Chapter 1 A Quiet Route

A small shuttle silently slid out of the catapult channel of the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace and rushed towards the abandoned resource dump at the end of the space island chain.

Vim, in his capacity as regent, opened up a "quiet" route for the shuttle to ensure that no elves would notice its movements. At the same time, he ordered the closure of several entrances and exits to the abandoned resource dump, temporarily halting the excavation and recovery of the Rainbow Light Island wreckage, clearing the entire site to ensure that the following events proceeded smoothly.

After a short space voyage, the shuttle arrived at the desolate and dilapidated space junkyard and began searching for the remains of Rainbow Light Island under the guidance of the structural diagram provided by Vim.

This junkyard occupies a large space in the entire island chain and is closely adjacent to the "Land of the Dead" floating island group. It is covered with fragmented floating island wreckage, giving the impression of an asteroid belt filled with flotsam. The floating islands in the Land of the Dead are still relatively complete, even retaining the possibility of salvage, while the wreckage on the junkyard side is completely broken and beyond repair. The Irim elves recover these accident remnants, extracting the last bit of resources from the dregs – Rainbow Light Island, recently destroyed in a massive explosion, is naturally among them.

Grayish-brown or grayish-white "stone blocks," as huge as small mountains, drifted past the shuttle's porthole. Many of these blocks still showed traces of artificial objects: they either had smooth surfaces, residual metal coverings, or conduits that once housed pipes and equipment. Hao Ren even saw some blocks with twisted and deformed buildings still attached. These buildings had been completely torn apart, but their vast interior spaces and thick partitions indicated that they had once been large-scale factory facilities. Vim explained that these fragments mostly came from industrial floating islands: they were the most solid and stable of all floating islands, but also the most catastrophic when they were scrapped. After the ecological floating island systems shut down, they would slowly lose their vitality and become a Land of the Dead, but most industrial floating islands were destroyed in massive explosions. These devices, which had been used for thousands of years, had reached the limits that earthlings could not imagine during repairs, so that even a small problem would cause a catastrophic chain accident. Time had dissolved the creations of the Irim elves' proud civilization into bombs, and they had nowhere to escape, so they could only delay the detonation date of these bombs through continuous repairs, and those that could not be delayed – were outside the spacecraft.

Among these space wrecks there was also a special kind of thing, those are the oval facilities with smooth and bright shells, ranging in size from one to two kilometers. They seem to be undamaged, and the vessels working around these facilities do not seem to be ordinary excavating ships on other fragments, but smaller, more advanced ships. Hao Ren curiously inquired and learned that these things were corona stations.

"Some corona stations can directly transmit energy from space to the island chain, but other corona stations used to collect solar wind matter need to return to the island chain to unload. They are actually a kind of special high-temperature resistant spacecraft," Vim said patiently, answering the guest’s questions, although he was nervous and depressed because of Hilda's condition. "These spacecraft use special energy cores, which are less stable than other forms of energy cores, and are highly radioactive and prone to explosion when entering standby mode, so they must be unloaded in areas far away from the main islands."

Vivian was strange: "Why don't you use small spacecraft for round-trip transportation?"

"We can't build such small spacecraft," Vim spread his hands. "Or rather, these corona stations are themselves the 'small spacecraft' you mentioned. These big guys are the only devices we can create that can resist the power of the sun at close range. They have thick magic armor and special shield generators, which require a large energy core to support. We can't make smaller cores, and larger spacecraft consume power exponentially, so corona stations are fixed in this form."

"Your corona stations will definitely be popular in low-end civilizations, as long as someone improves their stability," the data terminal suddenly said. "Maybe we can use these things to bargain with those long-distance merchants, and let them send some more emergency supplies – we only mentioned floating islands and recycling equipment when negotiating the conditions at the time, but we didn't say anything about corona stations, and you will need a lot of emergency supplies after the Great Migration."

Mentioning the Great Migration brightened Vim up again: "Our entire race will always remember this kindness – if the Great Migration comes true, I believe that every Irim elf and their descendants will be happy to regard you as saviors, and we will help you with whatever you want to do in the future."

Hao Ren looked at the bat demon and the dog beside him, and then thought about the two fish, one big and one small, at home and the mercenary girl who didn't know if she could ever go home. He pondered how ambitious these strange creatures in his family could be, and then felt that the biggest thing these guys could think of should be to freeload a meal after the Irim moved to a new home…

After passing through these lifeless and unpleasant clusters of wreckage, the shuttle finally arrived above a relatively "fresh" pile of rubble and landed on one of the largest broken floating stones.

"This is the wreckage of Rainbow Light Island," Vim said, pointing to the lifeless and dilapidated scene outside the porthole. "This was originally the high ground where the observation tower was located, but after the explosion, only the base of the tower remained. As for the core area where the spacetime accelerator was located, it has been completely reduced to ashes. Mother was here at the tower at the time… So if the 'residual soul' you mentioned really exists, this is the most likely place."

Vim cannot survive in space, but this is not a problem. The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace has some emergency equipment prepared, which is manufactured by some private companies in the macro world that specialize in serving the Military Intelligence Department, and is a "emergency survival kit" specially prepared for mortal races who cannot move in space. This is a silver-white collar-like device (of course, it can also be transformed into other styles in the ship's small factory according to the user's race). After wearing it, it will scan the user's body data and quickly form a shield-like protective layer to isolate vacuum, hypothermia and radiation. At the same time, it can form an air environment that can be used for a long time in the shield. Although this device can only maintain survival, this is enough. Plus a simple jet device (also from a very old civilian equipment company in the macro world), he can go out of the cabin with the others.

Due to the nature of the inspectors' work, their ship's cargo hold is filled with odds and ends for various mortal races from the beginning, and there is also a large pile of such production plug-ins in the ship's small factory, which can ensure that the inspectors can directly solve some smaller mortal affairs on the spot. Hao Ren felt that the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace was simply a 600-meter-long Doraemon – you can't be sure what good stuff it can pull out of its belly. If it weren't for the data terminal to help screen it, he would be confused as soon as he entered the cargo hold.

Lily and Vivian also each took a collar and followed out of the cabin. Lily also muttered to Hao Ren through the communicator on the collar: "I don't like wearing this around my neck, it feels weird…"

"A husky can't like a collar," Vivian followed behind Lily, muttering about the latter's dog attributes while curiously taking off the collar around her neck from time to time, and then putting it back on when she felt uncomfortable in the space environment. "Uh, the feeling in space is really strange, it's numb."

"Is it really?" Lily also happily tried it, took off the collar and put it back on after a few minutes with her tongue sticking out. "Uncomfortable, can't breathe, my body is swollen, and my tongue seems to be boiling like water."

The two superwomen's giggling behavior of experiencing the space environment stunned Vim. Hao Ren couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat: the data terminal was right, although Vivian and Lily did not specially evolve a physiological structure for space survival, these two girls can survive in outer space just by relying on their physical fitness! It is estimated that few people can learn this way of dying in space by taking off their space suits and experiencing nature...

Vivian and Lily didn't want to use the jet device at first, because they thought it was ugly to wear a silly wide belt around their waist. They thought they had a way to solve the problem of moving on a vacuum and weightless floating stone: Lily inserted her two claws into the stone crevice, and crawled forward like mountain climbing, Vivian had even more tricks: she created a large group of small bats and threw them out, which can also be regarded as reaction force propulsion... Anyway, Hao Ren watched for a few minutes and couldn't bear to watch anymore, and forced the two living treasures to put on the jet belt: movement efficiency is secondary, the main thing is that Vivian estimates that she should be anemic if she throws bats for a while, can you believe in anemic vampires?

Hilda is still lying in the medical cabin. This device can operate independently of the spacecraft, and now it is following behind the group with its own power. Hao Ren led the team forward clumsily in space, and finally approached the tower ruins that only had a base left and were surrounded by traces of melting.

The moment everyone approached, Hao Ren felt a certain power emanating from the medical cabin, and then a vague shadow flickering with faint light appeared in front of him.

The power seed left by Raven 12345 in Hilda's body really took effect, and Hilda's remaining soul was indeed wandering in this wreckage.

The confused soul stood quietly in front of the ruins of the observation tower, staring straight at the location that used to be the spacetime accelerator (now there is only a vast expanse there), and did not react to the approach of strangers at all. She seemed to be quite weak, and even with the reinforcement of Raven 12345's power, she seemed to be flickering, but as 12345 said: there is still time.

Hao Ren smiled and floated towards the soul: "Finally made it."