Chapter 1

Hao Ren was speeding across this desolate and bizarre planet in his official vehicle, which could do almost anything except transform into Optimus Prime. He watched as massive, ancient, dilapidated, and oppressive iron ruins flashed past the car window. They were currently passing by a colossal engine in a state of dormancy, resembling a strange, extinct volcano. Its shape was narrower at the top and wider at the bottom, like a mountain. Large pipes and alloy frames were visible on its black shell, along with old and mottled traces, probably rust caused by the planet's once-rich atmosphere.

Lily was glued to the car window, looking out. She sighed softly, "The machines are still alive, but the people are dead... Who created these things?"

"No signs of advanced life detected so far, only some microorganisms barely surviving in extreme underground environments," Hao Ren said, glancing at the car's control panel. Where the fuel gauge and mileage should have been, there was a floating virtual screen displaying complex radar charts and a communication interface with the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace. "The humans on this planet may have all died out... Or maybe they're hiding in some shelters, and we just haven't found them yet."

"The second possibility is unlikely," Vivian shook her head. "Gut feeling."

"You're saying these engines run automatically?" Hao Ren turned to look at Vivian.

Vivian shook her head again. "I don't understand engines. I just sense an atmosphere of death here... Vampires are sensitive to that."

The group didn't linger near the dormant engine, only circling slightly to take a few images before continuing on their way. The magnificent, mountain-like thruster was soon left behind. As they continued forward, passing more enormous pipes and iron ruins, they came across some other scattered structures that looked like watchtowers and bunkers—things that couldn't help but evoke images of a military base. It seemed that before those giant engines were completed, a war had taken place on this planet.

But all traces had been covered by thick ice and snow. Only these scattered ruins on higher ground were still visible above the ice. Unless they stopped for a detailed scan, it would be difficult to know what was hidden beneath the thick solid carbon dioxide and ordinary ice.

The car continued on, and the surroundings began to warm up. On the horizon, three blue-white flames shooting into the sky were clearly visible, along with the giant engines beneath them. The heat radiation from the plasma flames dispersed the cold within a certain range, allowing carbon dioxide to return to the atmosphere. It even melted the ordinary ice and snow within a certain area, and normal soil and rocks could finally be seen on the road.

A crackling sound came from outside the car window from time to time, the sound of strong winds carrying dust hitting the car shell: the operation of the giant engines caused dry ice and other substances in the vicinity to return to the atmosphere, and these heated and expanded gases cooled into ice crystals after rising and spreading to a distance. They were then swept back to the vicinity of the engines in the lower atmosphere, so sublimation-expansion-descent-cooling occurred over and over again, creating a never-ending peripheral wind. The area around the engines had become the only place on the planet with an atmosphere.

The engines were so huge that their operation even created phenomena resembling natural weather. However, the effects of these phenomena were quite limited, forming a "wind circle" around each engine. Beyond this ring-shaped wind zone, everything ahead returned to deathly stillness.

After continuing for a while, Hao Ren and his team unexpectedly discovered the ruins of a city.

The city was built on high ground, and because it was close to a functioning engine, the heat from the plasma flames melted the nearby ice and snow, preventing the city from being covered in white. At the request of the Nangong siblings, Hao Ren drove into the city ruins and saw well-ordered high-rise buildings everywhere. Although the style was very different from that on Earth, one could still appreciate the sophisticated planning and technologically advanced building designs, suggesting that a technologically powerful civilization once existed here.

And unlike those dark and gloomy engines, the city once had bright colors—the exterior walls of the buildings had detailed decorations, and colorful patterns resembling advertisements could be seen on the streets. Roofs, plazas, roads... all these places were not rigid. Hao Ren drove through the middle of a twin tower, and he saw that the shapes of the two buildings were like a pair of symmetrically growing plant buds, and the buildings were connected by slender and elegant arc-shaped sky bridges.

Buildings of this scale were common throughout the city ruins, and the styles varied. Some were elegant, others were as rough as those giant engines, and some were even hard to tell whether they were for living or simply decorations. Lily stared at the old buildings with her mouth open, imagining a sunny day when the alien city greeted a busy day in all its glory, the buildings covered in a glittering sheen, leisurely crowds wandering on the roads, and perhaps agile civilian aircraft shuttling between the buildings... But these imaginings receded like a tide, and all that remained before her was a lifeless scene.

Those empty buildings stood lifelessly in the darkness, silently facing the distant stars, welcoming the uninvited guests with rigid and cold faces.

And in the background of the city's buildings, the sky-piercing plasma beams split the entire night sky in two.

"No life signs," Hao Ren said, looking at the radar on the car. "And the city has been abandoned for a long time, I'd guess at least ten thousand years."

Hao Ren's statement was not just a random guess. He now had some knowledge and judgment in this area. He felt that the city should have been a product of before the engines were completed, because once those engines were activated, the planet would leave its orbit and enter space, and the natives of this planet obviously did not have the ability to heat their entire atmosphere while away from the sun—so after building the engines, they would have to abandon the cities on the surface and move to underground shelters or hibernation facilities.

And if the engines had not been activated ten thousand years ago, then everything would be even simpler: the residents of the city must have died in the world-ending disaster.

Vivian asked softly, "Why do you think they transformed their planet like this?"

"Obviously, it's for escape," Hao Ren looked at the huge plasma flames in the distance. "And I guess it's mostly due to the First Born... or the disaster caused by those Mind Flayers. Aside from an apocalyptic disaster, what else could drive a race to put their home planet on the road to wandering?"

Lily leaned on the back of Hao Ren's seat, rolled her eyes and thought for a while, then shook her head: "Obviously, their escape had problems."

Vivian was surprised by the husky's occasional flashes of inspiration: "How do you know?"

"Because this planet only set off a hundred years ago," Lily's ears twitched. "Nu Ling took the Nangong couple away a hundred years ago and teleported them to this planet. At that time, the starry sky in its memory was still seen near the pile of solar embers, which means that this planet was still in its solar system a hundred years ago and hadn't left. The doomsday disasters in this universe basically happened ten thousand years ago... so the escape plan of this planet obviously failed. Seriously, didn't you guys think of this?"

Vivian was very honest: "I just didn't think you could think of these things."

"I'm not stupid." Lily rolled her eyes and lay down on the seat, ignoring the bat.

Hao Ren looked at these two rivals bickering daily and smiled: "Lily is right, since this planet was going to escape, it should have set off ten thousand years ago. So something must have happened to it that caused it to stay in the original solar system for ten thousand years, until the Nangong couple were brought here before it suddenly started... The problem probably happened a hundred years ago."

The team wandered around the city for a while, but eventually left disappointed. There were no complex life signs here, nor were there any traces of humans living here in the short term. Although the whole city was shrouded in a relatively warm environment and liquid water and basic plants like moss could be found, it seemed that the parents of the Nangong siblings did not live here.

However, the Nangong siblings' mood was slightly uplifted: the environment in this city was obviously enough for a siren and a demon hunter to survive, although it was not comfortable, they could make do. And there was more than one such "habitable" area. Each engine that was spewing flames was likely to have the conditions for survival. Since they weren't in this city, they could continue to search.

Until they had searched the entire planet.

(I have to go out again today, so I have to put the update in the morning. Also, remind everyone to pay attention to the security of funds for online shopping. I heard that a reader was caught by a phishing website because they bought something online, and was scammed for 20,000. This world is really dangerous.)