Chapter 1886 Disturbance

Hearing the news, Nolan was also greatly startled. She had not expected that Zohm would accidentally receive such a bunch of signals from the deep space here. As for the guesses and associations proposed by Hao Ren, although the ship girl held reservations, she also felt that this matter was not a simple coincidence.

Perhaps it really had something to do with the super-giant antenna in orbit...

Thus, the remote mind array that had just quieted down instantly became lively again. Various giant facilities emitted the low hum of energy flow switching, and groups of autonomous machines and engineering drones flew out of their resting hangars, beginning to physically connect the remote mind array and the crystal resonance antenna. The outpost base itself was also affected: the lights in some areas were temporarily turned off, and energy control announcements were broadcast throughout the base, with notifications of temporary closures in some areas.

This was because all the facilities here were built temporarily, and coupled with the lack of experience in designing such bases before, many things only met their own operational needs, and were somewhat inconvenient when faced with unexpected situations. No one had ever thought that Zohm's remote mind array would need to be connected to the large antenna used to search for signals, so when connecting these two systems, one of the energy modules had to be temporarily shut down. As a result, part of the outpost base's reactor energy had to be transferred to the remote mind array.

Fortunately, this emergency process did not take too long. After the physical docking of the two systems was completed, the energy control computer quickly completed the calculation of the system coupling requirements and reset the operating parameters of the two sets of energy modules. The energy control of the outpost base ended in less than twenty minutes.

However, the commotion here had alarmed the little friends in the base. Lily was the first to rush over, shouting loudly as soon as she appeared: "What's wrong? What are we fighting with again?! I was coding in the room when the power suddenly went out—thank goodness for the backup power..."

Vivian appeared next: she was making snacks in the kitchen before and didn't hear the commotion outside, but saw Lily running out while yelling and followed her out to see what was happening. Then came Izhaks and his son. The Nangong siblings were the last to arrive. Gunny and Doudou didn't appear.

The cat girl should be on an adventure in some corner of the base at this time. A little change in the lights was completely commonplace for a stray cat who had been wandering in a dilapidated ancient city since childhood, and Doudou had already gone to sleep obediently.

"The signal received by Zohm..." Vivian was also stunned for a moment after hearing what had happened, and then looked at Hao Ren uncertainly, "Are you sure these communication signals are related to the crystal resonance we are conducting?"

"Of course I'm not sure, I'm just guessing," Hao Ren spread his hands. "Zohm has already confirmed that what he heard is delayed by at most a few minutes and belongs to faster-than-light communication, which means that those signals are not 'ghost radio waves' that were sent out many years ago and lingered in the universe, but were transmitted shortly after we turned on the antenna. These two things together make it difficult not to make associations."

Izhaks stroked his chin: "Then, according to the content of these communications, the crystal resonance signal we released caused a huge trouble... or even a crisis, for the people who sent the communication. Wait, is the antenna still running?"

This was the most frustrating thing for Hao Ren. He pinched his forehead: "The key is that it's not so easy to stop! The crystal resonance antenna looks complicated, but in fact, what we built is just a giant antenna and energy array plus a shell. The real core component is the big crystal dug out from the depths of the earth's core—and the operating principle of the crystal itself has not been figured out yet. What we are currently doing is simply poking this crystal, and then it starts to release signals continuously on its own. The system we built ourselves is only passively scanning for possible echoes from the universe..."

After Hao Ren explained the process, Izhaks understood what was going on: The crystal resonance antenna was, in essence, made up of two completely separate components. The one responsible for sending the signal was the divine crystal, which was produced by the Creation Goddess. Hao Ren's research results on it are currently limited to knowing how to poke it to make it emit signals, while the antenna main system tinkered with by Nolan can only passively receive signals and has no control over the crystal...

Lily thought for a while and raised her hand: "...The communication Zohm received should be cursing us, right?"

Hao Ren sighed: "It's been a while since there's been any movement. Maybe they've given up. Of course, it's also possible that they've already..."

Vivian interrupted him before he could finish his sentence: "The people who sent the communication shouldn't be in trouble yet—since the communication they sent can be received by Zohm, they should already be within our observable range, at least not too far away. The guys who are capable of faster-than-light communication and still survive in this X star cluster will definitely not be simple. Even if they are really attacked by something, they shouldn't be unable to make any noise."

"Well, that makes sense," Hao Ren felt a little relieved after hearing Vivian's analysis. He nodded gently, "Currently, our various antennas can't receive this communication signal, and Zohm can receive the signal but can't determine the other party's location due to his limited 'function'. Now I have connected the data processing center of the remote mind array with the antenna array. If everything goes well, maybe we can make the two systems work together to lock the signal source."

This was the only thing that could be done now, but Hao Ren was unwilling to just wait like this. While trying to search for the signal source, he issued a war readiness order to the drone swarm in the nearby area. All the armed drones that had just rolled off the production line were gathering towards the Agent Mother Planet, while the engineering drones dragged components from nearby nests and assembled a huge jump acceleration track in the sky above the Mother Planet.

Once the signal source was locked, no matter what emergency happened on the other side, Hao Ren could guarantee that he could push the drone army over in the shortest time.

In this strange ancient star system, the drone swarm meant safety.

"What kind of trouble do you think those who sent the communication have encountered?" After finally being free, Vivian asked Hao Ren for his opinion on this matter.

"There's too little intelligence. There are only a few occasional communications floating over, and we can't analyze anything at all," Hao Ren shook his head. "But judging from those few sentences... the people who sent the communication are trying to avoid signal communication with the outside world as much as possible, because the crystal resonance signal is mandatory bidirectional. When we send them a signal, they will inevitably generate a feedback signal—although I don't know why the antenna system we built still can't receive the feedback signal from the universe, this process definitely exists. So it's very likely that our 'shouting' behavior broke the other party's communication silence."

"Trying to avoid exposing their own signal as much as possible..." Vivian was thoughtful, "Are they fleeing or hiding?"

Hao Ren looked solemn and looked up at the stars: "Most likely that's the case."

At the same moment, in the depths of the stars beyond the reach of sight, an extremely huge space float was flying in the dark space.

The shape of this behemoth was like an irregular short cone. One end of the cone was a wide surface with an arc, and the other end was a shattered tip. The cone's section was covered with twisted tears and broken pipes, as if it had been torn from something even larger.

If it were an experienced space adventurer, he would be able to judge in an instant that this was actually a fragment of a planet—from the arc on its surface and the length of the entire cone fragment, it could be roughly judged that it was about one-third of a planet that had been torn off.

This huge planetary wreckage was floating in space, but it was not a dead and dark mass. In fact, its surface was covered with large and small light sources, which made the entire wreckage bright. On the "surface" of the planetary fragment, a large number of obvious artificial traces could be clearly seen: There were many towering towers like giant cannons standing on the ground, and magnificent palaces and cities were built around these towers. Outside these artificial structures, one could even see vast jungles and grasslands—they were lush and vibrant, making it completely unimaginable that these things existed on a celestial fragment drifting in the universe.

Obviously, it was the light sources and life-support environment created by the artificial facilities remaining on the celestial fragment that preserved these plants.

Although the "surface" of the planetary fragment could still be described as vibrant, its other parts were not so optimistic: At the edge of the surface, a large number of torn and collapsed structures could be seen. The earth's crust collapsed shatteringly, exposing the non-functional pipelines and mechanical facilities in the deeper layers. Huge electric arcs roamed the surface of the cone-shaped base of the celestial fragment, constantly causing small-scale explosions and fires. Some places were sparking, and some places even had material leaks: things like smoke clouds spewed out from the lower half of the planetary fragment, shrouding the tail of the entire cone-shaped structure in a haze.

In the center of the "space floating island" was a vast grassland, and in the center of the grassland was an ancient gathering place. Huge metal obelisks were arranged in a ring, and the center of the obelisks was a metal platform large enough to accommodate tens of thousands of people.

At this moment, on this metal platform from the last era, a large group of strange creatures emitting a faint light were gathered together, arguing about things. These creatures had body shapes and appearances similar to elves, but their whole bodies had an almost spiritual, translucent texture. They were difficult to distinguish between male and female, wore almost identical, spirit-like clothes, and both their bodies and clothes were emitting a soft halo. These "fairies" gathered in large groups, with bright electric arcs jumping between them, and their arguments were as crackling and unorganized as these electric arcs:

"We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're really gonna die this time! Those people are still sending signals!"

"Our shielding and interference has exceeded the limit! We can't control it at all, we're gonna be exposed!"

"You're stupid, we've already been exposed! We've been exposed for two hours!"

"It's been three hours!"

"A few hours don't matter at all! The most important thing is that those bad guys are about to attack!"

"We can't beat them, we can't beat them, we don't even have a usable cannon..."

"Aren't there many cannons outside the Great Plains..."

"You're stupid! They're all broken, they're all broken! Even if the Guardian Giants were still alive, there's nothing we can do!"

"What to do, what to do? The goddess created us and gave us only one task, and we're going to mess it up!"

"That's right, that's right, where's the Queen? Let the Queen come out quickly and make a decision!"

"Where's the Queen, where's the Queen, where's the Queen, where's the Queen..."

"..."

"...We're doomed! We don't have a Queen!"

"We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die..."