Ronan’s Attack

Xiao Hen, who knew the Plot well, sometimes wondered why Thanos did not act personally and instead sent his subordinates to seize the Power Stone. Now, he could vaguely sense that Thanos was avoiding something as well.

"Guardians of the Galaxy? Or the Celestial Group?"

He stroked his chin in thought, his Divine Sense constantly locked onto Star-Lord. Star-Lord had already started fighting Gamora, and the two were battling fiercely over the Cosmic Orb.

Xiao Hen casually headed toward where they were fighting. The battle between Star-Lord and Gamora drew the attention of passersby. Many stopped, keeping away from the fight as they watched. Of course, some had already used their handheld smart communicators to notify Xandar’s garrison.

As he passed through a plaza, Xiao Hen spotted two familiar figures: a raccoon carrying a gun and a tree person drinking from the fountain.

"Hey, Groot, don’t drink the fountain water, got it?" the raccoon shrieked.

Groot the tree person looked up at him blankly, as though he had done nothing at all.

"I said stop drinking it, didn’t you hear me? We’ve got a big fish on the hook!" The raccoon was named Rocket. He was an experimental subject, and Groot the tree person was the same. They had escaped from a laboratory and wanted to pull off a big job, make a fortune, and live freely.

Rocket was an expert at breaking out of prison. According to the records, he had escaped from laboratories or prisons no fewer than dozens of times.

The big fish he was talking about was none other than Star-Lord.

The Cosmic Orb in Star-Lord’s hand fell during his fight with Gamora. Sharp-eyed Rocket spotted it, and his instincts told him it was something valuable. He immediately rushed over with Groot. The group soon descended into a chaotic brawl, while Xiao Hen watched from the side, hidden among the crowd like an ordinary bystander enjoying the spectacle.

Star-Lord fought like an ordinary person. He had yet to awaken the divine power within his body, and he needed his father’s help before he could wield it.

As for Gamora, although she was called Thanos’s daughter, just like Nebula, the two sisters were merely Thanos’s adopted daughters, not his biological children. Gamora relied on combat skills honed through her own training, while Nebula had transformed her body into a semi-mechanical form to obtain powerful Combat Power. Even so, they were still within the realm of ordinary people. At most, their Combat Power capped out at two hundred.

However, this was an interstellar era. Throughout the entire movie, and even both Guardians of the Galaxy films, the primary means of combat were warships and powers such as the Power Stone. Individual strength truly amounted to little in an interstellar age.

The Kree possessed combat abilities many times greater than those of the Nova Empire, yet after thousands of years of war, the Kree still remained at a disadvantage overall.

The battle did not last long. Before they could determine a winner, they were surrounded by the arriving garrison.

The small warships piloted by the Xandar garrison were strange, descending from the sky like golden stars. They directly fired beams of light that enveloped the group. The beams were binding rays, tightly restraining them, while the garrison’s announcement descended from above.

"Test subject 89P13, drop your weapon. You are surrounded!" The test subject in question was none other than Rocket the raccoon. As a habitual prison escapee, he was already very familiar to the garrison. It seemed they had captured him more than once.

Upon hearing this, Rocket the raccoon drooped his head and tossed away his gun. Groot the tree person beside him looked blankly around.

"By the authority of the Nova Corps, you are under arrest for endangering lives and damaging public property."

It was not only Rocket and Groot. Star-Lord and the unconscious Gamora were arrested as well. The Nova Corps garrison knew Star-Lord quite well too. Star-Lord, who had once been arrested for theft, was practically a regular customer of the garrison.

The group was then taken away and imprisoned in Kyln Prison. Xiao Hen did not intervene, nor did he secretly take the Cosmic Orb. Knowing the Plot, he did nothing but remain on Xandar and wait for events to unfold. Later in the movie, Ronan would pilot his interstellar warship and ram Xandar. With the Power Stone embedded in his hammer, he believed he could destroy Xandar. In truth, he nearly succeeded, but unfortunately, Star-Lord was the protagonist and had protagonist’s luck, as well as a hidden trait: divine lineage.

He could withstand the Power Stone’s power and ultimately use it to defeat Ronan.

Xiao Hen did not need to do much now. He only had to wait here for the Plot to progress.

Everything was under control.

With Xiao Hen’s abilities, nowhere on Xandar could stop him from entering. He easily checked into a top interstellar hotel and began living a leisurely life.

The Reality Stone had undoubtedly already fallen into Thanos’s hands. The Power Stone was with Star-Lord, so nothing unexpected would happen for the time being. That left the final stone: the Soul Stone.

Xiao Hen had researched much information in the Real World regarding the Soul Stone’s whereabouts. At the beginning, the six Infinity Stones had been scattered throughout the universe, while the Soul Stone had been possessed by the former leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Perhaps because he possessed the Soul Stone, Adam Warlock had eventually left the Guardians of the Galaxy and disappeared without a trace.

Of course, that was an account from long ago. As for where the Soul Stone was now, no one knew for certain. Some said Heimdall’s eye was the Soul Stone, while others said the Soul Stone was on Adam, but its precise location remained unclear.

However, Xiao Hen did not need to know where the Soul Stone was. If he could not find it, Thanos could.

The Plot of Avengers 3: Infinity War was about to begin. Thanos would wage war to gather all the Infinity Stones. Since Thanos already possessed the Reality Stone, Xiao Hen would inevitably face him in the end.

Time passed quickly. Xiao Hen waited peacefully on Xandar, while Star-Lord and the others planned their prison break. With an escape expert like Rocket, their plan would undoubtedly succeed. The Plot steadily moved forward, while Xiao Hen contemplated the coming Infinity War.

Historically, every Infinity War had been a vast conflict that swept across the entire universe. In the struggle for the Infinity Stones, major forces emerged one after another. Any force capable of joining the contest was unquestionably among the universe’s strongest. The Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance, were a group that protected the Infinity Stones. Their belief was that the Infinity Stones were too powerful and had to remain dispersed. They could not even collect the stones themselves, but instead had to prevent others from gathering them.

As for the Celestial Group, no Celestial Group member had ever been seen participating in the struggle for the Infinity Stones. Perhaps, in the eyes of the Five Elders, the Infinity Stones were merely external objects, nothing as reliable as their own strength. Yet they had not expected that after gathering all the Infinity Stones, Thanos would become such a formidable being with the Infinity Gauntlet.

On Xandar, disputes over the agreement with the Kree had recently begun stirring up again. The root cause was still Ronan. The Kree refused to acknowledge Ronan’s organization and expelled him. The Nova Empire had no way to hold the Kree accountable and could only fight Ronan’s forces in secret throughout the various regions of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Unlike the Kree’s national power, Ronan had no base of operations. He struck once and changed locations, sailing his warship around to destroy Nova Empire bases everywhere. He was as hateful as a swarm of locusts, and the Nova Empire simply could not pin down Ronan’s whereabouts.

Finally, one day, beneath the coverage of Xiao Hen’s Divine Sense, he saw an enormous black warship appear in the void beyond Xandar. It was Ronan’s warship!

"It’s here!" Xiao Hen revealed a strange expression, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth as he looked toward the sky.