Chapter 11 Only Then Did We Understand

On the bridge of the Petrified Tortoise, only Hao Ren and the Goddess of Creation were present, staring at a box of books. Although they had reached a consensus on the idea that "knowledge is power," it was clear that for a wild goddess who had never attended school, how to transform knowledge into power was a complete mystery.

Hao Ren felt obligated to guide this out-of-school goddess onto the path of academic excellence, so he pointed to the box of books and said, "These are all textbooks compiled according to your specific situation. The Dark Valkyrie, your 'mother,' also left some study notes inside. I suggest you start by cramming creation studies because that knowledge is fundamental. The second most important thing is various destruction-based divine arts—because what we need most now is combat power. I've made a study plan for you. Here's a timetable. In addition to following the timetable, you also need to do ten sets of papers and sixty large questions every day. You need to finish these twenty *jin* of 'One Lesson, One Exercise' as soon as possible—and then there's more. Of course, practical lessons are as important as theoretical lessons, so here are ten sets of experimental guidance. You can mess around in the crystal nucleus research station's laboratory. If it's something that's too destructive, find a testing ground yourself..."

Lilia listened in a daze. She blinked every time Hao Ren said something. When Hao Ren finally finished his long list of study tasks, the Goddess of Creation puffed out her chest and waved her fist with particular spirit: "I'm going to find the Lord of Pandemonium and die together!"

"Escaping from studying is wrong," Hao Ren said expressionlessly, looking at the goddess. "I'm telling you, your mom was a famous academic in the God Realm, the first Bright Goddess to graduate as a Dark God. You have her bloodline, so your potential is definitely enough. You have to have confidence in yourself..."

Lilia's face was almost crumpled: "I've never experienced this before! Isn't learning supposed to be a gradual process?!"

Hao Ren sighed. "Learning should indeed be gradual, but the Lord of Pandemonium won't be gradual. You should know that better than I do. And to be honest, the higher-ups also considered that you might have difficulties facing such heavy academic pressure all of a sudden, so they asked me to help you."

Lilia's eyes lit up: "You can help? Can I copy your homework?"

Hao Ren casually pulled out the Morningstar Bible from his Dimensional Pocket: "This is a replica of the Dark Valkyrie's weapon. My main task is to督促 (dūcù—urge) you to study..."

Before he could finish speaking, Lilia had already teleported to the door. The goddess, whose style was becoming more and more wrong, or rather, more and more normal, pointed at the ferocious-looking studded brick and her lips trembled: "Take that thing away from me! I'll study, okay?!"

Hao Ren chuckled and put away the Morningstar. "It would've been over if you'd cooperated earlier."

Lilia walked back warily, looking at Hao Ren with suspicion: "So this thing was actually prepared for me from the beginning, right? And you only took it out to deal with that world-destroying goddess because the situation was urgent..."

Hao Ren coughed twice, acknowledging it.

Lilia's face turned ashen, and she decided to throw herself into the sea of learning...

In fact, she was very clear that to deal with the Lord of Pandemonium, it was wise to improve her strength as soon as possible, and those books containing valuable knowledge were the best aid to improve her strength—if she couldn't understand this, then even if Hao Ren wielded the Morningstar Bible, he wouldn't be able to threaten a genuine true god. But then again, who doesn't have a little emotion? Especially when facing a pile of exercise books suddenly thrown in front of them...

Hao Ren also knew this, so he stopped while he was ahead. After confirming that the Goddess of Creation had strengthened her determination to study, he changed the subject: "Actually, I have something else I want to talk to you about."

"Ah? There's more?" Lilia was shocked. "Isn't it just one semester?!"

"It's not about school," Hao Ren waved his hand helplessly. "I'm talking about the Genesis Engine."

"The Genesis Engine?" Lilia was relieved to hear that it wasn't increasing her homework load, and then became puzzled. "What's wrong with the Genesis Engine?"

Hao Ren cut to the chase: "In short, I need it."

Lilia became even more confused when she heard this: "Didn't you say that the plan I made had too many loopholes and was abandoned? Is the Genesis Engine still useful?"

"If it's used according to the functions you initially set for it, then it's indeed useless, but it's still valuable as a powerful artifact in itself," Hao Ren said, waving his hand. "We need to squeeze out every bit of power to prepare for the upcoming war. The Genesis Engine that you spent so long tinkering with can't just be treated as scrap metal. I know that thing was dragged into the dark realm during the God Kingdom explosion, but we didn't find it—where did you hide it?"

Hearing Hao Ren's reason, Lilia nodded in realization, and then smiled: "Of course you can't find it, because the Genesis Engine isn't even in the dark realm at all now."

Hao Ren was stunned for a long time before he reacted: "...What did you say?"

Lilia brought up another matter: "I heard that the Sulun star system has appeared in the main material world, is that right?"

Although he didn't know what the other party meant by suddenly mentioning this, Hao Ren still nodded: "Yes, it suddenly appeared two years ago. Rêmen Dusa and Sypha were found in the battlefield of the Gate of Sulun. We do suspect that the star system broke away from the dark realm because of the Genesis Engine's operation, but this process..."

Lilia interrupted him: "The Genesis Engine is in the Sulun star system."

Hao Ren was stunned and subconsciously said, "That's impossible! We searched the entire star system where the Gate of Sulun is located, and even the core of every star! There are still thousands of detectors scanning that place day and night, how could there be a Genesis Engine?"

"Conventional detection methods are useless, because the Genesis Engine is not in 'a certain place' in the Sulun star system, but in Sulun 'itself'," Lilia blinked. "Ah, explaining it in detail would probably be very troublesome, after all, I haven't been to school and don't know how to say this process in technical terms..."

"Then you don't need to explain, just get that engine out," Hao Ren said as he was about to order Nolan, "Nolan, prepare a course, the target is the foundry of the Gate of Sulun, we..."

"We don't need to go over there," Lilia interrupted him. "Didn't you say that you placed a lot of detectors in the Sulun star system? Then you should be able to transmit the images of the entire star system, right? Accurate to every small celestial body."

Hao Ren considered the number and quality of the detectors he had left behind, and found that there was no problem, so he nodded and asked Nolan to connect to the data station located on the surface of the Gate of Sulun planet: "Connect to the real-time monitoring data stream over there."

"And then find a place where you can look out into space," Lilia continued, "Facing an open space."

Hao Ren thought for a moment, and a flash of inspiration hit him: "Oh, there's an observation deck on the upper deck area of this ship, which can be opened to directly overlook space. Is that enough?"

Lilia smiled: "That's of course the best."

The two of them immediately left the bridge and went to the observation deck located in the upper deck area. As a result, when they arrived, they found that there were other people on the observation deck—Lily, Nangong Wuyue, and Gungnir were each holding a bottle of soda and looking at the stars.

Hao Ren initially thought that these three girls were in a poetic mood and had come here to observe the stars and compose poems, but when he got closer, he heard that they were just bragging. Lily was biting her straw and shaking her head: "At that time, the two of us were fighting inextricably—the mirror image, you all know, is evenly matched with the main body! Defeating oneself is the most difficult thing in the world. At first, I was spraying light cannons at each other, but I quickly ran out of mana, and then I fired missiles at each other, but the missiles also ran out. In the end, we competed to see who had the loudest voice, and we howled hard at each other. You know, I don't necessarily win fights, but I've never lost an argument! I thought I was about to win—but who would have thought that the landlord would use a Morningstar to beat the opposite Boss to the second stage..."

Nangong Wuyue and Gungnir next to her nodded together: "That's right, that's right." "I would have won if it wasn't for the landlord!" "Great Cat always ruins things!" "The Landlord is here!"

The Three Cowardly Musketeers finally noticed Hao Ren standing behind them, and immediately all jumped up, each with an embarrassed smile on their faces. Seeing this situation, Hao Ren didn't expose their topic just now, but just waved his hand: "I didn't hear anything just now."

"Hehehe..." Lily chuckled dryly, and then noticed the Goddess of Creation standing next to Hao Ren. "Ah, the goddess is here too? What are you two doing here?"

"To be honest, I don't know either," Hao Ren pointed to Lilia, "Still waiting for her to demonstrate."

Lilia didn't try to be mysterious, but said directly: "Transmit the real-time images of the Sulun star system, project it onto...this position. The required perspective is xxx-xxx-xxx."

Inside the Petrified Tortoise, holographic projections could be generated anywhere, so the real-time monitoring screen from the Sulun star system immediately appeared in the sky above the observation platform. According to Lilia's request, the background of this image was a vast expanse of space, with a considerable amount of open area.

Lilia looked at this image, and one of her eyes suddenly changed. The boundary between the white of the eye and the pupil became blurred, gradually becoming a chaotic gray and white, and the starlight of twinkling gold then shone in her eye sockets: "Keep this projection, and then another image with the perspective located at...".

"Keep these two projections, switch the perspective to..."

"Switch the perspective to..."

"Superimpose all the images, and then use the current time as a baseline to deduce the changes in this star system in the next two hundred years, and highlight the trajectory of all the stars."

"Now highlight the trajectories of all the planets, and continue to push forward two hundred years..."

The golden light in Lilia's eye sockets had already escaped to the outside, and had been projected onto the holographic projection in mid-air. Hao Ren felt that the reality and time outside the Petrified Tortoise were being distorted, and something that originally did not exist in the world gradually emerged.

"Very good, all the images are in place, now invert all the images."

The holographic projection of the Sulun star system was constantly superimposed, interfered with, and deformed in a series of complex changes. At first, it seemed to become a chaotic tangle of lines, but slowly, a spherical object with a complex structure but a subtle sense of regularity appeared in the center of the picture, until the Goddess of Creation finally ordered to invert all the images, Hao Ren and Lily all gasped.

The patterns of the stars combined into a new thing, which turned out to be the blueprint of the Genesis Engine! And it was precisely the core blueprint that Hao Ren was missing!

Lilia blinked, and the alienated eye returned to normal. Subsequently, the holographic projection in mid-air gradually dissipated, but outside the ship, in the area covered by the holographic projection before, a huge, light-gold complex structure appeared there at some point, and was slowly running under the drive of divine power.

"How can such an important thing as the Genesis Engine be placed in a place where everyone can see it?" Lilia turned her head with a sly smile on her face. "I stored it in a line of sight, a line of sight that observes the Sulun star system from a specific angle and order."

Hao Ren swallowed and suppressed the urge to shout "You gods really know how to play", and said with difficulty: "You made the pickup code so complicated...but if you really die, who else can find this engine?"

"This was one of Vivian's original tasks," Lilia shook her head helplessly. "Otherwise, why do you think the Gate of Sulun suddenly broke away from the dark realm and appeared in the real universe? That was to call Vivian to pick up the goods...but no one thought she would lose her memory."

Hao Ren finally understood.

And Lilia looked at the Genesis Engine (strictly speaking, the core of the engine) in the universe with quite a bit of emotion: "So many years of effort, only this thing was made, now it's yours."

Hao Ren was about to nod his head to express his gratitude when he heard that Lilia had more to say: "So I said, you guys are here for my inheritance!"

Hao Ren: "Pfft—"