Yuan Tong
Chapter 1582 Holy crap, what is that!
He received the message while eating breakfast the next day – Zorm had finally detected broadcast signals from the depths of space again, and this time, with the aid of the crystal resonance antenna, he successfully locked onto the source of the signal.
This news immediately excited everyone. Hao Ren put down his rice bowl on the spot and asked the data terminal to transfer the communication. Zorm's interactive image – this time a Shiba Inu meme – appeared in the holographic projection: "That communication frequency has appeared again! It's 22,000 light-years away from us, and this time the location is very clear!"
"Get all the drone swarms into the jump acceleration track, and Nolan, warm up the engine and prepare to set off," Hao Ren immediately ordered, then asked curiously, "Is the crystal resonance antenna working this time? Can it receive crystal signals from outer space?"
"This... I still can't receive them," Zorm's voice was also a bit confused, "I'm only receiving those communications from who-knows-who, as for crystal signals... apart from the ones we send out from here, I haven't detected any."
"It still doesn't work..." Hao Ren frowned, "It shouldn't be, isn't the antenna fine?"
"I've also studied the system you built, and the principle seems fine," Zorm sounded no less puzzled than Hao Ren, "And I'm using this antenna now, and it clearly has no problems with its receiving ability."
Hao Ren clicked his tongue as if he had a toothache: "The hardware is all fine, the principle is as simple as a straight line, but it just can't receive the signals that should be clear and unmistakable. This is a metaphysical problem..."
Lily was currently rolling up a whole bowl of noodles on her chopsticks, gnawing on them as hard as she would a chicken leg, and when she heard this, she raised her head and howled, "Landlord, aren't you, the Pope, the big boss of the metaphysical world? Even you get screwed by metaphysics sometimes?"
Meanwhile, Nangong Sanba seriously considered it and suddenly came up with an idea: "Crystal signals can only be sent out from this planet, but can't be transmitted in from the outside... could it be a feng shui... no, a geographical problem?"
"You mean this planet or this planetary system is blocking the entry and exit of crystal resonance signals?" Hao Ren was immediately inspired. He had to admit that although Nangong Sanba was a weakling, his "hunter intelligence analysis" skill point was actually quite high. "That's definitely possible... but why? What's so special about this planet? I can't see anything..."
The data terminal chimed in, "It's indeed just an ordinary temperate ecological planet, and the planetary system itself has no anomalies. The only thing worth noting is that there's a Progenitor inside this planet... but basically any ecological planet in the Dream Plane has a Progenitor. Ah, what's more special is that this place was hit by a crystal once, and it also made the local Progenitor stupid... Could it be because of this that the crystal resonance signals from outer space are bypassing this planet?"
"I don't think it would be such a trivial reason," Hao Ren frowned and waved his hand, standing up. "Forget it, we can study this matter slowly. The top priority now is to go to the 'communication source' that Zorm just found. Maybe it's another civilization of survivors, and it sounds like they're still quite lively, which isn't easy."
Hao Ren meant that finding a lively group of survivors in the Dream Plane was extremely rare, but Lily wagged her tail and shook her head, muttering, "Yeah, it seems like we don't have to collect corpses this time..."
Hao Ren grabbed the tail of this husky and yanked it hard: "Eat your food properly! Don't bring up bad memories!"
Everyone knew that in a normal set of monster girl settings, the inevitable result of a creature with a tail being grabbed by the tail would be a shy face, a weak body, and hazy eyes – but there were no normal guys around Hao Ren, so Lily's reaction was to quickly finish off the last of the noodles and then jump up to say she was going to bite someone...
But she was suppressed back down by the second bowl of noodles that Vivian had given her.
Nolan quickly completed the preparations for departure – in fact, if it was just going out for a spin, she wouldn't need to prepare at all. She would just step on the gas and take off without hesitation, but Hao Ren, by analyzing the communication content received earlier, judged that the people who sent out the calls were likely in danger. Whether they were threatened by a mad Progenitor or something else, they had to be prepared to go and fight.
Therefore, Nolan spent a little time calibrating her fire control system to ensure that this most important piece of equipment was in the best condition.
"This time only a few of us can go," Standing next to the Tortoise Rock Platform, Hao Ren looked at Vivian standing beside him and Doudou nestled in Vivian's arms, as well as the Asu Man Crystal floating not far away waiting to get on the ship, and sighed a little helplessly, "Before we can deal with the Godly power blockade, it looks like you can only stay on this planet."
"Staying at the base to watch the house is super boring," Lily was obviously a little unhappy, and even her tail drooped listlessly. As a husky, being unable to join in the fun twice in a row had greatly dampened her enthusiasm, "When will that deadly Godly power blockade outside be turned off..."
Vivian glanced at the husky girl: "Isn't guarding the house your old profession?"
Lily immediately glared back: "Have you no common sense! My family made their fortune pulling sleds!"
Vivian: "..."
It always felt like this dog was invincible after completely letting go of herself. The provocation methods that used to be so effective were now becoming less and less powerful...
"It's not bad to watch the house," Yizaks finally stood up and said, "The Messenger sent a message saying that they will send a batch of people down to try to make first contact with the gentrified Planetary Devourer, and also to examine the environment on the surface of the mother planet. We can at least receive them if we stay here."
Hao Ren nodded: "Then I'll leave this place to you."
A dozen minutes later, the Tortoise Rock Platform had broken through the Messenger's mother planet's thick atmosphere and entered the vast universe.
In the vast space between the Earth and the Moon, a large number of temporary giant facilities had been built. In addition to the most conspicuous crystal resonance antenna that looked like several towers entwined together, the most numerous of these temporary facilities were things related to the drone swarm – drone armed fortresses, command centers, assembly workshops, hangars, and beacon towers. These things formed a complex three-dimensional structure in space, like a loosely stacked space city.
A huge acceleration track extended from the edge of this "space city." Calling it a "track," it actually looked more like a dozen parallel rings arranged from large to small. These rings were arranged one after another, forming a continuous structure with a total length of more than hundreds of kilometers, and a large number of armed drones had already gathered in front of the largest ring at the starting point of the track, densely packed, like a swarm of insects.
This kind of track looked like a "slingshot device" used to directionally launch solid units to somewhere in the universe, but in fact, its function was much more complex and complete than that. Its multiple ring structure was not used to increase the flight speed of the "projectiles," but to increase the speed of the units passing through it. Each ring had an independent space conversion computer and was equipped with high-power coordinate reorientation equipment. They could temporarily erase the coordinates of the "projectiles" passing through them in the three-dimensional world, so that the latter could omit most of the calculation process and start-up loss during hyperspace jumps, allowing the "projectiles" to initiate jumps with extremely low consumption, and without worrying about the additional energy loss caused by a large number of units simultaneously starting jump engines in the same direction.
Obviously, the jump acceleration track was definitely not a "directional launch" device.
Under favorable conditions, having the drone swarm build a jump acceleration track would greatly improve the efficiency of delivering combat units, but this device had obvious shortcomings – that was, only vehicles that themselves had jump capabilities could use it. If it was a conventional-powered spacecraft...
The only outcome of them entering the rings would be to have their coordinates in the real world erased, thereby becoming a permanent quantum ghost, wandering in the prime material plane until the end of the world to be liberated.
Nolan slowly adjusted direction and found her position in the gap that the drone swarm had deliberately left, and then followed this mighty "escort legion" into the first ring of the acceleration track.
"Jump engine activated, acceleration track connection established."
Vivian unconsciously stroked Doudou's little head: "What do you think we'll see when we get there?"
"Judging from the communication content, the people who sent the communications are a group of recluses or people on the run, and the communication technology they use is likely inseparable from those resonance crystals... so to be honest, I think it's probably not the Progenitor who is threatening them," Hao Ren said, "Resonance crystals are the nemesis of corrupted Progenitors, so what's threatening those 'survivors' is probably something even more dangerous."
"When did you think of this?"
"Just now," Hao Ren grinned, "I don't know if it counts as intuition, but I always feel that this suddenly emerging communication source is related to that war that I don't know where it's being fought... after all, it's connected to the resonance crystals."
Vivian didn't respond, just watched the acceleration rings presented on the holographic projection get bigger and bigger, and bloom with bright light.
Each ring of the acceleration track began to glow, and strands of light connected between the rings to form parallel lines, and within each ring, the light film rippled like the surface of water, reflecting distorted and turbulent starlight.
The Tortoise Rock Platform and the drone swarm began to accelerate together, entering this array of rings.
Every time they passed through a ring, the figures of the drone swarm and the spacecraft blurred by one point. Their speed became faster and faster, and their figures became more and more transparent. By the time they reached the last ring, the entire fleet had disappeared without a trace.
After a short minute of jump – unbelievably fast compared to conventional jumps – the space around the Tortoise Rock Platform brightened again.
"All drones activate stealth operation modules and disperse in place to set up a position." Hao Ren said quickly as he turned on the ship's super-light search device – the coordinates provided by Zorm were a dynamic value, and the deviation was about two astronomical units. In addition, in order to prevent falling into an unfavorable situation after jumping into the destination, Hao Ren had deliberately deviated the jump target point further, so after the end of the jump, he first needed to find and lock onto where his target was.
At this distance, the Tortoise Rock Platform's own search equipment could easily find the target.
Sure enough, Nolan's holographic projection popped up after a few seconds: "Found it! Thirty-two light-minutes away on the flank of the fleet!"
Hao Ren and Vivian said in unison: "Bring up the image."
The image of the cosmic starry sky on the holographic projection flashed, and a huge structure, like a fragment of a celestial body, appeared in Hao Ren's field of vision.
Also appearing was an army surrounding this celestial wreckage.
Hao Ren: "What the hell is that!"