Chapter 1 Underworld

Under the bright exit guidance beams of the Kuiper Station, the Great Tortoise Rock Terrace patrol ship left the space station smoothly and quickly, now rapidly departing from the shielded area of this civilian port. After activating autopilot, there was nothing for Hao Ren to do, so he went to another console and casually switched the display mode around the bridge. The holographic images that originally showed various parameters and space station broadcast information quickly retreated, and the alloy armor plate in front of the bridge seemed to become transparent, presenting a real-time view of outer space: a vast darkness all around, distant stars twinkling in the far distance, and the rapidly moving space station building in the lower side of the picture—the ship was adjusting its heading.

Lili fiddled with the seats and the incomprehensible equipment next to them for a while, then jumped down from the seat and circled around, and then stared at the starry sky and howled with emotion. She was infinitely cheerful in the limited space. Anyway, the spacecraft's mainframe had intelligently locked all the key control panels, and no one except the captain could control any equipment here, so Hao Ren let this husky run around. Vivian looked at the distant stars with a face full of emotion: "I longed for the starry sky a long time ago... I told you, right? I almost hung myself on an American rocket back then, wanting to go to outer space to see what the stars are like, but I didn't expect... that this dream would come true today."

Hao Ren looked at Vivian curiously: "You really are a different kind. Do any other vampires have the same dream of going to space as you?"

"Most of them are fools, sick in the head and shortsighted," Vivian made no secret of her contempt for most of her kind. "All they know is to pursue their own power, or indulge in those troublesome banquets and etiquette. No one ever looks up to pay attention to space. What a big world it is outside. I don't know why, but I just long for the starry sky, just like you humans yearn for the ability to travel among the stars... maybe my wings are just born a little bigger than others?"

Hilda was sitting next to Vivian, and her face was obviously a little dim when she heard the topic of the starry sky, but no one around her noticed.

Lili couldn't stay on the bridge for long. After finding out which areas of the ship she could move around in, she asked Hao Ren for a map and scurried out, saying she wanted to explore this high-tech gadget. Izhaks looked worriedly at the direction Lili ran off to and said to Hao Ren, "Is it okay to let her run around like that? This isn't a place to play around..."

"It's okay, it's okay," Hao Ren had already experienced these crazy high-tech things. He had full confidence in the intelligence of the ship's mainframe and data terminal, and he was even more convinced that this ship could provide any passenger with a 100% free activity environment. "All the key parts have safety protection, and there are autonomous machines like squids patrolling everywhere on the ship. Lili can't break anything just by running around."

Izhaks shrugged: "Sometimes you spoil her too much."

"Nonsense, isn't that the way huskies are, whether you spoil them or not?"

At this moment, the gate at the entrance of the bridge made a soft hissing sound. Lili didn't know where she had run for a circle, but she came back, and this girl had changed her clothes. No one knew where she had gotten them. It was a uniform with a white base, blue trim, and light gray decorative patterns, and it was a men's uniform that was obviously a size too big for Lili. The husky was wearing this outfit and couldn't even get her hands out. The trouser legs dragged on the ground when she walked, looking ridiculous and funny, but she was still excited: "Landlord, landlord, do I look like a female captain..."

Hao Ren was stunned: "Where did you find this outfit?"

"I don't know!" Lili tugged at the waistband of this oversized uniform and ran over, "I ran into a machine squid wiping the floor at the crossroads, and asked it if there were any handsome aviation suits on the ship, and then it brought me this..."

The data terminal was enjoying the pleasure of commanding a starship in the slot, and at this time it lazily spared time to explain to Hao Ren: "It's your captain's uniform. There are more than two hundred sets in the warehouse. Because it's not an important material, anyone with visitor access can claim them."

Hao Ren nodded, and then realized: "What do you mean by more than two hundred sets?!"

The data terminal replied without hesitation: "Enough for you to wear until you die."

At this time, Lili was still jumping happily, showing off her new clothes to Vivian: "Do you think it's handsome? Do you think it's handsome?"

Vivian turned her face away and ignored this idiot. Hao Ren looked at Lili's actions with great emotion: he vaguely remembered that when he first saw the animated version of Space Battleship Yamato when he was in elementary school, he was like Lili for a while, yearning for such a silly or auspicious starship uniform, imagining himself as a spaceship repairman or captain or fighter pilot or something else that could appear on the main cast list—in summary, Lili is really an innocent and lovely girl...

Lili made a fuss for a while and then calmed down, lying on the seat and looking at the stars, but soon she had no stars to look at: the ship had completely left the dense celestial zone, and now it switched to superluminal cruising mode. The starlight on the external real scene twisted for a while, and then quickly formed a bizarre tubular channel of redshift-blueshift phenomenon. With a burst of buzzing from some equipment deep in the ship, the space around the ship finally closed completely, and the twisted starlight disappeared, leaving only a pitch black.

"The next stop is the World Gate, it won't take too long." The data terminal's voice entered everyone's ears through the bridge broadcast.

Lili lay on the seat in a daze for a while, then suddenly reached out to Hao Ren: "Landlord, are there any laptops or anything like that here?"

"Just install a plug-in on the console in front of you," Hao Ren looked at Lili strangely, "but what do you want a laptop for?"

"I have some feelings, I want to write something," Lili said seriously, "I still owe the magazine an article."

Hao Ren asked the data terminal to switch the console in front of Lili to the corresponding mode, while muttering with a strange expression: "Why do I feel so wrong when you say you want to write something..."

Lili had been as cheerful as... well, never mind, she's already a husky, does she need any extra adjectives? In short, no matter what, her image didn't seem to have anything to do with writers and poets, but Lili didn't think so. She was wearing an extra-large uniform and nestled in an even larger seat, with a serious expression and a look of concentration on her face, and began to outline her words, while arguing with Hao Ren: "Landlord, you're judging people by their appearance. You don't know that most people who really calm down to write are a little crazy. Those who have to burn incense, listen to light music, and insist on using an old Shanghai fountain pen before writing are just pretending. They can't sell their articles and can only package themselves as performance art and then go to schools to attend conferences to earn appearance fees. True writing should come from true feelings. Only by maintaining a free heart can you write a lively article. I can only maintain my strong creativity by indulging myself..."

Vivian really couldn't listen anymore, and knocked hard on the armrest of the seat: "Can you stop being so pretentious when you write a dog column for a pet magazine?"

Hao Ren: "..."

Lili suddenly bristled: "Who said I can only write dog columns! Back in the Republic of China, I also wrote lyrical and progressive articles, okay! I only started writing for pet magazines in the past two years because I found that more and more people are willing to spend money on raising dogs..."

This voyage didn't take much time, because the route was very direct, from Kuiper Station directly to the World Gate. While Lili was busy analyzing which of the latest dog food brands had better flavors in her article, the ship arrived at its destination.

The World Gate, a unique facility built by the Xiling God System, is, as the name suggests, a gate for traveling to other worlds. Unlike space jumps within this universe, jumping from one universe to another has extremely high technical requirements: the two universes often differ in basic rules, and some worlds do not even have the four basic forces—they rely on other rules to maintain the entire universe. In addition, the endless void between universes is also a chasm for most mortal races, so inter-world travel is difficult for most civilizations to achieve. The Xiling Apostles have the ability to travel between worlds, so in order to facilitate the management of the macro-world, and also to facilitate the exchange of resources between the many civilizations under their rule, they built this magnificent facility called "World Gate" in every universe of the macro-world.

There are two types of World Gates, one built on the surface of a planet for small-scale personnel movement, and the other is a huge device built in space, which can allow an entire fleet or even an entire planet to jump into other universes. Hao Ren has now arrived at the second type of World Gate.

When the warped space outside the ship returned to its original state, starlight reappeared in everyone's vision, and the miraculous building that had only been heard of before appeared in front of Hao Ren for the first time.