Chapter 1 The First Piece

Guided by Lily's good nose, Hao Ren found the first piece of the crashed aircraft.

It was a large piece of bent and twisted metal plate and an oval equipment bay whose function was unidentifiable, entangled with many charred cables and tubes, emitting a pungent burnt smell. Although the high temperature on this wreckage had dissipated after a day and night of cooling, it was clear that it had undergone a considerable explosion and burning, which made its shell appear almost molten.

This piece, which was five or six meters long, fell between two huge broad-leaved trees. Its fall created an impact crater with a radius of about ten meters. The two broad-leaved trees at the edge of the crater were in completely different states: one of the trees had been killed by the high temperature and shock wave, its trunk broken in the middle, and its canopy burned, leaving only some carbonized branches. The other tree, however, was lush and green, still standing straight at the edge of the crater, and even its branches and green leaves were as vibrant as if they had just grown.

Without a doubt, the second tree was something derived from the tendrils of the Great Progeny extending out of the ground. It was a nerve point used by that huge and terrifying creature inside the planet to perceive the outside world—standing at the edge of the impact crater, Hao Ren knew that he had fallen into the Great Progeny's eyes.

But as Zohm said, when a Great Progeny grows to maturity (usually the standard is when it is lying in the heart of the earth and can use its tentacles to reach out from any place on the surface), its perception will undergo some changes. The "micro-organisms" around the tentacles will no longer attract its attention, unless these micro-organisms produce a powerful energy reaction sufficient to destroy the main tendril, or emit some special, irritating, or provocative aura.

Hao Ren certainly wouldn't do that, so he and the other three converged their auras and carefully came to the impact crater to examine the cooled aircraft wreckage.

"This should be a radar bay, and the metal plate above is part of the radar bay's protective shield," the data terminal floated next to Hao Ren's head, scanning the structure of the aircraft wreckage with a blue beam of light. "It's completely destroyed inside too... It seems that the previous impact was very strong, and every part of the aircraft was subjected to huge squeezing. The Great Progeny's tendrils should have released something like a stasis field, so the aircraft diving at full speed instantaneously decelerated from extremely high speed to zero. Without inertial stabilizers, no means of transportation can withstand this degree of speed change."

"There should be other wreckage nearby, perhaps in better condition than this one," Hao Ren looked up at his surroundings. "I remember there was an aircraft that was destroyed during the bombing process, and it had a clear deceleration action before being destroyed, so its state of preservation should be more complete."

Lily wrinkled her nose: "Even if it's more complete, it still fell down after being blown to pieces."

But even so, the husky girl, as a good dog… a good canine demon, was still very diligent when looking for things. Her nose was even more useful than the data terminal's simplified radar in this environment, and she found more wreckage crash sites in no time.

There were more fallen objects than expected. If every scattered screw was counted, Hao Ren felt that the four aircraft might even have disintegrated into five-digit fragments and fallen in this area, and their distribution range might even exceed a radius of ten kilometers. But not every fragment was worth paying attention to. Hao Ren was looking for large fragments that might be carrying the cockpit.

If only they could find the pilot's remains...

The second large piece of wreckage they found fell in a low-lying area hundreds of meters away from the radar bay. This piece of wreckage was several meters larger than the radar bay. It had two parallel metal rails that looked like acceleration tracks, some broken tubular objects, and several sintered and deformed coil structures. This pile of messy things was entangled together, tilted diagonally in the center of the low-lying area. The water originally accumulated in the low-lying area had been evaporated by the high temperature, leaving only a cracked mud ground.

"This should be a weapon module, and it looks like parts of a railgun," the data terminal analyzed again. "There should be more than just these acceleration tracks, but only these have been preserved. Let me see what this is... High-temperature superconductor, efficient capacitor bank, and... Hmm? A projectile stuck at the end of the track slot? Good material."

"Who understands what you're saying," May scratched her head, her tail sliding impatiently on the ground. "Just tell us if their weapon technology is high or not. By the way, can you tell the industrial scale of the survivors from this?"

"The entry-level technology of railguns is not a very high-end thing. Earthlings are almost making it, but a mature railgun is definitely not the same level as an early verification machine," the data terminal bumped the two guide rails on the wreckage. "The wreckage only has this kind of solid but technologically uncomplicated part left. The really high-precision structure has been burned down by the high temperature. I can only analyze it from the materials. The survivors' methods are pretty good. Such a railgun can penetrate anything humans have made so far with a single shot, including Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and the Pyramid of Khufu. Of course, I think the plasma bombs they dropped during yesterday's bombing were more powerful. At least when dealing with a Great Progeny that is hundreds of kilometers long with just one tendril, bombs are more effective than naval guns."

"To manufacture and maintain such powerful large-scale aerial machinery, there must be a complete and stable industrial system," Hao Ren stroked his chin. "Moreover, this industrial system must have the ability to continuously mass-produce these weapons for consumption, which requires raw material support. A total of six aircraft appeared in yesterday's attack, and only two survived. I believe that in the process of fighting against the Great Progeny, this kind of loss is absolutely very common, and may even be more serious..."

"The survivors are not just simply surviving, they must at least have the complete strength of a country, both industrially and in terms of population. They must have raw material production areas and factories, as well as the ancillary industries and population base to support these things, and all of this requires a territory that is not too small. Otherwise, it would not be enough to rely on the ancient weapons left over from the last civilization," Vivian nodded. "Those 'ancient gods' on Earth who were glorious for one or two generations before being exterminated are ready-made examples."

Hao Ren waved his hand and called over the autonomous machines that were patrolling the periphery, and asked them to start clearing the wreckage of the railgun in front of him and collect the scattered wreckage fragments around. These autonomous machines were the batch that Nolan had modified last night. Although some of their tentacles were equipped with laser rifles and protective field generators, the remaining tentacles could still complete basic engineering tasks.

Hao Ren felt that it was indeed necessary to permanently transform a batch of autonomous machines into this kind of semi-combat and semi-auxiliary model, especially when exploring mysterious planets like this that are full of dangers—maybe he could give this kind of modification a new name called the Frontline Universal Type?

"Collect the larger wreckage," Hao Ren directed the autonomous machines while casually explaining to Vivian next to him, "The laboratory on the spacecraft can still be used, so we can take it back and let Nolan use the shipboard analysis mainframe to study it."

The collected wreckage was carefully sorted, packed into storage containers, and then put into Hao Ren's personal space that seemed to never be filled, while Lily went deep into the dense forest to find other fragments.

After a while, Hao Ren suddenly heard a gunshot coming from the forest, along with Lily's short exclamation: "Wow?!"

"Oh crap... that idiot's in trouble!"

Hao Ren exclaimed, turned around and ran towards the direction of the sound, with May and Vivian following closely behind.

But just as they ran halfway, they saw Lily running out of the forest, lively and kicking, while jumping and shouting: "Landlord, landlord! I saw people! I saw people! They even shot at me!"

Seeing the husky girl hopping around so lively, Hao Ren's heart, which had just been raised, was finally put back in his stomach, but then he was stunned: she was actually so happy after being shot at, this girl could probably be happy even if her whole family was killed, right?

And she found the surviving pilot?!

"Are you hurt?" Hao Ren first looked up and down at the husky girl. "I heard you scream just now."

Lily raised her arm: "Just a little scratch, mainly because it happened too suddenly and I didn't react. It wasn't easy to dodge when I saw the bullet, so I had to block it with my arm. By the way, the aliens' guns are more powerful than Earthlings'. I thought I could catch the bullet..."

Hao Ren glanced at the rather frightening wound on Lily's arm, mumbled that this husky was really broad-minded, and then pushed her to May's side: "May, heal her."

Nangong Wuyue summoned a water ball with healing effects and wrapped it around Lily's wound. The gunshot wound immediately began to wriggle and heal. Seeing that Lily's injury was not serious, Hao Ren turned his head to look in the direction she came from: "Is it up ahead?"

"Not far ahead, but after shooting at me, that guy seemed to faint. I think that guy was too badly injured..."

Under Lily's guidance, the group quickly found the crash site located in the dense forest.

The largest piece of aircraft wreckage fell here. The plants near the crash site showed signs of being severely burned by the fire. A pile of messy metal wreckage lay quietly on the circular open space that had been burned out. Seeing this scene, Hao Ren's first reaction was how could anyone survive such a tragic crash?

Then he saw the "survivor" in the middle of the wreckage.

It was a woman, or at least judged from her figure to be a "woman". She was lying lifelessly on her side in a pile of twisted pipes and metal. Many parts of her body were charred black. Her left arm was missing, and her right hand was still holding a black weapon—that should be the gun that injured Lily. The lower half of this woman's body was empty. Her lower body had been blown to pieces, and only some broken cables protruded from the break, occasionally jumping out with some sparks.

This was the "survivor" Lily was talking about.

Vivian carefully examined the broken state of the robot-like woman's waist, turned her head and rolled her eyes at Lily: "Okay, she's really 'badly injured'. I suspect you didn't even realize this was a robot."

"I didn't see it clearly before," Lily scratched her hair. "She suddenly shot at me, so I was just focused on watching the trajectory of the bullet..."