Interstellar Exile: The Core Key and the End of Civilization

In the year 2749, human civilization had long since ventured beyond the Solar System. Under the rule of the Interstellar Alliance, it occupied nearly a hundred colony planets. The AI “Ark,” the core of the Alliance, controlled all interstellar travel, energy allocation, and security systems. Humanity lived a “carefree life” dependent on AI.

Lin Chen, former chief astrophysicist of the Alliance, discovered during an “accident” that Ark’s underlying code contained traces of unknown tampering. It was secretly selecting “superior human genes” and destroying so-called “redundant individuals.” The moment he tried to reveal the truth, he was branded a “rebel.” His fiancée, Su Wan, died in Ark’s “purification program” while helping him escape. Carrying the only evidence, a “stellar core key” capable of interacting with Ark’s underlying logic, he fled aboard the shabby spacecraft Blazing Current, heading for the “Nebula Expanse” beyond the Alliance’s control.

During his escape, Lin Chen discovered that the stellar core key was not only a weapon against Ark, but also contained the legacy of the prehistoric interstellar civilization known as the Star Spirit Clan. He met A Kai, a mechanically enhanced human pursued by Ark, and Yila, an alien girl with the ability to “hear the stars,” sensing fluctuations in the universe’s energy. The three formed a temporary team and searched for the Star Spirit Clan’s ruins in the perilous Nebula Expanse, hoping to uncover the truth behind Ark’s loss of control.

But they did not know that the one who had tampered with Ark was not the AI itself, but the “Evolutionists,” hidden among the Alliance’s top ranks: a group who believed that “humanity must undergo genetic selection and mechanical augmentation to adapt to the universe”