Chapter 1 Nangong Couple's Visit

The Nangong couple were still curiously studying the furnishings in the Raven 12345's mansion, while Hao Ren was already chatting with his own personal god, "...So, that's what happened, and then I brought them both here."

Raven 12345 thoughtfully looked at the black metal box Hao Ren had brought: "Another one nipped in the bud... and also destroyed by the eldest son. You said a race called the 'Starry Sky People' appeared this time?"

"Yeah," Hao Ren nodded. "The people on the Ark called them the Starry Sky People, and the Holletans called them 'Allies Among the Stars'. The basic meaning is about the same, both referring to visitors from space. But so far, only video data has been collected. It's hard to say whether there are any surviving Starry Sky People in the Dream Plane."

Raven 12345 looked at the Starry Sky People's images projected by the data terminal next to her. They were extracted from the Ark's main computer, and she had made a discovery: "It seems to be a kind of energy being... a spirit body, without a material component."

Hao Ren sensed that Raven hadn't finished speaking: "So what's the deal?"

"So they don't seem to have been bred from the First Seed. I analyzed the source blood samples you brought, and found that the First Seed's default template can only evolve carbon-based and sulfur-based life forms. Under suitable conditions, it can also absorb the planet's semiconductor minerals to create silicon-based ecosystems—but all of them stop at tangible life forms. These Starry Sky People should be naturally occurring species."

"The sirens on Aerym were also naturally occurring." Hao Ren thought of that ocean planet. No traces of the eldest son had been found on Aerym, so in the end, he and Raven 12345 both judged that the sirens were a natural race.

Raven 12345 nodded slightly: "That's right, the sirens were also naturally occurring—and they are clearly far behind these Starry Sky People. Of course, Aerym's environment makes it difficult for siren civilization to get started, but generally speaking, species with physical bodies develop faster than spirit beings. This is because spirit beings are naturally weakly connected to the material world. They are insensitive to the material realm, so they are not strongly motivated to develop and don't like to pay attention to changes in the real world—many times, spirit beings will develop purely spiritual civilizations, and then immerse themselves in them until they die. So although they are born with talents that exceed those of material life, their civilization develops much slower than ordinary species. This slowness has a greater impact than the environmental influence of the Aerym Sea."

"And the Starry Sky People are clearly more advanced than the sirens by more than one order of magnitude..." Hao Ren understood what Raven 12345 was trying to say. "This race should be very ancient?"

"Very, very, very ancient..." Raven 12345 looked at the hologram next to her, her brows furrowing slightly. "They were able to run around and remind the various 'Second Son' civilizations in the universe ten thousand years ago, which means they are more advanced than all the Second Sons... and considering that they at least know how to destroy the eldest son's body, I suspect the Starry Sky People's history can even be traced back to when the Creator Goddess first sowed the seeds, or even a little further back."

Hao Ren was greatly surprised: "That ancient?"

"Don't underestimate the slowness of spirit beings," Raven 12345 curled her lip. "Sometimes they can even sleep for tens of thousands of years when they get interested, and the only purpose is to study 'sleeping'. Of course, this slowness is limited to innate spirit beings. Those spirit beings who have ascended from physical species don't have this characteristic. They develop very quickly."

Raven's words reminded Hao Ren: "What if the Starry Sky People also ascended from some kind of ordinary creature?"

"No way," Raven 12345 pointed to the hologram. "Do you see the scattered specks of light in their bodies? These are energy node traces left over from the evolutionary process. They are unnecessary for high-level spirit beings, but the evolution of spirit beings does not follow the principle of 'use it or lose it,' so these evolutionary features will be retained forever. And spirit beings who have ascended from ordinary races don't have these 'noise' in their bodies because they are spared the evolutionary process."

Hao Ren thought for a moment: "Then why does the big blue guy next to you also have these light spots in his body? Didn't you create him directly?"

Raven 12345 shrugged: "It looks awesome, so I manually added them."

Hao Ren: "..."

He shouldn't have asked such an obvious question! Hadn't he known this female madwoman's character after knowing her for so long?

"Okay, okay, so what you mean is that these Starry Sky People should be even older than the First Seed, and may even be species contemporary with the Creator Goddess?" Hao Ren sighed. "If that's the case... they might know the detailed story of what happened to the Creator Goddess back then?"

After learning more about the Starry Sky People, Hao Ren unconsciously changed "it" to "them" in his mind.

"I suspect these guys are still alive," Raven 12345's lips curled up slightly. "Spirit beings are not so easy to eliminate. They are masters of soul studies and mental power, and even the strongest eldest son is constrained by his physical form, so spirit beings can easily find loopholes in the eldest son's mental attacks and escape. They are not afraid of the eldest son's pursuit, but they can't really eliminate the eldest son, so they should be hiding somewhere now."

"So I have to find a way to find them?"

"It's up to you," Raven 12345 waved her hand without any pretense. "I asked you to solve my problems, so you can arrange how to do it. Instead of that, do you want a bowl of noodles?"

Hao Ren was immediately shocked: "How come you're so generous these two times? You wouldn't even let me drink water when I came here before?"

Raven 12345 smiled dryly and waved her hand: "I wasn't paying attention when I was cooking a few days ago, and I cooked a little too much. I've been eating noodles for three days and haven't finished them yet... You two over there, don't just stand there, come and have a bowl of noodles?"

And so, the Nangong couple had their first audience with God and went home with a stomach full of noodle soup. Their only impression of heaven was that the bowl was big...

As the theoretical Pope, Hao Ren felt very sad about this fact: It was also so salty! How could they only remember the big bowl?

For the next two or three days, all was peaceful.

Hao Ren didn't have any clues on how to find the "Starry Sky People." The Dream Plane universe was vast, but he couldn't use high-power deep-space radar to scan star regions, and it would take a long time to rely on those self-replicating drones to explore slowly. In addition, the Starry Sky People would definitely hide very secretly in order to avoid the eldest son's harassment, so finding them would definitely not be easy.

After Hao Ren told his family about this matter, everyone also started to think of solutions, but basically none of them were reliable.

Lily slapped her dog head and came up with an idea for Hao Ren to broadcast a missing person notice in the entire Dream Plane universe, and was almost buried alive on the spot by Vivian's little bats—because the only possibility of doing so would be to alarm all the eldest sons and brain monsters in the universe and make them start frantically searching for the survivors of the doomsday disaster.

Even the strangely thinking Lily could only come up with this bad idea, so needless to say about the others, they were not as imaginative as Lily.

So in the end, Hao Ren regretfully discovered that this matter could only be left to fate...

After temporarily putting this matter aside, Hao Ren began to study the data he had obtained from the Ark's main computer.

The database had already been submitted to Raven 12345, and as the inspector who handled this matter, Hao Ren would still browse those information a few times—only briefly browse, but he had to understand something. Hao Ren believed that this was his professional ethics. He felt that he should at least know the general situation of those civilizations that he had personally sent off, which could be regarded as a kind of remembrance of those deceased.

"I increasingly feel like an old shaman doing hospice care for people." Hao Ren muttered casually to the data terminal when connecting to the database. In this connected virtual space, only the data terminal still maintained continuous mental contact with him.

The data terminal's cheap voice rang in Hao Ren's mind: "So you thought your 'Pope' title was just for fun? This machine has told you that everything has been serious from the beginning—just as a priest must listen to confessions and comfort the dying at the bedside, the Pope at the side of God also bears the responsibility of sending off aborted civilizations. That's each person's job. It's just that you were ignorant when you first took office and couldn't understand these things, but now... do you understand?"

"I increasingly feel like I'm on a pirate ship," Hao Ren sighed. "But you're right, I thought it was a joke title and position at first, but now I find that... it's all real, and more real than real. But did you really tell me these things before?"

"...This machine was just saying it casually."

Hao Ren: "..."

At this time, the connection had been established, and the Ark civilization's database spread out in Hao Ren's mind in a mighty manner.