Chapter 1 Those Ancient Times

It seemed that most of the races that had escaped the doomsday calamity of the Guardians had been helped by the People of the Stars. These ancient lives from the depths of the stars were shrouded in a veil of mystery. To this day, Hao Ren had not found any reliable historical materials or relics related to the People of the Stars in the Dream Plane. He did not know where these luminous beings were born, nor did he know their social forms and civilization patterns. Even their language and writing were nebulous. The only thing he could be sure of was that these creatures had extremely advanced technology and were quite familiar with the Goddess of Creation—if not, they would not have been able to fight against the Guardians after the Goddess fell and went mad.

"The Golden Disk was brought by them?" Hao Ren stroked his chin, feeling that the secrets entangled in the People of the Stars seemed to be increasing. "Where did they find the artifact... Before the explosion of the Founding Star, the Golden Disk should have been in the Divine Kingdom."

"Muru once mentioned some special ethnic groups called 'Ageless Ones,' said to be ancient races that lived in this universe before the Goddess of Creation created living beings," Vivian suddenly recalled some details. "We didn't ask in detail at the time. Could the Ageless Ones be the People of the Stars?"

Hao Ren nodded and turned to the old man, "What happened after that? Did these People of the Stars stay with you when you embarked on your journey?"

"It is said that in the first few hundred years of the voyage, they were with us. Those luminous beings lived in the navigation cabin of the Ark," the old man said tremblingly. "But after many years, they determined that the artifact had taken effect, so they left, perhaps to help other survivors. Our fleet continued on its way, trying to find a safe place, but the entire universe had been polluted... Every habitable planet had a disaster, all the ecosystems were diseased, and there were huge tentacles and poisonous pools of blood everywhere. Our artifact could only protect the fleet, but could not purify the entire planet. After losing several spaceships, the fleet decided not to stop anymore. We will continue to wander until we find a planet without disaster..."

Vivian frowned and asked, "What about the infectious disease?"

The old man gasped heavily, his voice low. "No one knows what happened. It appeared suddenly, without warning, and there was no cure. Our medical technology could not find the cause at all. We only know that it infects adults, but its impact on children gradually weakened. The younger the age, the weaker the impact of the disease, and the mortality rate after adults are infected is almost one hundred percent..."

"Almost one hundred percent," Nangong Wuyue looked at the old man's face. "You are the only exception?"

The old man raised his hand and looked at the ravines on his skin, his voice hoarse. "Yes, I am the only exception, because I was very young at the time, oh, very young. Perhaps that's why the plague spared me—but many people my age were not so lucky."

Vivian raised an eyebrow slightly. "How old were you when you were first frozen?"

"I... I can't remember, twenty years old, or twenty-two years old?" The old man's eyes became cloudy again. "I only remember being locked in a white house, training day and night, learning, and being brainwashed to master those knowledge and skills... Because after the disease spread, we found that this was irresistible, just like the ecological disaster that happened in our hometown. This is a super disaster, so we began to prepare for the aftermath. We spent several years transforming the Ark and building the final vault, and more than half of the people died in the process. The project almost failed at the end due to insufficient manpower... We sent healthy children into hibernation facilities, and tried to get those older children to learn knowledge, because they will use it in the future, but this is not enough, far from enough... The oldest of them is only thirteen years old, and these thirteen-year-olds account for less than one percent of the total number."

"So that's you," Hao Ren slowly guided, letting the old man recall more things. "You are the teacher and parent of those children. When the virus in the Ark is extinct one day, you will lead them to rebuild civilization?"

The old man's head trembled slightly, as if nodding up and down. "Oh, yes, I want to guide them... After the children go to sleep, the adults will fend for themselves, and the shelter will be closed for a hundred years, until the ecosystem completes a thorough internal cycle before it can be restarted. After everything is ready, the children will wake up and start a new life under the guidance of the 'parents'. But originally there was more than one 'parent'. We have many candidates, each with strong will, strong learning ability, able to lead the team, and most importantly, have a certain resistance to the plague. But later other candidates died one by one. The plague only weakened in them, and they did not have real resistance. In the end, only I came out of the training facility. The children had already lined up to enter the hibernation pods, and the last dozens of dying people in the Ark held a small farewell ceremony for me. Since then, I have been here."

Lily asked curiously, "Why were you placed here independently?"

"For safety," the old man said slowly, "Because until the day the vault was completed, our medical scientists were not sure whether I was really completely free of disease, or whether I was carrying the 'virus'. If even the last healthy person was infected with the plague, we would rather give up the reconstruction plan. So I was sealed here independently, and every ten years, I would be awakened once, and then check my physical condition myself—I remember, those are what I used..."

The old man pointed tremblingly to a corner of the room, where Hao Ren saw an old set of devices that seemed to have been used for medical purposes.

"Every ten years, I wake up, and then draw blood, test, and check my skull alone," the old man said slowly with his head down. "Through a small glass window next to the door, I look at the 150,000 small cradles outside, knowing that the blood of my race is still waiting to be continued in the ice, which can give me enough courage. Every time I wake up from the ice, I count the number of times I 'get up'. I tell myself that when I count to ten times, everything can start again... Until one day I suddenly found that I had written 11 on my notebook—and the vault host was abnormally silent."

The scene was silent.

"System failure," Hao Ren sighed, "The reactor radiation leaked and spread to the entire compartment. The vault host urgently activated the hibernation pods outside. It probably thought that letting people hide in the shelter city was better than sleeping in the hibernation pods forever. But that machine missed you."

The old man's wrinkled face solidified into a complex expression. It was impossible to tell whether he was crying or laughing, but there was nothing unexpected in it. He just sighed softly with Hao Ren, "I know, there must be a system failure, but now I finally know the details."

Lily felt that all this was difficult to accept. "This kind of accident shouldn't have happened. There is a problem with the program of the vault host, and the location of this vault is also a problem. It is separated from the shelter city by the reactor. This is not a good way. If we could test more... Alas, forget it."

Lily didn't continue to say anything in the end, because she knew that the people in the Ark at that time had done their best: their people were dying every day, and the only places they could choose were a few corners of the spaceship. They didn't know how long they could live, and even everyone didn't know if they could see the completion of the project. When the vault was completed, there were only a few dozen adults left on the spaceship—they couldn't test the entire system, and they didn't have the opportunity to imagine any alternative plans.

Everything was a gamble, betting that this plan would not go wrong.

But no one is the protagonist, and fate did not favor anyone.

"How did you spend your time after that?" Vivian stared at the old man's face. The face was covered with wrinkles, dry and thin. The face was only in its twenties when he first entered the room, full of youth, but now it is old and unrecognizable. "You... how long have you been awake?"

"For a long time, waking up intermittently. At first, I forced myself to wake up once every ten years, and each time I woke up, I checked my body according to the plan, praying that I could see those children standing at the door the next time I woke up, but later I slowly gave up, gave up on myself, and ate and drank a lot—I should really be glad that they left me enough food, because I am the only one on the spaceship who still needs to eat. They simply stuffed all the remaining food into this room, anyway, they don't need it," the old man showed a crying smile. "Really, I wasted a lot of time, but later I found that this was more painful than death, so I went back to sleep again, and set the time to wake up once every thirty years. This continued many times, and I found that my hair was gradually turning white, and wrinkles appeared on my face, so I was afraid. I suddenly realized that what I was wasting was not only my own time, but also the time of the children outside. So before the last hibernation, I did the last meaningful thing... Oh, yes, that's right, I remember, the most important, the most important!"

The old man suddenly became excited, raised his finger and pointed to another corner of the room, his face glowing with a brilliant light like a reflection of light, Hao Ren hurried over, he saw a long table there, and many manuscripts were neatly stacked on the table.

If these manuscripts were stacked together, I am afraid they would be half a meter thick.

And if these manuscripts were not surprising enough, then the wall next to it would be enough to make him stunned: only to see the walls next to the long table, the nearby ground, and the furniture, almost every surface was covered with dense handwriting and drawings. He followed these handwriting to find next to him, and finally found that these things were almost engraved on half of the room—but the light here was dim, and most of the walls and the ground were covered with debris, and he had not noticed these things before.

Behind Hao Ren, the old man tried to stand up, slowly opened his hands, and said with a proud light in his eyes: "Our... history."