Chapter 1 Nolan is Temporarily Unable to Ascend

Nolan was temporarily unable to ascend, and the drone swarm's urban infrastructure work had not yet progressed to this wild planet, so Hao Ren and his group had no operational advantage in space. However, being unable to ascend didn't mean they couldn't do anything. Under the scanning of thousands of atmospheric probes and Nolan's own powerful antenna array, massive amounts of information were gathered, and Hao Ren still grasped a great deal of intelligence about this planet.

The "brain core offline" of the First Born was basically a confirmed fact. Regardless of whether the underlying reason was the brain core's lesions, the dissipation of consciousness, or the effect of some powerful neural inhibiting factor (such as an ultra-ultra-ultra-high-power lullaby generator poking at his brain nerves), in short, all the First Born organizations on this planet had definitely lost unified control. After collecting the behavioral patterns of the tentacles on the global surface and scanning the neural pulse patterns under the crust, Nolan confirmed that the First Born now only had the most basic reflexes and self-defense capabilities. When attacked, they would counterattack; when significant damage occurred, they would activate emergency regeneration mechanisms; and when the environment changed, they would alter their physiological structure. But all these changes were only completed by the tentacles relying on their own functions. This completely explained why the survivors' rebel army's bombing only caused the First Born's "limited counterattack" and did not elicit a devastating retaliation.

On the other side, those "descendants of the survivors" living on the lunar surface and in space were constantly organizing counterattacks against the surface. They had a well-structured, highly efficient militarized society, relying on lunar bases to provide a steady stream of industrial support. These survivors' attacks on the First Born's tentacles on the mother planet were almost constant. After Nolan spread her "eyes" across the entire planet, she could observe at least one attack from space every hour, and the bombing Hao Ren saw was actually the smallest of these attacks. The survivors' rebel army didn't just have kamikaze-like aerospace bombers; they used various means to clear the tentacles constantly emerging from the planet's surface, usually dropping guided bombs from the stratosphere for carpet bombing, or directly firing from the "Zenith" space station in orbit.

But after Nolan's observation, she found that the most effective method was still using aerospace bombers for near-suicidal close-range bombing, because attacks from higher altitudes were almost ineffective against the tentacles.

It wasn't that the power was insufficient, but that the First Born's tentacles had a stronger defensive awareness against those attacks from further distances. It seemed that although the First Born on this planet had lost his mind, his "reflexes" were still different from those of ordinary life. The tentacles still had a certain degree of advanced judgment ability. Ultra-long-range strikes from orbit would be blocked by various force fields before they arrived. On the contrary, the suicidal bombing carried out by aerospace bombers at extremely close range could avoid this "judgment mechanism" of the tentacles.

This seesaw-like war had been going on for who knew how many years, but Hao Ren was certain of one thing: the exiles in space who had been driven out of their homes were still far from the dawn.

Their attacks on the planet's surface were probably already their best effort. Dozens of battlefields were lit up by their artillery fire every day. On the planetary monitoring images established by Nolan, the red triangles representing "combat zones" could be said to be all over the globe. However, this kind of attack might be able to destroy an ordinary planetary civilization, but it could not fundamentally destroy a mythological creature. The First Born's tentacles repaired and regenerated day and night, sometimes regenerating faster than they were destroyed. And the tentacles on the surface were only a small part of this vast mythological creature; his true body was buried deep beneath the mantle, and would not be threatened by the rebel army in any way.

He wasn't being suppressed by mortals; he just wasn't fighting back.

And those survivors who were constantly trying to take back their homes… they really seemed like crabs charging against the endless ocean again and again…

On the morning of the sixth day after crashing on this planet, Nolan repaired all the ship's communication modules and part of the weapon systems, and at the same time began to try to activate her main engine. The engine was not completely repaired, but its main structure had been regenerated, and Nolan thought it could be tested for the first time.

"We should be able to fly tomorrow," Nolan seemed to be in a much better mood after successfully completing the test. She changed back to her long-lost 1:1 scale holographic image and reported to Hao Ren on the bridge, "Although I can't say I've recovered to my full strength, I at least have seventy or eighty percent of my combat power."

"That's pretty good," Hao Ren nodded sincerely with relief, "After all, you were almost blown in half before..."

Nolan's face suddenly fell when she heard this: "Can you not emphasize that... shipboard AIs have psychological shadows too, okay?"

Hao Ren rolled his eyes: "It would be great if this psychological shadow could stop you from giving me holographic paint jobs like 'Galaxy's Fastest' and 'Raucous Supreme' and embarrassing me all over the universe in the future."

Nolan's holographic image suddenly shrank a bit: "Just a little personal hobby, just a little personal hobby..."

Hao Ren curled his lips, not intending to argue with the ship girl about this, but turned to the large holographic projection in the center of the bridge, adjusting the screen to the observation of the lunar base: "Actually, there's one thing I still don't understand... When we crashed on this planet, we didn't hide our tracks at all. I believe the commotion when you fell could be seen even in space, so those people living in the space station and lunar base must have known about us a long time ago, but why haven't they taken any action yet? Even if they can't send people down to contact us, sending a reconnaissance plane to take a look should be possible, right?"

"That's a bit strange indeed," Nolan nodded in agreement when she heard this. "An alien spaceship of unknown origin that 'crashed' in their own home, no matter how you look at it, this is an issue that cannot be ignored. Those survivors in space can't be unaware of this, but..."

Nolan suddenly stopped halfway through her sentence, and Hao Ren looked at her curiously: "What's wrong?"

Nolan blinked: "That robot woke up... I mean, was repaired."

"Which... Ah, you mean the one in the lab?!" Hao Ren reacted immediately, and immediately threw aside the previous topic. "Quickly notify the others, go to the lab!"

The prediction data given by the lab's main computer before was indeed very accurate. The half-robot lady that Hao Ren picked up from the crash site lay on the repair workbench for exactly forty-eight hours, and completed the repair work on time just now, which was a rare good news in the past few days.

Hao Ren had tried to collect wreckage at other bombing sites these past two days, but he really gained nothing. Without Nolan's support, his range of activity on this planet was limited, and within this limited range, there had only been three rebel attacks and crash incidents in the past two days. The three crash sites were a mess. There were many scattered metal fragments, but there were probably no recoverable crew remains.

The First Born's counterattack was fierce and ruthless. Most of the wreckage that fell to the ground became debris. The half-robot lady that Lily encountered was completely a matter of luck. After two consecutive days of fruitless corpse retrieval failures, Hao Ren had to admit a fact: the husky girl was a European who could produce goods, while he himself... was destined to only salvage metal fragments.

Therefore, the female robot adjutant lying in the lab became Hao Ren's only hope.

The robot adjutant in the form of a girl lay quietly on the work platform. For the healthy growth of the majority of young people, Nolan had already let the autonomous machinery put a female crew uniform on her in advance (the kind that Lily wore on the spaceship when she was acting cool). Now she had all her limbs and complete skin. The bionic skin made her look no different from a healthy human girl. Unaware people would probably never think about how miserable she was brought to this lab two days ago.

She had her eyes closed, and a head of black hair spread out on the platform. Her slightly pale face was like a sculpted work of art, exquisite but lacking vitality. She was temporarily in a dormant state, but with just one command, she could open her eyes.

"It can't be considered a complete 'repair'. In fact, a large part of her structure is definitely different from when she left the factory," Nolan had already read the report from the lab's main computer, and was explaining at this time while standing beside her. "The analysis mainframe couldn't 'guess' what those completely lost parts originally looked like out of thin air, so it could only create some substitutes for her based on her remaining torso, including her limbs and part of her energy circuits. In order to ensure balance, her original remaining arm was directly discarded. But although they are substitutes, they should all work well on her body. The analysis mainframe studied her control module and wrote the driver program for all the body components according to her own logic circuits, so she will feel that her new limbs are as good as the original ones... probably."

"Can you not add that last 'probably'..." Hao Ren couldn't help but cover his forehead. "Forget it, in short, let's turn it on first."

The platform made some subtle buzzing sounds. The power-on command was input into the machine girl's core circuit through an external cable, and the latter's body trembled slightly. After a strange "beep" sound, the reborn robot lady opened her eyes.

A circle of large and small heads were arranged in a ring in her field of vision.

"Aww, she's awake, she's really awake!"

"Eee—I was planning to take her apart with a screwdriver if she didn't wake up..."

"Speaking of which, why isn't she talking? Nolan, did you confirm that you installed a speaker for her?"

"She's using a more high-end sound-producing device..."

A bunch of people were chattering and joining in the fun, but in the end Vivian made the final decision: "Don't make trouble, don't make trouble, I called you over to listen quietly—what's your name?"

Her last sentence was addressed to the mechanical girl lying on the platform.

N-6 turned her eyes, observing the people in front of her with surprise and curiosity...

Humans.