Chapter 1 Vivian's Multifunctionality

While it wasn't very nice to say so, Hao Ren sincerely felt that Vivian was the most versatile of all the demons and monsters in his house. Lily could only do manual labor (and even that wasn't guaranteed to be reliable), May only knew how to do laundry, and Old Wang was only useful when the gas tank ran out. As for Gungnir… Gungnir's only purpose was to take care of the fish. In comparison, Vivian was practically a jack-of-all-trades, skilled in everything from entertaining guests to cooking, cleaning, sewing, and sweeping. Moreover, she could serve as an air conditioner when it was hot and as a power source when there was a power outage. Especially as a power source—this function had been discovered by Lily not long ago, and everyone in the house unanimously agreed that it was extremely practical. Now, everyone went out without carrying portable power banks and chargers. Whenever their phones or other devices ran out of power, they would simply stuff them into Vivian's hand, which had become a habit.

Hao Ren handed the cable to Vivian, who immediately pouted. "Why do I always have to do this kind of thing?"

But despite her complaints, she habitually conjured a small, electrified bat, stuck one end of the cable into its mouth, and bit down on the other end herself, rolling her eyes helplessly. "Opening the door now, stay back, be careful of the air currents…"

The others immediately found protrusions on the nearby bulkhead to secure themselves or simply ran out of the ramp. Hao Ren, on the other hand, grabbed the cut-off steel frame behind Vivian, holding onto her arm with his other hand to prevent the air currents from blowing them away when the gate opened (because judging from the state of the spaceship, it was difficult to determine whether its airlock could still function properly). After confirming that everyone was ready, Vivian and her little bat exerted force simultaneously, and a series of small sparks immediately erupted from between her teeth.

Immediately afterward, something resembling a relay popped on the substrate to which the other end of the cable was connected. Hao Ren felt a slight vibration in his hand, and then the seemingly heavy gate trembled and opened.

A large number of complex mechanical locks operated, and the gate slowly split into multiple thick steel plates that receded to the sides. However, as the gate opened, no air rushed out from inside. Hao Ren saw a dim space on the other side of the gate, with only a few incomplete lights flickering in the darkness, outlining some strange silhouettes.

Accompanied by an even stronger vibration, the gate suddenly jammed after opening only one-fifth of the way. Vivian squeezed her bat hard, trying to send the door-opening signal again, but there was no response.

"Mechanical failure; looks like this door can only open this far," Hao Ren stopped Vivian from trying to increase the voltage. He carefully approached the gate, confirmed that it would not suddenly close again, and then peered inside. "Hmm, the width is enough. Everyone, go in, quickly, and try not to touch anything."

The group filed into the dark space through the gap in the gate. Although there were only a few incomplete lights behind the gate (and these lights did not seem to be specifically for illumination), fortunately, the people present had special eyesight and could still see. After entering the gate, Hao Ren immediately looked deeper inside. Sure enough, he saw another gate about several dozen meters away, and even worse: that gate was open.

"No air currents," Vivian released a small bat, which flapped its wings in the air but could not fly out. "Unless the people inside this ship don't need to breathe."

"They definitely need to breathe, because this is an airlock. Look at the structure of these two gates," Hao Ren pointed to the gate on the opposite side, which seemed to be open due to mechanical failure. "The airlock has failed. I didn't feel any air currents when I opened the outermost door just now. I'm worried that this place has completely lost pressure, and there's probably a relatively large leak somewhere else."

As he spoke, he took the lead in floating forward. Of course, he knew that perhaps the situation wasn't so bad: this was a giant ship more than a hundred kilometers long, almost a mini artificial planet. It was impossible for it to rely solely on this one airlock to connect with the outside world. Perhaps they had just happened to enter through one of the failed airlocks. They should encounter other blocking facilities ahead. If they did, there might still be survivors on this ship.

But as they continued to delve deeper into the giant ship, the situation began to become increasingly pessimistic.

They advanced through the huge, dilapidated steel corridors, seeing only ancient equipment that had long exceeded its service life and broken things along the way. The ship's internal lighting seemed to have completely failed, leaving only emergency indicator lights that occasionally flickered like will-o'-the-wisps in the darkness. They found some devices similar to terminals along the way, but due to the total system power failure, even activating these devices with Vivian's external power supply was useless.

"Could everyone inside be dead?" Nangong Wuyue carefully crawled along some huge pipes in the corridor, using her long tail to wrap around the ubiquitous protrusions to ensure that her body was always in contact with something, which gave her a great sense of security. "I can't feel any living water. Within a few kilometers, all I can feel is ice—ice without any life."

Hao Ren didn't say anything, but he increasingly felt the gloomy and oppressive atmosphere here. He kept the data terminal sharing its senses with him so that he could see the deep layers of the surrounding steel corridors at any time, but all he saw were various stalled electronic systems and mechanical devices. It seemed that all of the ship's internal equipment had crashed, except for the ship's own thrusters, which were still running.

Finally, after passing through countless faulty gates and forks in the road, they arrived at a fairly wide area, which seemed to be a transportation hub, shaped like an oval egg, where passages from all directions converged, forming a "waiting hall" of sorts. The lighting situation here was slightly better than in other places; perhaps the backup generator was still running, and a third of the lights in the hall were working normally.

There were many vertical, huge pillars in the center of the hall. Hao Ren initially thought they were supporting parts of the building, but when he walked over, he realized that they were actually things like elevators: seemingly leading to the interior space of the ship.

"All broken… or maybe it's because of the power outage," Nangong Sanba stepped forward and patted the control panels at the entrances of several "elevators." "But it seems like we can only go down from this kind of place."

Hao Ren thought for a moment and patted Lily's head. "Cut this open."

Lily immediately raised Fire Very Happy and stepped forward with great joy, but before cutting, she turned her head to confirm. "Are you sure?"

"Scanned it; no life signs below," Hao Ren pointed to the data terminal next to him. "At least no life signs within several kilometers."

Lily had no more questions. She immediately waved her claws and slashed wildly at the "elevator pillars," sparks flying everywhere. Soon, she cut down the entire door of one of the elevators, revealing the dark tunnel inside. Hao Ren leaned his head down and took a look, finding a dim, vertical shaft below, but he couldn't see where the elevator car was.

Vivian took out a small bat to scout the way. Considering that there was no air here, the bat couldn't fly down on its own, so she also took out a slingshot. After roughly aiming, she used the slingshot to launch her bat clone down.

A moment later, a wisp of blood energy floated up from the dark shaft. Vivian reabsorbed the blood energy back into her body. "Safe. Below is a very long elevator shaft. There are some cracks in the middle of the shaft that we can exit from."

Hao Ren checked his shield and took the lead in entering the shaft.

He continued to descend along the shaft, with only dim directional lights emitting some dying light around him. But after continuing to descend for a while, he saw some brighter light coming from below. The light invigorated him, and he immediately accelerated to get closer.

Just like Vivian said, there were several cracks beside the elevator shaft. These cracks seemed to have been torn open by the twisting and deformation of the ancient steel supports around them. Some light shone in from the cracks, and the outside seemed to be a brighter place.

Hao Ren gestured to his companions behind him, signaling everyone to be vigilant. Then, he was the first to squeeze through the crack that was wide enough for an adult to pass through.

The scene outside stunned him.

He saw a city.

A silent city in dim light.

"Landlord, landlord, what did you see, what did you see?" Lily's boisterous voice came from the communicator. Hao Ren felt a furry head bump into him from behind, and Lily clumsily crawled out of the crack in the elevator shaft. Then, the husky girl and Hao Ren were stunned on the spot.

"Wow! A space fortress!"