Chapter 1 Moonbase

The lunar base—strictly speaking, it wasn't a base, but rather the entire lunar surface completely covered, reinforced, and weaponized. After thousands of years of continuous construction, this natural satellite had been transformed into a steel fortress. It floated coldly in the vast universe, pointing its forest of guns and heavy armor towards its home planet, which was undeniably a tragedy.

Exiled from their homeland, the refugees gazed in the direction of their home for thousands of years, hoping to one day return to the land where they had once thrived. However, they had no choice but to stand guard tens of thousands of kilometers away from home, pointing all their weapons towards their homeland, because their homeland—their homeland had become their enemy.

A survivor society established and maintained under such circumstances could hardly possess the vigor and vitality that a normal civilization should have.

The entire lunar base was a massive, strictly disciplined barracks. Factories and barracks accounted for seventy to eighty percent of all facilities. Across the endless steel landscape, mining supports and production centers for assembling war machines stood everywhere. High-intelligence mechanical bio-humans known as "Acting Agents" were continuously manufactured in these factories and sent to Zenith after a short period of adaptive adjustment and preparation. In an even shorter time, half of them would be used as consumables, thrown into the ever-hungry grinder on their home planet.

It was almost a miracle for an Acting Agent like N-4 to have served for more than ten years. More often, they were like N-6, encountering the First Born's counterattack during a bombing mission, easily shot down, crashed, and turned into a pile of fragmented wreckage on their home planet.

If she hadn't met Hao Ren and his group, N-6's existence would have ended at that moment.

Carefully avoiding a group of patrol aircraft flying overhead, N-6 poked her head out from her hiding place, and inexplicably, these strange thoughts popped into her mind: about the world she lived in, about the life of an Acting Agent, about her own destiny.

This was the first time she had thought about her own destiny. Frankly, the Acting Agent felt it was a waste of electricity.

Perhaps this was the "emotional problem" that Acting Agents who had served for a certain period of time often talked about? N-6 curiously checked the running status of her logic circuits. She knew that there would be a big difference between Acting Agents who had served for a long time and those who had just left the factory, even if the former hadn't downloaded new logic programs from the Great Data Repository, this difference would appear over time. N-4 had talked to her about this topic, calling it experience accumulation and emotional development, but N-6 had never been able to understand these things. Now, she felt like she was about to understand.

So, after surviving for a while… the logic circuits would start to generate some code unrelated to the main program.

"Everything is automated," Lily said, curiously looking around, her golden eyes reflecting the distant steel buildings. "So cold and desolate…"

"That's normal," Hao Ren nodded. "This society doesn't have any entertainment or consumer industries. All we've seen along the way are factories and barracks. The newly produced soldiers and war machines are all stored in their respective warehouses. When it's time to go to war, they're directly transported to the front lines. I can hardly imagine such a society having bustling streets and people strolling around."

Vivian frowned. "But Acting Agents actually have emotions… at least someone like N-4 has very rich emotions. N-6 isn't bad either."

Izaak nodded. "That's right. They have the basis for building a normal society, but they don't have the leeway."

Hao Ren didn't continue the topic. He raised his head and looked in the direction his group was heading: a huge "mountain" was in front of them, seemingly not far away. That was the "Fortress" that N-4 and N-6 had mentioned.

The Fortress was a circular steel fortress. Viewed from the air, it looked like a regular-edged, slightly sunken round cake. At the edge of the Fortress were neatly arranged black cube structures. Huge metal pipes and corridors extended from these cubes, connecting to each other and pointing towards the central structure of the Fortress. At their intersection, one could see a several-hundred-meter-high alloy cylinder. That windowless, doorless, prison-like black cylinder was where humans lived—the Palace of Finality.

It really didn't look like a palace for creators to live in, but it was the belief and faith of all Acting Agents.

The black cubes neatly arranged at the edge of the Fortress were actually part of the Mainframe. They were the upper structure of thirteen giant servers. Beneath the steel landscape, these black cubes had a larger main body and more complex secondary server arrays. All of these things were centrally connected within the Palace of Finality. According to N-4, there was also a machine room inside the Palace of Finality, where there were also thirteen servers. That was where the Mainframe's interaction interface and control center were located.

Simply contacting or destroying the black cubes at the edge of the Fortress was useless. Hao Ren's group's destination was in the Fortress of Finality, in that most central machine room.

The route to the Fortress was clear and straightforward, but approaching it unnoticed was not so easy. Although the First Born (the planet-devourers in the Acting Agents' words) had never implemented complex tactics such as sending spies or internal sabotage, the humans who initially designed and built the lunar base had, as a matter of habit, set up layers of checkpoints and patrol teams around the Fortress. These designs were also inherited and carried forward by the Mainframe that later took over the lunar administration.

Hao Ren and his group saw many patrol troops and sentries along the way: Acting Agent guards riding small combat vehicles, and electronic monitoring stations fixed in certain places, constantly scanning the surroundings. But more common were small things called "patrol drones," which were disc-shaped intelligent aircraft. They were only the size of a basketball, usually in groups of three or six, and were distributed throughout the lunar surface, especially densely around the Fortress.

They were all the Mainframe's eyes and ears.

It wasn't difficult to eliminate these "eyes and ears." A husky that had cultivated into a spirit, plus a brick that could attack from a distance or defend up close, could take out all the哨位 (shào wèi, sentry posts), but this would inevitably cause an uprising in the entire lunar base. By that time, the overwhelming Acting Agent legions would probably be enough to completely drown Hao Ren's small team.

Hao Ren was indeed leading a group of gold-medal fighters, but even gold-medal fighters weren't invincible in this place. Even if a small bat like Vivian could stun a hundred ordinary Acting Agent soldiers, she didn't have ten thousand small bats to throw when facing a million-strong army…

So Hao Ren was very cautious along the way. N-6 could guide the team around the main monitoring equipment, and the Data Terminal constantly sensed the patrol troops lurking nearby, giving advance warnings. Relying on these two major aids, they had approached the Fortress so closely without any major incidents.

Hao Ren had originally wanted to try letting the Data Terminal fly a distance and then teleport everyone away, but the moment the Terminal activated the space equipment, it sensed at least seventy radar signals converging. So this idea had to be abandoned.

Clearly, although the Acting Agents hadn't yet unlocked hyperspace jump technology, their radar wasn't blind either. The abnormal energy fluctuations and electromagnetic radiation before the space gate opened were enough to trigger the Mainframe's alert. Considering that the brief dizziness and perceptual disturbances after the teleportation would reduce everyone's combat power, Hao Ren had to give up this overly risky method of travel.

Fortunately, the "good show" that Hao Ren had arranged at Zenith had the desired effect. The Mainframe's attention was almost entirely drawn to the battle in space—along with a large number of garrison troops on the lunar base. Although a significant number of Acting Agent legions still remained on the moon to maintain the base's necessary military force, their numbers were ultimately greatly reduced.

Hao Ren and his group thus crossed the stretch of road leading to the Fortress without any major incidents. The dark, heavy steel building finally appeared before them.

"The Fortress was built on the basis of a环形山 (huán xíng shān, circular mountain, i.e., a crater), initially just an underground shelter with an alloy shield excavated at the bottom of the crater," N-6 said, looking at the towering black wall in front of her, her tone not without pride. "But it has undergone countless major and minor modifications and reinforcements over thousands of years. Now, apart from this circular outline, it is basically impossible to see its original appearance. Its outer shell is covered with the Mainframe's sensors and electronic eyes. The entire black city wall is built with活化金属 (huó huà jīn shǔ, activated metal). Any contact with the outer wall will be transmitted to the Mainframe in real time. What are you planning to do about this thing?"

Izaak looked at the black wall not far away. "Air or underground?"

N-6 shook her head. "There is a layer of repulsive shield in the air. Although it's not as good as your shield technology, the repulsive shield itself has 'awareness.' The Mainframe can also sense anything entering its Fortress through the shield. Underground is also not feasible, because the entire underground is wrapped in a hemispherical shell of活化金属 (huó huà jīn shǔ, activated metal), making it impossible to sneak in silently."

Vivian said thoughtfully, "It sounds like the entire Fortress is surrounded by barriers… This structure gives the feeling that it can be detached from the lunar base at any time."

N-6 glanced at her, and after a moment of silence, she said, "You guessed it. The entire Fortress is indeed designed as an independent structure that can detach from the moon at any time. This great project was completed three thousand years ago, and subsequent improvements and revisions have continued intermittently to this day. It aims to preserve the last spark of the survivor society when the situation is extremely critical and irreparable: If the lunar base falls and the Zenith space station is also destroyed by the planet-devourers, then the Fortress will ascend and fly into the universe, becoming a new 'Zenith Ark.' Humans and the Mainframe will still have a glimmer of hope to find a place to live in the vast universe."

"At the same time, the Acting Agents have buried annihilation reactors inside the moon that are enough to push the entire planet out of orbit. If the Fortress really reaches the day when it has to flee its home again, the Acting Agents will detonate those annihilation reactors after the Fortress ascends. The moon will then change its orbit and eventually collide with the home planet. We don't know if this will ultimately destroy the planet-devourers, but at least… we can go home."

This plan made people gasp, and Lily's eyes widened. "Are you guys crazy?"

"We just want to go home."