Chapter 1 Heeding Caution

Hao Ren had everyone, including Vivian, wait behind. He then approached the golden disc with the data terminal in hand, knowing this thing was one of the most bizarre and peculiar creations in the Dream Plane, so a bit of caution was never a bad thing.

He reached the artifact without incident.

The golden disc was embedded in a massive metal pedestal, and around the pedestal were various pipes, cables, steel columns, and other such things. These miscellaneous items extended to the floor, making the whole device look like a bizarre, science-styled altar. Around the golden disc was a faintly glowing metal ring, which seemed to brighten slightly as Hao Ren approached, but it didn't react any further.

"Seems to be broken," the data terminal said, inspecting the energy flow in the pipes and cables around the metal pedestal. "This thing was originally supposed to be something like an amplifier, broadcasting the golden disc's information to the entire fleet—but the whole device is silent now."

Hao Ren nodded gently, cautiously reaching out his hand towards the surface of the disc.

But nothing happened.

A warm, non-metallic sensation came from his fingertips, but he didn't receive any information from the artifact as he had last time. It seemed this disc was just an ordinary creation of the goddess; it didn't carry any extra information.

The data terminal flew around the disc several more times, confirming there were no dangerous factors before declaring it safe. The Nangong siblings and Lily then curiously came over, Lily tugging on Hao Ren's sleeve, looking happy. "Nothing happened? Did we find another treasure?"

Vivian called from a distance, "Um, can I come over now?"

Hao Ren looked back, a bit amused, and saw Vivian standing far away at the hall's entrance, looking like she wanted to see the excitement but was afraid of causing trouble. He waved towards the entrance. "Come on, just try not to touch this thing. Better safe than sorry."

Vivian happily trotted over, arms crossed, muttering, "So this is what protected the Ark Fleet from being chased all the way here? Does that mean the golden disc's aura can drive away those crazed Guardians?"

"Yeah…" Hao Ren replied casually, starting to curiously inspect the metal pedestal under the disc, wanting to know what other functions the device had besides using the disc as a signal source. But before he could discover anything, the data terminal suddenly found something. "Wait a minute, buddy, there's something fishy down here."

"Down here?" Hao Ren was taken aback.

The data terminal fluttered to a corner of the pedestal, bumping into a protruding metal rod. Everyone had thought it was just a decoration, but the data terminal knocked it down, and a faint mechanical friction sound came from beneath the pedestal!

"Squeak, creak—" Accompanied by a series of gear and motor friction sounds, the golden disc slowly stood up, and the black metal pedestal underneath cracked open from the middle, slowly opening to both sides. Hao Ren stared in astonishment at all of this. After the ancient mechanical device finally settled down, a downward-sloping passage about five or six meters wide appeared before his eyes.

There was more to this place than met the eye!

Vivian habitually threw a small bat down the passage to scout ahead. After a moment, she nodded. "Safe. It's a corridor, no traps."

"Everyone, be careful." Hao Ren said as he activated his shield and walked forward. Before entering the passage, he hesitated, looking at the golden disc. But because he wasn't sure if it was still affecting the Ark's other sensitive systems, he didn't recklessly retrieve it, but instead left a self-regulating mechanical drone to protect the site.

The group walked down the ancient stairs for a long time before reaching the bottom. Before them was a wide corridor, dimly lit. But as Hao Ren stepped onto the corridor floor, the lights beside him suddenly activated, illuminating the entire corridor as bright as day.

Compared to the surface's shelter city, which was already turning into a dump, the corridor before them was extraordinarily new, without trash, damage, or scars. Except for the thick dust, everything here was intact. Without a doubt, the surface residents didn't know about this place. It had probably been centuries since anyone had visited.

"The other Arks probably don't have this facility," Hao Ren muttered. Because the builders of this place used the golden disc as the entrance to the entire facility, this place probably had extraordinary significance. He walked forward along the corridor and suddenly felt something under his foot. He looked down and saw a plastic card about the size of his palm.

He picked up the card and saw the words "Final Repository" written on it, along with a name and position. It was a staff ID card.

"'Final Repository'?" Vivian came over for a look. "Repository of what?"

Hao Ren shook his head. "Who knows."

At this moment, Lily, who was running ahead, suddenly called out from afar, "Hey, hey! Everyone, come look at this!"

Hao Ren hurried over and saw what Lily had found: a small skeleton, lying face down in the corner. The clothes the skeleton's owner had originally worn had rotted into a few rags, but one could vaguely see that they had once been white.

This was the second set of "prehistoric remains" he had seen in the Ark, and it was clearly a child.

"A kid?" Vivian frowned. "How could a kid die in this kind of top-secret facility?"

The data terminal floated over to examine the skeleton and quickly analyzed a lot of information. "According to Ark human standards, the age of death should be between twelve and thirteen. The cause of death was a large dose of radiation in a short period of time."

"Death by radiation?" The first thing Hao Ren thought of was the adult human remains he had found in the control room. He remembered that the Ark administrator had died from a chronic disease that slowly eroded the skull. "Not a disease?"

"You're talking about the strange disease that person in the control room had?" The data terminal knew what Hao Ren was referring to. "No. This child's time of death was about eight hundred years ago, while the 'captain' in the control room died about nine hundred years ago. There's a difference of a hundred years between them. Um… the person in the control room didn't have any traces of death by radiation, but this one does. This unit estimates that the reactor radiation leak occurred between eight hundred and nine hundred years ago."

"The one in the control room should be the Ark's last captain," Hao Ren's brow furrowed slightly, faintly feeling like he had grasped something. "After he died, no one should have entered the control room again. But a hundred years after his death, a child died in this place…"

After examining the small corpse, the group continued towards the depths of the corridor. They passed through several doors in a row, passing through structures that looked like disinfection rooms, inspection channels, and isolation rooms. Finally, they came to a special gate. This gate was wider than any of the previous ones and had intricate and complex locking devices. Without a doubt, this was the deepest part of the entire facility.

Hao Ren vaguely estimated the distance he had traveled and believed that this location had far exceeded the outer shell of the shelter city and might have even passed through the Ark section where the giant fusion reactor was located (the evidence being that there was no radiation here anymore). This should be a vacant cabin hidden between the inner city and the Ark's outer shell, and judging from the newness of the various facilities here, it was rebuilt many years after the Ark set sail—its construction history probably didn't exceed a thousand years.

The gate's locking mechanism was still usable, so with the data terminal's assistance, Hao Ren normally opened the door before him. As the two heavy metal plates slowly retreated to both sides, a huge, silver-white space appeared before everyone.

This was a large cylindrical section, probably a hundred meters in diameter, and its vertical height was difficult to judge with the naked eye. In this cylindrical section, a large number of silver-white metal boxes, no more than one and a half meters in length, were neatly arranged and fixed with brackets. All of these metal boxes and brackets were firmly grasped by a complex set of robotic arms, suspended in mid-air in the cylindrical cabin. A wide, overhanging bridge ran through the cabin, and Hao Ren and the others were now standing at the starting point of this bridge.

"I say…" Lily looked up at the countless neatly arranged metal boxes, her tone drawn out long, "Woof…"

Hao Ren looked around. He believed that the metal boxes suspended in the air were definitely not fixed. Sure enough, he soon found a device that looked like a control panel not far away.