Chapter 1 The End

In the brilliant and dazzling sunlight, a planet was rapidly approaching its demise.

Zhuom's sunlit side was constantly bursting like fireworks under the star's irradiation. The heavy rock layers melted, exploded, and vaporized under the sunlight, torn away by gravity and sprinkled into space in a magnificent and tragic manner. The entire planet rotated while constantly spilling out hundreds of millions of tons of celestial material, approaching the end of its planetary life in the most spectacular way. On Zhuom's dark side, a bridge of life was desperately trying to save the civilization that once existed on this planet in the last six hours before doomsday.

The strata near the equator bloomed like flower buds. Countless giant tentacles, somewhere between plants and animals, meandered and stretched between the earth's crust, pushing aside rock layers that were taller than mountains. A structure composed of flesh, plants, and machinery trembled slightly in the center of this giant "flower bud," and the red light it emitted was now the most striking light on Zhuom's dark side.

This entire structure was like an enormous flower of life, blooming furiously in this hellish world about to fall into the blazing sun.

The Giant Tortoise Rock Platform, like a silver-white flying bird, hovered nimbly in the heart of the "Flower of Life," connecting a large number of cables and pipes to the planet's heart, extracting Zhuom's 1.6 billion souls like a hummingbird collecting nectar.

A reconnaissance drone flying over the planet captured this spectacular and rare scene and quickly sent it to the inspectors' communication platform.

Inspectors often posted images recorded during their missions on this platform, and Hao Ren had gradually developed this habit. Not to show off his achievements—there was no need to show off in front of his colleagues. He recorded and posted these things just to remember every step he took and to record every civilization and every landscape he encountered because these landscapes were always easy to disappear.

Just like Zhuom in front of him.

"Current progress is good, bandwidth is just enough," the data terminal kept track of the soul transfer situation. "Thanks to the Empire's technology, we knew how to transcode souls many years ago, otherwise it wouldn't be so easy to upload and download souls."

Hao Ren patted his chest with some lingering fear, "I really don't know what I would have done if I hadn't set up these drone swarms..."

"Just say it outright if you want to show off your foresight," Lily glanced at him, then wagged her tail, "But speaking of which...Landlord, you were indeed quite prescient at the time, couldn't tell at all usually."

Vivian chuckled after hearing this, "We usually can't tell that you could graduate from Peking University four times either."

As things progressed smoothly, the atmosphere in the spaceship seemed to relax, and everyone started joking again. However, Hao Ren never took his eyes off the console during this process. At this critical moment, he didn't want anything to go wrong.

Time passed quietly like this, slowly and unbearably. Hao Ren didn't know how long he had been staring at the console. He only knew that Vivian had brought over a cup of tea to let him rest for a moment, but he soon returned to the captain's seat. 1.6 billion human souls plus the soul of an Old One – the amount of data was astonishing. Even if the drone swarm optimized the transmission structure as much as possible, it was impossible to completely transmit it in a short period of time. As time passed, the planet's six-hour night was also gradually coming to an end, but the bar on the console indicating the progress of the transmission still had nearly a tenth left to fill. The atmosphere on the bridge suddenly became tense again. Lily stared at the screen of the external monitor with wide eyes, a flame appearing in the reflection in her pupils.

"The sun is rising!"

Throughout the entire transmission process, the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform had been hovering synchronously above Zhuom's data release point, following the planet's slow rotation, and now it had finally rotated to a position to welcome the morning sun. A dazzling wall of fire appeared far in front of the spaceship.

The data terminal screamed, "Only five percent left!"

The magnificent sunlight had already appeared on the horizon. The horizon scorched by the high temperature ignited a raging "fire." It wasn't real flame, but a curtain of light produced by the refraction of sunlight as rock vapor spewed into the sky, but its temperature was even more terrifying than ordinary flame. This wall of fire began to advance toward the data release point with an unwavering momentum, corrosively burning the entire world along the way!

And advancing along with the wall of fire was the even more deadly stellar gravity. On the screen from the external monitor, the distant horizon rose upwards in a bizarre way as if it were being rolled up, and countless tiny black substances floated up as if they were rising and flew towards the sun. The huge vibrations had even begun to destroy the structure of the data release point in advance. Around the "Flower of Life," the earth was collapsing, and huge sinkholes appeared one after another, while the tentacles of the Old One inside the data release point quickly turned a deathly gray-black color at a speed visible to the naked eye. The sunlight finally burned through all the protective layers, and the tissues of this ancient creature were dying in large quantities.

However, its central nervous system was still working stubbornly. The console still showed the connection progress, and although the progress was slow, it was undoubtedly advancing!

"Three percent!"

The sunlight continued to advance, and the outer shell of the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform spaceship was finally stained with a layer of golden-red light, while the fragile tissues inside the data release point were completely exposed to the scorching heat of the star. Without the protection of the strata, everything began to ignite in a raging "fire."

"One percent!"

The Old One's tentacles had been ignited. Due to the thin air, this burning process was bizarre and shocking. The tentacles, hundreds of kilometers long, emitted a strong light under the sunlight and then turned directly into coke. The speed of this process was astonishing, and it almost instantly threatened the "heart" at the core of the data release point. However, the "heart" itself was still alive. The remaining energy of the entire planet had been transported to this location, and it was sending the last bit of data into the Giant Tortoise Rock Platform's mainframe!

But at this moment, the data terminal suddenly exclaimed in a broken voice, "It's stuck!!"

Hao Ren didn't react for a moment, "What's stuck?"

A large pile of messy data flashed on the console's holographic projection, finally locking onto an entry. The terminal shouted, "Nolan! Nolan's data and communication link are incompatible!"

At this moment, the sunlight had already spread to the base of the "heart," which was rapidly disintegrating under the scorching heat. The surface of that indescribable organ was suddenly covered with meridians, and then large pieces burst open, spraying substances mixed with origin blood, electrolyte, industrial grease, and flesh fragments everywhere. Seeing this scene, Vivian was even more anxious than Hao Ren, "What's going on?"

"The drone swarm's data link was set to a special mode for transmitting souls, but we only logged the soul codes of the Zhuom people and the Old One," the terminal explained quickly, "Nolan—she's an AI!"

Hao Ren understood in an instant.

Although Nolan lived in a virtual world, she was not essentially a member of that world, or rather, she was not a member of "biological" beings.

Her soul belonged to the machines that maintained the Old One's existence.

The data link established by the drone swarm in a hurry could only be used to transmit the souls of carbon-based organisms. This system forgot to leave a path for Nolan!

This was equivalent to forcibly sending data over the network when the protocols were incompatible. In any case, when the data arrived at its destination, it would only be garbled code.

And even if the forced transmission was successful, sending Nolan's data to the crystal nucleus research station would at best only send away a memory bank: a compressed file containing all of Nolan's memories. But without a soul, it would be equivalent to losing the execution program. This data would no longer be able to run. Others might be able to see all of Nolan's experiences in her life from this data, but no matter how you read them, the girl named Nolan would never respond again.

Hao Ren stared blankly at the rapidly collapsing data release point, but his brain did not freeze. He squeezed out the last bit of his wisdom and suddenly asked the terminal loudly, "The only problem is the incompatible transmission protocol, right? There's no problem with saving it, right?"

"Yes..." The terminal was stunned, "What are you going to do?"

Hao Ren didn't say anything, but quickly entered the final instruction on the console.

He was extremely grateful at this moment for his hard work in the past, which allowed him to understand most of the operations of these high-tech devices.

The moment the final instruction began to execute, the sunlight completely enveloped the data release point, and the blazing flames swallowed the last surviving tissues of the Old One. A few seconds later, a huge explosion erupted from the lower level of the data release point.

All the parameters on the console cleared to zero at the same time—everything was finally over.