The Record of Unusual Creatures - Chapter 846

Chapter 846: For Some Reason, Lil Pea is Simply Powerful

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The lifeblood—the raw ingredient used by the Goddess of Creation to create life, the divine substance representing the origin of beings in the Plane of Dreams—had an unquestionable sanctity in it though it was only a component of the Seed of Origin and the First Born. It made them wonder why the lifeblood was so scared of a small fish that was just one foot long.

Hao Ren took some lifeblood samples from the blood pool and Lil Pea to a hut far away from the square for the experiment. The results of the test remained unchanged. As long as the little mermaid came close to the lifeblood, it would immediately show its inactivity and even signs of active retreat. He put the lifeblood in a glass tube and let the little mermaid stare at it. The lifeblood almost stuck on the side wall of the glass tube.

After a few tests, he also found a peculiar phenomenon; Lil Pea seemed to be able to control her ‘power’ slightly.

When the little mermaid looked at or paid attention to the lifeblood, the retreat of the lifeblood would be more visible, but if the little guy shifted her focus away, the effect of this ‘suppression’ would be greatly reduced, or even no suppression effect at all. The little mermaid became impatient after a few experiments. She no longer wanted to pay attention to the ‘red water’ in the tube, so the lifeblood regained its vitality.

Feeling bored, Lil Pea jumped around on the table and finally onto Hao Ren’s arm and hung there like an armband. She no longer wanted to move her muscle. The lifeblood in the glass tube began to move slowly. Its surging speed was a little slower than before though. Hao Ren stroked the tail of the little mermaid and said to Y’zaks, “Looks like the key to the suppression effect is the little guy’s attention. When she focused, she would influence the lifeblood.”

“The lifeblood has no self-awareness. It can’t even perceive,” said Y’zaks, scratching his big bald head. The highly experienced great demon king was also a little dumbstruck now. “Why is it afraid of a fish?”

Lily chimed in suddenly. “Rollie is also afraid of Lil Pea.”

“It’s not the same thing. Go to a side.” Hao Ren motioned her away and then looked at the MDT. “Were there any other special powers in her that you had discovered during the body check-up?”

“She has a lot of special powers, after all, she is a demon hunting fish,” the MD replied. “However, there is no such special power that you describe. She is just an ordinary mermaid. At most, she is a little spirited and likes to beat the cat up.”

“The talent of the demon hunter is unlikely to produce this effect,” Hao Ren said and pulled his brows together. “Nangong Sanba used to be in contact with the lifeblood, but there was no reaction at all. I guess demon hunters would not be able to influence the lifeblood. After all, demon hunters are just cyborgs created by the ancient magic emperors.”

“Is it because Lil Pea has a purer bloodline?” Lily wagged her tail gently, which was a sign that she was in serious thought. “She was, after all, processed in the Sacred Relics of Origins, and several ranks above the demon hunters such as Hesse,” she said.

Hao Ren spread out his hand. “Isn’t demon hunter of the purest bloodline just a derivative of the derivative of the derivative of the lifeblood?” he asked.

While they discussed and studied the problem here, Muru was following up with the situation through the radio outside the town. The giant had learned about the phenomenon between Lil Pea and the lifeblood and discussed it with the First Born of Zorm. His voice suddenly came through the radio. “Guys, something crossed my mind suddenly. Do you still remember a few months ago, when you tested Zorm’s ability to control the lifeblood in the CARS? Near to the culture pool, the lifeblood suddenly lost its vitality just like today. Was your daughter present at the scene at that time?”

Muru’s word reminded Hao Ren of the incident. He smacked himself on the head and said, “Right, Lil Pea was also there!”

“However, this still doesn’t explain how the interplay comes about,” the MDT said as it knocked on the table, or rather knocked its head on the table, depending on your interpretation. “I’ve recorded the information of the interaction between Lil Pea and the lifeblood, but not found any logical relationship. There is no magic nor superpower. Lil Pea did not exert any power. It seems that it is just an instinctive reaction of the lifeblood as if it fears the mermaid naturally although the mermaid is only a foot long and has not even learned how to speak properly.”

The discussion went on for a long while, but there was no conclusion. Whether it was the actual test or the analysis of the MDT, they found not the slightest clue. Hao Ren felt that harping on the question was only a waste of time. He got to his feet and said, “Keep this question in the record. After the mission, I’d ask Raven 12345 about it. After all, she was the only who sent Lil Pea to me. She must know something.”

They all agreed and could only place their hope on the Goddess.

They came out from the hut and saw Ulyanov loitering outside. No one chased him out of the hut, but he came out on his on will. He was still troubled by the memory disorder and could not wrap his brain around the experiments that Hao Ren conducted. He just needed some quiet time. When he saw them coming out, he came up to them and asked about the blood pool, looking worried. The blood pool was the most important thing in the society of Zorm today. It was the only way for them to return to the real world and the source of the population. If they could not depend on it, then there would be nothing they could depend on in this world.

“The blood pool is fine. The incident was just an isolated accident.” Hao Ren patted Ulyanov on the shoulder to reassure him. “By the way, is the person who failed to come through the ‘transmission’ okay? Did he return to the virtual world safely?”

“The person is fine.” Ulyanov nodded. “The birth is a two-step process. The only thing that comes out of the blood pool is the body assembled according to the gene bank. Then we have to touch the signal tower to reload our soul into the body. It is said that this process is to save bandwidth and prevent the soul from being loaded into a defective body. The person who was ‘stuck’ today has been born only half an hour late.”

Hao Ren nodded as he breathed a sigh of relief. “Perhaps you should build a roof or something around the blood pool; exposing it in the open doesn’t sound appropriate,” he said.

Ulyanov laughed. “We are planning to do that in the future. The town has just been formed not long ago, and we are facing housing and food shortage right now. Build a large ‘restoration greenhouse’ is too big a project for us for the moment.”

Looking at the rudimentary houses around, Y’lisabet suddenly asked with curiosity, “Why don’t you live in the golden city? Isn’t Alamanda a ready-made shelter? The houses are solid; the most you need to do is to clean the place up. Err, I mean those that have not collapsed.”

Hao Ren also nodded. “She is right. You can stay in the ruins of the city freely. Anyway, the necessary preservation work of civilization has been completed, and the rest are just materials. People are more important than anything else.”

Ulyanov who had just woken up did not seem to know this thing. All he saw was just a beautiful wall of Alamanda on the high ground in the distance and never realized there was a magnificent alien city ruin and thought of moving to the city. At this time, a Zorm people passed by and heard the conversation. The person came up and told them, “Although we would like to do so, this is not realistic at present.”

The person was a tall, dark-skinned man, whom Hao Ren had never met before. The man was not a member of the Grey Fox Mercenary Company, he figured. The dark-skinned man explained, “At this stage, we can’t leave the blood pool and the signal tower too far. These two things are the key to connecting the virtual world and the real world, but there are no such facilities in the city ruins. There are no water sources and food in the ruin, no materials from the natural world, and too far from the resupply point. Initially, there was a small group of people moving in the city, but they found that there were food supply and communication difficulties, so they came back out, leaving behind only a few outposts around the city. The only advantage of that place is that the houses are relatively stronger, but to be honest, this is not our priority at the moment.”

Hao Ren had been wondering why these Zorm people would instead settle in the wild and not live in Alamanda. Now he understood. When he first built the infrastructure on this planet, he consciously circumvented all the ruins of Tannagost, including making eighty percent of the autonomous factories in the wild, and only a few production facilities in the city. At present, the Zorm people needed more than just solid houses. They relied on the blood pool, the signal tower, forests, and natural rivers to survive. The alien city had none of these things.

He knew that this would be temporary. After the Zorm people had stored enough food, explored the surrounding terrains, built necessary production tools and gained experience in reclaiming the wilderness, they would move into the city ruins of Tannagost. When that happened, the area between the ruins and the blood pool would grow into a populated strip.

The Zorm people still needed shelter from the wind and rain. The first winter of this planet would not be hospitable to them.

Chapter 847: Popping Out of Nowhere?

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Hao Ren was capable of making the life of the Zorm people easier. At least he could build more factories and send more autonomous robots though he could not solve the living needs of the entire 1.6 billion people. However, this was not a smart approach.

Civilizations needed to be self-reliant. In particular, Zorm, which had just woke up from the virtual paradise and was about to begin to a long road to recovery, must learn to face challenges in the early days. It was not that their survival was under threat; the factory system on this planet had provided enough initial supplies for the Zorm people. All they needed to do was create further living conditions with their own hands. In this case, Hao Ren did not have to intervene. It was the standard of judgment that an inspector should possess. Appropriate help was necessary but not spoon-feeding. As long as the civilization was not facing the threat of extinction, challenging the difficulties was not something too terrible to do. It was complacency that was more dangerous.

Hao Ren had almost visited every place of the new town as many things had aroused his interest and curiosity.

After waking up, the Zorm people found that the social reconstruction plans they had set before had become useless; their planet had been destroyed, the global communication system and the political order were in a state of disarray. They used to store enough resources in the warehouses for use when they woke up, but now they had to get resources from the surrounding environment. They had also planned to form a temporary governmental council after waking up, but now the council was useless in the face of today’s situation. After a short discussion, they established a new social order temporarily. Each settlement was an autonomous region. They relied on the spiritual channel of the First Born to keep a minimum contact with each other. They prioritized social reconstruction. At least when they had virtually nothing now, there was no danger that the Zorm people would get into power struggles and money disputes. There were signs of solidarity and resource sharing everywhere in this new town. Whether it was the mass-produced standard houses or the hand-built hut, everything was allocated by the city council evenly to everyone who needed it. Everyone required to register for occupations and skills immediately after birth from the blood pool. Regardless of one’s status, everyone was assigned to a job. Food and clothing and other materials were obtainable from the distribution point, so there was no distribution problem. Nevertheless, the management committee had also begun to discuss how to ensure equitable distribution after the town could produce the resources on its own, at least to ensure that it was allocated based on demand. It was a fantastic state of communism where it needed to maintain a fair society at a particular time under certain conditions.

Hao Ren had no idea how long this state could last, but at least it was necessary at this stage.

They did not stay here for too long, because the CARS had finished analyzing the data that Muru provided. The CARS and drone cluster had jointly determined a coordinate from where the signal of the other guardian originated. Now the navigation star chart had been sent to the MDT; Hao Ren could not wait to check out the coordinate now.

“We should go now,” Hao Ren said, saying goodbye to Ulyanov. “I’m happy to see you guys doing fine here. I have left an emergency contact channel with Zorm and Muru. I will deal with the problem if there is any.”

“I hope this channel will never be used,” Ulyanov said frankly. His eyes landed on the holographic projection, which was the image of Nolan. “Are you going too?” he asked.

“Of course,” Nolan nodded matter-of-coursely.

Ulyanov rubbed his nose, finally could not hold back his curiosity. “You have already joined Hao Ren’s mission? I remember I was with you in the last dream, so I thought you would also be ‘born’ here too. Where are you now?”

He had no idea the true state of Nolan and thought that Nolan had also returned to the real world through the blood pool just like other human beings.

Nolan looked a little embarrassed but quickly eased up. She smiled and waved at Ulyanov. “I changed my job. We will probably meet again in the future until then you will be shocked by seeing the real me.”

Ulyanov did not give her words too much thought. He just nodded and left. He still had a lot of things to do: lesson at the Social Adaptation Department, and then follow the ‘masters’ who had been awake for a long time to learn how to use the resources and tools of the world, and then he planned to help the town build a hydraulic machine, or become a construction worker. No one was redundant in this new world.

They were back in the CARS, where Muru, who had arrived earlier, was waiting in the central control hall.

Hao Ren checked with the host of the space station as soon as he arrived. “You got the coordinates? How far is it from here? Did the other side respond?”

The space station host replied with a cold machine voice, “The signal source is 12.6 billion light years away, and there is an unknown dimensional phenomenon. The target has no response.”

Hao Ren patted the MDT. “Go and prep the spacecraft, we will set off and go to see what is going on.”

Muru suddenly said, “I will go with you.”

Hao Ren nodded without giving it a thought. Y’zaks quickly said, “You may go but mind your body size. Our spaceship is only a standard version.”

As the tallest person among the tenants, Y’zaks was quite conscious of height. He had banged his head on every door frame in the house.

Hao Ren thought for a while, realizing that this was indeed a problem. Though the Petrachelys had a space expansion module and a very spacious interior, the ten-meter tall giant was still too tall for it. Muru could go nowhere except staying in the garage.

“I’m fine with it. I can squat,” Muru said.

Hao Ren was speechless.

Since Muru had said so, and Hao Ren had run out of words to persuade him otherwise; he nodded. “If you’re okay, I’m okay. You can stay in the garage. I would fix your spacecraft when I’ve free time so that you could move around easily.”

Lily poked Hao Ren’s arm. “You have blown his spaceship into pieces, don’t you remember? What is left is just the cockpit.”

Hao Ren thought for a moment and agreed with Lily. It was not like repairing a car where you could change a tire or something, and the car was good to go again. Here, Hao Ren could only get Muru a new spacecraft considering the state of Muru’s spacecraft.

“We will talk about it later.” Hao Ren smiled and steered away from the conversation and took everyone onboard the spacecraft.

The Petrachelys left the CARS and flew towards the area from where the signal had come.

The distance of more than 10 billion light years was not a problem for the spaceship; it would only take an hour traveling in hyperspace state. During the voyage, Hao Ren called out the navigation map and compared the information of the destination. He found out that the spacecraft’s flight path was coinciding with the direction of the expansion of the drone cluster.

On the star map, the range of movement of the drones was marked with a striking blue, and his destination was right at the edge of the blue spectrum.

“Well.” Hao Ren was curious. “Is this place in the cruising range of the drone? Why didn’t they discover it before?”

“That’s strange.” The MDT had realized it too. “The drone cluster extended their range up to that position a week ago, but they found nothing as there wasn’t even any celestial body there at that time. Now, a drone has rechecked and confirmed the existence of celestial system there.”

“It popped out of nowhere?” Hao Ren blinked. “When did it happen?”

“The drone cluster isn’t monitoring the border twenty-four seven, because the number of drones in the border area is insufficient, so they are patrolling every three days there, waiting until the cluster’s nest produces enough drones to mark the area ‘Normal Patrol Area’ and continue to expand outward,” the MDT explained. “For that reason, the drones didn’t discover in-time a celestial system had suddenly popped up at the border. By the way, in the normal sense of the world, it is impossible for a celestial system just popping out of nowhere.”

Hao Ren scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “That means we can’t know when the Solenne Gateway appeared, but at least we know that it appeared out of nowhere in the last three days.”

Chapter 848: The Distorted Nebula

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

A flash blasted across space as a silver spaceship darted out of the light and into realspace.

“Navigation completed.”

Nolan’s voice remembered everyone that they have arrived at their destination. Hao Ren took the chance to look away from the mind-numbing pile of data towards the display of the visuals outside. He only saw a bright nebula that the ship had arrived upon, but yet there was something clearly wrong with the nebula.

It was a bright purple gaseous structure, and based on the initial scans it was about twelve light years wide as it spread out in a radial form across the nebula, and the core was even brighter by the order of magnitudes. Based on its shape, it seemed like this was a nebula that remained after being torn off, and the bright light was the primal materials that could not form a planet. Within the nebula’s darker parts a few bright spots were visible as the smaller stars were glowing bright.

“It looks a bit weird…” Lily said as she lay before the holographic display wagging her tail. “Like it got distorted by a funhouse mirror?”

Hao Ren nodded. “Probably by gravitational interference. The sunken part probably has a blackhole or something.”

They were talking about the weird shape of the nebula: It was not in a proper shape and one side of the nebula was clearly ‘sinking’ inwards. Everything, light included was slanted towards the sinkhole, almost akin to a canvas being slowly torn apart, or the big hole was formed in the middle of the universe and the nebula was sinking through the hole into another universe. If one were to look in detail, the entire nebula was indeed affected by this ‘skewing point’, and an infinitely powerful gravitational energy was slowly and surely drawing it in.

On the end of the nebula closest towards the ‘skewing point’, there were clear signs of the nebula being torn apart. Everything within that zone had disappeared, leaving only a clear demarcation line, like formless nebula was sliced apart by an invisible blade. Well, it could also be somes ort of optical phenomenon obscuring what was really within the zone.

“Amazing…” Lily mumbled to herself. She might act like a dumb husky most of the time, she was however the most educated amongst the team. The scene before here was no mere entertainment. “The skewing of the starlight can be attributed to the blackhole, but what of that barren area?”

“No, even that reasoning does not hold water.” Hao Ren looked at the data on the screen before frowning. “There’s no blackhole there.”

“No blackhole?” Lily’s ears shuddered. “Then why did the light skew?”

“Nothing to do with gravity, period.” The MDT spoke before Hao Ren could even say a word as it displayed a new holographic screen. On it was the purple nebula’s dimensional structure. It was crumpled like a cloth being pulled. “The whole dimension is skewed and the starlight skewing is only to our eyes. It is still a straight line in its own dimension. This is a very unusual place. There’s no powerful gravitational force affecting it, but yet the dimension’s rhythm had undergone changes.”

Y’zaks gruff voice rang. “Must’ve been the explosion from the assassination attempt against the Goddess and it destroyed the dimension’s structural integrity.”

Hao Ren set for the Petrachelys to travel at hyperspeed towards the skewing point of the nebula as he raised a comm to the hangar – Muru was waiting there. “Muru, I’ll be transferring the images to you. You reckon this is the Solenne Gateway?”

Hao Ren transferred the image of the skewed nebula to the guardian, and the latter took a few seconds before responding, surprise was apparent in his voice. “This… it does look like part of the star systems that the Solenne Gateway is located, but how did it become like that?”

“No idea. There’s something off there, and the dimension itself is distorted and it is pushing against the universe around it.” Hao Ren explained. “We are now heading into the epicenter of the skewing, you know what sort of celestial body that is able to create such a signal?”

Muru suppressed the unease within him as he scanned through his memory for any celestial bodies that were familiar to him within the grossly distorted nebula. “The skewing point… a little to the side, do you see the part that looked like it was cut apart? There is a solitary light there, a star, there should be a rocky planet around there, that star is the main fortress of the Solenne Gateway. Its name is the very gateway it is protecting. The signal is from there.”

Hao Ren nodded and had Nolan to accelerate towards the planet. He then deployed the data network of the exploration probes and pulled out the surveillance records from a few days back of one of the probes.

A few days ago, one of the exploration probe passed by the area, and the images captured was what Hao Ren was seeing now. But the recordings only showed a desolate area and only the faint light of stars a million light years dotted the barren zone.

Yet, when Hao Ren looked up, what he saw was a magnificent, tilting and mysterious nebula.

The Solenne Gateway just popped out of nowhere, without warning in the dimension. The question was, why did it appear?

Nolan swiftly brought the ship close towards the skewing point and they were soon at the distance where the outer surveillance cameras could no longer see the complete body of the nebula. Hao Ren only saw the frigate approaching a star that was getting brighter by the passing moment. Within the star’s perimeter was a very visible ‘scar’, and that scar seemed to have ‘pierced’ into the universe (visually at least) as it expanded on both sides of the star.

The scar was the same demarcation line that they saw when they were monitoring the nebula, the place that looked it got slashed up with a sword. It was not radiant by is own and had no obvious coloration to it. But as nebula and the galactical background did not mesh, and that the light source from other places was completely blocked by the scar, leaving the line a very obvious one.

“Seems like this Solenne Gateway is something that was chopped out of a bigger block.” Lily pointed towards the scar around the star. “And we are flying directly towards it!”

Nolan’s holographic projection suddenly popped up as she forked her arms on her waist, staring sternly at Lily. “Stop that scary talk. The one that is flying towards it is me, I have first-person view for crying out loud!”

Hao Ren subconsciously looked at Nolan, and thought that the longer that she became a ship, this cold and distant ‘ mercenary lass’ was more and more humanlike. But this change probably had nothing to do with her being a spaceship now. The main reason was that Nolan had finally known the ‘truth’ and she now did not need to worry that things would disappear like a dream and she no longer need to worry about waking up to a world where everyone was a stranger again. She was now living in a bona fide world, a real world and the personality that is on display now is probably her original personality.

As Hao Ren’s thoughts circled around such immaterial matters, Nolan’s expression suddenly changed as the Petrachelys suddenly deaccelarated and the mainframe sent out a warning. “Space-time anomaly detected, Space-time anomaly detected…”

Y’lisabet immediately leaped from her seat. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a space-time distortion ahead of us.” Nolan’s projection was fading as she shifted more processing power to the mainframe. “…There is a problem with the timeflow at the skewing point.”

Y’lisabet rubbed her dainty horn in confusion. “Timeflow?”

Seems like the little demon had not studied that sort of super-advanced module yet.

The holographic display on the control bridge displayed the celestial map of the area, and the planet named Solenne was right in the middle. It was marked as bright red, and around Solenne was rings upon rings of reddish halo that faded as it went. This was a whirlpool of considerable strength, and Solenne was in the eye of the storm.

“Seems like both time and space was distorted, and Solenne is at the epicenter of it.” Nolan pointed towards Solenne as she gave a rapidfire explanation. “From here on, time flows slower the closer it is to Solenne.”

The bridge fell silent and everyone looked at each other.

They knew this place was off, but they never thought the thing that was really off was the timeflow. This was not something they had encountered before.

“This slowdown effect is also present near a blackhole, or when some form of hyper lightspeed travel was used without first stabilizing the space-time continuum.” Nolan went on. She probably was not originally equipped with such knowledge, but now that she had access to the data vault, she was a literal walking encyclopedia. “As there is no blackhole, or hyper lightspeed activities in the area, the main reason for the change in timeflow is probably a dimensional distortion… or something even more sinister than that, like the Goddess-slaying War that blew the entire law of the universe in the place to smithereens.”

Chapter 849: You Know What This Means?

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The Solenne Gateway: It was originally a very unique system, it had a massive stellar system and a nebula had continued to create new planets. A gravitational springboard one must pass through if coming from the outer system towards the Star of Creation. The nebula before Hao Ren now is actually just a part of the Solenne Gateway, but it was probably the most significant part, the part that creates nebulas.

All around the nebula were territories that were once protected by the Guardians. This was their home turf, the place where the Goddess would run her experiments, it was her inner sanctum and palace. The planet Solenne was the first of many gateways into this sacred zone. The place where the Nebula of Creation overlooking every starlight across the system. This was also the place where a few fortunate mortals were able to directly be in touch with the Goddess,; a holy land.

During the apocalyptic battle, this gateway was the first to fall, and based on what Muru said, even when the gateway had been taken, there were still ferocious combat on and around the gateway. The treacherous children’s army swarmed every inch of terrirtory with the the Solenne Gateway while the surviving guardians found on tooth and nail from the remaining citadels and strongholds on the planet, hoping to turn the tide and help their mother. This heroic battle lasted until the very last moment, until the entire Solenne Gateway and the Star of Creation was plunged into the Umbral Realm. As no one could see what’s within the Umbral Realm, no one knew what became of the guardians who stood their ground to the very end. Muru too had no idea what had happened after the fall of the gateway that it had turned out this way now.

Now, the gateway was a dimensional wreck there the timeflow had gone haywire. The entire nebula was now stuck in a very peculiar state of contradiction. The laws of the universe does not seem to exist in the place, and the past grandeur of the gate into the holy land was no longer apparent.

The Petrachelys stopped at the edge of the timeflow flux, Nolan ran multiple scans and tests to determine the situation ahead, and now everyone at least know the radius of the flux, and that the timeflow distortion worsens the closer it is to Solenne. For that planet, time had slowed to a pace where it had practically stopped.

“Basing on prelimenary calculations, the timeflow distortion is the worst on the surface of Solenne itself. One hour there is literally a thousand years elsewhere.” Nolan’s voice was tinged with surprise. “And seems like it had been in this state for a very long while, probably from the time where the dimension started skewing.”

Y’zaks crossed his arms over his chest as he stared intently at the images on the holographic display. The wonders of the universe reminded him of his passion for exploration back in the days. “This how extraordinary the universe is… I cannot fathom what sort of energy could cause time to distort as such.”

Hao Ren kept silent the moment he heard that the timeflow had been distorted, as a torrent of thoughts finally started to take shape within his mind. A few minutes later, he suddenly knocked against the control dais, agitation in his voice. “Do you know what this means?”

Lily thoughts for a bit. “So.. we can wait for the final chapter of Detective Conan here?”

Hao Ren smacked the husky’s head without second thought. “That means the God-slaying war on that planet had only just passed the ten hour mark! Means that the treacherous children’s army had only left the place ten hours ago! Maybe some are still there!”

A pall of silence fell on the bridge, even Y’lisabet was gawking at the revelation. Belatedly she exclaimed, “… Wow this is so cool!”

“Can we head in there?” Hao Ren stared at the MDT that was playing dead on the control dais (playing dead to prevent anyone from taking it off the socket). “Under the condition that we are able to ward off the time distortion.”

Hao Ren thought that this was a rare opportunity and wanted under any circumstances to head on to Solenne to see what was going on. But the time distortion is a fatal problem, especially when an hour on the planet equates to thousands outside. This means that by the time he let out a sneeze on the planet, the people on Earth probably had already colonised Mars. As this was something he had never enconutered before, Hao Ren felt that was a particularly tricky question.

Yet the MDT’s responsed was relaxed. “Of course. No problem. We can negate the timeflow distrotion, but this is a one-time only and cannot be reversed. Using the ship’s void engine will do.”

“Negating the timeflow distortion?” Hao Ren’s was stunned. “On what basis?”

“The Xiling Celestials are immune to the negative effects from any disruption to the law of the universe. And any of their creations are equipped with the same ability. The basis of which that after ‘jumping’ out of a planet one would be in contact with the ‘void’. The MDT tried to explain this complicated question. “Do you know what is the concept of ‘worlds’?”

Hao Ren blinked as he started to recall what he had previously studied. “It must be within a space-time continuum that is self-contained and yet compatible with the universal manifold? A series of information is able to self-, and is fully equipped with all the data it requires. It is a massive continuous self-deductive mathematical equation that works under series of mathematical laws to conduct internal calculations and cycles. Externally it is the activities that happen within the universe. This system is called a ‘world’.

“There’s a few mistakes here and there, but there’s the gist of it.” the Mdt flashed twice to signal that Hao Ren was correct.” The world is a self-consitent model, and the void is the primal chaos outside this model. Touching the void means you’re out of the world, and are no longer bound by the world’s rules, this includes perception and any physical laws. Time itself is what? No matter what it is, it can only affect what is within this world. Once something out of the world appears, it will be destroyed, and subsequently reset.”

Hao Ren suddenly understood what it mean. “So when we set the ship for void travel, and ram directly into the place…”

“We could negate whatever form of time distortion. But this process will also destroy the distorted structure there and once the void engine shuts down the area around Solenne will reset to the normal timeflow. This ‘normal timeflow’ will match the surrounding universe.

Lily blinked as she listened on to the borderline metaphysics discussion Hao Ren and the MDT had. Even if she was the most educated of the lot, this was something out of her league, and she could only nodded, feigning understanding. “Can this work?”

“Simple, brutal and effective.” the MDT was confident. “We’re just hitting the circuit breaker of the timeflow here to reset it. Well, since the the slowdown was not caused by gravity or anything, it’s just a programming error, this sort of ‘bug’ can be fixed easily.”

Hao Ren nodded and gave Nolan an order. “Activate the void engine, we’ll smash our way through. Stop on the signal from the MDT.”

The MDT’s methods was simple and effective, but it was slightly on the brutal side of things. It was using a ‘foregin object’ to pass through the time distortion to force an area-wide reset of the timeflow. This was almost a hail mary sort of treatment, as the void engine’s activation will cause a great amount of stress to the world, and the engine needs to be stopped before the world disintegrates into binary codes.

The Petrachelys reacted almost immediately, as the center portion of the ship armor glowed in a radiant blue grid. The void engine was now active, and the blue grids quicky turned illusory and placed the ship on standby to jump out of the universe.

Strictly speaking, the ship now was not something the rule of this world was able to comprehend, and yet as it forcibly stayed on, that triggered a chain reaction. The skewing point of the nebula shuddered, and the light around it faded away as if was swallowed by omething. And even some of the stars and planets slowly lost their form in the shuddering and became almost like two-dimensional art clip.

The ship was now headed straight for Solenne.

Hao Ren nervously looked at the scene outside as he mumbled out his orders. “Nolan, slowly, slowly… Lower the engine power output… WAH! Easy on the clutch! Treat this like a walk… No, don’t step on the accelerator! Legs off! Alright, just like this, slowly, steady, mind the speedometer…”

Nolan had enough. “Shut up!”

Solenne’s image was fading by the moment, and was just about to disintegrate into merger binary integres, but just as it was about to totally fade from the shuddering caused by the void engine, the MDT barked the order. “Cease!”

Nolan immediately slammed the brakes… oh, she didn’t. She just merely cut off the power to the void engine and just as the ship was about to descend into the void, the Petrachelys floated precariously on the world’s edge. After a short buzz like a TV with poor reception, the ship form was restored.

Solenne and and the surrouning area too had been restored. The light was slowly stabilising and while the dimensional distortion is still there, the timeflow of the place had started moving again, at the usual pace.

The Petrachelys arrived slowly on Solenne’s orbit. On this very planet, the god-slaying war had just ended ten hours ago.