Life is the greatest miracle in the world.

The four directions and above and below are called the Universe. Though the Universe has substance, there is no fixed place one can seek. The past and the present are called Time. Though Time continues to grow, none can know where it first began.

The vast cosmos, the boundless starry sky — many scientists speculate that Earth may be the only source of life.

Humanity is, in truth, deeply alone. Amid the immensity of the heavens, though there are hundreds of millions of stars, it is exceedingly difficult to find a second world that harbors life.

Yet humanity has never abandoned the pursuit of exploration. Since the last century, numerous space probes have been launched.

Voyager 2 is an unmanned deep-space probe launched in 1977 from the Kennedy Space Center in the United States.

Aboard it was a gold-plated phonograph record titled “Greetings to the Universe,” containing popular music and spoken greetings recorded in fifty-five languages of Earth, in the hope that one day it might be intercepted and received by an extraterrestrial civilization that may exist out there.

From the 1970s to the present day, Voyager 2 has traveled on in solitude, as insignificant as a speck of dust in the vast, boundless cosmos.

Space probes of the same era have mostly either malfunctioned or had their signal connections severed, vanishing forever into the Desolate universe.

More than thirty years have passed. Technology has continued to advance, and humanity has developed far more sophisticated deep-space probes. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the exploration of the starry sky will see even greater progress.

And yet, even so, for quite a long time to come, the new generation of deep-space probes will still be unable to catch up with Voyager 2.

Thirty-three years have passed. Voyager 2 is now fourteen billion kilometers from Earth.

At this very moment, it has already reached the third cosmic velocity; its trajectory can no longer guide it back to the solar system, and it has become an interstellar spacecraft.

In the dark and frozen cosmos, stars glimmer like brilliant diamonds embedded in a black curtain.

Although Voyager 2 is traveling at tremendous speed, in the cold and boundless universe it resembles a tiny ant crawling slowly across a darkened plain.

More than thirty years later — on this very day — Voyager 2 made a stunning discovery!

In the Desolate cosmos, nine colossal corpses lay silently in place…

On May 22, 2010, NASA received a set of mysterious data transmissions sent back by Voyager 2. After an arduous process of decryption and reconstruction, they beheld an utterly unbelievable image.

In that moment, every person in the main control room of the space agency simultaneously changed color. In the end, they stood motionless, like carved wood or molded clay — struck speechless beyond all measure by what they saw.

It was only after a long while that the crowd finally came back to their senses, and then the main control room erupted all at once.

“Good God — what am I seeing?”

“How can this be? I can’t believe it!”

……

Voyager 2 was long past any guidance; it could only continue forward in a single direction. After transmitting this set of mysterious data, it passed swiftly through that pitch-black region of space and sped onward toward even darker and more distant star fields.

Because that stretch of the starry sky was so impossibly remote, even with such a momentous discovery — even having captured such a staggering image — humanity was presently powerless to do anything about it.

This set of mysterious data was never made public. And shortly afterward, Voyager 2 suffered a malfunction and severed its signal transmission to Earth.

Perhaps it was fitting to draw a full stop there — yet sometimes events have a way of defying all expectations.

Whether for astronomical observation and exploration or for scientific research into life and physics, space stations possess an unparalleled and uniquely advantaged environment.

From 1971, when the Soviet Union first successfully launched a crewed space station, to the present day, a total of nine space stations have been launched worldwide.

June 11, 2010. At this very moment, aboard the International Space Station orbiting Earth, several astronauts simultaneously drained of color, their pupils contracting sharply.

By now, the existence of gods had long since been disproven. If anyone still held to such faith, it was only because they sought something to hold onto amid an inner emptiness.

Yet in this moment, the minds of several elite astronauts were struck by a powerful force. They beheld an utterly unbelievable image.

Outside the International Space Station, in the cold and dark cosmos where ice and blackness coexisted, nine colossal beings lay utterly still — as though they had been stretched across that void since the beginning of time, filling the beholder with a sense of endless desolation and unfathomable antiquity. They were, impossibly, nine Dragon Corpses.

Indistinguishable from the dragons of ancient myth and legend.

Each Dragon Corpse stretched a hundred meters in length, as though cast from molten iron, radiating a staggering sense of physical power.

All nine Dragon Corpses were Five-clawed Black Dragons. Save for their Dragon Horns — crystalline and translucent, flashing with violet light — the bodies of the dragons were black throughout, gleaming with a dark luster, their Dragon Scales flickering with faint, mysterious radiance in the darkness.

The dragon — a creature of legend, standing alongside the gods, transcending the natural order. But now that science had advanced this far, who could still believe that dragons truly existed?

The minds of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station were struck by a powerful force; what lay before their eyes filled them with utter disbelief.

In the Desolate cosmos, the cold Dragon Corpses resembled indestructible walls of iron and steel, and even from afar one could sense the terrifying power contained within those bodies.

Yet they had lost all vitality, resting forever in the cold and silent expanse of space.

“That is…”

After the deep shock had passed, the pupils of the elite astronauts contracted sharply once more — for they had now glimpsed an even more astonishing sight.

Each of the nine Dragon Corpses stretched a hundred meters in length, and bound to their tails were thick black iron chains, each as wide as the mouth of a bowl. These chains stretched behind the nine Dragon Corpses into the darkness of the surrounding cosmic space, where a bronze coffin, twenty meters in length, hung silently in the void.

The massive chains had been forged through a hundred beatings; thick, long, and unyielding, their dim dark luster making them appear chillingly sinister.

The great bronze coffin was ancient and unadorned, bearing faint and blurred archaic patterns upon its surface, suffused with the weathered marks of countless ages — how many years it had drifted through the cosmos, no one could say.

Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin!

In that pitch-black and frozen cosmos, the nine Dragon Corpses and the Ancient Bronze Coffin were bound together by thick, long black iron chains — the sight was profoundly overwhelming.

After staring in stunned disbelief at that inconceivable image on the monitors, the elite astronauts wasted no time in sending out a signal.

“Calling Earth…”