Chapter 1 Back from Ankatro Territory

After returning from the Ankatro Territory, Hao Ren found that he couldn't settle down at home as peacefully as he usually did. In the past, no matter how intense or thrilling his work trips were, as soon as he got home, he would always return to his carefree, day-to-day life. He would fuss over the cat, go fishing, walk the dog, and create nutritional plans for the monsters and demons in his house based on animal documentaries. Life would simply pass by in this ordinary way. But this time, he couldn't calm down: the divine blood sin and the god-slaying memories kept stirring in his heart, making him see the scene of the Creation Goddess falling every time he closed his eyes. This forced him to throw himself into his work, as if he had suddenly become diligent.

Although he doubted whether his abilities could extract anything from the Golden Discs, he felt that as long as he kept himself busy with work, he could at least calm his mind.

The Crystal Core Research Station.

Hao Ren had been frequently visiting this space station in the past few days to observe the state of the Golden Discs. He had sent both discs to the space station's comprehensive laboratory, where he was conducting a series of tests and structural analysis.

Most of the time, he would come alone or with Vivian to check on things, but today, everyone at home was free, and even Nangong's parents' small restaurant was closed for the day. So, a large group of monsters and demons came along to the Crystal Core Research Station: everyone wanted to see what Hao Ren had been busy with recently.

Even "Gun" came along—she wasn't curious about Hao Ren's work; she just felt that if everyone went out, no one would feed her, so she came along to wait for food.

The Golden Discs were placed in one of the larger laboratories, a huge oval room located beneath the second crystal tower of the Crystal Core Research Station. Like the rest of the space station, the room was made of translucent crystal, filled with flowing light and strange sounds, like a mysterious crystal cave. In the center of the laboratory were newly built suspended platforms, with two semi-transparent crystal platforms, each over ten meters in diameter. The Golden Discs hovered above these platforms, undergoing a series of external stimuli to verify their operating mechanisms.

Around the Golden Discs were numerous crystal prisms floating in the air, slowly rotating around the platforms. These crystal prisms were connected by light, seemingly scattered, but actually forming a precise sensor array.

"Time: xxxxxx, seventeenth resonance phenomenon test, all recording devices are online, energizing the main energy emitter in one minute."

The laboratory mainframe reported the status of the test project in a stiff, synthesized voice. The platforms below the two Golden Discs lit up, and tiny sparks began to jump along the prisms around the discs. A strange鸣响 and a bizarre sound like wind echoed in the room. Hao Ren and Vivian stood closest to the discs, curiously observing what would happen next. Behind them, Lily and Gun were squatting bored, competing to see who could wag their tail faster. They were always excited when they came, but once the serious stuff started, they basically became useless.

"Did you two come here just to play with your tails?" May looked at Lily and Gun with her hands on her hips. "It's one thing for the cat to have just become a spirit, but Lily, how old are you?"

"What else is there to do besides play with my tail?" Lily said with perfect confidence. "I don't understand what the landlord is doing anyway—what's so interesting about these two discs? He even brought us along to watch. I thought there would be something else fun to do, but all he does is charge these two things."

Hearing Lily's words, Hao Ren casually explained, "I've recently discovered some strange phenomena with these two Golden Discs."

"Phenomena?" Nangong Wuyue asked curiously.

"They resonate, and they produce different resonance patterns under different conditions, like tuning forks transmitting sound waves to each other," Hao Ren said, pointing to the discs. "When one of them is bombarded with energy, the other sometimes replicates the exact same energy release, and sometimes it absorbs the energy from the opposite disc out of nowhere, but no matter what, there's no visible channel of energy flow between them."

"What strange things," Wuyue said, scratching her head. She regretfully said that she couldn't understand at all. "Is there any significance to this?"

"The Golden Discs don't operate independently. Dumen Dusa said that there were other Golden Discs in the Creation Engine core, and he also said that many discs didn't have time to be assembled during the explosion of the Divine Kingdom, and they were still stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Divine Kingdom. So, we suspect that more discs were scattered into the depths of the universe during the Divine Kingdom explosion. These discs should all be able to resonate with each other," Vivian replied for Hao Ren. "Two discs don't show much, but what if more discs are put together, and they resonate with each other?"

Lily tilted her head and thought for a moment, "Like arguing?"

"You should just keep playing with your tail," Hao Ren sighed, and then said his thoughts, "If we collect more scattered discs, we can probably deduce the power, range, and mode of the Divine Kingdom explosion. I'm planning to build something like an antenna based on the resonance phenomenon between the two discs, to search for this kind of resonance signal throughout the universe. These tests in the past few days are to figure out the resonance pattern and how to amplify and transmit these signals."

Lily perked up her ears. She understood a little bit: "Use them as signal sources to find other discs? Have you made any progress?"

"Unfortunately, not much," said the Data Terminal, who was Hao Ren's technical director. It floated up and replied, "The operating process of this thing is completely supernatural, and it even violates the physical laws of the current universe. It's quite troublesome to operate this kind of thing. Currently, this unit can only make these signals spread within the Crystal Core Research Station, which is a little bit away from the expected goal."

"That's basically useless," Lily rolled her eyes. "I can spread my voice throughout the space station by howling loudly here."

Hao Ren ignored Lily's strange logic, he just muttered in his heart: After realizing that the operation of the Golden Disc was more complex and profound than he had imagined, he became more and more suspicious of the artifact called "Creation Engine". Its core was operating in a way that exceeded the current universe's laws, so the purpose for which that thing was designed was probably not to interfere with the current world - or at least there were other purposes, purposes that were unrelated to the universe of the Dream Plane.

It's like someone put a telescope in their house, but the telescope pointed neither at the sky nor at the girls' dormitory, but at a completely empty place. Then you can't help but doubt the use of this telescope. The core component of the Creation Engine was actually operating in a way that violated the laws of the current universe, so Hao Ren also suspected this engine… Was it really designed to deal with the problems of the Dream Plane?

Lily saw that Hao Ren wasn't saying anything, and muttered boredly, "The landlord's been acting strangely lately…"

Gun suddenly meowed and pointed at Lily's tail: "Your tail isn't moving! I win! You owe me two bags of dried fish!"

Looking at their carefree appearance, Hao Ren couldn't help but sigh: The life of a cat and dog is so happy.

The test of the Golden Disc was not as interesting as imagined, it was just a mechanical release of energy, collection of data, summary comparison and then a loop again, a group of people were originally excited to see what new things could make Hao Ren, a lazy man, work diligently for several days, but after watching the light and shadow effects for a while, everyone got bored. "Gun" was the first to become impatient, after Lily didn't play with her, she finally couldn't help but scratch Hao Ren's clothes: "Big cat, food? Food?朕's food?!"

"So I said, this place is quite boring, I really don't know why you had to come and watch," Hao Ren bent down to pick up Gun, let her stand upright first and then consider feeding her, and smiled helplessly at the others, "But I'm also hungry, let's go to the cafeteria to eat something first, the remaining test items here are all automatically completed by the system, no need to watch."

Lily became truly energetic when she heard this, and immediately howled and dragged everyone to eat. Hao Ren was also dragged by the husky spirit, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and while following the team, he turned his head to look at Vivian, who was still standing next to the disc: "Vivian, what are you still standing there for? Let's go eat something first."

Vivian suddenly woke up from a trance, she didn't know how her attention was completely attracted by the Golden Disc just now, and only then did she come back to her senses: "Oh, oh, eating, I'm coming."