Chapter 141 The Commander's Last Moments

The explosion caused by the demon fire blew the entire gate to pieces, and even half the corridor was violently shaken. After the choking smoke finally dissipated slowly, Hao Ren, with his shield raised, took the lead and was the first to enter the control center of the spaceship.

Behind the gate was a large, bright hall that resembled a cathedral, with an irregular polygonal shape. In addition to those almost trademark sculptures, there were many uniquely shaped control devices and projection equipment in the hall. All the consoles were arranged in concentric circles, distributed in three rings. The equipment was carefully decorated and designed; although its shape suggested machinery, it was more like ceremonial instruments used in some kind of religious ritual. This style was ubiquitous throughout the ship, so there was nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

The dome of the hall was towering, and there were three huge circular openings in the ceiling. Bright pillars of light shone down from these openings, arranged in a triangular formation in the center of the innermost circle of equipment in the hall. Dazzling data and charts floated on these pillars of light, and they were still rapidly refreshing when Hao Ren entered the hall—if he was not mistaken, this should be the display interface of the ship's main control system.

Hao Ren remained vigilant, in case there were any automatically responding alert devices or sentinel robots, but he was not attacked even when he reached the three giant pillars of light. It seemed that even the alert devices in the core area of the ship were offline. He stood in front of the three giant pillars of light, curiously looking at the constantly refreshing characters on them. Since he had never been exposed to the technology of the Scions, he did not know the state of this thing.

The data terminal analyzed the information on the pillars of light slightly: "It's the core mainframe's self-check program. It's already frozen, and it's constantly repeating several threads. It may have encountered a problem during the attempted restart."

Hao Ren casually said "oh," and walked around curiously among the control devices. He saw that many of the control devices around the pillars of light were still lit up. The operation panels of these devices were unique: most of the devices' operation panels were several parallel crystal strips, and between the crystal strips were strands of red light that resembled strings of a piano. These lights were the input devices. After Hao Ren had the data terminal confirm the function of one of the devices, he carefully placed his hand on its panel, plucking a "light string" as if playing a piano. As a result, the lights on a section of the ceiling nearby dimmed—this method of operation was quite interesting.

Although the Scions' fanaticism and foolish behavior had brought profound suffering to this universe, Hao Ren had to admit that they were perhaps a species with a unique talent for art—if only they could use their talent in slightly more normal areas.

At this moment, Lily suddenly shouted loudly from several rows of equipment away: "Landlord, landlord! There's a body here, there's a body here!"

Hearing this, Hao Ren immediately perked up and ran towards her. He saw Lily pointing to the open space between two controllers: "Look!"

Hao Ren followed the direction of her finger and saw a man wearing a gorgeous short robe lying face down on the floor, his body twisted into a strange posture. He had obviously been dead for a long time.

This unexpected discovery left Hao Ren and Izhaks dumbfounded. They did not expect that this warship, which had already been abandoned, would still have a corpse on board. Perhaps this dead crew member could reveal the secret of the ship's crew's emergency evacuation. Izhaks stepped forward and carefully turned the corpse over. The moment they saw the state of the corpse, all three of them exclaimed in surprise.

The dead man was a "Scion" officer who looked like a commander. Since this race was handsome from top to bottom, there was no need to add additional descriptions of his appearance. His death was quite peculiar: the corpse's face was pale, his eye sockets were sunken, his skin was wrinkled and showed obvious signs of dehydration. These characteristics seemed to indicate that the man had suffered severe blood loss before his death. Even more disturbing was the man's expression: horror, an extremely indescribable horror. His eyes were almost completely bulging out of their sockets, and his mouth was open as if it would tear from his chin. Every inch of muscle on his face was filled with fear, and his lifeless eyes were chaotic, with bloodshot streaks across the whites. One of his hands was pressed against his heart, and the other was twisted strangely behind his back, as if trying to grab something.

He almost looked as if he had been scared to death.

None of the three people present were qualified coroners, so the data terminal took the initiative to check the condition of the corpse. Hao Ren watched the terminal float around in the air and couldn't help but ask eagerly, "What's the cause of death? Was he really scared to death?"

"Half of the cause of death is shock. His heart ruptured, but the other half of the cause of death is... blood loss. This corpse lost at least half of its blood. Every blood vessel has varying degrees of twisting and deformation, and part of his internal organs seems to have been heated. In areas with denser blood vessels, the internal organs are almost cooked. To be honest, both of these are fatal factors. This machine is not sure whether he was scared to death first or boiled to death by his own blood first."

The data terminal's unemotional and plain description made Lily stick out her tongue: "Sounds kinda grotesque."

"This method of death is quite original and self-contained," Hao Ren tried to mobilize his brain cells to make the topic seem less grotesque, but everyone knew what his mouth was like. As soon as he opened his mouth, Lily slapped him with her tail. "Uh, let's not worry about how he died for now. Let's see if there are any other corpses."

Lily sniffed around, but found nothing. The man lying on the floor seemed to be the only clue here.

Hao Ren stood up, thinking about the bizarre death of the rebel commander while thoughtfully looking at the surrounding machines and equipment in standby mode. He suddenly remembered something: "Right, shouldn't there be surveillance or something in this place? It's such an advanced spaceship after all."

"This machine will look for it, but to be honest, don't have too much hope," the data terminal said as it floated towards the center of the hall. "The system here is completely offline. It's hard to say whether any data was saved when the accident happened."

The data terminal came to the middle of the three large pillars of light, and then activated its sensing function. A large number of subtle light blue lines suddenly appeared on its silver-white shell, and a light, melodious sound rippled through the air. This guy, who was often used by Hao Ren as a coaster, brick, paperweight, hammer, and revolving lantern, finally had the opportunity to show off the aura of his high-tech product. It allowed its signal fluctuations to resonate with the nearby "crude" equipment, and began to invade the ship's nervous system with crushing computing power.

As the data terminal massively invaded all the nearby equipment, the consoles that were in standby or frozen state started to operate as if they had been resurrected. Hao Ren heard the rising and falling sounds of machines and various system sound effects. He saw two projectors flickering on, and the holographic screens above the devices showed the scenery of outer space. The Petrified Turtle Rock Terrace appeared in the corner of one of the screens: it seemed that the terminal had gained access to the external monitors.

The data terminal first tried to reset the state of the spaceship's mainframe and obtain control of the entire warship, but it found that the spaceship's mainframe mode was a bit special. It would probably take some time to completely take over. In order to avoid a complete loss of control, it re-locked the starship mainframe's restart process, and instead began to retrieve data that looked like internal surveillance footage.

Hao Ren and the others waited patiently next to it, not holding out too much hope, as the terminal said.

But today seemed to be a lucky day. The data terminal soon shouted happily: "Found it!"

Hao Ren snapped his fingers: "Get it on the big projector."

The terminal took control of one of the three large pillars of light. It temporarily blocked the constantly refreshing mainframe status report on the pillar of light, and then transferred the surveillance system's footage to it.

The picture on the pillar of light flickered a bit, but quickly stabilized. It began to play a video that had been left not long ago. Hao Ren saw that it was the scene of this control hall, and it had been left before the crew had abandoned ship.

The control hall was bustling with activity. The rebel officers were busy issuing orders and making plans on this command ship. An operator with a serious expression sat in front of each work station. According to their actions, it was clear that the ship was in a combat zone, and was probably engaged in a battle.

Hao Ren and the other two watched this scene with rapt attention, wanting to see what had caused the huge change in the spaceship.

Then they saw a blob of liquid suddenly appear in the center of the screen.