Chapter 1 Forest's Devouring

The forest devoured the city, plants replaced buildings. The "sentient beings" built a splendid civilization with fire and steel, but nature only needed some time to erase these traces—even to swallow and assimilate everything into itself.

The civilization on this planet had faded away for many years. This could be seen from the ancient and desolate ruins, many of which were not only dilapidated but had also become the nests and territories of wild animals. Their builders meticulously designed these things to showcase human wisdom and power, but now these achievements could only benefit the birds and beasts of the forest. And these later "tenants" obviously didn't care what their nests were originally for.

Several alien beasts with stiff, short fur, looking like wild boars, ran away in panic and disappeared into the dense forest in the blink of an eye. Lily only slightly released her pressure, scaring these animals with low intelligence out of their wits. It seemed that Nolan's previous judgment was correct: there was nothing threatening on this planet. The beasts in the forest were no more dangerous than tigers and wolves on Earth.

"The development level of this civilization doesn't seem low. These ruins are thousands of years old, but they haven't completely weathered away yet. Their material technology is on par with Tanagrus, or even higher," Hao Ren said as he and the data terminal stepped forward to examine an ancient relic that had once been occupied by those animals as a nest after driving them away. It was a hemispherical metal shell, which seemed to have been a large pressure vessel for storing dangerous liquids. It was now twisted and deformed, with only half of it remaining, but its strength hadn't changed much. Apart from the mottled rust on the surface, it was still hard and stable. "A structurally complex alloy, resistant to high temperatures and corrosion, and with good strength."

Vivian ran her fingers over the rough rust marks on the surface of the metal container: "Then how did they perish?"

"Maybe it was First Born. Even if it wasn't First Born, there are countless reasons that could lead to the demise of a civilization of this level," the data terminal said in an emotionless tone. "Civilizations are fragile, even those that can go to space aren't that strong. Diseases, wars, natural disasters—most civilizations' ability to resist these things isn't as strong as they think. We can't analyze how the native civilization of this planet went extinct yet, but this unit believes that more information can be obtained in the city ruins."

Lily looked up into the distance. Due to the layers of jungle and the difference in altitude, she couldn't directly see the city ruins from here, but her special vision could still capture some things: occasional pieces of steel visible between the trees, or fragments of cement that had been pushed into the air by giant trees. These things were becoming more and more dense, which indicated that they had already reached the edge of the city ruins, but due to forest erosion, this part of the ruins was about to be completely obliterated.

"I didn't expect the Dream Plane to have such a place," Hao Ren couldn't help but sigh. "Mysterious star sectors blocked by spatial fractures, ecological planets hidden in remote corners, and ancient civilizations that have perished... Life is such a wonderful thing. It always feels rare and precious, but it can always appear in various places."

"Rather than sighing about these things, I'm more concerned about the attack we suffered in space," Vivian frowned. "That attack was obviously targeted, it was aimed at us... But the drones had already scanned our jump point back and forth countless times. It was confirmed to be absolutely safe before the navigation route was illuminated, right?"

Mentioning this, Hao Ren's expression also became serious: "That's right, the drones had scanned the jump point countless times, and until we jumped over, there were probes scattered by the drones active in that area: the signals released by the probes were very strong, but they were never attacked."

If he hadn't confirmed the safety of the navigation route in advance, Hao Ren would never have rashly taken a ship full of people to an unknown star system to take risks. But the awkward situation this time was that even though the destination had been confirmed to be safe, and they had even specifically asked probes and drones to test it in various ways for a long time, something still happened in the end.

Hao Ren couldn't help but think that this was really a trap, and a rather clever one, and most likely—this trap was still controlled by someone.

Or at least there was a complex and sophisticated judgment mechanism controlling this trap.

He stroked his chin: "That storm in space later showed obvious divine power characteristics, so it was driven by divine power, and there aren't many existences that can mobilize this kind of power. In the Dream Plane, there are only three parties: the Goddess of Creation and her guardian race are naturally capable of this, the Godslayers can achieve similar effects through rune technology, and there's also... the 'Goddess of Destruction' who was polluted and corrupted. As for the Lord of the Mad, it doesn't have the intelligence to set up this kind of trap."

"The probability of the Goddess of Destruction is higher, right?" Lily pondered. "The Goddess of Creation is on the side of justice and shouldn't do harmful things. The Godslayers are actually just being used as pawns by both sides, they haven't grasped the initiative at all. Only the Goddess of Destruction has the ability and the motive. And landlord, think about it, haven't we always suspected the star chart in Vivian's head? In my opinion, that's a pit left by the Goddess of Destruction, we came here and actively jumped into the pit..."

Hao Ren frowned. Although Lily's thoughts sounded very reasonable, he always felt a sense of incongruity in them, but he couldn't explain where this sense of incongruity came from. So in the end, he could only shake his head: "Don't rush to conclusions yet, let's figure out the main body of that divine power storm first."

In order to collect data on the local natural environment along the way, Hao Ren and his party didn't move very fast. After collecting enough data, they came out of the forest. When the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds and sprinkled on the earth, they stood on the edge of the city ruins in the center of the forest.

It was larger than expected. When Nolan passed by in the air before, she only had time to take a few silhouettes with less than ideal angles. The scale of the ruins that could be seen was limited to the part visible from the air. But when looking down from a high ground at the edge of the forest, the part of the ruins hidden by the forest became clear at a glance. It must have been a highly developed metropolis in the past. Even after years of vicissitudes and disasters, its glorious traces could still be glimpsed. Hao Ren saw many neatly arranged tall buildings in the city center, with some overhanging structures intersecting and connecting between these buildings. The very center of the city was a giant four-sided pyramid-shaped building, magnificent in momentum and of unknown use.

All the buildings had been severely damaged, and traces of collapse and destruction could be seen everywhere in the city. Although he could still see those neatly arranged tall buildings, Hao Ren could also find that the collapsed buildings far outnumbered those that were still standing. This civilization had superb material technology. The tall buildings they built were far more solid than those built by Earthlings, just like the Golden City of Tanagrus. A small part of these buildings could still stand for thousands or even ten thousand years after the apocalypse, but even so, the power of nature still brutally ravaged these solid man-made materials: the sprawling forest twisted, deformed, bent, and collapsed these solid steel structures. Giant trees grew from inside the buildings, piercing the walls of the buildings with their branches, making the entire building seem like a layer of clothing on the outside of the tree trunk, while the dense canopy directly expanded and grew on the upper part of the building.

Bridges had become the skeletons of vines, and the roads were also broken and twisted together. This was the end of nature's counterattack after the end of civilization.

Hao Ren also saw two huge lakes in the city ruins. They should have been caused by the collapse of the city's underground structure. The subway system or something else couldn't withstand the weight of the upper buildings, causing the city to collapse and sink everywhere. Then these pits became good places to store water. After the forest spread over, the largest depression also became a lake, becoming a source of water for animals to drink.

Morning had arrived, and the world was becoming brighter. The sounds of birds and beasts gradually made the ruins and the forest lively. A burst of "fluttering" sounds also joined this dawn sonata: Vivian's small bat swarm flew out of the dense forest and flew to various parts of the city to find anything that might be valuable.

The data terminal rose into the air, preparing to scan the energy reactions of the entire ruins from the air: according to experience, if this kind of civilization had even a glimmer of reaction time when it went extinct, it would definitely try to leave some traces of information. Even if it wasn't intentional, it was very likely that prehistoric relics such as databases were buried deep in this scale of city ruins. Perhaps such databases could withstand the erosion of time and even continue to operate after thousands of years. What the data terminal was looking for was this kind of thing.

While waiting for more information, Hao Ren climbed onto a nearby boulder and looked out over the entire city and the scenery around the city from a high place. Suddenly, a sense of incongruity made his gaze stop in a certain direction.

"Landlord—" Nangong Wuyue's shout came from below, "What are you looking at up there—"

"Come up and take a look, I always feel like something's wrong over there."

Wuyue wagged her tail and climbed onto the big rock in a few steps. Then she raised her upper body and followed Hao Ren to look into the distance with her hand over her eyes: "What's wrong?"

Relying on the height increased by her tail, she was much better than Hao Ren at seizing the high ground...

"The plants over there are very sparse, the forest seems to have been cleared away by something, and I can't see any relics that can be considered intact... Not even a pile of high ruins," Hao Ren pointed into the distance. "It always feels like it's been bombed..."

"It looks like it is," Wuyue shook the tip of her tail. "Does that mean this civilization was destroyed by war?"

"No, not just that," Hao Ren frowned. "Even if the city was destroyed by bombing, after so many years, the forest should have filled in the bombed area long ago..."

He was only halfway through his words when he heard the data terminal's voice suddenly ring in his mind: "Partner! I see something on my end!"

Hao Ren led Wuyue back to the ground and reunited with Lily and Vivian. After a while, the data terminal also fell from the sky. The latter didn't say a word and directly projected a video taken from high altitude in front of the four of them.

Only to see in the northwest direction of the city, an abrupt mountain range rose from the end of the forest and spread out along the edge of the forest. The mountain range was blackish-brown with a slight green tinge, and its lines were not as angular as ordinary mountains, but looked quite rounded and smooth...

Lines?

Hao Ren finally suddenly realized what was on the screen:

It was a tentacle, a tentacle that stretched out from the depths of the earth, as huge as a mountain range.