Chapter 1 Starlight

Li Ang logged out of the game plaza and, as before, disguised himself, slipped away from Yin City, and boarded a Zerg Nest submarine to the Pacific Ocean.

It was late at night, and the vast sea surged with waves. The salty, fishy sea breeze howled, and the sky was covered with thick clouds, obscuring the starlight.

Li Ang, wearing a sealed raincoat, sat on a floating wooden board and snapped his fingers.

The Zerg Nest units around the wooden board, disguised as fish, immediately scattered and dived below the surface of the water, working in concert with the birds circling in the sky to detect and investigate.

After a moment, the Zerg Nest units relayed the results: no ships or human detection devices were in the surrounding waters.

Since that was the case, then let's begin.

Li Ang opened his inventory, his mind focusing on the last item, a "thing" called the Door.

Starlight.

Brilliant starlight emerged from his palm, slowly rotating, surrounded by a circle of colorful, blurry halos.

Li Ang held the weightless Door, and intuitively grasped its true usage.

He raised his arm and gently pushed the Door forward.

The starlight detached from his palm, suspended in mid-air, the slow rotation gradually accelerating.

Whoosh—

Accompanied by a low-frequency, subtle sound, the diameter of the star gate continuously expanded, from half a meter to one meter, two meters....

Stop.

Li Ang's thought flickered, and the star gate instantly halted its expansion, quietly floating above the turbulent sea surface, maintaining a stable distance from him.

Light.

Warm, peaceful sunlight streamed through the star gate. The other side of the star gate seemed to be facing the sky.

Across the azure sky, a few soft white clouds drifted. Below the clouds, several small black dots flitted past, seemingly birds flying at high altitude.

A strong sense of déjà vu welled up in Li Ang's heart, but he didn't follow the Door's usage instructions from that déjà vu and directly cross the star gate.

Instead, he quietly observed for a while.

The star gate remained for a full ten minutes. Throughout the process, Li Ang's spiritual energy slightly decreased, but the decrease was so low that it was recovering faster than it was being used.

If he hadn't already advanced to demigod status, and was exceptionally sensitive to his body's condition, he might not have noticed.

"After testing, I can choose to expand or shrink the Door. The smallest star gate size that can display a scene is 1.5 meters. Smaller than that, it reverts to the starlight of the star gate itself."

"Under mental command, the star gate can expand at a uniform speed of 0.71ms to both sides. Before expanding to 10 meters, it doesn't consume spiritual energy. After expanding to 10 meters, the spiritual energy consumption for continued expansion gradually increases. Maintaining the star gate also requires more spiritual energy."

"The star gate doesn't seem to be affected by gravity, always remaining in the position where it was first summoned. After being summoned, the user cannot change the star gate's orientation, angle, or discern the specific location on the other side."

"The user can freely close the star gate with a thought. This ability is still effective beyond a relative distance of one thousand two hundred meters. It should be possible even further away. After closing the star gate, the Door will reappear in the inventory. It's personally bound and cannot be plundered by others."

"Light penetrates from the other side of the star gate, but no air flow can be detected. Spiritual energy, divine power, psychic energy, ripple power, etc., lose their connection after crossing the star gate."

"In other words, a physical probe is necessary..."

Li Ang pondered for a moment, then took out the cheapest smartphone (without a SIM card, with the internet connection turned off), activated the camera,

and casually crafted a selfie stick, a balloon filled with sea air, an open-mouthed glass bottle, and a thermometer using alchemy.

He mounted the phone on the selfie stick, then fixed the balloon, open-mouthed glass bottle, and thermometer on either side of the stick.

He extended the selfie stick toward the star gate.

The process was much easier than Li Ang had imagined. When the selfie stick touched the star gate, it transmitted a viscous sensation like piercing a low-density gel, and then passed through easily.

The stick appeared slightly bent, like chopsticks placed in a water glass, creating a light refraction effect.

His spiritual energy decreased very slightly...

Li Ang held his breath, grasped the selfie stick, and steadily rotated it in a circle. The entire process lasted thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds later, Li Ang withdrew the selfie stick, and his spiritual energy decreased slightly again.

He immediately closed the star gate, and a large amount of slender, thread-like plant fibers surged from the palm of his hand, covering the surface of the phone, balloon, and open-mouthed glass bottle.

The other side of the star gate was indeed another world.

Although the thermometer read 21c, and the balloon hadn't been crushed or exploded due to the sudden change in air pressure on the other side of the star gate,

the gas content in the open-mouthed glass bottle was indeed different from that of Earth.

The normal composition of Earth's air, calculated by volume, is 72% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.939% rare gases such as helium, neon, and argon, and 0.031% nitrogen dioxide.

But the gas collected in the open-mouthed glass bottle had

a nitrogen content reduced to 51%, denser oxygen, and much more methane, chlorine, and hydrogen cyanide in the air than on Earth—in other words, the air on the other side of the star gate was toxic to ordinary humans.

Most importantly,

in the analysis by the swamp vines and the biological mother lode, the microbial DNA sequence attached to the glass was completely different from that of Earth's organisms.

And in the sky footage captured by the rotating phone, there were also two stars and a huge brown gas giant.

"Okay, two stars. I can confirm it's not modern or ancient Earth."

Li Ang played the phone video back and forth, his eyes narrowing slightly. "The angle of the shot, or rather, the location of the star gate in the other world, seems to be above an island.

The island is surrounded by a blue ocean. The island's surface is covered with a large amount of green vegetation that is completely different from Earth's. I haven't seen any traces of civilization similar to Earth's humans, and I haven't seen any large creatures yet either.

It can't be ruled out that the other world has the fantasy trope of 'wood elves who live in harmony with the forest...'”

Li Ang's mind raced, considering one possibility after another.

As the ultimate reward for the Door competition, the star gate doesn't seem to provide a substantial boost to individual combat power in a short period of time.

But the entire world behind the star gate is a wealth so vast it's hard to imagine.

Soil, mineral resources, living space for civilizations, a biological gene pool accumulated by the other world for ten thousand years, and even knowledge of extraordinary powers developed by civilizations...

The only thing to be wary of is the threat posed by the other world to the star gate's owner.

"If it's really an entire colonizable ecological planet, the Zerg Nest can't give up."

Li Ang immediately made a decision. He snapped his fingers, and dozens of Zerg Nest units disguised as birds swooped down from the sky, accepting Li Ang's adjustments to add self-circulating breathing systems and toxic gas filter organs.

Afterward, these Zerg Nest units were all thrown into the star gate by Li Ang.