Chapter 1 The Gigantic Golden Spaceship

The golden spaceship was immense in size, its long axis around five kilometers, and possessed an extremely symmetrical appearance. A series of smooth, curved metal beams and arched shells made it look like a bizarre and elongated giant beetle. One end of the spaceship was about three times as large as the other, and numerous parabolic golden structures extended from the thicker end, connecting to its waist, forming a birdcage-like structure. Inside this birdcage were neatly arranged protruding devices—perhaps weapon platforms, or perhaps devices that generated unconventional destruction, such as gravity weapons or matter disintegration devices. Hao Ren believed that a large spaceship built by the Prodigal Son would have at least these two kinds of high-tech gadgets.

The golden warship drifted aimlessly at the gravitational balance point between the planet Suloen and the sun, showing no signs of being manned. There was a series of dimly lit, narrow grilles on the rear half of the ship, but less than ten percent of them emitted strong energy reactions, which should have been the propulsion devices. The spaceship was moving away from the sun at an extremely slow speed, propelled by this small amount of power, but it seemed difficult for it to truly escape the sun's gravity—if those grilles continued to maintain this half-dead state.

Sunlight shone on the ship's hull, causing it to reflect a brilliant golden light in space. It was as solemn and magnificent as a temple floating in the cosmos, yet there were no signs of life inside.

The Petrified Tortoise maintained a distance of several kilometers, circling the golden warship, constantly releasing exploratory signals of various frequencies. Nolan seemed very nervous: "Speaking of which, this thing won't suddenly attack me, will it?"

Hao Ren glanced at Nolan: "Didn't you test it? This thing doesn't react to our signals at all."

"Don't forget I'm in the first-person perspective," Nolan's holographic image put his hands on his hips. "Aren't you nervous facing a counterpart that's a dozen times your size?"

Hao Ren thought about it and suddenly realized that since he started working, he really hadn't fought many opponents of comparable size. Even the husky beside him, munching on spicy sticks with a greasy mouth, was more than four meters tall after transforming, but he hadn't been nervous at all—because these didn't count as the same kind, they didn't even look human. The only time he fought a humanoid creature bigger than him was the battle with Mu Lu, but at that time, he was leading a group of people in a gang fight, which was obviously more advantageous than Nolan's current situation… so he completely couldn't understand what Nolan's current worldview was.

Hao Ren shook his head, pulling back his wandering thoughts. He opened the communication with Mu Lu: "Have you all seen it? Did the Prodigal Son build this spaceship? Do you recognize this model?"

"This is indeed a warship built by the Prodigal Son!" Mu Lu replied immediately, his tone serious. "Get closer, we might be able to tell the identity of this ship."

Hao Ren had Nolan continue to approach the golden spaceship and enlarge all the detailed images to send to the hangar. The three Guardian Giants stared intently at the images transmitted and quickly discussed them. Lementusa, as a veteran warrior, made his judgment: "It looks like a comprehensive command ship, modified from a warship. Those protrusions around it are devices for electronic warfare and generating offensive energy fields. Remnants of gun emplacements can still be seen at the front of the warship. These types of ships are not numerous in the rebel fleet, usually serving as flagships for medium-sized units. In combat, they are protected at the core of the fleet."

"This ship looks to be in good condition," Hao Ren said, puzzled. "Why was it abandoned?"

"We'll only know after we go up there," Mu Lu replied. "Too many incredible things have happened in this star system. And in fact, we don't know much about the rebel troops—the war broke out very suddenly, and the rebels used a lot of equipment that had never appeared before. This type of ship is one of them. We've engaged with these ships many times, but we don't know much about what they're like inside. These ships are hard to capture."

Hao Ren nodded and gave instructions to Nolan: "Prepare the boarding procedure. I, Wang, and Lily will go up and take a look. Everyone else, stand by on the ship."

Elizabeth raised her little screwdriver, looking disappointed: "You're still not letting me go this time?"

She had been itching to get her hands on an unowned spaceship for a long time. All she could think about was going up and tearing off a couple of parts. Of course, Hao Ren couldn't let this troublemaker mess around: "Stay on the ship obediently. Heaven knows what you shouldn't touch in that place. It's too easy for something to happen if you go."

Hao Ren knew this devilish kid who liked to poke at electrical outlets when she had nothing to do like the back of his hand. He knew that once this little girl went, she would definitely be poking everything along the way with her screwdriver. After seeing the Prodigal Son's excellent self-destruct technology, he had made up his mind: he absolutely couldn't let this little girl join in the fun!

Elizabeth gave a disappointed "oh" and climbed back into her chair, holding Dou Dou and muttering to herself, while Hao Ren, Yizaks, and Lily left the bridge. As the Petrified Tortoise slowly approached the golden spaceship, Mu Lu's voice came from the communicator: "Do you need me to go with you?"

Hao Ren thought for a moment and still didn't agree: "Forget it, you probably wouldn't be able to move around in there. This spaceship looks big, but it's not designed for giants after all."

"Then be careful," Mu Lu's voice sounded a little regretful, but he didn't insist too much. "Those Prodigal Sons are very cunning. This ship might be a trap. You'd better prepare an escape plan in advance."

Hao Ren tapped the data terminal perched on his shoulder: "This thing is my escape plan."

The data terminal hummed: "Now that you know this unit is your lifeline, can you stop calling this unit 'thingy'?"

In front of the golden giant ship, which was five kilometers long, the Petrified Tortoise was as inconspicuous as a light hummingbird. The latter circled the giant ship once before finally finding something that looked like a gate on the edge of the "birdcage" structure at the rear of the giant ship. Hao Ren, Lily, and Yizaks stood on the upper platform of the Petrified Tortoise, watching a group of drones appear from space and fly towards the gate, beginning to cut through the light-golden armor around the gate with engineering-grade matter disintegration rays.

During this process, Hao Ren and Nolan were closely monitoring the overall reaction of the golden warship, watching to see if it would take any action when its outer shell was damaged, such as activating shields or releasing interception sentry machines, but until the drones removed an entire armor plate from the spaceship, the golden giant ship remained motionless.

The work drones cut a large hole in the golden giant ship, and a violent airflow and some metal fragments immediately gushed out of the hole. The spaceship's automatic damage control system was activated in response. Hao Ren saw a large amount of liquid metal-like material rapidly "grow" out from under the armor plate around the hole, trying to plug the leak like some kind of mollusk. He immediately pulled Lily and Yizaks, rushing in before the hole was completely sealed by the damage control system.

Only a few seconds after they rushed in, the hole was automatically sealed.

After the airflow around him subsided, Hao Ren stood up and turned to look in the direction he had come from. He saw a mass of light-golden liquid metal surging on the armor wall not far away, rapidly covering the scars cut out by the drones like some kind of soft creature. Then, these liquid metals solidified and hardened in an instant, and the armor wall was restored to its original state, without even a trace of being cut. The liquid metals even molded themselves into pipes and lines, obviously restoring all the functions of this armor wall.

"Not bad damage control technology," the data terminal flew over to take a look, not stingy with its praise for the ship's manufacturer. "It's already very good for a civilization within the universe. The entire outer shell of this ship should be able to grow and heal itself like this. Perhaps its initial manufacturing process was just like this, 'grown' up."

Hao Ren could only marvel at the diversity of civilizations—the universe was so big that all kinds of technology trees existed.

A slight hissing sound came from ahead, and Lily immediately looked up vigilantly, only to see that it was a gate opening not far away. When the drones made a hole in the spaceship earlier, it caused some automatic devices to operate. The gates in this area had been closed at one point, but now that the bulkhead had been automatically repaired, these gates had opened.

"These basic systems are still running…" Hao Ren looked at the gate thoughtfully. "But the higher-level systems haven't reacted yet."

"Switching gates and repairing bulkheads can be controlled with simple automatic circuits, but activating shields and self-defense firepower should require at least the participation of the main computer," the data terminal speculated. "I'm afraid the main computer of this ship has crashed."

Yizaks walked forward: "Then let's hope it's completely dead."