"oath of starlight is only a key; the true weapon is the bonds you've forged on your journey, the emotions you've awakened, and what you've proven through each choice—the light of free will."

"Sleeping in the cradle of the Observer Council are the twelve wisest sages of the Sky Federation."

"Back then, they chose to embrace absolute rationality because they witnessed firsthand the tragic sacrifices caused by emotion and faith during the War of the Divine Kingdom."

"They weren't born evil; it's just that... they've gone too far and forgotten why they set out in the first place."

The phantom image was about to dissipate.

"Tell them, Elvia... never held a grudge. She only regrets not being able to understand sooner back then..."

The voice faded into the astral wind.

The Pure White Spire began to disintegrate, turning into countless specks of light rising into the sky, like a farewell ceremony two thousand years late.

Bai Cheng caught the droplet crystal.

At the moment of contact, a massive flood of memories rushed in—

She saw the final moment before the Lord of the Sky's fall:

It was a great being with a blurred face and twenty-four pairs of wings of light on his back, standing at the edge of the Star Abyss, looking back at the countless sky island civilizations he had created, his eyes full of reluctance and hope.

"Let my children... choose their own future."

"Even if the choices are wrong, even if the path is rough."

"That is... what a civilization should look like."

In the memory fragments, as the Lord of the Sky split and sealed the three memories of authority, he whispered to himself:

"Rationality should be a lighthouse, not a cage."

"Though emotions bring pain, they also give birth to poetry, art, love, and sacrifice..."

"If anyone in later generations [N O V E L I G H T] can reunite oath of starlight, may they understand."

"Perfect calculations can never compare to an imperfect but free soul."

The memories receded.

Bai Cheng opened her eyes and found her companions returning to their senses from their respective resonances. Everyone's eyes held a bit more heaviness, but also a bit more determination.

"It's time to go back," Zi Yuan spoke first. "Of the seventy-two-hour time limit for the Rainbow Bridge, less than half remains."

The dawn set sail, its stern spewing azure flames.

Inside the bridge, the droplet crystal of oath of starlight was carefully placed in the energy stabilization chamber.

Through the observation window, it could be seen pulsing in synchronization with the resonance frequency of the golden bell.

"Fusion takes time," Leng Ningxue said, calculating the data.

"After returning to Shandora, it will take at least twenty-four hours for oath of starlight to fully synchronize with the golden bell."

"During that time, we must protect it well."

"The Observer Council will not sit idly by."

Garel stared with his one eye at the moving silver dots on the edge of the star chart on the navigation screen. "They've already noticed."

Sure enough, just as the dawn sailed out of the relic graveyard of the Forgotten Corridor, ripples suddenly appeared in space at the seventh node of the Rainbow Bridge ahead.

Twelve mirror portals opened simultaneously.

What stepped out of the portals were not ordinary Observer Guards, but twelve figures dressed in silver-white robes, their faces hidden under hoods.

They were surrounded by a logic aura purer and colder than that of the Silent Observers, each holding a crystal prism that was constantly calculating billions of possibilities.

The leader raised his head; under the hood was a constantly changing projection of the starry sky, with a pure black singularity suspended in the center of the projection.

"Successors," his voice sounded like thousands of recordings playing in sync. "Hand over oath of starlight. It is the property of the Sky Federation and should be kept by the Council."

Bai Cheng walked to the bow, her silver hair fluttering in the energy wind.

"Property?" Her voice was calm but echoed across the entire airspace. "No, that is the... legacy the Lord of the Sky left for his children."

"And the meaning of a legacy is never defined by its keeper."

"But by how the successor... lives out the light of that heritage."

Though the Sword of Conviction was shattered, the insignia of judgment burned on her forehead.

Zi Yuan's long blade was unsheathed, and the Blue Bird Thunderstorm erupted; Leng Ningxue's ice crystals covered the ship's hull; the powers of Lu Duo and Yu Nian intertwined into a barrier of life and mind-cleansing; the lightning in Garel's right eye connected to the Great Thunder Array beneath Shandora; Aurora held her staff high, and Elune's four pairs of light wings fully unfurled.

The dawn did not slow down.

The bow aimed at the twelve high-ranking Observers, carving a resolute trail of light across the Rainbow Bridge.

In the next instant, the two sides collided.

The sea of stars trembled, and at this moment, the seven-colored light of the Rainbow Bridge—

—was stained with the flames of battle.

The seven-colored streaming light of the Rainbow Bridge twisted violently under the energy impact, like silk being tightened by an invisible giant hand.

The trail of judgment light from the dawn's bow collided head-on with the logic auras surrounding the twelve high-ranking Observers; there was no deafening explosion, only a more terrifying silence.

It was the crisp sound of reality's laws being forcibly rewritten, like the sound of glass being frozen solid.

Twelve crystal prisms simultaneously projected a silver torrent of data.

Each torrent was composed of countless nested causality correction formulas; their goal was not to destroy the dawn, but to forcibly converge all variables in this area into a single solution:

"Probability of the successors handing over oath of starlight: 97.3%"

"Energy loss caused by resistance: Acceptable range"

"Optimal evolutionary path for civilization: Reclaim legacy, eliminate irrational variables"

The formulas wrapped around the ship's hull like chains, and the dawn's energy shields began to be rationalized the moment they made contact.

The shield structure transformed from a chaotic energy field into a regular geometric grid, with every node of the grid executing the same command: disarm.

"They are assimilating our defense system!" The data stream in Leng Ningxue's icy eyes refreshed frantically, but the more she calculated, the more the data in her eyes tended towards a unified result.

"My ice crystal calculations are being reverse-invaded... they are guiding my thought patterns toward the logical endpoint where handing over oath of starlight is the optimal solution!"

Zi Yuan's long blade slashed at the data torrent, and her Tide-Breaking Blade Intent tore through the outermost layer of formulas, but the moment the blade touched them, a cold conclusion that resistance was useless involuntarily surfaced in her mind.

It was a direct implantation of logic, unrelated to will, purely an overwhelming crush at the information level.

The Blue Bird Thunderstorm bombarded the barrier projected by the prisms; the lightning was evenly distributed in twelve directions, failing to stir even a single ripple.

More terrifyingly, her madness and battle intent were being stripped away bit by bit, converted into quantifiable energy output values.

"At this rate..." Aurora's staff trembled violently, and the golden characters of the Solar Holy Word became blurred under the erosion of the silver formulas.

"The essence of our power will be analyzed, defined, and incorporated into their calculation model! Once complete, even the thought of resisting will become a low-probability event!"

Bai Cheng stood at the bow, the insignia of judgment burning to its limit on her forehead.

She could see the essence of those silver formulas; they were not an attack, but a proof.

The high-ranking Observers were using absolute rationality to prove one thing: resistance is meaningless, and handing over oath of starlight is the only logical choice.