Twelve o’clock sharp.

Even those on the Main Star could clearly feel a slight tremor.

A rain suddenly began to fall from the sky.

What was unusual was that this was a gray rain.

It was just like the ash from the incinerated planet, now drifting through space.

Everyone’s mood was somber.

The more extreme people rushed to the Star Network to post doomsday prophecies:

[Hahaha, go ahead, you higher-ups, leaders, and Imperial Family! Keep messing things up! One day, the universe will follow the same path as our home world!!]

[Everyone, hurry up and start hoarding nutrient liquid! Get ready to move to a remote Wild Star! The pollution is coming, and the viruses won’t be far behind.]

[This gray rain is terrifying! I’m emigrating!]

[Anyone who’s been wanting to eat something or buy something, don’t hold back starting today. We’re not going to be alive much longer.]

[This is the retribution for destroying a planet!]

[These damn, useless higher-ups! Every time the Alien Beasts get out of control, their only idea is to blow up the planet. What the hell good are you?!]

[Actually, you can’t blame it all on the higher-ups. And of course, you can’t blame the warriors, either. After all, the Empire couldn’t hold their ground, could they?]

Everyone understood the reasoning, but who could remain calm and rational?

This gray rain had terrified many people.

If this were an artificial rain from an environmental simulator, it definitely wouldn’t be gray. Therefore, this was a natural rain.

When a planet is destroyed, the first thing to appear is abnormal weather.

They had just used chemical weapons to destroy a planet, and the weather immediately turned strange. It was hard for people not to read into it.

Perhaps no one cared about the lives of those who died on the Frontline Star, but they certainly cared about their own.

None of the Federation’s top leadership came out to respond.

No one wanted to come out and get chewed out at a time like this, but the Research Institute still issued a statement.

It stated that they would investigate the origin of the gray rain as soon as possible.

It had to be said, the Research Institute’s statement did calm the anxious hearts of some people.

But most people weren’t buying it.

[LMAO, whatever you "research" is just whatever you decide to say it is.]

[The final result will definitely be "a normal phenomenon." Or if they’re more brazen, they’ll just tell us the planet raining gray ash is ’recovering its ecosystem.’ After all, it’s raining on its own, isn’t it?]

[Oh, that makes so much sense. Maybe it really is recovering?]

[Are you trying to say the way to heal a planet is to fight poison with poison? Then why did all the remote planets destroyed before turn into dead zones nearby?]

Everyone fell silent.

The comments paused for two minutes before a new one appeared.

[So the area we live in will also become a dead zone one day?]

[I don’t care anymore. I’m emigrating. I’m going to the northernmost planet. Even if it’s far, it’s better than being polluted into a monster here.]

Quite a few people had the same idea.

The Main Star, once so crowded you couldn’t squeeze in, lost a large number of its citizens in just one day.

***

The rain fell for a very long time, not stopping even by nightfall.

The accumulated water in the courtyard looked filthy, but thankfully, it didn’t stink.

Long Hao quickly sent the housekeeping robot out to clean it up.

"I wonder if this rain is harmful to people. Qinqin, whatever you do, don’t touch it."

Even if he hadn’t said anything, Jiang Qin had no intention of touching it.

After coming to this Interstellar age, she had always kept her distance from such abnormal things.

She looked at the hazy streetlights outside the window and murmured worriedly, "I wonder if they managed to leave the Frontline Star safely."

Because she was unsure of their situation, she had been holding back and hadn’t asked Yuan Ling to connect to their Light Computers again.

She believed that as soon as they were out of danger, they would definitely contact her.

’There’s no news yet. Maybe they’re busy piloting the ship and treating their wounds.’

As for other possibilities, she didn’t dare to think about them.

"They did. They must have left safely," Long Hao said firmly.

Jiang Qin’s smile was a bit forced.

Then she suddenly remembered. "What about Lan Yan? I don’t think I’ve seen him today?"

Long Hao didn’t even blink. "Oh, that kid? His parents came to pick him up."

"His parents? Was it Aunt Lan? Or one of the uncles?"

"I don’t know them. Anyway, the person whispered a few words to Lan Yan, and he left in a hurry. He said he’d send you a message when he left. Maybe he got busy and forgot."

Seizing the opportunity, Long Hao covertly tried to sow some discord.

’Hmph, serves that little punk right for showing off in front of me.’

’As for whether the person who took him was actually his parent, what’s that got to do with me?’

’Lan Yan left with them willingly anyway. If there’s any danger, that’s his problem.’

Jiang Qin was thinking along the same lines as Long Hao.

’Since he left with them willingly, he must have known them.’

’Besides, if it wasn’t someone he knew, they probably wouldn’t have found out so quickly that Lan Yan was here with her.’

So, after learning he had left, Jiang Qin didn’t say much more.

Her mind was currently filled with worry for Yun Xie and the others; she had no energy to think about anything else.

....

This rainy night seemed exceptionally long.

So long that 80% of the Federation people and Imperial people were suffering from insomnia.

On the music platforms, the play counts for all songs were skyrocketing tonight.

Jiang Qin couldn’t sleep either. She tossed and turned, waiting for a communication signal deep into the night.

She was listening to music, too.

Many songs had come out in the Interstellar space that followed her style, and some of them were actually quite good...

She waited until 3:16 a.m. before finally receiving a message from Shi Lichuan.

The message was very brief, just one sentence: Safe, don’t worry, in transit, signal is intermittent.

The anxiety she had been holding in all day finally subsided at that moment.

But she still found it difficult to fall asleep.

Because when she returned, she had heard that of the one hundred escape pods that left together, five were still out of contact.

It had been so many days. They had likely fallen into a black hole...

After all, Federation warriors had been searching the vicinity recently but still hadn’t found them.

The escape pods that had docked nearby had basically all been found, with the sole exception of those five, which were still missing.

Among them were two older females, one female serving a sentence, and two female volunteers.

Of these five females, only one, a young volunteer, was a fan of hers.

In order to find them, she had even asked Yuan Ling to conduct a thorough search of the area, just like he had when searching for her.

But there was still no trace of them.

Now, everyone on the Star Network was saying they probably weren’t coming back.

Many people were calling for females to stop volunteering to support the battlefield. After all, you only live once.

Things this life-threatening should be left to the female convicts.

And indeed, many frightened females had explicitly stated that they would not go to the battlefield again.

Call them selfish or cowardly, it didn’t matter; the fact was that the experience had left a shadow in the hearts of many females.

No one had the heart to be too harsh on them.

After all, they had been brave once. They were just so frightened that they had lost that Courage.