Chapter 1 Katrina and Shakira

Several kilometers away from the floating city cluster, Katrina and Shakira were standing in the rolling waves. Besides them, only one of Iva's avatars was floating on the sea. When Hao Ren and his group arrived, they didn't see anyone else. Presumably, those tourists were still visiting the ancient ruins of the deep sea under the guidance of the other sirens.

"What's going on?" Hao Ren stood on the wave-boat rolled up by Nangong Wuyue and came to Katrina's side lightly. "Iva is looking for me?"

He felt very surprised, because Iva had always been a child who didn't know the world at all, and didn't seem to be able to take the initiative to come up with any ideas. Would she also want to find someone on her own initiative?

Katrina turned over nimbly in the water, her beautiful mermaid tail rippling in the waves with sunlight. The siren queen seemed to be in a great mood, and she was full of smiles: "Don't worry, it's not a big deal—Iva was very happy after receiving the gift we brought, and then asked me for a long time what a 'gift' is. Now she also wants to give you a gift."

"To me?" Hao Ren was even more surprised now. "Why not to you?"

"We've already received our gifts," Shakira also swam over at this time, and said with a smile, "They are the stones from the bottom of Aioi Sea, and the handicrafts dug out from the ancient siren cities. Iva treasures them like treasures—like our sirens, she also has a hobby of collecting all kinds of strange things."

"Oh, I see," Hao Ren nodded, and then couldn't help being curious about Iva's "gift". "So what is she going to give me?"

"We don't know, she said she would wait for you to come and take out the gift," Katrina waved her hand with a smile, then slapped her tail hard in the direction of Iva. "Iva, Hao Ren is here, where's your gift?"

Iva quickly "swam" along the surging sea surface, like a lively wave rolling on the water. She circled around Hao Ren: "Gift! Gift! Gift!"

As she spoke, Hao Ren heard louder and louder sounds of water coming from the nearby sea. Then a large patch of white foam emerged from there. In the rolling water, everyone saw a glittering thing being lifted out of the water, reflecting the glittering brilliance in the sun.

"Wow, it's really a big thing, it looks quite floa..." Hao Ren didn't care what gift Iva had prepared for him, and he didn't have much expectation. Anyway, just look at the things brought by those sirens. It's possible for this kind of creature with weird values to collect anything they find in the water as treasures, but after taking a serious look at the thing that emerged from the water, the second half of his sentence was stuck in his throat. "Wait a minute...where did you find this thing?!"

A huge crystal was lifted into the air by the waves, and sent to Hao Ren in a way that completely violated the laws of physics. This crystal was translucent white, about two meters high, and its overall shape was an irregular polyhedron. Its surface was floating with a faint layer of brilliance. At first, it would be mistaken for reflected sunlight, but after careful observation, it would be found that the light was actually emitted by the crystal itself. And if you observe closely, you can even see a large number of light streams that seem to have life surging inside the crystal. They jumped and trembled deep in the crystal, forming a large number of constantly changing trajectories. A glance at it was dazzling and mesmerizing.

This is definitely not something made by sirens.

In fact, Hao Ren had seen similar substances not long ago—in Coro, Mount Asuman, the ancient starship made by the Starry Sky People was made entirely of this self-luminous holy crystal!

Not only Hao Ren thought so, but Lily also recognized the material of this crystal at once (after all, one of her biggest hobbies in her life is collecting all kinds of beautiful stones. She still regretted that she couldn't knock a lump off the spaceship when she left Asuman last time), the husky girl immediately went up and circled around it, and then ran back and grabbed Hao Ren's arm, shaking it violently while shouting: "Landlord landlord landlord! This thing is very similar to Asuman's shell!!"

Hao Ren felt like the whole world had entered a vibration mode when a strange-powered girl with a one-handed grip of several tons grabbed his arm and shook it violently. It took a lot of effort to not be thrown out by this husky spirit: "Wait wait I know I know... don't shake don't shake your arm is about to be pulled off my god my shield is on…"

"Where did you find this crystal?" After finally appeasing the suddenly excited dog girl, Hao Ren had a chance to turn around and ask Iva seriously.

"Fell from the sky..." Iva thought for a while, making a sound mixed with the sound of rushing water, "Swoosh—it came down, and then pia—it fell into the water, splash! Such high waves! Finally, it sank to the bottom of the sea!"

Iva was not very proficient in this way of communication after all, and coupled with her immature mind, her description sounded inexplicable at first, but Hao Ren was also the master who had been mixing with a group of idiots and wonders for many years, so it was no problem to understand what Iva said. He frowned: "Fell from the sky? Did you see anything else passing by at that time? Like a spaceship or something... uh, a spaceship is the kind of thing we ride on, those iron islands were also spaceships before they landed."

Iva tried hard to think: "...Didn't see it."

"The fragment may have fallen off the spaceship before approaching Aioi," Nangong Wuyue interjected, "Iva can only observe and perceive Aioi and the Aioi near-Earth orbit range."

"That's not right," Hao Ren frowned, "There are unmanned aerial vehicle fortresses and armed satellite battle groups that I set up near Aioi. The sensing range of these things is not just the planetary ring... I haven't received any reports of unidentified flying objects passing through the Aioi identification circle recently. Machine cluster, check the log."

His last sentence was said to the drone swarm in a mental connection. After a moment, the collective consciousness of the drone swarm responded: "No relevant records were found in the log. Since the Aioi monitoring system was activated, no unregistered flying objects have appeared within the radar irradiation range."

After hearing the report from the drone swarm, Hao Ren looked at Iva: "When did this 'stone' fall down?"

Iva was a little confused, but she still thought seriously: "One day, two days, three days... Many days ago, before you first came here, when there were still many clouds in the sky... Suddenly it fell down."

Hao Ren tried hard to understand Iva's words, and suddenly his eyes widened: "Was it before the current 'you' woke up? The 'previous generation' Iva?"

Iva's transparent body floated on the sea, shaking with a rustling sound, making a puzzled sound: "Not very clear, in segments, I seemed to be sleeping at that time... Slept for a long, long time."

"It's too difficult to communicate," Hao Ren simply gave up talking to Iva in words, and squatted down to put his hand into the sea, re-establishing the mental connection, "Iva, open your heart and let me see your memory..."

A few minutes later, Hao Ren stood up, and the others immediately surrounded him with concern.

"This crystal fell to Aioi about three to six hundred years ago," Hao Ren breathed a sigh of relief, "You heard me right—that was when this planet was still shrouded in storms, and the remnant consciousness fragments of the previous generation of Iva had not completely died out. This crystal fell into the sea, and then fell into the bottom of a sea trench near the equator. No wonder my drone swarm didn't detect it."

Nangong Wuyue was very surprised: "Iva still remembers what happened at that time?"

"Of course I can't remember clearly. At that time, there were only the remnant consciousness fragments of the previous Iva in the ocean of Aioi, and it was still in a sleeping state. The newly born Iva has only inherited a small part of the memory of those consciousness fragments. She can only vaguely remember that such a thing fell from the sky, but she doesn't know the specific time and whether anything else happened when the fragment fell. I can only guess that it happened three to six hundred years ago based on the approximate imprint of her memory recall."

Vivian frowned: "We didn't have contact with the Dream Plane at that time."

As soon as she said this, Lily and the Nangong siblings turned their heads and stared at her. Lily rolled her eyes: "Can you not use 'we'—the few of us are still young, only you old woman was running around three centuries ago."

Vivian slapped an Ice Arrow on Lily's face: "Go away, you guy who was a lonely ghost three hundred years ago has the nerve to talk about me?"

"Don't you think about who turned me into a lonely ghost!"

"If you hadn't courted death to mess with the Godslayer Sword back then, would you have become a lonely ghost?!"

When Hao Ren saw this situation, he quickly separated the two enemies: "Okay, okay, can't you two stop for a while, what a big deal... uh, okay, it's really a big deal, but Lily, didn't you successfully resurrect... uh, okay, although you're living on a dog, but..."

Before he could finish his words, Lily and Vivian turned their heads at the same time and glared at him: "Can you speak!"

Hao Ren: "..."

Fortunately, he was also used to this kind of situation where the topic suddenly went off track. After all, Lily was a husky who had become a spirit, and was born with the talent to suddenly get excited, and Vivian was a nemesis who was specifically at odds with Lily. The two of them had been killing each other since their previous lives, and they had no intention of living in peace in this life. It was not the first or second time that the two of them suddenly started quarreling for no reason. After diverting the attention of the two, Hao Ren looked at the crystal: "In short, I have to take this thing to Asuman to see... If this is really a fragment that fell from the spaceship of the Starry Sky People, then something big may have happened in this area hundreds of years ago... In this universe, those who can wound the spaceship of the Starry Sky People are at least guys who are on par with demigods."