Chapter 1 The Core is Lost

Under the witness of three examiners, the gaze of a large group of supernatural creatures, and the surveillance of thousands of sensors on three ships, the crystal core containing immense energy—enough to tear a gap in the world's barrier—dove straight into the void of space, and then vanished without a trace, not even a fart.

A few minutes later, Hao Ren wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and realized something: he seemed to have lost this super awesome, super dangerous, super remarkable thing.

At this moment, Hao Ren desperately wanted to shout in the universe's public channel: Friends all over the world, have you ever screwed up at work? Have you ever messed up in life? Have you ever encountered a major wave in your life that will be etched in your memory? Come and see here, the messes you made are nothing—I just threw a super artifact used to control the balance of the universe into the cracks between worlds, and then lost it!!

"All detectors, send the monitoring data from just now again! Nolan, re-check your memory bank!" Thanks to the experience of various crises over the years, Hao Ren slapped himself on the forehead twice and forcibly calmed down, "Gala卓尔, Anthony, you also check the monitoring records over there—something's wrong, the crystal core has disappeared, it seems to have directly passed through the rift!"

The Dragon Queen Gala卓尔 didn't even care about her "skateboard" at this time. She transformed back into human form with a whoosh and burrowed into her spaceship. Anthony, on the other hand, was covered in arcane light, whirling around the bridge of his ship like a gust of wind, recalibrating various data. It was obvious that even an old fox with thousands of years of experience was a little flustered when faced with this situation!

The group around Hao Ren was, of course, in a state of utter confusion. Vivian frowned tightly, the Nangong siblings exchanged glances, Izhaks and his daughter stared wide-eyed at each other, even Doudou fearfully hugged the data terminal. The only one who could still offer an opinion was Lily, and her opinion was to jump up and down while her tail exploded: "How could it be gone, how could it be gone, how could it be gone..."

Apart from that, these laymen couldn't help at all.

Mimir, who was waiting for news in the hangar, was also paying attention to the "opening of the door." He was still waiting to meet his brother, but he didn't expect to encounter such a thing. But the old giant was a little more calm, and even his deep voice was reassuring: "Doesn't that 'core' have a tracking function in case of emergency?"

"Oh right, I'll check the instructions..." Hao Ren slapped his forehead, but when he took out the instructions, he immediately became exasperated, "There's only one sentence in the instructions, what am I supposed to check!"

That's right, he forgot that the instructions Raven 12345 gave him only had a concise sentence: Throw it in.

But Goddess, what if you can't find it after throwing it in?

"Are you sure this isn't a normal phenomenon?" Gala卓尔 sent a message, trying to be optimistic while busily adjusting the monitoring data. "After all, it's something made by our God, maybe it's supposed to be like this when it's running normally..."

Hao Ren: "Do you believe that?"

"...Then I think we're in big trouble," Gala卓尔's human image appeared in the communication window. "I've already recalibrated all the monitoring data here and confirmed that the crystal core completely disappeared six seconds after entering the rift. In addition, the monitoring data of the rift itself shows that there was a slight 'tremor' at that moment, and the tremor intensity has been sent to you."

"My data is consistent with Gala卓尔's," Anthony also sent a message. "In addition, I found information feedback waves near the rift that don't belong to this world. If I'm not mistaken, that's from the 'Dream Plane'."

Hao Ren compared the data sent by the two seniors with the things in Nolan's memory bank, and finally extinguished the last glimmer of hope: the crystal core had indeed disappeared in full view, and no tracking or monitoring equipment had detected the core's trajectory. As it stands now, the core is very likely to have fallen into the depths of the Dream Plane's universe.

And among all the information, the most valuable came from Anthony. The old mage opened an extra channel while listening to the data, and thus received the information feedback wave transmitted from the great rift at the moment the core lost contact. This extremely short piece of information may be expressing a material attribute, or it may be expressing a period of time and space. In any case, it came from the place where the core fell.

If they want to retrieve the artifact, the information recorded by Anthony is probably the only clue.

"Let's not busy ourselves blindly," Gala卓尔 sighed. "In short, it seems that thing is lost. I think we should report this to the Goddess. Hao Ren, what about the remaining work?"

Hao Ren thought for a while and nodded: "Stop work for now, I'll file a report with the Goddess."

After speaking, he hung up the communication, took the data terminal from Doudou, and began to sigh.

Doudou looked at her father's frowning face, and thought that she had done something wrong, she quickly jumped over and patted Hao Ren's arm: "Daddy's not happy? This glowing lump didn't break..."

"Please call this unit a data terminal," the terminal immediately corrected, "And your dad is obviously not worried about the health of this unit..."

Hao Ren knocked on the terminal's shell: "Alright, prepare to connect, connect me to Heaven."

The terminal started dialing, and after a moment, a voice came: "Hello, this is the mostly great, bright, and correct Goddess Raven 12345, praise me please dial 1, join the church please dial 2, complaints please dial 21564879645413215 auuu..."

Hao Ren said weakly: "Big sister, stop fooling around, what kind of ringtone bites its tongue?"

Raven 12345's voice suddenly became a little embarrassed: "Uh, hehe... Hao Ren, what's the matter? I'm recording a personalized ringtone..."

"Wasn't the gate supposed to be built in the Rift Nebula today?" Hao Ren continued weakly, "I have good news and bad news to tell you, which do you want to hear first?"

Raven 12345: "...You say the bad one first."

"Bad... forget it, I'll tell the good one first," Hao Ren sucked his teeth, "The good news is that I've already thrown the crystal core you gave me, which is said to be meticulously crafted, eight hearts and eight arrows, divinely powerful, and even has your logo, into the rift, just like you said in the instructions."

"What's the bad news?"

"The bad news is that the thing disappeared after being thrown in..."

Raven 12345 was silent for a few seconds: "What?!"

Then Hao Ren told the other party about the situation on his side in detail. Anyway, there was nothing to hide, and after starting to report these things, he felt no pressure in his heart. Originally, he was a guy with nerves so thick that they were almost completely calcified, plus that core was made by Raven 12345 herself, and the core came with a set of instructions that looked unreliable no matter how you looked at it. When he got that thing, it gave people the feeling that "this thing is super unreliable, I'm afraid there will be problems after throwing it out, and then it will trigger at least a million words of plot, and finally, one side of the land will have to be blasted into a hole." Because of this, Hao Ren couldn't feel any guilt after losing the core...

But after he finished talking about everything, he couldn't help but worry a little, thinking that the neurotic goddess wouldn't give himself a blessing from afar on a whim—later, facts proved that he was overthinking it, Raven 12345 did not throw a blessing over.

Because she came in person.

"My eight hearts and eight arrows!!" Raven 12345 looked at the chaotic great rift and let out an exaggerated lament, pulling her head full of silver hair in pain, "I cut for a whole two hours to cut out such a perfect shape!"

Hao Ren was covered in cold sweat, thinking that he didn't see where the shape of that crystal core was perfect at all. In fact, that thing was just an irregularly shaped stone. The most magical thing about it was that any edge and plane on its surface was asymmetrical. Anyone could have a good reason to believe that the creator of the crystal core used the profound "blindly slashing" sword technique when cutting this artifact...

However, the goddess painfully said that she did cut out something with eight hearts and eight arrows, and Hao Ren, as the Pope, could only express his approval—it's easy to have a mental breakdown if you reason with a neurotic.

"This is the previous monitoring data."

Raven 12345 was acting neurotic in front, and Hao Ren didn't feel any psychological pressure at all. When the other party calmed down a little, he handed over the things he had recorded.

Raven 12345 immediately recovered from her neurotic state and carefully looked over the monitoring data.

"It really fell into the Dream Plane," the goddess said, pulling her messy hair, "But theoretically it shouldn't be like this... It should have activated the moment it entered the rift, and then got stuck between the two worlds, opening to form a gate, unless... unless something on the other side of the rift is interfering."

Hao Ren became energetic all of a sudden: "The problem on the other side of the rift? What could be on the other side?"

"To be able to interfere with that core, I'm afraid it's related to divine power," Raven 12345 narrowed her eyes, "Divinity is most likely to interfere with divinity."

Hao Ren was really completely energetic this time: "The legacy of the Creator Goddess?!"

Raven 12345 silently nodded.

"Does the crystal core have any navigation or coordinate sending functions?" Hao Ren immediately asked, "Can we restore contact from here?"

"No, even if there was this setting, I would turn it off for you," Raven 12345 glanced at Hao Ren, "The core is most dangerous during the opening of the passage. It's like drilling another hole in the most fragile part of the wall of reality. During this process, it must be ensured that there is no extra information exchange on either side of the passage. Therefore, a major function of the core is to shield the flow of information during the door-opening process. At the same time, it cannot emit any extra information impact itself. In order to prevent some uncontrollable factors from causing the core to accidentally emit a signal, it will automatically turn off all information sending and receiving modules after it is released, until the passage is fully opened before it is reactivated."

Lily came over at this time: "I feel like you set this up a bit stupid..."

"Boom!"

A bolt of heavenly punishment passed, and Vivian looked sympathetically at Lily who was struck into a little black dog: "Stupid dog."