Chapter 18 All Sculptures are Damaged

Basically all the sculptures were damaged—some were even so fragmented that they couldn’t be restored, even with the computational power of the data terminal. It was impossible to recreate the missing parts of the statues and reliefs out of thin air.

Hao Ren could only ask the data terminal to restore them to their original appearance as much as possible.

The data terminal hovered in mid-air, and a pale blue light curtain was projected into the air a few meters in front of it. Where the light curtain enveloped, time seemed to reverse. The broken sculptures and incomplete reliefs were reorganized into images and placed in their original positions. Vines and moss were cleared by the image filtering system, revealing the original appearance of the walls and pillars. Less than a third of the scene could be restored. In the unrecoverable parts, the blue light curtain projected large swaths of trembling shadows representing “unknown data.”

Hao Ren saw human sculptures: men, women, old and young, of various races. They were arranged neatly on both sides of the entrance to the hall, as if standing there specifically to display the standard model of humanity.

Further ahead was a “star chart” of planetary positions, carved on a metal plate five meters long and wide. The metal plate stood like a screen in front of the human sculptures. It not only marked the relative positions of planets and stars, but also used various symbols to mark many things. After a simple translation by the data terminal, it was discovered that those symbols were all explaining the meaning of this star chart.

“Looks like this is indeed a ‘message board’,” Hao Ren muttered, stroking his chin. “I guess there should be more than one such building on this planet... Perhaps every large city center has such a ‘museum’ built?”

Vivian shook her head, “We’ll have to wait until we can find more ruins to know.”

The group of four finally stopped in front of a set of reliefs.

“This should be it.” Lily pointed to the picture on the relief with great excitement, her golden eyes shining brightly.

In the picture restored by the data terminal, Hao Ren saw a very familiar scene: huge tentacles grew out from the depths of the earth, the tentacles shook the entire continental structure, setting off world-destroying floods and earthquakes. The cities built by humans were destroyed piece by piece in the face of the disaster. Buildings collapsed, bridges fell, and countless magnificent buildings were ruined.

After the continuous natural disasters came the arrival of the Blood Tide: the relief depicted this scene in a very vivid way. Large areas of shadow shrouded the world where humans lived, and various creatures twisted and melted in the face of the shadow, turning into chaotic lines and clumps. People who saw these pictures for the first time might be a little dazed, but Hao Ren could tell at a glance that this was a depiction of the process of creatures being swallowed and fused by the Blood Tide.

In the last few parts of the relief, Hao Ren saw the indigenous creatures of this planet resisting—they seemed to have built huge steel fortresses, relying on completely isolating themselves from the external ecological environment to resist the attack of the First Born, but just like what happened on the planet Tanagoth, these steel fortresses quickly fell. They also sent out massive mechanical troops to attack the tentacles protruding from the ground, but such counterattacks could only delay the pace of the disaster: because they lived on the body of the world-destroyer, the enemy was the entire world they lived in, omnipresent, and inescapable.

“Look here,” Vivian pointed to the end of the relief. Because this part was severely damaged, the picture restored by the data terminal was also blurred, but there were still some things that could be understood in that blurred picture. In one of the pictures, there was a clear scene of a spaceship taking off. “They seem to have built large spaceships and launched a large number of people and supplies into space, but there was no follow-up after that.”

Hao Ren showed a thoughtful expression. He subconsciously reached out to touch the picture on the relief, but his fingers passed through the light curtain projected by the data terminal. What he touched in the end was only a layer of rough, corroded metal. “Judging from these pictures, the indigenous civilization on this planet was indeed destroyed by the First Born. Until the final part of the picture, the First Born still occupied an overwhelming advantage... But what happened in the thousands of years after that is unknown. This planet has become what we see today. The ecological environment seems to have recovered. Although the First Born is still active, it has not continued to destroy the ecosystem, and..."

“And there are those ‘survivors’ driving bombers and fighting the tentacles,” Nangong Wuyue patted the ground with her tail. “Something must have happened after the timeline of these reliefs, changing the subsequent course of events.”

Hao Ren nodded, “This planet is different from any we’ve seen before. It seems necessary to study it carefully.”

In the subsequent exploration, they traveled almost every corner of this building. Although they made some discoveries, they didn’t find any more valuable clues.

On the top floor of the building, they found some sealed-off secret rooms completely wrapped in special alloy. After cutting open the outer shells of these secret rooms, Hao Ren found some ancient equipment that was completely damaged and could no longer be repaired, as well as some human remains that may have been equipment operators. Through identification, the data terminal confirmed that all the operators had committed suicide.

The secret rooms were completely sealed off. Not only could they not be opened from the outside, but judging from the structure, the people inside could not get out after the locking device fell, so these secret rooms were designed as tombs from the very beginning. Vivian guessed that the people left in these secret rooms should be the last batch of city guards. They controlled the city’s last defensive forces here through various pieces of equipment, and after all the defensive facilities were destroyed, they ended their lives in these “safe houses.”

In the part of the building that had sunk underground, Nangong Wuyue used her control over water elements to find some ancient machine rooms and reactors that had been half-submerged in water. They should have been the “brain” and “heart” of this ancient facility. Due to being soaked in water and the passage of time, the machine room had turned into a pile of scrap metal that had completely lost its value. Hao Ren had originally hoped to find some chips or other things that stored information in those ancient machines, but in the end, he gained nothing.

As for the reactor that had been completely destroyed... The data terminal could only determine that it was a highly efficient fusion furnace, but the specific technical details could not be restored.

The exploration continued until nightfall.

After finishing the exploration of the pyramidal building, Hao Ren and his group also checked several other places in the city, finding a large pile of discarded machines and weapon wreckage. Lily even found a delicate ship model, which Vivian believed should be a toy that children played with back then. From an archeological point of view, their subsequent explorations could be described as fruitful, but from the point of view of uncovering the truth of history, only the things seen in the “sculpture hall” earlier were the most valuable.

Having confirmed the existence of the First Born, the natural environment in the wild no longer seemed safe. Hao Ren gave up the idea of spending the night among the ruins and forests. After the data terminal established a coordinate connection with Nolan, the group returned directly to the spaceship through space teleportation.

The people on the spaceship had been waiting all day in boredom. Due to the damage to the central host, Nolan had to transfer all her computing power to repairing the system, so the people left on the spaceship didn’t even have a movie to watch. This bored everyone: especially Elizabeth, who was lively by nature. The little girl wandered around the spaceship with a wrench all day, scaring Nolan enough.

Probably only Gun had a more pleasant day. As a cat, at least a cat in spirit, she hadn’t yet developed too many chaotic human hobbies. She spent half of her day dozing and the other half dealing with a ball of yarn. To be honest, everyone else on the spaceship was envious of this stupid cat. If only they had her temperament, one ball of yarn per person would be enough to play with until the end of time...

In short, the return of Hao Ren and his group immediately ignited the spirits of Elizabeth and Nangong Sanba. Even Doudou jumped over with all her might, jumping onto Hao Ren and asking the latter what discoveries they had made after being out all day.

“We found a lot of things, but can you let me catch my breath first,” Hao Ren waved his hand to drive Elizabeth and Nangong Sanba aside. After settling into his captain’s seat, he looked around the bridge and found that many of the things that had been damaged before had now “grown” back to their original state. “Nolan, is the regeneration going smoothly?”

“It’s going a bit more smoothly than expected,” Nolan’s voice came from all around. “Because there’s been no external interference, the repair work on this ship can proceed at full speed.”

“Have you detected any more signal responses from the indigenous civilization on this planet?”

“Apart from the aerial units you encountered during the day, this ship hasn’t detected any more signal responses.”

“Well... Okay, that’s not urgent,” Hao Ren waved his hand. “We found some information left by the ancients in the city ruins...”

A group of people gathered on the bridge, listening to Hao Ren and his group of four recount the discoveries of their exploration trip. Apart from Doudou and Gun, who were just there for show, everyone was actively racking their brains, thinking about the meaning behind those reliefs and the information revealed by the aircraft that appeared during the day.

Izhaks was the first to speak: “Those reliefs should have been recorded by the last batch of holdouts left on the planet. After the spaceship took off, they retreated to these cities and left sculptures and reliefs in their final moments. This can explain why the content of the reliefs ends abruptly after the escape ship takes off: the people who left the reliefs didn’t know what happened after that.”

“I think so too,” Hao Ren nodded. “The ships they launched should only be able to take away a portion of the people, perhaps less than a tenth of the total population—a large number of people were left on the planet. These holdouts should have resisted for a while after the ships took off, until the First Born completely destroyed all defenses. During this time, they had time to leave enough information for later arrivals.”

Nangong Sanba interjected: “But the city wasn’t completely destroyed by the First Born—although it is indeed a ruin now, it’s clearly more due to the damage caused by the passage of time. If it was caused by the First Born, the entire city should be more thoroughly destroyed.”

“So I suspect that the First Born’s process of destruction didn’t proceed to the final step,” Hao Ren said his guess. “After the humans on the planet died out, the First Born’s activities probably stopped—that’s why the relatively well-preserved city ruins and the entire ecosystem were left behind.”

If that weren’t the case, what Hao Ren and his group saw after arriving here should have been a more desolate world.

Vivian then brought up another matter: “Speaking of which, what does everyone think about the aircraft we saw during the day?”

“Survivors,” Lily said without much thought. “What else could they be?”

“‘Survivors’ is fine, but the key is... where did these survivors come from,” Hao Ren tapped the armrest of the seat with his finger. “Are they the descendants of the resistance organizations that remained on the planet’s surface, or... that batch of people who were launched into the sky back then?”