Chapter 155 Different?

"Different? How so?" Vivian looked up at Hao Ren. "Because this one's an infant?"

"Not just an infant," Hao Ren said, looking at the surrounding tentacles and remains of biological tissue. "The First Born we saw in the Dream Plane was closer to some kind of plant, and it had already precisely differentiated into various functions, like the forest on the surface, the tentacles in the rock layers, the 'heart' buried underground, and various nerve nodes. But this one in front of us looks like it hasn't fully evolved, giving the impression that it's just an embryo."

Nangong Wuyue added from the side, "And how this thing ran from the Dream Plane to this world is a big problem too."

Hao Ren raised his head, looking around the hall. This was the central hub of the spaceship, and many passages could be seen around, leading to unknown places. The "First Born's" tentacles spread out along those passages, and he estimated that some of its organs could be found elsewhere. He thought for a moment and decided to split up: "Let's split up, it'll be more efficient that way. If you find anything, contact each other immediately."

Everyone agreed. Finally, they divided into groups. Lily teamed up with Hao Ren, Izhaks and his daughter with Lanina, and Vivian and Nangong Wuyue together. After a rigorous process of coin flips, rock-paper-scissors, and spinning a stick, they determined three directions and left the hall separately.

Lily held the Fiery Wonder and happily led the way. Her playful nature flared up, and she wasn't afraid at all. Hao Ren followed behind the husky girl, cautiously paying attention to the surroundings as they moved forward. After leaving the hall, they had explored a long distance, discovering some empty cabins. However, the cabins were either empty or only contained ordinary tentacles, so they weren't of much value.

Lily was very interested, picking up anything rare in the spaceship and stuffing it into her pockets. Before they had gone far, she had filled all her pockets until they were bulging, and in the end, she could only dump her loot into Hao Ren's dimensional pocket. The amount of Wang's treasure increased rapidly at a rate visible to the naked eye. Hao Ren looked at the girl and couldn't understand. "Collecting stones can still be considered appreciating odd rocks, but what's the point of picking up broken pieces of iron?"

Lily said with a straight face, "It doesn't matter if it's useful or not, I'll take it back to my nest first. It's common sense for werewolves!"

Hao Ren: "..." The werewolves in Lily's concept must include the sled dogs in the Arctic Circle...

The two of them walked forward while chatting idly, and finally found another empty room. The entrance of the room was almost completely blocked by tentacles. Without Hao Ren's instructions, Lily waved her claws happily and started cutting grass, clearing away the withered and decaying remains in a few strokes. Hao Ren held up the data terminal and shone it into the room. "It doesn't seem like there's anyth... Wait! There's something!"

The data terminal's faint blue light flickered in the room, and a reflective object immediately caught Hao Ren's attention. He quickly floated in and dug the thing out from a pile of vines, finding that he was right: it was a small device, and it looked intact.

The two of them had felt something was wrong for a long time, because the rooms they passed were basically empty except for tentacles. The huge spaceship was as clean as if it had just left the factory, giving the impression that this wasn't a sudden disaster, but an orderly evacuation. And now they had finally found something interesting.

The small device was only the size of a palm, shaped like an oval cake, with a smooth surface but no buttons visible. Hao Ren asked the data terminal to identify it: "See what this is."

The data terminal floated over and scanned it. "It seems to be a foreign friend of this machine..."

"Huh?"

"Oh, this machine says this thing seems to be a data processing device, similar to a PDA, but I don't know which civilization made it."

Hao Ren immediately became excited. "Can you read it?"

"That's more difficult," the data terminal circled the small device twice, then went up and touched its outer shell. "Hey, hey, buddy, are you alive?"

After touching it a few times without any response, the data terminal shook its body regretfully. "It's dead."

Hao Ren conveniently took out a piece of alloy brick from his dimensional pocket and aimed it at the data terminal. "If you mess around again, do you believe I'll give you a crisp one? Want to compare hardness with a professional brick?"

The data terminal scurried back to the small device in an instant. "This machine is just trying to ease the atmosphere—don't panic, this machine will do a physical hard read..."

As it spoke, it clung to the ancient device that had probably been scrapped hundreds of thousands of years ago, releasing a faint blue light from its body and began to forcibly crack any information that might remain inside. Because it was difficult to determine the storage mechanism and structure of this thing, the data terminal slowly moved around while reading. Lily watched this scene and stroked her chin thoughtfully. "I feel like the data terminal is molesting a corpse..."

Hao Ren slapped Lily on the head. "Can't your thoughts be a little simpler! You were such a pure and artistic young woman when you first came, how did you become so perverted!"

Lily covered her head and looked at Hao Ren aggrievedly. "I'm very pure, I haven't even had my heat cycle in all these years—but you can't stop me from reading a lot of books, right."

Hao Ren immediately felt that he was experiencing cultural differences with a demon girl again.

While the data terminal was busy, it silently listened to these two shameless people discussing the issue of morality, and couldn't help but mutter, "That's enough, this machine is not interested in this kind of poor and frustrated device that doesn't even have four sets of redundant processors. This machine yearns for the kind of bold and unrestrained host with a stomach full of processing cores and a body full of expansion slots, who even uses sixteen threads when cursing—of course, preferably the kind on a battleship..."

Hao Ren was surprised to find that there were actually cultural differences between him and his PDA!

At this time, the data terminal seemed to have finally scanned something and suddenly exclaimed in surprise, "Hey, hey, there really is something, this thing's performance is not good, but the storage is sturdy, it actually saved a small part of the data!"

Hao Ren's eyes immediately lit up. "Quickly release it, quickly release it!"

The data terminal processed the data. "Wait, this machine is translating, and by the way, putting the useless data aside—you wouldn't be interested in alien porno, would you?"

Hao Ren looked at his nose, his nose looked at his mouth, and his mouth looked at his heart, solemnly raising the alloy brick. "Do you want a loud one or a crisp one?"

The data terminal shivered and quickly released the processed document. "Here, take a look, this should be the log left by the spaceship's crew, the thing mentioned inside is probably the 'First Born' that corroded this ship."

The log had been translated and the most valuable parts had been intelligently extracted. Hao Ren and Lily quickly read it carefully:

"Log 1...Keyword: Cruise Record.

"We have been in this star system for six months and have discovered a large number of star systems with life and habitable planets. This should be a vibrant and thriving place. These days have been spent recording coordinates and collecting planetary data, which is a bit tedious, but it always feels pleasant to discover a planet with life. Those creatures called 'demons' are very concerning. They are highly intelligent but have short tempers and seem unable to negotiate. Perhaps this is related to the harsh environment in which they live? Those planets are indeed not very suitable for survival, and it is the first time I have seen creatures that can move in magma."

"Log 2, Keyword: Unexpected Disaster.

"...An incredible accident occurred, I should be glad I'm still alive...May the winds of my homeland protect me, I don't know how long this ship can last! A huge...bizarre thing suddenly appeared in space and collided with the ship. It contained incomprehensible energy and overloaded the ship's shield system the moment it made contact, almost breaking the ship in half. Now that strange sphere is still stuck in the central hangar. It's hard to believe that a sphere of a few hundred meters actually blasted out a hole more than ten kilometers wide, which should be related to some kind of spatial phenomenon. The ship suffered a serious gas leak, and thousands of people were killed or missing. Currently, the emergency control device has successfully prevented gas leakage and the spread of fire, but we probably can't repair the ship."

"Log 3, Keyword: Growth, Bizarre.

"Incredible, incredible, incredible, incredible! I can only express my surprise in this way. I am a biologist and have studied creatures in the universe all my life, but I never thought that the sphere that crashed into the ship's hangar was some kind of life! Yesterday it was just a sphere, but today its surface cracked and strange things are growing out of it...I am sure it is a sign of life. It crosses space, survives in the universe, and has immense power. Why does such a thing exist in the world? Today, the people on the ship held a meeting to discuss how to deal with that sphere, and some suggested throwing it back into space, but we soon realized that this was impossible. The sphere has 'taken root' on our ship, and its powerful supernatural power prevents some of the more violent tests. We can only watch it lying there and pray that it does not cause any harm.

"Also: The navigators have discovered a terrible situation. For some reason, the space around the ship seems to be closed. We seem to be temporarily trapped in a warped space bubble. The only thing we are grateful for now is that the technicians seem to be able to repair the hyperspace modules of the escape pods. They seem to be planning to evacuate. Perhaps I should study what is growing out of that sphere before that."

"Log 4, Keyword: Gentle Seed.

"I have been dealing with the strange creatures growing rapidly in the sphere for the past few days, and it is unexpectedly gentle. Although we still cannot communicate smoothly with each other, it seems to realize that it is on someone else's ship, so it cautiously slows down its expansion speed. If I am not mistaken, it should also be trying to express its apologies to me—of course, others do not care about my little discovery. They are busy investigating the spatial anomaly, and the ship's trapped state is more serious than expected."

Hao Ren was stunned when he saw this and couldn't help but raise his head. "It says here that the 'First Born' is very gentle?!"

Lily's expression was also silly, and she recalled the violent tentacle monster in the Dream Plane. Suddenly, the fur on her tail bristled and she shook her head vigorously. "How could it be gentle! I almost got eaten by it!"

At this time, the log extracted by the data terminal was still increasing, and Hao Ren temporarily put aside the huge confusion in his mind and continued to study the following records.

"Log 5, Keyword: Spatial Anomaly.

"I really want to continue the record about the 'space sphere,' but today I must record an even worse situation: The spatial structure seems to have been changed within the detectable range.

"It has now been determined that the ship is trapped in a strange realm like a warped bubble. The surrounding space has been closed, as if the entire universe has suddenly shrunk to a diameter of only ten million kilometers. The probes that are sent out encounter a closed space wall, and after flying in one direction, they return from the other end of the space. The technicians calculated the circulation paths of these probes and finally determined that the center of this closed space is our ship. What happened? Did the entire universe collapse with us as the center? In any case, the technicians are still looking for the cause of the mutation, but I am not very optimistic."

"Log 6, Keyword: None.

"We know too little about the universe.

"That strange spherical creature—I can only call it that now—it seems to be the root of everything. The technicians analyzed the instrument records when the spherical creature suddenly appeared near the ship, and they were surprised to find that it was not a spatial jump in the usual sense, but a more peculiar teleportation phenomenon. The records show that when the sphere appeared, many natural laws nearby were distorted, as if the sphere had 'fallen' in from a universe completely different from ours. It may be that this 'crossing' behavior triggered the chaos of spatial laws, causing us to be trapped in a closed space bubble. Fortunately, there are signs that this space is not completely sealed off. Unstable teleportation points can be opened at fixed locations. The technicians are testing this opening rule."

"Log 7, Keyword: Bubble, Spread.

"We have finally confirmed the situation outside, and by 'outside' I mean the situation outside the space bubble.

"Things are even more bizarre than we thought. A strange atmosphere lingers in the ship, and everyone is very uneasy. Obviously, huge changes have taken place outside the space bubble in the past period of time, and we have been completely unaware: The spatial structure outside has been fragmented.

"The technicians opened several teleportation doors to the outside world, and the probes successfully crossed and returned, bringing back surprising news. Outside is also a series of space bubbles—one after another, connected by hyperspace channels, each sealing off a warped space. No probe has found a trace of the starry sky, perhaps the entire universe has mutated? No one knows what the real situation is.

"It's like adding a foaming agent to a calm basin of water and then stirring it frantically. Now the universe outside us is completely different from the world we know. The continuously visible and accessible space has been broken, and the cause of all this...is just a seed, possibly a seed from another parallel universe.

"It is still growing, although it has slowed down, it has completely occupied the central section of the ship and is spreading to the power core. I still believe that its nature is gentle, but its life instinct is gradually disintegrating our ship.

"A group of soldiers tried to destroy those tentacles and achieved some results, but it was meaningless. The mental state of those soldiers became abnormal after returning, and there will probably be no new 'weeding operations.' This morning, I found some small bumps in the corner of my cabin, and the tentacles are probably going to grow here too."

"Log 8, Keyword: None.

"We finally decided to abandon this ship, including the 'spherical creature' that has completely coexisted with the ship. Oh, it is no longer a sphere now, it is now like a forest, spreading in half of the ship's compartments.

"The technicians roughly predicted a spatial model, and they believe that the area where the mutation occurred should be limited. The laws of the universe will smooth out foreign information interference, and the spatial bubble phenomenon is probably such a 'cosmic self-healing method.' We have enough small spaceships for evacuation. According to the technicians' estimated route, as long as we constantly jump between space bubbles according to certain rules, we can leave this strange star area.

"The spherical creature seems to know that we are about to leave, and it expressed some kind of 'regretful' emotion. I don't know how to tell others how I communicated with that strange creature: it is a mental connection, probably because the place where I live is very close to one of its nerve nodes, and I can hear its voice in my sleep.

"It said that it cannot leave this place. This is a failed sowing. It will continue to grow here, at least to complete its 'first generation incubation' mission. If it has the strength, it plans to evolve a short-lived small ecosystem within its coverage area. I don't quite understand what it means, but it seems that a more powerful higher creature created it and let it perform a mission similar to life sowing. In any case, we know too little about the universe."

The log ended here.

Hao Ren and Lily looked at each other. The things revealed in this log were so important that they far exceeded Hao Ren's initial expectations.

It seemed that a lot of questions were suddenly solved!

Of course, a lot of questions suddenly popped up again.

Lily stretched out her claws and scratched the wall, muttering as she scratched, "How old is this ship... Did the space bubble get smashed out?"

"It's been detected," the data terminal floated in front of the two of them, "This will scare you—after converting the time scale, this ship was abandoned at least 200,000 years ago."

Hao Ren didn't react all at once. "Oh, 200,000 years ago...what?!"

"200,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago on the Dream Plane side," the data terminal's voice was very serious, "This is a lot of information..."

Hao Ren was just about to say something when he suddenly heard Vivian's voice in the communicator: "Landlord! We found some weird stuff over here!"

(I have something to do tonight and can't update, so I thought about merging two chapters together and posting them.)