Chapter 1 What?! A Fight Broke Out?!

Hearing Nolan's report, Hao Ren jumped up from his chair, his face a picture of "You gotta be kidding me."

Nolan seemed to have anticipated Hao Ren's reaction, her expression remaining unchanged: "Don't believe me? Go take a look – it's quite a show."

"How did a fight suddenly break out?" Hao Ren knew it was true from Nolan's expression, but he really couldn't understand. "Wasn't N-6 with those guys outside? I even sent her out to do diplomacy. How did they start fighting when they met? What's the situation outside?"

"This ship has its shields up. N-6 hasn't left the shield's range, so the situation is that a dozen or so armed individuals are spraying my shields with something about as powerful as water guns, while N-6 is standing behind the shield with a bewildered look on her face... The situation is quite chaotic, but no one is injured."

"...Go take a look."

N-6 didn't come out of the spaceship alone. Hao Ren had also arranged for the Nangong siblings to accompany her. The original plan was to first have N-6 greet her compatriots, get them to lay down their weapons and agree to communicate. Then, Nangong Sanba, with his good eloquence, and Nangong Wuyue, with her approachable demeanor, would act as the initial contactors. Finally, Hao Ren and the others would formally appear—but this plan failed from the start. The Nangong siblings didn't even get to utter the first word of their speech before the other side launched a sudden attack. Fortunately, the Tortoise Rock Platform's shield system had already regenerated, and all the firepower was blocked outside. But this sudden attack scared the poor siren girl into a ball. When Hao Ren rushed over, she was huddled behind the hatch, trembling.

A dozen or so armed personnel in black combat uniforms hid in the forest at the edge of the spaceship crash pit, firing randomly at the Tortoise Rock Platform's side armor belt from a high vantage point. They were using electromagnetic rifles and light plasma cannons. These weapons would be considered powerful for ordinary planetary civilizations, but to the Tortoise Rock Platform's thick energy shields, they were about as threatening as Wuyue's tail tip.

They only created a lot of light and shadow effects in the air dozens of meters around the spaceship.

N-6 hid back in the hatch as soon as the attack started. She was also caught off guard by this sudden change, her logic circuits almost overloading and burning out. She saw familiar faces among the attackers and tried to call out to them to stop firing, but her efforts were futile.

"What's going on?" Hao Ren asked, standing beside N-6 with a confused expression.

"I don't know," the robot girl shook her head. "They started firing as soon as they saw me. I tried to talk to them, but they ignored me."

Vivian frowned: "Do you know those people?"

"I recognize a few of them," N-6 cautiously peeked outside. "The leader is N-4, from the same combat echelon as me. There's also TD-22 and TD-26, whom I often see."

Nangong Sanba touched his head, still shaken, and looked at N-6 with a strange expression: "What's your usual interpersonal relationship like?"

"Interpersonal relationship?" N-6 seemed a little confused by the term.

"I mean, did you ever do anything like digging holes, smashing walls, or blowing up toilets at your base, so that the first reaction of people who know you is to shoot you?" Hao Ren said, glancing sideways at Nangong Sanba. "To be honest, I don't think you need to take this question seriously."

"In any case, we need to get them to stop firing first," Vivian frowned, looking outside the spaceship. The armed personnel's attacks weren't a threat to the Tortoise Rock Platform, but they didn't weaken their offensive at all, which was really annoying. "God knows what they're thinking... Let's try shouting at them first. If shouting doesn't work, we'll just have to knock them out with kinetic tranquilizers one by one."

Hao Ren nodded and walked with Vivian towards the hatch.

In the bushes at the edge of the forest, N-4 was forcefully unloading the empty steel nail magazine and inserting a new magazine into the electromagnetic rifle's clip, while anxiously looking towards the spaceship.

The ship had a powerful shield system—something that hadn't been anticipated, but it didn't cause N-4 much panic. From the beginning, she hadn't expected to be able to fight a spaceship that looked very advanced with the individual weapons in the hands of a dozen people. She only hoped to use this to ascertain N-6's status. However, the confirmation only made her more worried.

The "thing" with N-6's shell shouted loudly for them to stop firing at the beginning of the attack, but the special identification code that N-4 sent over didn't receive a response. Not only her own code, but the emergency identification protocols executed by the team members also failed to get a reply. All the signs indicated one thing: the one who came out of the spaceship was indeed a "fake" that had been modified by aliens.

The aliens had obtained N-6's remains, but could only imitate her appearance and superficial memories. They didn't even know about the existence of emergency identification protocols, so they revealed their flaw in this step.

Miss N-4 believed her judgment was completely correct.

She was staying here for two purposes: one was to confirm N-6's status, and if possible, to recover her. The second was to cover the retreat of several members of the team so they could notify the remaining members of the camp to stay away from this place as soon as possible. Now that there was no way to bring back N-6 on the spot, and the purpose of covering the retreat of others had been achieved, she had to retreat next...

Just as the thought of retreating came to mind, N-4 was knocked unconscious by a bolt of lightning that fell from the sky.

Hao Ren looked at the female soldier who had been knocked unconscious by Vivian's lightning ball in the distance, and didn't react for a long time: "Didn't we say we were going to shout first..."

Vivian also looked a little embarrassed: "The gravity on this planet is a bit different from Earth's. I didn't calculate the path of the little bat properly – I originally just wanted to explode it next to them to scare them so they would listen to us quietly..."

Hao Ren covered his forehead: "...Never mind, it's not a big deal. Anyway, it looks like peaceful communication is impossible this time. Let's just knock them all out."

Vivian casually conjured a new little bat, and brilliant electric light bloomed from the little bat, shaped like a dazzling spherical lightning. Vivian tossed this obviously dangerous thing up and down: "Don't worry, I've discovered that electromagnetic attacks are particularly effective against these guys... But speaking of which, Nolan said that half of them ran into the forest not long after the firefight started. Should we chase after them?"

"No need. Capturing a few people is enough to get information."

N-4's sudden fall caused a brief confusion among the action team members. They realized that the people in the spaceship were launching a counterattack, so they immediately turned from offense to defense and prepared to retreat. One of the members came to N-4's side, preparing to take his captain away. However, he had only run halfway when another lightning ball slammed into his face.

What followed was a lightning storm that plowed the ground like artillery fire.

Vivian's electromagnetic attacks were really effective against these attackers who had inexplicably started the fight. In fact, Hao Ren didn't have a chance to take action from beginning to end. He just watched Vivian float in the sky, randomly throwing spherical lightning and knocking everyone out. He couldn't help but feel emotional: Hesperides is really resistant to beatings...

Several attackers were quickly tied up tightly and brought to an empty cabin on the Tortoise Rock Platform.

N-6 looked worriedly at her former teammates, their faces blackened by the explosions, as they were brought back to the spaceship. Naturally, she expressed concern about their condition: "Are they... alright?"

"Don't worry, none of them died. They were just knocked out by electricity." Hao Ren waved his hand. This short conflict started in a strange way and ended in a muddled way. He didn't understand what these guys were doing the whole time, and what surprised him even more was the "essence" of these people: each of them, like N-6, was a robot—this was a team composed entirely of robots.

No wonder Vivian's electromagnetic attacks were so effective against them—it was basically electronic equipment encountering emp. Although these high-tech artificial soldiers also had protection against electromagnetic strikes, such as electromagnetic shielding protection layers on their core systems, but to be honest, their protection layers seemed insufficient against the spherical lightning Vivian threw out.

Besides, even if they really maxed out their electromagnetic resistance to 99+, it wouldn't matter. Vivian's lightning balls not only had lightning, but also contained a little bat that smashed out at subsonic speed...

N-4 and several action team members didn't remain unconscious for long. The emp shock only triggered the emergency protection mechanism of their logic circuits, but didn't cause too much damage to their bodies. After the data terminal commanded a few autonomous machines to give these people electrotherapy, all the temporary "prisoners," including N-4, were successfully restarted.

As soon as N-4 opened her eyes, she saw a short-haired man with a smile on his face and a woman with scarlet eyes standing in front of her. The guy with N-6's shell was also standing with them, and behind them were several men and women who seemed to be watching the show.

As for herself, she was firmly fixed to a metal chair by some kind of sturdy restraint device.

Captured. Captured by a group of aliens whose appearance was very similar to humans.

N-4 quickly ran her logic circuits, starting to analyze the current situation and preparing to formulate an effective escape plan—if it didn't work, she would formulate a self-destruct plan. But before she could speak, the man with the smile on his face spoke: "I'm sorry to have to greet you this way—but you weren't willing to talk to us peacefully, so we could only force you to be peaceful."

N-4 stared at the person in front of her with a wary expression, without saying a word.

Hao Ren felt a little headache. Another robot, and this robot seemed far less easy to communicate with than N-6. He remembered that N-6 had happily reached a consensus with his group not long after waking up, but this female robot in front of him didn't even want to open her mouth to him, let alone reach a consensus...

This was understandable, after all, the processes of the two contacts were completely different. N-6 was rescued by him, and the contact process was full of selfless help from a different race, the emotion of being resurrected, the trust of open communication, and the brilliance of humanity. The other contact was different. Its main contents were electromagnetic rifle bullets, tens of thousands of volts of electricity, and a little bat that smashed into her face at subsonic speed...