Chapter 1 Routine Calibration

The vast cosmos was cold and silent, an immeasurable expanse of dark space accompanied only by starlight. A bright silver arc suddenly sliced through this darkness as the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace jumped out of a spatial rift, executing a routine calibration during its continuous jump sequence.

The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace was currently heading towards Aerym in a general direction, alternating between hyperspace jumps and conventional navigation, and the journey was nearing its end. Two days prior, the ship's navigation system had recalibrated the Star Light Lens and fed star charts from Nasaton into the navigation program. After a comparison, the onboard mainframe identified a star sector suspected to be the Siren homeworld system, and the ship was now heading in that direction.

Due to the Siren star charts lacking accuracy, and the celestial drift caused by ten thousand years severely affecting the reliability of hyperspace transmission, the ship could not directly reach those coordinates. For safety, and to gather as much intelligence as possible from this universe, the navigation assistant program suggested the ship travel in short jumps like this—it would take a little longer, but it wouldn't delay things much.

Currently, the ship was passing through a monotonous and barren area, a cold and empty zone with occasional, extremely thin radioactive clouds. Apart from the distant starlight and a bright star-forming nebula, there was nothing of interest. Hao Ren sat in his captain's chair, boredly looking through documents while dealing with Lily's occasional outbursts.

He was no longer the newbie who had first encountered the sea of stars a year ago. The monotonous and unchanging starlight here could no longer captivate him. Of course, the scenery of the vast universe was always attractive, but these attractions were not enough to outweigh the work at hand.

He was studying the data extracted from the Nasaton mainframe.

"Aerym… the Water Star. Your homeworld is a planet with a one hundred percent ocean coverage. Huge ice floes and storm clouds circulate the planet on an annual cycle, and the entire planet's ecosystem developed from the deep sea—until your ancestors established an outpost on the first ice floe, you did not even know what 'atmosphere' meant," Hao Ren said, holding up a data terminal and looking at the Siren Queen. "That's the joy of exploration—the universe is so vast that you will always encounter all kinds of strange and wonderful places."

The Siren Queen stared blankly at the vast star chart displayed on the navigation mainframe, feeling incredible. "I can't believe I'm here at this moment… My people and I have lived in the deep sea for ten thousand years, and we thought that living in the deep sea was the Siren's nature… Yet our ancestors studied the secrets of the stars. Do you often make these kinds of trips?"

"Pretty much, we're experts," Lily said, hanging over the back of her seat and wagging her tail. "Ever heard of a space dog? Let me tell you..."

Hao Ren felt that this husky was about to destroy his worldview again, so he put away the data terminal and walked towards the door. "I'm going to the lab to take a look."

Nangong Wuyue, Sha Qi La, and Suo Ma were huddled together in a ball on the bridge when she suddenly opened her eyes and struggled to pull herself out of the ball. "Wait, wait, I'll go with you! It's too boring just huddled like this!"

Hao Ren looked blankly at the snake girl sliding clumsily to him, almost rolling, and then looked at Sha Qi La and Suo Ma, who were trying to re-form into a new ball. "Speaking of which, your Siren's racial culture is really incomprehensible..."

"This is a symbol of friendship!" Nangong Wuyue wagged the tip of her tail in the air like a rattlesnake. "I just learned it from them!"

After Hao Ren and Wuyue left the bridge, Sha Qi La and Suo Ma exchanged a look. "She still needs to get used to this way of resting." "Yes, she wraps too loosely. It's easy to fall out after falling asleep." "No, I mean she tied me up just now." "Oh, that was me… I was having a nightmare."

Nangong Sanba was pretending to read a magazine next to them when he suddenly covered his face with the book. "The world is so freaking wonderful..."

Hao Ren led Wuyue out of the bridge and, after passing through the central corridor, arrived at the ship's laboratory. This place had previously been occupied by various devices and platforms for researching the First Born, but now these research projects had been mostly transferred to the Crystal Nucleus Research Station, and the laboratory had suddenly become spacious. Currently, there were only two remaining active project groups here: the "Wrath Spirit Scanner," which had not yet been fully decoded, and a large restraint device in the center of the laboratory—this device was brand new.

"Looks like it's still working hard to study the Wrath Spirit's memory code," Hao Ren and Wuyue passed by the Wrath Spirit Scanner first. He saw that the instrument was still flickering with a regular glow, and the light in the center of the instrument's groove was unchanged compared to the last time. "Hopefully, this thing will produce results soon."

Wuyue glanced at the Wrath Spirit, a hint of worry flashed in her eyes, and then turned to look at the center of the laboratory. "Are you sure it won't suddenly go out of control?"

In the center of the room was a large transparent container, a crystalline vertical tube nearly ten meters in diameter that emitted a faint blue light. Various sensing devices and recording equipment were distributed around the container, and inside it, a strange creature floated quietly: a swollen mass of flesh, shaped like a brain.

It was the brain monster captured from Nasaton.

"The protective crystals are irradiating this thing twenty-four hours a day; it can't escape," Hao Ren said, pointing to the bottom of the container, where a colorful diamond-shaped crystal was embedded. The light emitted by the crystal shone on the surface of the giant brain, causing it to twitch from time to time. "Just as long as it doesn't weaken too much and die inside."

Wuyue curiously leaned on the container's protective wall, looking at the brain inside. "I heard this thing eats everything?"

"Well, the several organic substances tested so far have worked," Hao Ren nodded, and a mechanical arm in the container sent a piece of animal flesh to the brain monster's tentacles. The latter immediately curled up the flesh and absorbed it in the blink of an eye. "It uses its tentacles to feed. The tips of those tentacles can instantly secrete a highly corrosive digestive fluid and open a series of dense 'teeth' to deal with prey. Hasson asked where its mouth was—it's those tentacles. I'm feeding this guy according to the 'recipes' submitted by the Sirens. It needs to eat four to five times a day, both plants and meat, but according to Catyrina's memory… it seems to prefer eating raw meat. Don't mention this in front of her."

Wuyue stuck out her tongue. "Um… then I won't ask about this thing's excretion process."

"Before we arrive, I'll try to communicate with it again." As Hao Ren spoke, he activated a device next to the container.

Invisible traction fields restrained the brain monster in the container, slowly pushing it to the edge of the container, and a tentacle was fixed to a silver-white cylinder. A similar cylinder also rose in front of Hao Ren, with a holographic projection above it displaying the words "Connection Ready."

Hao Ren didn't want to have close contact with a tentacle monster every time he wanted to understand its thoughts, so he ordered the design of this device. It was a small device that could replace direct limb connection, not only capable of performing perfect mental connection, but also strengthening the connection and recording the data flow during the connection process—in other words, Hao Ren could not only see the brain monster's memories, but also scan them like a video recording. Although the recorded data was always severely distorted and blurred, this was indeed an important function.

This way, he could find those images that appeared in his subconscious but were ignored by his conscious mind during his communication with the brain monster by reviewing the recordings.

Hao Ren put his hand on the top of the silver-white cylinder, and a tide of strange thoughts immediately flooded his mind.

Chaotic red, chaotic skies, skewed and falling starlight—all kinds of bizarre scenes immediately crashed down from his vision as if he were there in person. Hao Ren realized that he was in a doomsday-like alien planet. But this was not what he wanted.

Huge mushroom clouds rose beside him, and countless terrifying shadows surged from all directions, as if to tear him apart. Hao Ren stayed in this illusion for only a few seconds before being baptized by these terrifying images. He heard bursts of rumbling, incomprehensible howls in his mind. These howls and the surrounding scenes seemed to join forces to imprint the world's most terrifying impressions into the intruder's mind, using the primal weakness of mortals—the "fear heart"—to drive away the intruder entering this sea of ​​consciousness. Hao Ren stood in the alien illusion as if the sky were falling and the earth were splitting, watching all kinds of strange things tear his body to pieces time and time again. He looked up at the constantly collapsing starry sky and let out a challenging roar from the depths of his soul:

"You know this is useless! Come out and talk to me face to face!"

Only hollow echoes came from all directions in the collapsing world of thought. The brain monster refused to answer any further probing.

Yes, this complete brain monster had the ability to build a barrier in its mind. Even if Hao Ren could directly cut into its memory, he could only take a step with difficulty.