moreover, because they also possessed various weapons and equipment obtained from other worlds, and their Law Bodies had almost no fatal weaknesses, even gods and demons were unwilling to fight against Apostles.

In ancient times of Shattered Starry Sky, it was precisely because of the appearance of many Apostles that the ruling high-ranking beings fell one after another, with some high-ranking races even going completely extinct, forcing them to choose seclusion and no longer appear publicly. In the eyes of Apostles, these high-ranking beings were like walking treasures. They were happy to use the inheritance of gods and demons to give themselves extra insurance when performing Otherworld Missions.

That period was called the Demise of Gods and Demons. The top of Shattered Starry Sky’s pyramid was completely cut off by Apostles, and Shattered Starry Sky entered a new era of competing powers. Some intelligent races with large populations but relatively weak individual power began to rise, becoming the new rulers of Shattered Starry Sky.

The influence of Apostles on Shattered Starry Sky didn’t stop there. Their energy and focus were on Otherworld adventure missions; Shattered Starry Sky was just a resting and preparation place for them. Plus, because of mission relationships, their connections with each other were complicated – some were allies, some were enemies – so they couldn’t become the actual rulers of Shattered Starry Sky.

However, the intelligent races that held ruling positions couldn’t ignore the power of Apostles. Unlike gods and demons, they didn’t have hunting value themselves, but they could hire Apostles to attack enemy races and opposing continents.

When two floating continents of similar strength, or two intelligent races with comparable military power went to war, the Apostle teams they possessed could very well become the key to victory. Even some small races, by hiring powerful Apostle teams, defeated strong opponents in war and won broader living space for themselves.

From the extinction of gods and demons in ancient times to the current Domination War among continents, all intelligent races in Shattered Starry Sky began to follow an iron rule. That was: they couldn’t completely depend on Apostles for racial survival, but they also couldn’t lose the help of Apostles.

The reason was simple: because Space-Time Portals existed, Apostles couldn’t be eliminated at the source. But if they completely relied on specific Apostle teams, when those Apostles suffered heavy losses in Otherworld Missions, they would lose the initiative in war.

This strange and absurd phenomenon led to the birth of a special thing in Shattered Starry Sky. That was the Floating Cities that some intelligent races built by concentrating all their resources.

These huge cities had different power sources depending on their civilizations, but they could all move freely over floating continents. At the same time, they could use Starry Sky Gates to teleport between various floating continents. They were both the foundation for intelligent races’ survival and special places that served Apostles.

Intelligent races that possessed such Floating Cities could not only greatly enhance their survival ability by relying on the cities, but also continuously attract Apostles to settle in. They didn’t have to worry about suddenly losing the combat power of Apostle teams during wartime.

Floating Cities came in all sizes and types. Distinguished by different civilizations, there were technological cities, magical cities, bio-engineered cities, supernatural cities, etc. Distinguished by the types of services they provided to Apostles, there were academy cities, entertainment cities, trade cities, war fortresses, etc.

No matter what type of city, they all treated settling Apostles with great courtesy. Besides some basic benefits, they would specially create a complete set of service regulations for Apostles. These service regulations basically followed the principle of equivalent exchange, since not every Apostle would become comparable to gods and demons – most Apostles would die during Otherworld Missions.

To compete for Apostle resources, Floating Cities regularly traveled between various floating continents. By now, intelligent races without Floating Cities either slowly went extinct or became subordinates of other races. The number and size of Floating Cities had become the only standard for distinguishing the strength of intelligent races and floating continents.

Strangely enough, large floating continents with numerous populations and races rarely had Space-Time Portals appear. Instead, medium and small floating continents like Crimson Gobi that were sparsely populated with barren environments would frequently have Space-Time Portals and cross-world travelers appear – that is, Probationary Apostles.

Probationary Apostles didn’t have powerful fighting capabilities, but timely help was better than favors after success. When Floating Cities provided some help during their weakest moments, these Apostles would naturally return the favor after becoming powerful, repaying the Floating Cities that helped them.

It could be said that the more Probationary Apostles recruited, the greater the potential of a Floating City. Of course, Floating Cities were massive structures. Although they could float and move, and travel between floating continents, they couldn’t search everywhere for Probationary Apostles who might appear at any time, like ants.

Therefore, some remote, medium and small floating continents similar to Crimson Gobi gave birth to Scavenger tribes that specialized in finding Space-Time Portal Ruins.

For example: the Lu-Lu Tribe facing the human prisoners!