Qilan Star.
Once, it was a world famed across the cosmos for art and emotion. Now, it had begun to cut itself off from everything.
Its people—the Lumenweavers—could directly sense and manipulate emotions, converting them into visible spectrums of feeling, then using those spectra to shape ever-changing cityscapes and works of art.
To the wider universe, the planet itself had once been a masterpiece: a living artwork.
Then the Stellaron arrived.
It didn't "destroy" in the straightforward sense. Instead, it twisted the planet's fundamental laws in a far more uncanny way.
It began absorbing and crystallizing all negative emotions.
To survive, the Lumenweavers were forced to suppress every trace of sadness, fear, anger—anything.
Because the moment a single negative thought slipped through, shards of Destruction would bloom nearby—hard, lethal crystals that endangered the thinker and anyone around them.
Society became an emotional cleanroom. Artistic expression turned cautious. Formulaic. Sterile. The soul of Qilan Star—its explosive, living resonance—was slowly smothered.
But even that alone wouldn't have reduced the planet to its current desolation.
The Interastral Peace Corporation—ever practical, ever profit-driven—had once stationed forces here.
Given Qilan Star's value, the Corporation didn't mind investing resources to help the planet endure the Destruction crisis, so long as the Legion presence drawn by the Stellaron stayed within manageable bounds.
Of course, afterward, the planet's "ownership" would have to be discussed… in a way that benefited the Corporation.
Yet this Stellaron did not draw any Legion forces aligned with Destruction.
That wasn't good news.
Because Nihility descended instead.
It was Nihility that prevented the Legion from coming.
This planet of emotion and color was unlucky enough to be stained by the Path of Nihility.
At first, neither the Lumenweavers nor the Corporation recognized the invasion. It wasn't like Legion artillery—loud and obvious. It wasn't like the Stellaron's crystallization—visible and immediate.
It was more like a fading of color.
A drop in temperature.
A quiet loss of meaning.
The tide of Nihility washed over Qilan Star's atmosphere without a sound. It didn't devour emotion—it dissolved the significance of emotion.
The Lumenweavers discovered, in horror, that they could still sense feelings, still convert them into light-spectrum art…
But the passion that once drove creation—the resonance, the satisfaction, the shared awe—was evaporating.
A sky mural painted in gold of ecstasy and blue of longing, completed in a single breathless burst…
No longer brought pride.
No longer brought tears.
Only a bottomless emptiness.
"What… is the point of this?"
The forced "positivity" they maintained became hollow and exhausting, like a fire burning in a vacuum—no oxygen, only futile flame.
The negative emotions they'd been suppressing didn't vanish, either. In a vacuum where meaning had died, those emotions took on an even more terrifying shape.
The Corporation's representatives tried to solve the problem in the Corporation's way.
They shipped in emotional-stabilization field generators, attempting to lock residents' emotional bands within "safe" ranges by force.
They introduced rigorously audited "standardized art templates," designed to be reliably positive and harmless—hoping to mass-produce acceptable emotional artworks the way one manufactures commodities.
But all of it was laughable in the face of Nihility.
The field generators became amplifiers. Emotions pressed down without an outlet slid faster into the abyss of meaninglessness.
Standardized art murdered Qilan Star's last trace of spirit.
After pouring in resources and seeing no return—not even a return in hope—the Corporation's evaluation report was swift and clinical:
"Investment risk excessively high. Potential yield approaching zero. Uncontrollable philosophical-disaster diffusion risk."
And so the Interastral Peace Corporation withdrew without hesitation. Their forces vanished. Qilan Star was scrubbed from tourism recommendations and investment watchlists.
The planet became a forgotten island in the universe.
And now, beyond this isolated world, a different kind of presence had arrived.
A train—strangely shaped—hung silently near the planet's dim ring.
Even its once-vivid colors looked dulled by the Nihility field below, as if dusted over with gray.
Wei Qing stepped out of the void, and his gaze locked onto it at once.
"The Astral Express…" he murmured, something complex flickering in his eyes. "It's still running?"
So in this timeline, the Express hadn't gone silent yet?
That surprised him. The universe hadn't heard news of the Astral Express in a long time. And yet here it was—dusty, yes, but still maintaining basic operations. Not fully dead.
Two months had passed since the operation on the Luofu.
In those two months, the universe had not been quiet.
Information traveled fast. After he took the Stellaron, the Luofu issued a public notice to the entire cosmos:
The Stellaron Hunter "Sam," and the Emanator of Destruction "Qingzhou," confirmed as the same person.
The announcement detonated like a bomb.
Most people had assumed that the Emanator who betrayed the Luofu—who carried power from three Paths—had stayed hidden for decades because he was brewing something catastrophic.
Now the Luofu was telling them: that Emanator of Destruction joined the Stellaron Hunters… to collect Stellarons?
Believe it or not, it didn't matter. The Luofu followed with a second announcement:
A new general was coming.
His name was Jing Yuan.
And he was no ordinary successor. He'd already begun to shine in recent decades—yet in this very encirclement, he had wounded Qingzhou heavily. Though he failed to keep him, he reclaimed the Luofu's inherited Shenjun.
The ripples spread far.
An Emanator hiding among the Stellaron Hunters was already headline material. The Luofu using such a battle to cement the prestige of a new general in a time of transition forced every major faction to reassess the future posture of the Xianzhou Alliance.
Wei Qing didn't particularly care.
After taking the Stellaron…
The Stellaron Hunters went on vacation.
Yes. That organization, already low-frequency by nature, had decided—under their "boss's" direction—to take a break.
Especially him.
Perhaps Polka's words about "changing the future" had gotten under Elio's skin. That damned old cat had named him specifically and told him to lie low. If anything needed doing, Elio would send Firefly and Baiheng instead.
Absolute daylight robbery.
He had dragged both of them into the team with his own hands—and now they were "excluding" him?
Outrageous.
But after a perfunctory bout of complaints, Wei Qing didn't dwell on it.
Like hell he was going to stop causing trouble just because someone told him to.
So he followed the pull of the Trailblaze—the resonance that pointed him straight toward the Express—and came to Qilan Star.
As a so-called "transmigrator," and now an Emanator of Trailblaze, how could he resist taking a look at the Astral Express?
And then the system chimed in with yet another "main quest" the moment he left the Luofu:
Main Quest: Join the Astral Express and complete a full Trailblaze.
The instant he saw it, Wei Qing felt something was off.
He had only just received an Emanator-grade reward for Trailblaze—and now the system immediately wanted him to board the Express?
One link after another, like a chain designed to pull him somewhere.
This couldn't be a coincidence.
Was some capitalist overlord setting him up?
Still… after thinking it through, he decided to come see for himself.
The system's rewards had been genuinely good. He'd taken plenty already. No harm in checking the situation.
"Akivili…" Wei Qing murmured, tasting the name of the fallen Aeon, feeling the Trailblaze authority in his soul tugging him toward the train.
If he remembered correctly, the Astral Express's last navigator before it went silent had been the one known as "the Young Man," Granholm.
After that navigator, the Express vanished from the universe—until the era of Himeko and the later storyline.
But the Express in front of him now—still not lost yet—looked like it wasn't far from its limit.
Because in Wei Qing's perception…
There were no human traces on board at all.
Only one strange, rabbit-like presence.
That was alarming.
In the later era, even when the crew dwindled to only a handful, they always left at least one person aboard to watch the train during missions.
Yet right now, not a single human remained onboard?
Wei Qing suppressed his aura and drifted closer, silent as a phantom.
He didn't board immediately. He hovered alongside the train's outer shell, fingers brushing the cold metal.
Trailblaze resonated within him, like a traveler sensing home.
But woven into that resonance was a stuttering heaviness—something like grief.
In his perception, the Astral Express was nearing its breaking point for some reason.
He closed his eyes and let the Path of Trailblaze extend outward, threading into every corner of the train.
The cars were unusually tidy—almost spotless. As if someone had just finished a thorough cleaning.
But the cleanliness was lifeless.
The warmth of human living, the messy imprint of everyday existence, was almost entirely gone.
The fiery vitality of Trailblaze itself had thinned like a guttering candle.
Finally, his awareness locked onto the observation car.
On the sofa lay a weak, gray rabbit.
"Pom-Pom…" Wei Qing recognized it at once.
The train's conductor.
A being bound to the Express—living with it, living through it.
Pom-Pom's condition was clearly terrible. Yet it didn't look injured.
If he had to describe it… it felt like a fever. Like being sick with the train itself—both of them reaching some shared limit.
Pom-Pom seemed to sense the probe. Its long ears snapped upright.
It struggled to its feet, looking in Wei Qing's direction with a flicker of panic.
Wei Qing understood: if the Nameless were out on a mission, then Pom-Pom was likely the only "passenger" left onboard right now.
He stopped hiding.
With a flicker, he appeared directly in front of Pom-Pom.
Pom-Pom jumped so hard it almost bounced off the sofa. Its small body wobbled from weakness, but it still forced itself into a guarded stance, ears upright, trying to maintain the dignity of a conductor.
"Y-you—who are you, pom?! How did you get on board, pom?!"
Pom-Pom's voice was clearly frail, yet it fought to sound authoritative.
Wei Qing looked at the little rabbit trying to stand tall and let the corner of his mouth lift.
He began with introductions.
"Hello. My name is Yi Qing."
"I'm a drifting traveler who longs to become one of the Nameless."
"I followed the will of Trailblaze here, hoping to join the Astral Express and become a Nameless."
Pom-Pom eyed him warily, nose twitching as if sniffing for lies.
"Nameless… The train hasn't had new Nameless for a long time, pom…"
Its voice grew smaller, the loneliness impossible to hide.
"And how did you find this place, pom? The Express has clearly already…"
Then Pom-Pom seemed to realize something. Its eyes widened in disbelief.
"No—wait, pom!!!"
"Why is your body overflowing with such dense Trailblaze aura, pom?!"
It forced its eyes open wider, trying to see him clearly.
"That's Akivili's aura, pom! That's impossible, pom!"
"I remember every Nameless who's ever ridden this train, pom! There's never been someone like you! Who are you?!"
Wei Qing froze.
Not because Pom-Pom could sense his Emanator-grade Trailblaze—Pom-Pom was bound to the Express; it was natural it would notice something wrong.
What shocked him was something else.
Just now, when Pom-Pom demanded to know who he was—
his "Emperor Engine" roared.
A deep, heavy, instinctive thrum in his chest.
What did that mean?
When he faced top-tier enemies—Phantylia, Stellaron Eater types—his heart didn't move.
Only when he faced monsters on the truly terrifying tier—Hua, Polka Kakamond—did he feel that faint, involuntary tremor.
But now?
Pom-Pom's question echoed through the observation car.
And within Wei Qing's ribs, that low, powerful "Emperor Engine" beat like war drums.
His heartbeat was thunder.
Loud. Unrelenting.
This tiny rabbit…
Had the potential to become an Aeon?!
Conductor, are you that insane?!
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 150)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter190)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter105)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter225)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 195
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 170
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/5
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 225
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 210
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/30
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 115
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 130
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 105
I Can Copy Unique Skills 100
Summoning an Evil God, but the 70
Supernatural Multiverse 90
My Harem Is Indescribable 85
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 90
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 68
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 100
Still playing traditional Honk 69
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 75
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 60
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 71
Checking In in Demon Slayer 75
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 80
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 66
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 58
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 65
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 63
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 59
Why did they assign me to Uma 55
MYGO Beauties 56
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 45
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 49
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 36
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 35
The Uma Musume Who Became 30
I'm Definitely Not the King of 35
After Maxing Out Every Class 35
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