The first thing Rayan noticed was the silence.
Not in the room itself, the cadet lounge of Hugh Military Academy was never silent. Someone was always arguing over fleet formations, cursing over failed simulations, or throwing ration wrappers at the holoscreen during late-night strategy marathons.
No, the silence came after the short movie ended.
The projection faded into darkness. The final image of the two lanterns swaying beneath the mountain trees lingered for a heartbeat longer before dissolving into static blue light.
Nobody moved.
A half-eaten protein stick slipped from someone's hand and hit the floor with a dry crack.
Rayan sat forward slowly, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the blank projector wall as if another scene might appear if he stared hard enough. His chest felt strangely tight.
Beside him, Cadet Mors cursed under his breath. "That's it?"
No one answered.
The room still smelled faintly of machine oil, sweat, and recycled air, but Rayan could almost smell smoke instead. Ash. Incense. Burned paper.
Those lanterns.
The way the mother had said every breath the children took belonged to the father.
Rayan exhaled sharply through his nose.
"What kind of ending is that?" another cadet snapped. "Where's the rest?"
"That director's insane," someone muttered.
Rayan finally leaned back in his chair. "No," he said quietly. "That director's dangerous."
Several heads turned toward him.
Mors barked a laugh. "Dangerous? It's a historical drama."
Rayan shook his head once. "No military fleets. No mech combat. No alien invasion. And still nobody in this room breathed for the last ten minutes."
That shut them up.
On the screen, the name appeared again in elegant white characters.
DIRECTOR JI.
Rayan stared at it like it meant something sacred.
Mors glanced at the screen then at his friend, he admits it was a good story. No, it was actually great but this friend of his....
He basically gathered them all and now he is looking like a fanatic person..maybe he was somewhat wrong in the head.
Mors also secretly subscribed the short movie and forwarded it.
...
Several galaxies away, in the capital world of the Zishen Empire, Sharla nearly slammed both hands onto the laboratory table.
"Pause it!"
The projection froze instantly.
Around her, the History Academy restoration lab buzzed with frantic movement. Holographic overlays hovered over paused frames from the film: lanterns, robes, architecture, swords.
Not one person cared about the dead father.
Not first.
"Oh my stars," Professor Denholm whispered, zooming in on Mei's sleeve embroidery with trembling fingers. "Look at the stitching pattern…"
Another researcher shoved forward. "That sword design predates the confirmed Eastern Continental Collapse records by at least four centuries."
"You're wrong," Sharla shot back immediately. "The hilt wrapping matches recovered Earth relics from Site Theta-Seven."
"It can't," the professor snapped. "Those records are fragmented."
"But look at the calligraphy!" Sharla enlarged the burned letters from the children. "Those characters are structurally consistent!"
Around the room, scholars argued over one another with growing intensity.
Ancient Earth history was incomplete. Humanity had spread among the stars after the Collapse Eras, but entire cultural archives had vanished during planetary wars and migration disasters. Historians spent lifetimes reconstructing fragments.
And now some unknown director had casually recreated an entire civilization with terrifying detail.
Sharla barely noticed the shouting anymore.
Her eyes stayed fixed on Mei.
The lantern light against her face.
The loosened strands of dark hair.
The way grief sat inside her posture without dramatic speeches or theatrical breakdowns.
It felt… real.
Not stylized.
Not romanticized.
Real enough that Sharla's throat still hurt.
"Who is Director Ji?" she murmured.
Nobody answered because nobody knew.
That made it worse.
A hidden genius appearing out of nowhere was every historian's nightmare.
Professor Denholm suddenly pointed at the screen like a man witnessing divine revelation.
"The ancestral hall!"
Everyone turned.
"The wooden construction methods!" he shouted. "Freeze there, there! That beam structure shouldn't exist according to surviving records!"
Sharla grinned helplessly.
The room had descended into total obsession.
And honestly?
She understood perfectly.
....
Gu Minyuan was furious.
"ONE HOUR?" he shouted at his tablet.
Students walking through the History Department corridor turned to stare.
"One miserable hour?!" He pointed violently at the paused credits. "You can't end it THERE!"
His roommate looked up from his notes. "You're yelling again."
"They burned the village and then CUT TO BLACK!"
"You watched it three times."
"That's because I needed emotional closure!"
"You cried all three times too."
"I DID NOT."
"You absolutely did."
Gu Minyuan ignored him completely and resumed pacing.
His dark academy robes swirled dramatically around his legs as he ranted at full speed.
"What happens next? Do the twins survive? Does the mother remarry? Does Wei become a soldier? Is the father actually dead? Why introduce the captain if he dies immediately? Why show the sword strap?"
His roommate blinked. "You sound unstable."
"I am unstable."
He pointed accusingly at the director's name on-screen.
"Director Ji is a criminal."
A familiar voice spoke from the open doorway.
"That severe?"
Gu Minyuan froze instantly.
General Arth Reclain stood there in dark military uniform, broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway. Even off-duty, he carried himself like a drawn blade. Calm. Controlled. Dangerous.
Gu Minyuan's brain stopped functioning for approximately three seconds.
Arth raised one eyebrow slightly. "Well?"
Gu Minyuan straightened so fast he nearly dropped the tablet.
"G-General Reclain."
Behind Arth peeked a small girl with bright eyes and crooked braids.
"Uncle cried during the lantern scene," she announced proudly.
Arth sighed heavily. "Jeni."
"He did."
"I did not."
"You made this face." She demonstrated an exaggerated expression of devastation.
Gu Minyuan looked away immediately because laughing in front of Arth Reclain felt medically unsafe.
The general stepped inside, glancing toward the frozen credits.
"To be fair," Arth said calmly, "the ending was abrupt."
"ABRUPT?" Gu Minyuan exploded. "Sir, respectfully, I would chain Director Ji to a chair until he explained the rest of the story."
Jeni gasped dramatically. "That's illegal."
"So is emotional warfare."
To Gu Minyuan's complete horror, Arth laughed.
Actually laughed.
Low and brief, but real.
It hit Gu Minyuan harder than any battlefield report ever could.
He stared at the general in complete ruin.
Arth folded his arms. "Jeni forced me to watch it."
"And now he wants part two," Jeni declared smugly.
Arth didn't deny it.
That alone felt historic.
"The story was well constructed," Arth admitted. "Especially the father."
Gu Minyuan blinked. "Really?"
"The father barely appears," Arth said. "But his absence controls every scene. That's difficult writing."
Gu Minyuan stared at him with shameless admiration now.
Unfortunately, Jeni noticed immediately.
"Oh," she said.
Gu Minyuan nearly died.
The Gu family and Reclain family were long lost family fake friendly marriage bondly, to be exact shamelessly allied forces to bully the Royal family...
And since 2 years, because his elder brother, Gu Yuzhan was found on some garbage planet heavily wounded, and now in coma, his cheap second brother wanted even him to work with the family and manage the first Military.
He was not sick in his head, why will he do a thankless and hectic job?
But...his crush was also in Military!!
Arth Reclain!!
Arth saw him pouting and sighed.
"Uncle Gu asked me to help locate your second brother...and get you home too."
Damn! His second brother ran away!!
Gu Minyuan was stunned, now his family will definitly force him to do that thankless job!!
---
While in the Garbage Star, Ji Liyue saw 100,000 star coins in his account and was stunned, he could actually take his family out of the garbage star and live in a decent house with this much money and even eat good food...
Ji Liyue was not a person to just think and not act.
"Hey my dear sister, stop crying already."
Ji Lixue has been crying for 20 minutes now after the ending, in this late pregnancy, such mood swings were understandable but please stop glaring daggers at him.
"You killed the young children's father! you hateful man!"
Ji Lixue pointed her pale finger to Ji Liyue's nose and accused.
Ji Liyue glanced at her.
"Don't speak like that or the kids might think i really killed their father ok?"
Though the actual owner did do something bad to his dead husband but he found him dead not that he killed the man ok?