Chapter 1 Of Course, Hao Ren Didn't Forget What Happened at the Rift Nebula

More than two months ago, he and his two Inspectors—Gala卓尔 and Anthony—went to deal with the historical issues of Yggdrasil. Afterward, they headed to the Rift Nebula, preparing to create an artificial stable gate on the ancient crack in the Wall of Reality to strengthen the connection between the Surface World and the Dream Plane. However, this ambitious "Opening the Gate" project encountered a major setback right from the start:

The core crystal used to open the gate was impacted by information from the Dream Plane. After breaking free from the ship's control, it immediately crashed and fell directly into the great rift in the center of the Rift Nebula, its whereabouts unknown to this day.

To this day, the auxiliary engineering projects that Hao Ren and his team left near the Rift Nebula are still under constant construction. Tireless autonomous machines and building units have set up huge outposts and data centers around the rift, as well as tens of thousands of space turrets and various factories. Yggdrasil, docked near the Purgatory Star, serves as the general monitoring station for the Rift Nebula system. In Hao Ren's absence, it is responsible for maintaining and advancing the continuous progress of that magnificent project.

However, the most important opening crystal has remained missing, putting the entire project in an awkward position: almost all its preparations have been completed, but the main part of the project is still nowhere to be found.

The only clue to that crystal is a piece of information—at the moment the great rift in the center of the Rift Nebula opened, Inspector Anthony Alfonso detected some brief signals from the depths of the Dream Plane, and these signals came from near the spot where the crystal passed through the Wall of Reality.

Over the past two months, Hao Ren has activated all his monitoring systems in the Dream Plane. From the Crystal Nucleus Research Station to the drone swarms, from the free radar stations in space to the deep-space probes set up on the planet's surface, countless automated devices have been scanning the entire explored universe day after day. Now, this vast search project has finally made progress.

A remote-sensing signal from the New Frontier overlapped with the information sample recorded that day, with an overlap rate of over 90%. After completing the information comparison, the Crystal Nucleus Research Station immediately transmitted this news to Hao Ren.

In the Dream Plane, above the planet Tanagothus, the Crystal Nucleus Research Station hangs in the dark space as always, watching the vast land below like the eyes of a god. In the background of this giant space station, the stars of the universe still shine, and those mysterious galaxies and nebulae have existed forever in the darkness. The disasters happening in this universe seem to have no impact on the world's operation.

Hao Ren and his entire gang… well, team, in short, everyone came to the main control hall of the Crystal Nucleus Research Station, even the Nangong siblings, who had been lazy at home for a long time, and Gun Gun (almost a useless cat)—the boring days had been too long, and now something seemingly a little more interesting finally popped up, and everyone said they wanted to join in the fun.

Of course, everyone's reasons were relatively high-sounding. For example, Lily's reason was to come and be Hao Ren's bodyguard, and Gun Gun's reason was that Hao Ren hadn't walked her in a long time…

Guardian Mulu returned to the space station from the ecological monitoring base on the planet Tanagothus specifically to greet Hao Ren. He has now fully demonstrated his ability and reliability, so Hao Ren has given this giant complete freedom and assigned him some daily maintenance and recording work in the space station: the Tanagothus ecological reshaping project is nearing completion, and the Guardian Giant now has a lot of free time. As a demigod creature personally created by the Creation Goddess, Mulu has enough learning ability, so he quickly mastered these technologies.

Usually, he runs back and forth between the planet's ecological monitoring base and the space station, but now, he has replaced the space station's host in explaining things.

"The coordinates sent by the monitoring station are in a wild area 2.2 billion light-years away from here," Mulu opened his recorder, "I have been paying attention to the information about that rift these days… look, it's in this place."

The recorder showed a star map. According to the map's markings, it can be seen that this is a "preliminary scan map" with a lower-than-standard accuracy, and the galaxies on the edges have not been subjected to starlight correction—obviously, this star map comes from the edge of the drone swarm's detection area. A newly activated monitoring station discovered this place on the edge of the observable universe, and it hasn't had time to perform a more in-depth deep-space refinement scan.

Hao Ren frowned: "...this location doesn't seem to be on the drone swarm's expansion route."

"Yes, we almost missed this location," a constantly changing AI face floating not far away said. The cluster consciousness of the drone swarm replied, "The original expansion direction of the drone swarm brushed past this area, but at your command, we began to proliferate towards the ancient dark areas of the universe, so the forward outposts partially changed their detection direction. This area happens to fall on our new detection route. This star sector is quite old. All starlight is at least 20 billion years old, and the number of new stars under one billion years old accounts for less than 3% of the total number of celestial bodies."

Hao Ren looked carefully at the star map and suddenly felt strange: "Where is the rift? The star map doesn't seem to mark it?"

"There is no rift," the cluster consciousness gave an unexpected answer. "In fact, we didn't find anything there."

Hao Ren raised an eyebrow: "Didn't find anything?"

Mulu nodded: "I was a little surprised at first, but after comparing the data sent by several outposts of the machine swarm, I finally determined that there was no problem with the radar. In the area where the sample signal and the feedback signal overlap, there is a celestial vacuum zone. Not to mention the rift in the Wall of Reality, there isn't even a cloud of space dust there."

As the giant spoke, he zoomed in on the star map. Hao Ren immediately saw the area that was specially marked.

It was located in the junction area of two ancient galaxies, an unusually abrupt dark zone. It was empty and desolate. Within a span of 10,000 light-years, material vacuum enveloped everything.

Izhaks leaned over in front of the star map, his face with a solemn expression: "...this isn't nothing, there is a blank here."

What the old demon said sounded a little strange at first, but everyone present except the cat, dog, and fish (also known as the Hao family's three fools) were quick-witted people, and soon everyone knew what this sentence meant.

At the intersection of two ancient galaxies that were gradually merging, "nothing" itself was the most conspicuous "thing." It should have been filled with turbulent celestial dust and newly born stars from dying nebulae. In any case, a vacuum zone spanning tens of thousands of light-years was impossible in itself.

"There must be something there, it's blocking the radar's line of sight," Vivian said in a low voice.

"Something that can interfere with the monitoring system of the machine swarm?" Nangong Wuyue felt incredible. She had a heartfelt admiration for Hao Ren's pile of high-tech gadgets. The siren girl never thought that those world-destroying advanced goods would ever fail.

"The machine swarm only uses civilian version detectors," the data terminal floated out and interjected. "Of course, even the civilian version, they can surpass the technology of most mortal civilizations, but they are still not omnipotent. At least the relics of the Creation Goddess and the technology of the guardians in this universe may affect the judgment of the machine swarm."

Hao Ren thought for a moment and contacted his ship spirit: "Nolan, prepare to set sail, I'll go and see the situation myself."

Nolan's holographic image immediately appeared in front of the crystal spire of the space station's host: "Oh, oh, got it—my stomach is a little uncomfortable, wait for me to reset the energy lattice and we can set off! Five minutes at most!"

Hao Ren hummed, and then he heard a pattering sound from below. He looked down and saw that Doudou was jumping around his feet happily, occasionally bouncing hard on his feet.

He hesitated whether to take the fish baby to that "vacuum zone." In the end, he decided to bring the little guy.

There was a reason for this: if Crow 12345's previous speculation was correct, the opening of the Wall of Reality on the Dream Plane side should lead to a Creation Goddess relic. That strange "vacuum zone" also seemed to confirm this, and Doudou had been proven to have a great influence on the Source Blood, so according to the life level, she might also have some subtle "resonance" with other creations of the Creation Goddess.

When acting in the Dream Plane, bringing this little guy might reveal some small details that are usually unintentionally overlooked.

Of course, in this process, he must always pay attention not to let the fish baby go to seek death…

Hao Ren's gaze turned to the other side: Lily was holding a canned bottle in her hand, and the little weak chicken was hugging a ball of old newspaper in the canned bottle, tearing it with great interest.

He decided to bring this little guy too, anyway, they were both somewhat related to the Creation Goddess, and more importantly—if there really was power left by the Creation Goddess there, what would happen if an evil thought body encountered the goddess's original divine power?

The little weak chicken had shown a partial tendency to rationality after being illuminated by Vivian's moonlight (improved version), so if she came into contact with a higher level of original divine power, was it possible for the evil thought body to completely "normalize"?