Chapter 1 Working for God

In the year that Hao Ren had been working for God, he had come to a conclusion: anything involving Raven 12345 always had a truth hidden behind its glossy exterior that was as if it had taken the wrong medicine. All those things that made her look like a goddess depended mostly on special effects. So, the smartest way to deal with the goddess was to never study the details. After she came up with something new, you just used it silently. If you insisted on figuring out the ins and outs, you would easily end up in a sanatorium before the age of thirty…

Behind such a goddess, there seemed to be quite a few followers. Hao Ren felt that those bishops and popes who worked for her were also not easy to deal with. It must take a strong writing ability and adaptability to package Raven 12345 into something brilliant. You had to sift through her usual statements three times before you could write them in the Bible—so Hao Ren never intended to establish a religion for that female psychopath from the beginning. He knew that his conscience and logical ability would not allow such a thing to happen…

"Let's just use abbreviations from now on," Hao Ren silently glanced at the standby screen in mid-air. "Next, let's see how this research station works. I've only used the spaceship control panel before; I haven't really studied this kind of mystical stuff."

The central area of the Crystal Core Research Station was very large, and Hao Ren didn't plan to wander around places like warehouses, factories, or residential areas for the time being. He led everyone to the control hall of the entire facility, where he could monitor all the research station's projects in real-time.

The control hall was an extremely wide, circular hall. There were no common instruments, equipment, or metal devices found in technology-based facilities. Instead, there were crystal clusters and crystal pillars of various shapes. Crystalline structures seemed to be a favorite of the Xiling God System in their mystical aspects, and the entire Crystal Core Research Station reflected this. The crystal clusters and crystal pillars were arranged regularly and neatly throughout the hall, as if they had grown out of the ground as a whole. They were the main interactive terminals here. With simple mental matching, a newbie like Hao Ren could achieve complete control of the research station.

In the very center of the control hall was a giant crystal that was almost like a small mountain. It was part of the facility's mainframe and also a huge mind-interactive device. Complex runes and wonderful lights and shadows flowed continuously on the surface of the crystal. When Hao Ren approached it, he heard a melodious chime, and then he established an automatic mental connection with it, so the information that the mainframe needed to interact with was immediately clear in his mind.

Like most technology-based devices, these mystical magic devices also supported mental control and direct mind connection, which greatly reduced their operating difficulty. Hao Ren was originally worried that his half-baked magical knowledge would not be able to handle this place, but now it seemed that the development of all technologies would eventually converge, and the simplification and ease of understanding of the interactive interface was an inevitable direction.

He was very relieved that he didn't need to figure out the principle of this place…

Dou Dou poked her head out of Hao Ren's collar and looked at this place curiously, muttering something in her mouth. Then she happily jumped to the ground and bounced around. This little fellow's body was incredibly strong. She often jumped down from one or two meters or even higher, and she never seemed to fall. Hao Ren himself was just worrying blindly, sometimes worrying that her fish tail would be flattened someday.

Although it was already flat.

Elizabeth saw the fish baby bouncing around and immediately followed behind to prevent the little fellow from getting lost. She quickly found her place. As the larger of the only two mischievous kids in the family, she felt that she should take care of Dou Dou like a sister. Recently, she had also been learning from Nangong Wuyue how to change the water in the fish tank and actively studying agricultural books on tropical fish farming. These studies were very effective. Her water changing technique was as skilled as Hao Ren's, and Dou Dou said that the agricultural books tasted good.

Anyway, it was a good thing that the two little guys could play together, and the big one could take care of the little one, which could also reduce a lot of burden on the adults.

"Don't run too far, and don't let Dou Dou nibble on anything here," Hao Ren watched the two little guys hopping and skipping towards the edge of the hall and called out from behind, "Also, put away your little screwdriver!"

Izhaks scratched his head: "Forget it, I'll go watch them."

Hao Ren nodded, and then activated the giant crystal in the center of the hall somewhat unskillfully according to the operating instructions in his mind, and began to connect to containers one and two.

The giant crystal emitted a series of crisp chimes, and a series of holographic images appeared around the crystal. The largest image was the current status of the two First Borns in their containers. The two behemoths were now sleeping quietly in bubble-like vesicles, suspended in an almost transparent medium solution, looking like babies sleeping in the womb. Lily couldn't help sticking out her tongue as she watched this scene: "It feels like a horror movie."

"Yeah, we're like the villainous bosses in the movies," Hao Ren shrugged. "Anyway, our style has never been normal."

Vivian said she wouldn't comment because she didn't know much about horror movies—she was too poor to watch movies before…

The two containers were not completely calm. After excavating the First Borns and placing them in an environment that was convenient for observation at any time, Hao Ren saw that the huge tentacles were not completely still. Some tentacles—mainly those close to certain nerve nodes of the First Borns—would occasionally twitch or swing slightly, which might be a manifestation of sleep talking.

But there was no need to worry that these two big guys would suddenly wake up. The "Lullaby" system was still hypnotizing them non-stop. The nerve signal suppressors were buried at the bottom of the two containers, and the Crystal Core Research Station itself also had a set of broadcasting devices that could cover the entire facility. The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace had connected the "Lullaby" signal source to this set of broadcasting devices, which could be regarded as a double insurance for the safety suppression system. In addition, there were huge "syringes" above the two containers. Once a First Born was out of control, a high concentration of interference pheromones would be released into those thin medium solutions immediately.

This was an absolutely secure prison, and Hao Ren felt that he could use this place to imprison and study the dangerous creatures he found while patrolling various worlds.

Vivian couldn't quite understand the charts and data on the holographic projections, and just tilted her head and asked Hao Ren, "By the way, do you have any research plans?"

"I want to read the First Born's mind," Hao Ren pointed to the tissues on the holographic projection that were emitting dark red light. "Of course, we all know that the First Born has no reason, and probably doesn't have much thoughts, but it was at least normal once, so I wonder if its memory retains some things from before it went crazy. Now we can say that we know nothing about the First Born's body structure. We only know roughly that it has some nerve nodes, so let's give it a physical examination first...figure out what these organs are for."

"Ooh," Vivian blinked. "That's a big job."

Hao Ren pinched his chin and nodded slightly: "So we can do something else before the scanning is complete."

He opened his personal space, and several autonomous machines pushed two large silver-white boxes out of his personal space while chattering.

Hao Ren stepped forward to activate the storage box's recognizer, and the surface of the latter shone with a layer of blue light, then gradually unfolded amidst a series of mechanical sounds, revealing the large red spheres inside.

These were the two strange spheres that had been taken from the Demon King's Castle.

Until now, Hao Ren hadn't figured out what they were for, but it was clear that these were definitely not batteries. Now that the Crystal Core Research Station was up and running, with huge amounts of spare computing power, it was a good time to throw the two spheres here and analyze them.

Hao Ren tapped on the outer shell of the data terminal: "Send these two samples to Integrated Analysis Room One. We'll be over later."

After the autonomous machines left the hall with the two spheres in a lively manner, Lily muttered while scratching her ears: "Research a ball."

Hao Ren coughed for a while: "Cough cough...can you be more tactful?"

Lily flicked her tail: "Research an egg."

Hao Ren: "..."

At this time, Vivian interjected and interrupted Lily's divergent thinking: "I suddenly have an idea: we can see if the First Born has organs similar to those spheres. Maybe we can figure out what it's used for."

Hao Ren's eyes lit up immediately: This was a good way!