Chapter 1

Hao Ren looked up at the enormous machine before him—though he honestly didn't know whether to call it a machine or a building, or, even more dramatically, an artificial mountain, because it was truly a massive thing. The warped land of the intra-ship city had closed into an ellipsoidal shell space, and this machine was situated at the end of that ellipsoidal space, perpendicular to all the buildings in the city. Its main body was a huge cylinder, several kilometers high, made of black steel, with massive heat dissipation grids and various glowing windows visible on its surface. Surrounding this main body was a series of smaller cylindrical structures. Whether main or auxiliary, each cylindrical structure had a ring of openings resembling exhaust vents at the top, emitting a faint red glow, as if a trace of energy remained. As Lily had said, the entire facility was clearly shut down, with most of its external lights off and the surrounding auxiliary buildings pitch black, but some energy still radiated from within this behemoth, suggesting it might still be activated.

"The energy flow of this device is separate from the ship's propulsion power. It should be specifically for powering the intra-ship city—basically, it's the life support system's generator," the data terminal said after briefly sensing the energy flow around the giant building. "A clever design. This ship has multiple isolated power and control centers. The life support system and engine group don't affect each other. No wonder the city inside is dead, while the ship's navigation and propulsion systems are still functioning."

"Unmanned..." Hao Ren muttered, casually connecting to the Petrified Turtle Rock. "Nolan, how's your inspection going?"

"The hull inspection of the target ship is complete. No critical leaks were found. In fact, apart from some scratches on the hull, its structure is intact, not even the buffer layer was damaged. Also, its engine is in good working order. At least for a ship of this technological level, it's quite powerful."

"But the people inside are all dead, and the engine group's energy and the life support system's energy are separate," Hao Ren replied. "Send out some probes and see how the other ships are doing. Be careful, these old antiques are very fragile. I hope they're all intact."

After hanging up, Hao Ren spread his hands to the others. "The ship isn't damaged."

"Then where did the atmosphere in the city go?" Lily asked, wide-eyed. "If there's no hole, did it slowly leak out over time?"

"Looks like the temperature was too low, and it turned into ice. After the life support system shut down, the temperature dropped first, and then the air condensed..." Hao Ren guessed, stroking his chin, but he was interrupted by Nangong Wuyue. The siren girl bent down, picked up a piece of ice crystal, and put it in her mouth to taste. "No, these are all water ice. Since we started, more than 99.99% of all the ice crystals encountered here are water. The remaining trace elements aren't enough to fill the entire city."

"Then it seems the atmosphere inside really disappeared," Hao Ren clicked his tongue and walked forward. "Let's find the entrance to this thing. If the data terminal is right, this thing is the central hub of the life support system."

Finding a small door on such a huge facility was not easy, but fortunately, with the help of the data terminal, they quickly found the entrance where the massive facility connected to the city base. At the foot of this giant steel mountain, where it connected to the ship's inner shell, was a series of large pipes extending out like roots, and between the nodes of the intertwined pipes were small buildings resembling airlocks or staff preparation rooms. Here were passages leading to the depths of the facility.

Hao Ren didn't waste any effort opening the passage to the inside of the facility, and then was surprised to find that the lights inside were perfectly normal.

Bright yellow warm lights illuminated the metal corridors inside the facility. Although it was still as cold as space, the lights gave people a sense of psychological warmth. In the corridor, there were many devices that had stopped working, but there were also some small devices—such as some indicator lights and small displays embedded in the walls—that were still operating. All of these devices were alarming, but there were no operators to correct any errors.

"Looks like even if the main system shut down, the backup power here lasted until today," Nangong Sanba casually stroked a small display embedded in the wall, wiping off the thin layer of frost on it. "It says here that the reactor is shut down and the 'Guardian' mainframe is in hibernation."

Hao Ren's heart skipped a beat: shutdown, not malfunction? Or did the self-check system here also have problems?

He looked up at the depths of the corridor, and under the guidance of a series of orange glowing signs, he found the sign marked "To Control Room".

The control room was not deep inside the "Steel Mountain." In fact, it was not too far from where they were. It seemed that the energy inside the Steel Mountain was surging, and it was not suitable to place personnel inside. Hao Ren and his party followed the signs and soon found the control center of this facility. A large alloy door stood in front of them. This time, without Hao Ren's instructions, Lily had already waved her claws and quickly cut the door open.

The interior of the control room was much simpler and narrower than Hao Ren had expected. In fact, it was just an ordinary machine room with a lot of machines. The area didn't seem to be larger than a home office, and a large number of silver-gray and light-blue cabinet-shaped machines took up two-thirds of the space, leaving only a few seats for the staff. As the control center for the life support system of an entire intra-ship city, it seemed very cramped. Hao Ren guessed that this must be because the system was highly automated, and the human involvement was so little.

Hao Ren's eyes quickly fell on a special high-backed chair in the center of several machines, which was obviously the seat of the chief officer. According to the little knowledge Hao Ren had read in the inspector's public database, in this type of doomsday shelter facility, the chief officer was often the chief operator, or at least the person responsible for starting and stopping the highest system.

He walked forward and gently pushed the chair, which had frozen to the ground, turning it around. As a result, he couldn't help but catch his breath: a dignified old man in his sixties, covered in frost, was sitting there. He was wearing a commander's uniform, and he was still sitting upright at the last moment of his life. His chest was covered with many medals representing honor and strangely styled emblems, indicating his extraordinary status. Although the old man was dead, the expression on his face was still stern. His eyes were even wide open, and in the depths of his already cloudy and frozen eyeballs, there seemed to be a hint of fire hidden. Thousands of years of ice had not made the old man lose his aura. Instead, it was like sealing an old and firm sword together with its steel aura to this day.

"What an imposing commander..." Hao Ren muttered in a low voice, gently pushing the chair to the side. Then he came to the pile of control equipment that the old man had last watched over. "Now let's see if we can start this old antique..."

The ultra-low temperature had made some parts of the console fragile. Its plastic casing and instrument cover turned into fragments with a slight touch, but the most critical buttons and internal circuits seemed to be made of special materials and were still intact after thousands of years in the space environment. Nangong Wuyue carefully controlled the power of water to naturally sublimate the ice crystals inside and outside the console, and the machine became as clean as new: at least it looked that way.

"Core communication group... generator indicator... sanctuary atmosphere monitoring... artificial gravity..." Hao Ren's eyes wandered over a series of alien characters, and finally he saw a special slot in the corner of the console. "Core reactor, this is it."

"Looks like we need a key... or some kind of identification card," Nangong Sanba checked the slot. "Someone took the key after the system shut down."

"The key is here!" Lily suddenly held up a shiny silver-white metal plate and arched over, pointing with her tail towards the old man. "It's in this old man's hand!"

What else could Hao Ren say? Dogs are just fast at finding things...

He scratched behind Lily's ear, took the metal plate, and carefully inserted it into the slot on the console.

Several indicator lights lit up, and then the entire facility began to vibrate.