Nobody living in the current age has ever seen a complete universe.
People only know fragments now, shattered planets drifting endlessly through dark space, broken continents frozen beside dead stars, abandoned cities floating silently with their lights still glowing as if their citizens vanished halfway through an ordinary evening. The old cosmos collapsed so long ago that most civilizations treat it less like history and more like mythology nobody fully understands anymore.
What remained became known as the Shattered Starry Sea.
Strangely enough, humanity adapted faster than expected. Not peacefully, of course. Entire factions rose from the ruins, carving territories out of fractured space while fighting over relics left behind by extinct civilizations. Some forces rely on cultivation and ancient bloodlines, others worship mechanical evolution, and a few possess technologies so strange they almost feel supernatural.
But regardless of ideology, everyone agrees on one thing, Xinhuo warships decide survival.
A weak ship means becoming prey somewhere in the Starry Sea. A powerful one means resources, influence, and the freedom to cross dangerous sectors most people will never even see. Small scout ships, fortress-class carriers, dimensional dreadnoughts capable of destroying fleets, every advancement completely changes a captain’s status overnight.
Naturally, not everyone qualifies to command one.
Every human is born carrying something called the Seed of Xinhuo, but awakening it is another matter entirely. Those who fail remain ordinary citizens trapped in lower sectors for the rest of their lives. Those who succeed must survive Spectral Transformation, a dangerous process most people describe with the same expression usually reserved for near-death experiences.
Song Chi enters this world already lagging behind others around him.
The academies training future captains are ruthless enough on their own, resources are limited, competition is vicious, and exploration missions into unstable sectors regularly leave students dead before graduation even arrives. Ancient ruins drifting through the Starry Sea tempt people with impossible rewards, but most expeditions return with damaged ships, missing crews, or nothing at all.
Still, Song Chi carries something nobody else knows about.
Hidden within him exists the Zhu Tian Ruins Market, a strange space connected to civilizations scattered throughout different corners of the shattered universe. Items ignored in one world become priceless elsewhere, damaged relics turn out to be lost technologies, and certain resources considered extinct suddenly become obtainable through trade.
At first, Song Chi only wants enough strength to survive.
That goal changes gradually as his warship evolves, his access to the market deepens, and pieces of the Starry Sea’s hidden history begin surfacing around him. Because beneath the endless ruins and drifting civilizations, something about the destruction of the universe still feels unfinished, as though the collapse itself may not have been an accident at all.
