Chapter 1573: Visitation

Frankly speaking, Asurmen’s cryptic way of speaking sent shivers down Hao Ren’s spine, and if Lily was around, she would be a puffy dog now.

“The way you put it reminds me of those times I watched a horror movie at midnight. Before watching, the room would suddenly feel cold and eerie to me, and after watching, my place would seem very lively. Bloody hell, I felt a presence almost everywhere I went.” Hao Ren hugged his arms as he recalled. “I never thought that one day my job would be even more vivid than a movie.”

Vivian gave Hao Ren a weird look. “Too much time in your hands that you decided to watch horror movies alone at home? What sort?”

Hao Ren suddenly felt awkward and wanted to quickly brush it off. But seeing Vivian’s serious and curious eyes staring at him, he could not help but blurt out, “Vampires…”

“Oi!”

“I never thought vampires could be cuties like you.” Hao Ren laughed dryly before he steered the conversation back. “Asurmen, those sounds you mentioned aren’t being picked up by our sensors. Are they some sort of unique energy signature released by the dormant Denizens?”

Vivian was rendered speechless by Hao Ren’s “cutie” line, and after she glared at the latter, she turned to Asurmen’s crystal.

“I am not sure,” Asurmen answered frankly. “The Denizens of the Stars are a complex and adaptive race. In order to adapt to an environment, we can semi-actively change our life form or traits. I have left my kin for too long, and this Star Cluster X… Its environment is unique, and I am not sure why the dormant starships are here. I also do not know if they are able to release those murmurs, but I can be sure that the murmurs come from countless different entities. It is very noisy, so even if the dormant starships are the source of the murmurs, they are not the only source.”

“Star Cluster X is basically shrouded in mystery, and everywhere there’s some unknown, mysterious thingamajig lying around. Let’s be cautious.” Hao Ren shook his head as he tapped the control panel gently. “This is the first area that we’re exploring, be careful. Nolan, bring all sensors online at the highest efficiency. Keep the warp engine warm as usual and all weapon systems hot. If we run into any problems, blast a way out and floor the accelerator.”

“Understood.”

Following the markers left by the exploratory probes, the Petrachelys soon approached the first glowing cloud closest to the Executor’s homeworld.

The dark curtain from the dimensional distortion quickly faded away like a popped bubble, and normal starlight now came through the sensors, shining on the holographic projection above the bridge. At the center of the screen was the massive eye-catching light cloud.

Similar to the image sent from the long-range sensors, the light cloud looked like any ancient dust cloud at first glance. Not only did it have a common disc shape, but on the edge of the disc were also many messy floating “diffusion-belt-like” structures. Seeing this, Hao Ren was once again reminded of the universe’s vastness and the fact that the Denizens of the Stars were beings beyond the comprehension of the average mortal race.

This massive “galactic dust cloud”… was actually a sleeping Denizen of the Stars.

“Approaching slowly.” Nolan’s voice rang across the bridge as the Petrachelys’ standard engines were activated. The “little” hundred-meter-long ship went from stationary to the set speed almost effortlessly and left a series of afterimages as she approached the “cloud”.

While it was technically “approaching slowly”, this was relative to a hyperspace jump. Plus, for an object with a diameter of one thousand kilometers, the tiny Petrachelys, even at ten times the speed of sound, would still look like she was crawling through space.

As they closed in on a set distance, the MDT reminded, “The droids received the signals at this distance.”

Just as the MDT spoke, Hao Ren’s holographic control panel lit up, and at the same time, Nolan’s voice rang. “Received external all-channel communication. Decoding complete. Broadcasting now.”

“Unauthorized unit detected. Please provide contact authorization or identification serial.

“No authorization or identification serial received, not a member of the fleet.

“Another form of identification signal detected… Analyzing… Determined as an unknown cognate unit. Checking if exposed to corruption.

“No corruption detected. No hostile actions detected. Not in the list of hostile targets. Determined to be a neutral unit.

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“Secondary contact clearance approved. Kinsmen, you may entire this unit’s control zone. Please be cautious. This is a war zone.”

The external communication then ceased. Following that was a garble of data fluctuations. It seemed like the clouds had some internal reaction, and the attacks that the droids suffered did not materialize.

“It looks like we pass.” Hao Ren heaved a sigh of relief as he looked worriedly at Vivian. “Didn’t he say ‘war zone’ earlier?”

“He did mention a war zone.” Vivian frowned. “That means there’s fighting going on here and the Denizens are one of the belligerents?”

“Doesn’t look like it. These starships are all dormant. Where’s the fighting?” Hao Ren shook his head. “They aren’t talking about the fighting on the Executor’s homeworld, are they… That war’s bad for the Executors, but that shouldn’t even factor into what’s going on with Star Cluster X.”

After Nolan confirmed that the authorization was effective, she started up the engine carefully as the ship moved toward the light cloud. While she accelerated, she spoke to Hao Ren, “It appears that our exploration is greatly limited in this system. The energy of the Divine Storm is still disrupting all forms of auguries. Outside the activity range of the droids, we are totally blind. Not only that, this ‘unexplorable area’ is very far out of our radius. Therefore, even if there’s a war deep within Star Cluster X, we’d probably not be able to pick up on anything. Plus, the dormant ships we see now aren’t saying anything about it.”

As they spoke, the Petrachelys arrived at the edge of the glowing light discs and came into contact with its material border. Hao Rent then saw the ship that was flying underneath one of the massive diffusion belts. The belt was like a winding drape, hanging overhead. The Petrachelys’ external antenna touched the “drape” and triggered a bizarre flickering akin to ripples when a rock was thrown into a lake.

“I feel like I’m going deep into a jellyfish’s stomach,” Nolan casually quipped about her current feeling. “Boss, when can I become this big… A massive starship sure is awesome!”

“What’s wrong with you and the MDT?” Hao Ren rolled his eyes at Nolan. “Have you heard of a PDA growing up to be a starship’s mainframe, or a frigate growing up to be a carrier?”

The MDT then dashed over and slammed itself against Hao Ren’s skull. “Jab her if you need do, why do you have to drag me in?!”

“He has been sleeping for a long while, probably started right after the goddess entered her slumber.” Asurmen was using the broken crystal to sense his surroundings. Even when separated by the Petrachelys’ thick armored hull and shields, using his unique sensory organs, he could clearly see as well as feel the insides of his kin, not to mention detecting something within this particular one. “His mental frame appears to be evenly spread out, and all material trails are rather hazy. Also, I am not detecting any thoughts…”

“What does this mean?” Hao Ren asked.

“This means we can wake him up by shouting at him.” Asurmen used a very simple-to-understand method to explain, “His slumber is deep… even odd to a certain degree. I have never seen a dormancy where even the mental frame gets diffused.”

Hao Ren was suddenly worried. “Don’t tell me he died in his sleep?”

“…While he is sleeping, it is not that sort of sleep, you know. Besides, we underwent identification checks when we got here, so this starship’s basic functions are working. However, the main consciousness is fully asleep.”

Hao Ren frowned but did not dwell on the matter further because the Petrachelys had already entered the interior of the light cloud.

Upon entering the light cloud’s interior, he noticed that the material density was much higher than expected. And, the images from the sensors earlier showed a vast blurry sky outside the cloud, yet it was now nothing but a roiling storm of “mist”. It was as if the Petrachelys was moving in a massive sandstorm; vision was poor all around.

Hao Ren saw some flickering illumination coming from the light and clouds, surrounding the Petrachelys. From the passing silhouettes, he saw the crystalline curved domes, flying buttresses, suspension bridges, and clusters of massive sharp structures. They seemed to solidify within the mist before they dissipated again.

Vivian saw the same scene too and immediately turned to Asurmen. “What is that?”

“The slumbering parts have ‘awakened’ with our visit,” Asurmen explained, but this awakening is limited to a very small area and has nothing to do with the starship’s main consciousness. What we are seeing is like a projection that has been awakened by external stimuli. This projection can be seen and felt.”

“So that means, if we were to spin around the entire thousand-odd kilometers, we can see its entire form? Hao Ren raised his eyebrow. “Won’t we run into a structure if a pillar suddenly materializes before us?”

“That will not happen since we can only summon a small part, and this small part is not the starship’s real structure. Even though they can be felt, they will disappear at the slightest damage, and like any fake, crashing into one will not cause any problems…”

As though to proof what Asurmen had just said, while he spoke, a pillar that could not be evaded suddenly appeared before the Petrachelys. Before Nolan could even react, the ship ran into it, and Hao Ren saw the pillar shatter into countless of transparent fragments as the Petrachelys impacted it. It then disappeared into the void.

“That scared the sh*t out of me,” the shipgirl mumbled nervously.