Chapter 1 Hao Ren's Discovery

Hao Ren led Lily and Vivian back to the Tortoise Rock, and as the ship gradually descended towards the equator of Aiur, Izhaks curiously inquired about their gains in the wreckage of the space station.

The Siren Queen immediately leaned in with concern.

"That was the Zarathustra, it didn't escape. It was destroyed in high orbit," Hao Ren shook his head. "There are a lot of penetrating wounds in the pipe junction area on the flanks and lower half of the starship, extending for more than several kilometers, all caused by artillery fire. We found an unexploded warhead in the ship—that unlucky thing almost ruined my hairstyle."

"Artillery?!" Izhaks didn't expect this result. "Was it not the First Born and the Mind Eaters that destroyed the Siren civilization, but a... mortal race that used artillery?"

"The First Born and the Mind Eaters are also mortal races. Although they are powerful, they are still essentially 'mortal'," Hao Ren first corrected Izhaks' statement as the "Chief Pope and Traffic Cop and Beat Cop certified by the True God." "Of course, I understand what you mean... being able to use artillery means that this race is definitely not the First Born, and it doesn't look like the Mind Eaters. Those big heads don't even wear clothes; they don't seem like a species that would use tools."

"Regardless of whether it was the artillery guys who destroyed Aiur, at least the Zarathustra was shot down by artillery," Vivian curled her lips. "Haa... this is really not good news. The situation is getting more and more complicated. The First Born and the Mind Eaters are already entangled, and now there's another high-tech race from an unknown origin. I don't know if they're with the First Born."

Hao Ren shrugged: "At least there's more and more information. To look at it another way, the more confused we are, the closer we are to the truth. The Dream Plane is so big, if all the clues are clear and obvious, I would suspect that I've gone astray."

Lily turned her head to look at Hao Ren and then at Vivian, and rubbed Hao Ren with her tail with distress: "I don't care about anything else, Landlord, you really stepped on my tail just now..."

Hao Ren: "..."

The Tortoise Rock plunged into the atmosphere, dragging a long, bright fiery cloud towards the vast sea. It didn't stay in the clear upper atmosphere for a few seconds before breaking into a cloud of torrential rain. The images from the external monitors showed thrilling thunderstorms and heavy rain. The heavy rain poured down as if the sea and the sky were upside down. The field of vision was full of a vast gray rain curtain, and thick lightning twisted and exploded in the rain curtain and clouds. Each time, it would crack a gap in the thick clouds, giving the feeling that the sky was connected to another water world, and now it was breaking countless cracks, about to plunge an entire ocean into Aiur.

"Whoa... your hometown's weather is not as gentle as your personality," Nangong Sanba exclaimed as he looked at the heavy rain outside the ship, and couldn't help but mutter to Soma next to him, "This heavy rain is like it will never stop."

"It really doesn't stop," Hao Ren turned back to look at Nangong Sanba. "Aiur is shrouded in almost perpetual precipitation. Sometimes it's heavy rain, sometimes it's heavy snow, depending on the angle of the sun. And near the equator, there is no winter, so it is always torrential rain. This rain has been falling continuously for many billions of years since the planet cooled down, and it will continue to do so. The entire planet has only cleared up less than ten times in recorded history, and only in some areas."

Nangong Sanba opened his mouth, strangely gesticulating in the air: "Uh... how does the water cycle?"

"Storms," Hao Ren pointed to another set of holographic projections. "Super-scale tornadoes, kilometer-high giant waves—these things, like the rain, haven't stopped for many years."

On the holographic projection, a huge column of water reached straight into the clouds. This was seawater swept into the sky by a tornado, a hundred times more spectacular than the largest "waterspout" phenomenon on Earth. As if sucked into the clouds by an invisible water pipe, tens of thousands of tons of seawater were continuously sent into the clouds, maintaining Aiur's perpetual torrential rain.

Such a thrilling storm planet, even if it had a bit of land, would be hard pressed to evolve any life. Only the deep sea could serve as the cradle of life: it was the only calm place on the entire planet.

"Did you find any enemies while scanning the planet?" Hao Ren looked at the control panel.

"This machine guarantees with its six corners that there are none," the data terminal said, popping out of the slot with a click. "Switching to autonomous driving... of course, the scanning accuracy is limited, so if there are a few stray Mind Eaters hiding here, I probably wouldn't find them, but the Mind Eater army you were worried about doesn't exist. No enemies, and no First Born, so we don't need to plow the entire planet with the main gun—although that does sound pretty cool."

The ship slowly approached the sea surface. This turbulent water planet completely presented its violent side to the visitors. The monstrous waves and torrential rain turned almost the entire world gray. And in this heavy rain, Hao Ren suddenly saw a strange object not far ahead: "Go over there, there seems to be something."

The data terminal magnified the monitor screen: "It's a platform, made of metal."

A silver-gray metal platform stood in the sea. Several thick alloy skeletons stably supported it hundreds of meters above the sea level, so that small-scale waves would hardly interfere with the upper part of the platform (on Aiur, waves below 100 meters are really small splashes). The facility was very large, enough for ten Tortoise Rocks to take off and land on it, and there were many closed buildings set up on the platform from top to bottom. The buildings were connected by pipes, and its age was probably quite old—Nasaton had been lying on Earth for more than ten thousand years and was still as good as new, but the platform in front of him looked mottled, as if it had been abandoned for a long time.

"This is a..." Hao Ren quickly consulted the data copied from Nasaton, but unfortunately, what he copied at that time was not a civilization seed bank after all. There was not a single word about the platform in front of him in the database. "Can't find it. I think it's something like an aircraft take-off and landing platform."

"No, it's a sea observation station, used to observe the 'air world'," Vivian pointed to a large character on a pillar of the platform. "Don't just look down at the database, it's written on it."

Hao Ren: "..."

"It's not easy for the Sirens to build a platform that can observe the atmosphere. This thing has to pass through ten kilometers of seawater to reach the surface of the planet. It is rooted on the seabed," the data terminal's voice was full of admiration. "And this is still a relatively shallow part of the seabed. Aiur's sea is much deeper than Earth's."

The ship circled around the large platform. On one side of it, everyone saw a huge, monument-like metal plate. The writing on it was still clearly legible, recording matters related to the platform:

"Ivena Observatory, rebuilt in 13086, in memory of Star Pioneer Ivena, in memory of the place where the Sirens first saw the stars. Thank you to the pioneers for their seven hundred years of perseverance on the observatory, ushering in the first clear sky in our history."

"This is the place where the Sirens first saw the stars," Hao Ren suddenly realized, and he looked at the thick clouds above Aiur. "They had to wait on the observation platform for hundreds or even thousands of years to see the stars once."

Lily hugged her arms: "I think the first time they saw the stars must have been an accident, and it was probably accompanied by panic. That Ivena should have been sketching the clouds, but the dark clouds suddenly dispersed, and the stars appeared, and the Sirens were surprised to realize that there was something else behind the endless clouds—before that, they probably never thought about what was outside their 'world'."

The Siren Queen looked at the platform standing in the wind and rain in a daze, and suddenly sighed softly: "This should have been our important history... but I can't even understand the words on it."

Hao Ren smiled: "It's okay, we'll help you relearn those words then."

Nangong Wuyue looked at the supports under the platform that had been standing for who knows how many years: "So the high-energy area we are looking for is right below here?"

"Directly below," the data terminal replied, and then the Tortoise Rock began to sink into the water. "This machine will put the weapon system online—although there are no troops here, it is hard to guarantee whether the Sirens left any defense firepower back then."