Chapter 1 The Fall of Civilization

The low-hanging night enveloped this nameless planet. The firelight of civilization had vanished from its surface many years ago, and the rampant primeval forests and vines had long since reclaimed the land once covered in metal and concrete. The magnificent skyscrapers of centuries past had become jagged steel skeletons, bridges had collapsed into rubble in the valleys and riverbeds, and even the various immortal structures once regarded as miracles could not achieve true immortality – they collapsed in the jungles, lay prone in the depths of the yellow sands, and were submerged beneath the ocean. Only some desolate ruins protruded from their collapsed and buried places, pointing to the firmament like the bones of giants.

And upon these desolate bones, moss and vines had covered every surface, the green representing life giving these lifeless, cold ruins a sense of burgeoning vitality – a burgeoning vitality without human involvement after the decline of civilization.

The faint glow from the two bright moons洒洒洒from the sky, bringing some light to this world no longer illuminated by lanterns. The world under the moonlight was quiet, and from the ruins of buildings covered with plants could only be heard the sound of wind blowing through various holes and cracks. Occasionally, some short screams and rustling sounds came from certain corners of the plants, the struggles of predators and small animals engaged in the survival of the fittest at night.

But such a quiet night was suddenly broken.

Above the ruins of a city that had been almost completely swallowed by the forest, the glow洒洒洒by the two moons suddenly trembled. The starry sky seemed to ripple like a pond of water being blown. In the vortex formed by the twisting starlight, a series of flashes suddenly erupted, followed by a huge object rushing out from the most distorted place – a silver-white spaceship. It had thick and rugged lines, and azure energy pulses flickered continuously on the lower half of the ship. The rear of the ship billowed with thick smoke, and metal fragments and sparks spewed out like blood and entrails gushing from the body of a giant beast. The ship adjusted its attitude in the air, and it seemed that its main functions were still under control, but then a device below it seemed to have exceeded its load. After a series of new explosions, some armor plates and mechanical structures left the hull, and the ship itself tilted, drawing a large arc as it slowly fell towards the southeast of the earth.

Throughout this process, the thunderous roar never stopped. Various wild animals dwelling among the trees and ruins were awakened by the loud noise and firelight in the sky, and desperately rushed out of their hiding nests, running straight towards the nearest water source: it seemed that these animals were not facing this kind of falling firelight and explosion for the first time. They had quite a bit of experience and chose the direction of refuge that would best increase their chances of survival.

However, the spaceship did not explode above them, nor did it drop any explosives from the sky. It simply drew a very exaggerated trajectory, reducing its altitude all the way while trying to slow down, and finally the place where it landed – or rather, crashed – was already outside the city ruins, in a flat wilderness.

Not long after the spaceship crashed, the ground trembled slightly, and then came a loud noise. A group of wild animals that had already run to the water's edge or even hidden in the water timidly raised their heads. They found that there were no subsequent disasters, so they calmly returned to their nests.

It seemed that this kind of thing was not unfamiliar to them...

The vibration during "landing" was not as strong as imagined. Although the ship's inertia stabilization device was severely overloaded, it still did a good job of slowing down the impact when it hit the ground – this impact was much lighter than being slapped in the face by divine power. But despite the relatively smooth landing, the spirits of everyone on the bridge still experienced a super serious tremor. After all, no matter what, watching a piece of land suddenly appear in front of you and quickly enlarge was a stimulating enough experience, especially for a few guys who don't usually go to the sky very often – like the Nangong siblings and Gun.

Lily had recently had an experience of soaring ninety thousand miles straight up, shoulder-to-shoulder with the sun, so she seemed much calmer than others.

After crawling out of the ground, she even had the leisure to smooth the fur on her tail.

"A-Are we on the ground?" Nangong Wuyue carefully poked her head out of her tail ball, her eyes still a little dazed. "I don't think it's shaking anymore..."

While checking the ship's damage report, Hao Ren nodded, "Good news, we landed safely."

"You call this process of slamming headfirst into the surface of a planet from outer space a landing?" Nangong Sanba grumbled with lingering fear while helping Wuyue untangle her tail. "I thought I was going to die just now..."

Hao Ren curled his lips, "Okay, then we crashed safely. At least we're on our own two feet."

The projection device on the console flickered a few times, and a slightly distorted image then appeared, shaking in the air for a few seconds before gradually becoming clear: it was Nolan. The corners of this ship consciousness's mouth twitched, "I appreciate your dark humor, but as the person involved in the crash, I'm aching all over."

"You've recovered so quickly? That saves me from checking the report – how's the ship?"

While asking Nolan about the ship's condition, Hao Ren bent down and grabbed a furry tail that was trembling non-stop under his chair, and with a hard tug, he dragged out Gun, who had shrunk into a fur ball: "Wuyue, check if this stupid cat is injured. I think she might have bumped her head."

Nolan's image flickered, and after a moment, she completed her initial self-check: "The situation is a bit bad... We were interrupted once during the warp, and as a result, we were saturated with a divine power shockwave no less than a psionic main gun bombardment. All shield systems are scrapped. The armor structure is still there, but the charging module is burned out and needs to recover slowly. The jump engine is finished, physically damaged. The navigation host crashed and didn't restart successfully after two attempts. There may also be physical damage. Besides that, the power furnace is still running, but the energy output is problematic. I need to shield two-thirds of the lines and concentrate the energy on the central host and maintenance system. The fire control system can still be used, but the weapon array can't connect. The main conventional engine... there is no main conventional engine. Something flew out when we fell. I just found out that it was my engine..."

After saying a lot of bad news, Nolan shook her head, "The best thing about the current situation is the laboratory section and the residential area, because they are in the most core area and have separate energy shielding layers, but they can't make me fly again..."

Hao Ren's brows furrowed tighter and tighter. What he heard was almost the worst possible news, which made him unable to help but interrupt Nolan's words, "Besides that? Is there any good news?"

"Yes, it seems we really got rid of that divine power storm," Nolan nodded. "Looks like your judgment was correct. The divine power storm is limited to outer space. It only blocked the space, and it's safe on the surface of the planet."

"Okay, that's at least some good news," Hao Ren sighed. "Can you repair the damage you've suffered?"

"All the damage suffered by this ship can be repaired. In theory, even if it's blown up and only the steering wheel is left, as long as you find a few autonomous machines to weld it for a while, it can continue to take you through the universe at superluminal speed, and even if there are no autonomous machines for maintenance, this ship has the ability to self-recover as a whole," Nolan's voice sounded a little more energetic, as if her host system was slowly recovering its vitality. "But the problem is that all of this takes time – even the engine and part of the power center are out of order. This is the most difficult to repair. I need at least a week to fly again."

"It's good as long as it can be repaired," Hao Ren sighed. "It's better than just squatting here and waiting for a drone fleet to rescue us. But even if it's repaired, we'd better not rashly go into deep space. Based on the previous situation of escaping the divine power storm, it's probably only relatively safe within the range of the planetary system."

"I know that without you telling me," Nolan's holographic image lay on the console. "Hiss – ouch, ouch, ouch... I won't develop a psychological shadow and be afraid to go to the sky, will I? It would be too funny if a ship got this problem... I was still discussing with a bunch of bastards from the Azathoth civilization circle about going out to race ships together in a couple of months."

Hao Ren rolled his eyes at her, "Psychological shadow, my ass? How can a shipboard host develop that. And you're still thinking about racing ships at this time?"

Nolan curled her lips and said nothing.

Hao Ren looked around the bridge. He found that the self-repair mechanism of the Tortoise Rock was already beginning to work: faint glows were emerging from some damaged places on the bridge, and the cracks in the metal walls were wriggling and slowly healing, as if flesh and blood were regenerating.

But not every place was regenerating as quickly as here. The engine and power center could only be done slowly.

Before Nolan could take off again, he had to first figure out the surrounding situation, at least to know what kind of place he had crash-landed in.

Most of the ship's functions were damaged to varying degrees, and it was impossible to cope with space missions, but because it had a strong and solid core module, it could still be used as an outpost base after "landing" on the ground. At least its integrated computing center, survival modules, and solid armor were still usable.

Exploring the environment required radar. The main radar array of the Tortoise Rock was prepared specifically for space missions, but it also had a set of devices specifically used to scan the planetary surface environment within the atmosphere. This set of devices could be slightly modified to detect the environmental data around the crash site – it was barely enough.

"An ecological planet, thankfully. The environment is also very comfortable. The oxygen content is higher than Earth's, and the air pressure is also higher, but that's not a problem for any of you," Nolan reported the results of the initial scan. "No threatening energy sources were detected. It seems that there are no primordial behemoths or anything like that on this planet. It's a good place for wasteland reclamation and farming."

Hao Ren felt that he shouldn't have downloaded a bunch of online novels onto the ship's host. Nolan had obviously read them all...

"When we fell down earlier, I think I saw something like city ruins," Lily raised her hand. "We left them behind us."

"You didn't see wrong," Nolan released a few holographic projections, showing the remains of buildings that were almost completely submerged by plants in the dense jungle. The picture was very unclear and was obscured by thick smoke and some scattered metal debris, but it was still easy to distinguish things that obviously didn't belong to natural products. "Some remains of man-made objects. Perhaps there will be something interesting there."

Hao Ren stroked his chin, "Looks like it's time to organize an expedition..."