Chapter 1 The Wandering Starship

Because this "planetary spaceship" traveling alone in the vast space was so bizarre, the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace did not rashly land on the planet's surface. Instead, it cautiously circled above it a few times and gained a general understanding of the planet's current state.

Just as it appeared at first glance, this planet was traveling under the propulsion of a series of massive propellant engines. Its surface was dotted with more than one hundred and sixty huge engine nozzles, each as large as a mountain, though only a quarter of them were active. The planet trailed a plasma flame stretching thousands of kilometers, making it look like a bizarre and enormous comet in space, dazzling and extraordinarily spectacular. But apart from those huge and operating engines, the rest of the planet seemed lifeless. No vegetation could be seen on the surface, all the oceans were frozen, and the land was covered with snow and ice that had not melted for who knows how many years. Ninety percent of the planet's surface was in darkness, with light only visible around the giant engines, presumably the glow of the machines in operation.

A phrase flashed through Hao Ren's mind: a trudging corpse.

This planet was like a corpse wandering in space, already dead, but the engines were still faithfully executing their orders, sending the planet into the distance.

"There are only trace amounts of life signs on the planet's surface, lower life forms, algae, or other single-celled organisms," the data terminal's voice interrupted Hao Ren's thoughts. "No traces of large, higher life forms have been detected—though they could be hiding underground. Also, there is a shield on the planet's surface, built with the help of its own geomagnetic field. This is probably why it survived the solar flare more than ten thousand years ago."

"Anything threatening?" Vivian asked, turning her head.

The data terminal's surface flickered as it communicated with the ship's radar system: "... Nothing detected yet."

Hao Ren thought for a moment: "Elizabeth, you stay on the ship with the cat and the fish. Everyone else, come with me to check things out. Terminal, don't come with us; you're in charge of controlling the ship in orbit. If we run into any trouble, we're counting on your space support."

Since encountering the crisis on Planet Aioi last time, Hao Ren had learned a lesson. He realized that leaving a support platform in space could be very helpful when exploring an unfamiliar planet—if it hadn't been for the data terminal's space fire support on Planet Aioi, he would probably have been frozen in the endless ice.

The data terminal immediately felt a great responsibility and proudly shook its body: "You can count on me! Just leave it to this unit!"

Elizabeth, however, pouted a little unhappily. She looked at the silly cat squatting on the ground dozing off and the bean sprout dozing off on the cat's head and felt her role was being ignored: "Am I just responsible for taking care of the kids and the cat? I'm also intelligent and brave, you know!"

Izhaks flicked his daughter's head lightly, sending the little girl flying four or five meters: "Listen to your uncle and stay on the ship."

Elizabeth trotted back and obediently said, "Okay..."

Hao Ren was stunned. Although he knew that demons were generally even rougher when raising children, he still felt it was a miracle that Elizabeth had lived this long... The little girl's life was really tough! Izhaks' head flick could be heard with the sound of the sonic boom...

The ship found an open landing spot on the equator of the wandering planet, hovered above it, and teleported everyone directly to the planet's surface.

The surface of the planet was desolate. After walking out of the teleportation beam, Hao Ren and the others saw only endless snowfields, bare hills, and a pitch-black night sky. In the distance, they could vaguely see some towering shadows, which were the nozzles of the deactivated thrusters, and behind those shadows, they could see some soaring lights, which were the plasma flames emitted by the thrusters in operation further away. They were the only sights worth seeing on this planet.

It was very quiet all around. Even with focused attention, they could only hear some strange, low rumbling sounds coming from far, far away, and they were so faint that they were almost indistinguishable. The sounds should have come from the giant engines in the distance, but because the atmosphere was too thin, the sounds could barely travel far. Even with the superhuman senses of Hao Ren and his group, they could only vaguely hear a little. In fact, the planet still had an atmosphere, but due to the extremely low temperature, most of the gas had frozen on the surface of the planet. Under Hao Ren's feet were carbon dioxide ice chips and solid fragments of many other gases.

Before landing, the ship had scanned the environment below, so everyone except Hao Ren and Izhaks, the two special guys, was wearing a life-support collar. Lily stomped her foot on the ground, raising a cloud of grayish-white ice dust: "It doesn't look like anyone's been here before."

Nangong Wuyue looked at the dark earth in the distance, the worry on her face hard to conceal. Nangong Sanba next to her was also pinching his chin and frowning. Vivian glanced at them, knowing that the two of them were in a state of anxiety and were prone to thinking of things in an overly pessimistic way, so she reminded them, "Can sirens and demon hunters survive in this environment? How long can they survive?"

Wuyue then realized that her parents also had a chance of surviving on this planet. She carefully took off her life-support collar to experience it for a moment, and her brow furrowed slightly: "Very... uncomfortable, but not fatal. As long as I can find an environment with liquid water, I can survive for a long time, relying on thermal energy and the elemental power in the water to sustain life. And this planet has a magnetic field shield, so there's no need to worry about radiation from space... At least Mother can survive in this environment."

"A hundred years?" Lily asked.

Wuyue frowned: "... In theory, sirens can survive as long as there is water, but here... perhaps Mother would choose to freeze herself periodically, so she could survive the hundred-year space journey, at most losing some memories and power. Sirens are like water, and we can change ourselves between three states like water. Sometimes when we encounter extreme environments, sirens can survive by changing through three states."

Lily was immediately amazed by the abilities of the sirens. She imagined Nangong Wuyue freezing, melting, and evaporating according to the seasons, and immediately felt that the picture was so magical that it was unbearable, like a horror movie.

Nangong Sanba also stroked his chin and thought for a moment: "My dad isn't a very strong demon hunter, so it would be a little difficult to survive on this planet, but with my mom's help, it's possible to last more than a hundred years. Demon hunters have many skills to save their lives in extreme conditions."

"In any case, if they survived to reach this planet, they would definitely move in that direction—" Izhaks raised his hand and pointed to the distance. In the direction of his finger, several huge flames were rising beyond the horizon, "The thrusters. That's the only warm place on the whole planet. If you want to find liquid water, you have to go there."

Hao Ren immediately took out his official vehicle from his portable space: "Everyone get in the car, we're going to the thrusters."

The little Beidou Star quickly sped across the endless ice and snow on this wandering planet, stirring up large clouds of conspicuous ice and snow all the way, looking like it was leading a group of white monsters running across the earth from a distance. Hao Ren did not directly teleport or fly to the metal mountains in order to observe the surrounding environment along the way—he was very interested in this planet.

Most of the scenery along the way was very monotonous, with only endless white and gray wilderness, but as they approached the giant thrusters, some strange things began to appear. Huge, black pipes and steel supports gradually rose from the snow as if growing out of the depths of the earth, clustering towards the thrusters like vines surrounding fruit, or like thousands of tree roots supporting a giant tree. The scale of these pipes and supports was astonishing. The way they rose from the ground even made people couldn't help but think of the roots of the eldest son. They spread across the earth in black, looking strange and desolate under the starlight.

The car silently passed under a huge steel support. Lily stuck her head out of the car window, curiously looking at the depressing black shadows flying overhead. As a literary girl, she suddenly became sentimental.

These things are still working—but what about their creators?