My divine beast is a foodie.

The aurora borealis twisted into bizarre geometric shapes outside the quantum barrier. Lin Fan was wrapped in a star energy protective suit, and the special spiked claws on the soles of his boots scratched azure sparks on the ice. When he was proofreading the coordinates for the seventh time, the Star Fox Core on his chest suddenly beeped - three hundred meters below the ice, the outline of the Starfall Altar surfaced clearly on the thermal imager.

"Abnormal energy readings." Su Yuqing's voice was mixed with electromagnetic murmurs, "There are residual fluctuations from the cognitive filters around the altar..."

Her words were interrupted by a sudden tremor in the ice. The Taotie leapt out of the Imperial Beast Space, its fifth sealing chain glowing with blood under the aurora borealis. When its front claws touched the ice, ancient star-fall runes suddenly swam as if they had come to life, weaving a gigantic Reverse Big Dipper formation on the ice surface.

"It's a cognitive trap." The silhouette of the white-clothed girl suddenly surfaced in front of the crowd. The star staff in her hand resonated with Lin Fan's star chain, holding up a light golden shield in the blizzard, "Don't look directly at the runes, they will rewrite your memory circuits."

Lin Xiaomeng suddenly covered her temples and fell to her knees. Her Star Chain Monitor showed a sea of unfamiliar memories pouring in - it was an image from the Star Fox's perspective: three years ago, late at night in the North Pole, the young girl embedded the Star Core into the altar's centerpiece, and the Star Meteorite Chain burrowed out of the ice like a venomous serpent...

"So it was you who activated the altar." Chen Tianming's Star Chain materialized as the Spear of Judgment, "Is this how the Star Sea Watcher guards the balance?"

The white-clothed girl's star staff suddenly refracted dodecahedral prisms of light, "Three years ago I came a step too late, and Star Fox used the core to seal the stargate that was about to open." Her gaze swept over Lin Xiaomeng, "And this young lady, is the memory vessel chosen by Star Fox."

Lin Fan's sixth yoke suddenly flared. In his dimensional vision, he saw the Star Fox's silhouette curled up in the depths of Lin Xiaomeng's soul, and those silvery-blue memory threads were fiercely fighting against the Star Meteor Rune. As his star chain attempted to make contact, the entire ice field suddenly flipped - what was under their feet wasn't ice at all, but a cognitive mirror image suspended upside down above the altar.

"Hold on!" Taotie's tail curled around the crowd. The moment gravity reversed, Lin Fan saw the real altar: nine star coffins arranged in a ring, with a kilometer-diameter dark matter vortex suspended in the center, each spinning particle reflecting a war scene from a different dimension.

The white girl's star staff plunged into the ice: "The cognitive filter has covered a radius of five hundred kilometers, we only have thirty minutes."

Altar Core.

The Star Fox Core trembled violently in Lin Fan's hands. When he pressed the core into the altar groove, the ice crystals suddenly turned into liquid starlight and ran along the grooves of the starfall runes. Lin Xiaomeng suddenly let out an inhuman shrill whistle, her pupils splitting into starry compound eyes, and the tail flames of a star fox erupting from her hair.

"Memory assimilation exceeding critical value!" Su Yuqing's monitor sparked with electricity, "We must cut her off from the altar..."

Chen Tianming's Spear of Judgment suddenly reversed direction. Amidst the stunned gazes of the crowd, he pierced through the white-clothed young girl's shield, "The Star Sea Watcher shouldn't intervene in the affairs of this realm."

The young girl's figure flickered like a poorly signaling projection, "You have no idea what you're guarding..." Her star staff suddenly materialized, the dodecahedron at its tip unfolding into a dimensional compass, "See the truth behind the Stargate!"

The hologram projected by the compass took everyone's breath away - somewhere in a branch of the timeline, the unsealed Taotie was devouring the galaxy, while Lin Fan stood atop its head, starfall runes flowing from his eyes.

"Is this the power you crave?" The young girl's voice pierced through the blizzard, "The Starfall Sect was originally designed to stop this very future..."

The Taotie suddenly surged, and the moment the fifth chain broke, its size soared to a hundred meters. Star sea veins emerged under its dark gold scales, and the horns in front of its forehead pierced directly into the dark matter vortex, "Lies! This seat has never..."

The vortex suddenly solidified. Countless timelines unfolded in Lin Fan's dimensional field of vision, each one pointing to the same endgame: the Taotie who had lifted all his seals was transformed into a black hole of extinction on the other side of the stargate. But when he looked at Lin Xiaomeng, who was fusing with Star Fox's memories, a certain dim timeline suddenly flickered - the image showed the white-clothed girl thrusting the Star Staff into her chest, and the cosmic strings reset with a mournful cry.

"Choose." The young girl's silhouette began to dissipate, "Become a prisoner of the Starfall, or..."

Aurora was suddenly torn in half. The projections of the twelve Starfall Priests descended onto the altar, and the chains in their hands were fusing into the beginnings of cosmic strings. The real Chen Tianming suddenly tore through his protective suit, and nine star chains intertwined behind him to form the Wheel of Judgment, "It's time to put an end to this farce."

Lin Fan's sixth shackle snapped in response. In the moment when space and time froze, he saw the Star Fox Core quantum entangled with Taotie's sealing chains. As his double-edged sword penetrated both the Dark Matter Vortex and the Wheel of Judgment, a certain being beyond dimensions whispered in his ear:

"Perception is the cage, truth is the key..."

The arctic ice plain was suddenly engulfed in white light. When everyone regained consciousness, only Lin Xiaomeng's huddled figure remained in the center of the altar, the core of the Star Fox pulsing in her chest, while the star coffins under the ice all turned into pieces.

"Stargate coordinates... Changed..." The white-clothed girl's silhouette became more and more transparent, "Beware of the cognitive flashbacks..."

Taotie suddenly roared towards the void. In Lin Fan's dimensional vision, countless transparent tentacles were reaching out from the Starfall Priests' projections, trying to tamper with their memories. However, the Star Fox Core in Lin Xiaomeng's arms suddenly bloomed with supernova light, and those tentacles evaporated like morning dew in the strong light.

"Go!" Chen Tianming tore open the emergency teleportation scroll, "The main force of the Starfall Sect is leaping!"

As the teleportation beam enveloped the crowd, Lin Fan took one last look at the altar. In the depths of the collapsing ice, the white-clothed girl's body was falling through some dimensional rift, the star staff in her hand had broken, and the dodecahedral core at the tip of the staff had disappeared.

Starship medical bay

Lin Xiaomeng was slumbering in the life-support cabin, the core of the Star Fox pulsing regularly in her chest. Ice crystals remained in Lin Fan's sixth yoke, proof of crossing the cognitive filter.

"Memory cleansing completed at 87%." Su Yuqing pulled up the brainwave mapping, "But she's still harboring the dimensional coordinates of the Star Fox in her subconscious."

Taotie was nibbling on the dark energy block, the cracks in the fifth seal had mostly healed, "Mortal, the choices you see..."

"Not the future." Lin Fan wiped the stardust from his double-edged sword, "Just a certain possibility."

A piercing alarm suddenly sounded on the bridge. On the holographic star map, seven points of eclipsing energy lit up simultaneously at the end of the Milky Way's cantilever, arranging themselves into a star map older than the Big Dipper. And in some barren galaxy yet to be named by mankind, the broken staff was sticking out of the surface of the star, the dodecahedral core looming in the heliopause.