Chapter 1 The Course

The space continent, having lost its power, could only drift in the vast universe according to its established course and speed. Fortunately, in such a vast space, a slow-drifting celestial body would probably not collide with anything else for millions of years. However, for some longer-term considerations, Hao Ren ordered the engineering drones to bring this drifting land to a halt. Now, tens of thousands of drones were busy on the base of the space continent, installing various conventional thrusters and space-time jump devices. This was a huge project, but fortunately, the technical difficulty was not high, and there were currently quite sufficient drones available to be dispatched. If everything went smoothly, this fragment of celestial body that had been drifting for three thousand years would be able to stop before long.

While the engineering drones were busy installing thrusters on the space continent, the logistics drones had already cleaned up the battlefield wreckage floating around the continent—on the one hand, to complete the "collect samples" task that Hao Ren had assigned, and on the other hand, to prevent these wrecks from being captured by the space continent's gravity and posing a threat to the latter.

Hao Ren did not allow the drones to send the collected wreckage samples to the surface, but instead anchored a synchronous "stack yard" near the space continent to store the massive samples. The reason for this was that the corrupted monsters all carried very serious pollution and mutation. The power of the Lord of Madness had accumulated in these creatures for who knows how many years, and they themselves had become quite dangerous sources of pollution, so it was absolutely impossible to carry out analysis work on these wrecks on the surface.

The stack yard was a loosely structured space construction complex that relied on force fields rather than solid structures to fix things in the field. At the center of the stack yard was a huge comprehensive space anchor device. This silver-white tower could locate and lock the spatial entities within a radius of thousands of kilometers around it to prevent them from flying around. In the spherical space around the anchor tower, there were thousands of small spires arranged at fixed intervals. These small spires all pointed to the center and were connected to each other by beams of light. The beams themselves also divided the spherical space into a grid structure. Each square they divided was a storage space—the wreckage samples collected from the battlefield were stored in these squares.

To ensure safety and prevent these contaminated samples from leaking, Hao Ren installed two tons of space implosion warheads in each tower.

"Please submit the access code… Access code verification successful, highest administrator privileges, access to all areas."

The security system sent a message allowing passage, and the "light membrane" blocking the front of the spaceship changed from red to green. Nolan carefully accelerated forward and entered this "morgue" composed of countless squares.

"The samples currently checked account for less than one-tenth of the total sample volume, and they are all rough checks," the data terminal floated next to Hao Ren's head, giving a synchronous report as holographic projections displayed hideous and ugly monster corpses one by one. "A considerable part of these samples carry relatively weak divinity—of course, divinity that has been polluted."

Hao Ren murmured to himself, "The Creation Goddess's first-level or second-level creations…"

"That's right, these monsters were probably the Creation Goddess's 'direct descendants' before they were corrupted and polluted," the data terminal replied. "The Creation Goddess not only created the Guardian Giants and the Firstborn as her direct descendants, she also had many other kinds of creations. These things are not as systematic and organized as the Guardians, but their number is also quite large. You could say they are her own sons…"

"Do you think it's appropriate to use the phrase 'own sons' in such a serious report?"

The data terminal said with perfect justification, "It's very expressive."

Hao Ren curled his lips, but in his heart, he highly agreed with the terminal's statement…

"The fate of these 'own sons' is not very good," Vivian couldn't help but sigh softly as she looked at the corrupted monsters displayed on the holographic projection. "Now that I think about it, I almost became a monster similar to them… Having a goddess as a mother is really dangerous."

Hao Ren: "Having a goddess as a boss is about the same."

The Tortoise Rock Platform stopped in a square, where a sample was being dissected and analyzed. A giant with a swollen body and growths visible everywhere on its skin lay quietly in a restraining force field. Several autonomous machines flew around the giant's corpse, cutting the latter's lifeless skin and muscles and stripping off the more ugly and disgusting corrupted organs.

Hao Ren had noticed this distinctive giant in the previous battle, and now, after observing it up close, he had no more doubts: "A Guardian Giant, in flesh and blood form. It looks like a compatriot of Mu Lu."

"According to the fairies, the war going on at the 'Nexus' broke out because a group of Guardians suddenly went mad," the data terminal said. "Three planetary fortresses bear the responsibility of guarding the Nexus: Nakodar, Agudar, and Amantir. Among them, Amantir is the most powerful, and the bravest and most belligerent troops among the Guardians are stationed there. But this force suddenly went out of control and unexpectedly bombarded the vital points of Nakodar with doomsday weapons—coupled with the sudden appearance of some guards going mad inside Nakodar, that fortress was torn apart on the spot. The largest fragment is this floating land we found. The fairies have been wandering since that day."

Who would have thought that after the fall of the Creation Goddess, such a magnificent war would have broken out in this distant and mysterious X-cluster?

"The Lord of Madness had already projected his power into the Creation Goddess's body, and any action taken by the Creation Goddess had a 50% probability of being an effort to destroy this world," Hao Ren said quietly, looking at the giant corpse that had been distorted to the point where it was difficult to recognize its original appearance. "This is undoubtedly one of them."

Vivian frowned: "Obviously, this was a fatal blow—at such a crucial juncture, the most powerful wave of guards were all minions infected by the Lord of Madness. Look at the degree of corruption and the number of these monsters… It's a miracle that the Nexus didn't fall on the spot."

"Based on the clues I saw in the illusion, the Nexus should be protected by the Creation Goddess's divine power, otherwise it would have been overrun long ago," Hao Ren said. "Now, perhaps we can also explain the situation of those Star Citizen ships—the Nexus was suddenly attacked, and the attack didn't come from outside, but broke out from within. The peripheral guard troops didn't have time to react at all, so those Star Citizen ships directly transmitted all their energy and consciousness to the battlefield."

"The attack that broke out internally also bypassed the divine power blockade on the outside, and I guess those Guardians who suddenly went mad had an exemption from the divine power blockade—otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to come out and hunt down those fairies."

Nolan changed direction, bypassed the work station where the dissection was being carried out, and continued to move towards the depths of the stack yard after passing through the energy barrier of the square.

The deeper in, the more dangerous the samples.

After passing those corrupted monsters that were even larger than the Guardian Giants, a hideous starship formed from the fusion of metal and biological tissue appeared in front.

A black spaceship, with a huge volume. It must have had a majestic and handsome image before it was corrupted, but now the power of the Lord of Madness had completely distorted this ancient war machine. Its armor plates were riddled with holes by negative energy, showing signs of wrinkling and swelling like rotten flesh, and tentacle-like things protruded from every crack in the armor plates, which was extremely disgusting.

However, these things had now lost their vitality. The volley of fire from the drone's main guns tore the ship into four pieces of varying sizes. Those black tentacles that had once wriggled around were now grayish-white from the loss of life, drifting in space like withered tree branches. The black substance wriggling on the spaceship's armor had also completely solidified, and was now being cut off by autonomous machines and sent for analysis.

"Although this ship is severely distorted and deformed and has 80% surface coverage, after analyzing its skeleton, we have confirmed that it is the starship used by the Guardian Giants," the data terminal said. "By analyzing the material layers inside the samples, we can determine that these ships did not become what they are now overnight, but were gradually and completely eroded over a long period of time—if the erosion continues, you won't be able to tell that it was once a ship at all."

Watching the autonomous machines dig out clumps of indescribable matter from the wreckage of the spaceship—some of which were still wriggling even after losing their vitality—Hao Ren felt disgusted, but couldn't help but think of the terrible changes that these ships had once undergone.

The first to be eroded and go mad were undoubtedly the controllers of the ship, the Guardian Giants. The mutated crew lost their minds and gradually merged with the ship to become a huge hybrid creature. The proliferating tentacles on the outside of the ship and the fleshy tissue piled up between the various compartments inside the ship were, in essence, the limbs of the Giants: Clearly, the disorder of the Lord of Madness was once again manifested.

If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, you simply wouldn't dare to imagine how these things were made—even raising Gu with twenty thousand planners and a designer locked up together probably wouldn't produce something with this style.

Nolan's holographic image suddenly popped up next to Hao Ren: "I feel… a little nauseous."

"Uh, it's a bit stimulating to show this to you as a ship," Hao Ren said with a strange expression. "But you got through watching the Guardian Giant being dissected just now, didn't you?"

Nolan looked pale: "But thinking about what happened inside this ship, I still… urgh—"

Hao Ren: "Hey, cheer up! Nolan, cheer up!"

"Damn it, I can't hold it in… urgh—"

The Tortoise Rock Platform shook for a while, and then the energy discharge grid and emergency gate at the front of the ship suddenly opened, spraying a large amount of waste coolant and degraded energy crystals solidified from the circulation system all the way…

The ship girl shook her head: "I feel much better this time."

Hao Ren: "...Damn it, how should I describe how I feel right now…"