Shrouded in Mystery
The neutron cannons spat out beautiful tongues of flame. The antimatter missiles landed on this huge building one after another, and for a moment, the rumble of cannon fire filled the air.
The Tomahawk only had two medium-size blast-cannons. Its main method of attack was not gunfire but the many combat drones it carried. Once they were released, they would be like a swarm of poisonous bees, biting the enemy to death.
Fearing that the dust in the supergravity zone would damage these valuable drones, Xia Fei did not use them. Instead, he only used the two blast-cannons to attack.
What are you trying to do? asked Phantom, confused.
He could not understand why Xia Fei would indiscriminately bombard these old, square-shaped buildings. A single antimatter rail bomb cost thirty thousand star coins, and the two rapid-fire cannons could fire one hundred and eighty rounds per minute. Just the ammo alone would cost more than five million star coins per minute. Xia Fei had always been frugal, so this was no different from a waste.
Xia Fei knitted his eyebrows. He did not order the blast-cannons to stop as he said, I suspect that these things are not buildings at all.
Not buildings? Then what could they be?
Due to his habitual thinking, Xia Fei had initially thought that these huge square objects were buildings like Phantoms. There was no way the natural environment could produce such standard square rocks, unless they were man-made.
However, when Xia Fei actually came into contact with them, his train of thought changed again. There were no doors or windows, so Xia Fei could not think of anyone who would build such a strange building. He began to suspect that these things were actually physical objects and not buildings.
The depth detector on the Tomahawk was affected by the environment and could not be used, so Xia Fei decided to use the most direct and effective method, which was to use cannons to blast open these giant rocks to see what was going on.
If they were buildings, they would naturally be blasted open by the cannons. If not, it would mean that they were man-made concrete blocks.
It was not easy to build concrete blocks that were over a thousand meters in length, width, and height. Why would they abandon them on this desolate planet after they were built? Xia Fei could not imagine it. He could only figure out the true structure of these things first.
Stop! After two minutes of continuous bombardment, Xia Fei ordered the mainframe computer to stop.
Phantom and Xia Fei stood in front of the porthole and looked ahead. When the dust settled, the two could not help but gasp.
A rectangular boulder had been sliced in half, revealing countless pieces of concrete, and the metal structure could be vaguely seen.
These huge square objects were indeed solid!
They were not just any buildings!
No one could imagine who would throw these huge concrete blocks here. What were they used for?
Lighting a cigarette, Xia Fei returned to his chair and furrowed his eyebrows in deep thought.
Phantom thought for a moment and asked, "Since these boulders are solid, could it be that someone wanted to use them to build some kind of building, but for some unknown reason, they didn't use it and abandoned it here?"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Phantom laughed out loud. Each boulder was no less than a kilometer in length, width, and height. Putting aside whether it was feasible to use such large stones to build a house, even if it was built, how big would it be?
A super building that was hundreds of thousands of meters tall, or even millions of meters tall, what was it used for? Play golf?
At the very least, humans with their small bodies would not be able to withstand a building that was millions of meters tall. Unless there was some extremely tall and intelligent species in the universe, it was hard to imagine who would need such a large building.
Humans had actually built some very large bases as well, and the way they did it was to empty out a small planet and install many cannons and other defensive facilities around it, turning it into a mobile bunker. The bases Xia Fei had seen in the Wild Star Region were one such example.
The problem was that these stones were shaped like bricks. If they were used to build a military base, it would be much more difficult than hollowing out a planet. Moreover, they were not sturdy. If they were used to build civilian residences, it would be even more absurd. How could it be possible to stuff hundreds of millions of people into a single building?
The Tomahawk continued circling around the crimson planet. Xia Fei kept thinking about the use of these stones, so he did not give the warship any further orders.
Looking through the porthole, he could see that the arrangement of these stones was not very uniform. Some were tightly connected to each other, while others were very far apart. However, they were all arranged very neatly, facing the pitch-black space. It did not look like they had been randomly thrown here. The reason why Xia Fei had thought that they were buildings was because of the arrangement of these stones.
Theyre not placed evenly, but theyre all neatly placed? Xia Fei muttered to himself, puzzled.
Suddenly, he had an idea.
"Quick! Quickly pull up to 150,000 meters! "Xia Fei ordered.
The Tomahawk turned around and flew in the opposite direction. A few moments later, Xia Fei stood on the porthole and looked into the distance. He saw that these rocks were connected vertically and horizontally, like some kind of unknown calligraphy.
"Look!" Xia Fei excitedly said. "Don't these stones look like words when they're connected?"
"Words?!" Phantom was startled. "Yes, it does look like words. The structure is scattered but not messy. It's just that I don't know what kind of words they are."
Xia Fei smiled. His finger lightly tapped on the screen, recording the words.
Because the planet was circular, Xia Fei and Phantom had not realized that these stones were arranged like words at first, but if they were to view it as a flat surface, the arrangement of the stones on the planet would appear very orderly.
The translation chip in his brain was busy, but it was still unable to decipher the meaning of these words. Xia Fei shook his head. If even the advanced AI translation chip could not decipher them, it could only mean that the structure of the words was too complicated and rare.
Though he had no way of knowing who had tossed these giant rocks here or what the words formed by these rocks meant, Xia Fei still let out a sigh of relief. After all, he had found traces of Old Porters whereabouts and even figured out the purpose of these rocks.
"At least this is a good start. Old Porters arrival and departure means that he is at least still alive," Phantom said.
Xia Fei nodded and ordered in a deep voice, "Start recharging the warp engine. Head toward target number two."
The purple zone that Old Porters had marked was not far from where they were, and they could reach it in a single warp. Since the gravity of the two zones was similar, this warp was not as unbearable as before.
From the star map, they had already left the Black Abyss Star Region and had entered a truly unexplored region. Moreover, this region was rather large, with an asteroid belt and four planets in the purple zone that needed to be explored one by one.
The signal received by the radar system was still chaotic, so Xia Fei could only rely on his vision and the blurry video system to find traces of Old Porters.
First, he searched the four planets one by one. These planets were no different from the many barren asteroids in the universe, with nothing special about them. Xia Fei pursed his lips and piloted the Tomahawk into the asteroid belt.
There was no asteroid belt on the planet, so Xia Fei naturally did not hold out much hope. With the mindset of giving it a try, the Tomahawk broke through the layers of obstacles and slowly advanced through the countless rocks.
"This asteroid belt is way too long. I'm afraid that it'll take several months to completely search through it," Phantom said as he looked out the window at the boundless asteroid belt.
Xia Fei furrowed his eyebrows and ordered in a deep voice, "Run the metal detector at full capacity and scan the entire asteroid belt."
Even without the hindrance of gravity, it was still a very difficult task to explore a wide belt of gravel because the messy gravel would greatly interfere with any signal transmission. Moreover, one could imagine the difficulty of exploring in this supergravity zone.
"Use a blurry scan; only search for signals that are larger than or close to the frigate," Xia Fei continued to order.
The metal detector quickly began operating. These asteroids all contained different amounts of metal, so it was necessary to filter out those that were too small or had insufficient metal purity.
Xia Fei actually did not hold out much hope for the metal detector. After all, the interference in the supergravity zone was just too severe, and almost all electronic devices were unable to function.
Unexpectedly, the metal detector actually discovered a dazzling signal!
This signal was located several tens of thousands of kilometers away from the Tomahawk. From the signal's equivalent, it was very large, much larger than what he expected!
There were no words to describe Xia Fei's shock. According to the signal, this metal object was at least 1.5 billion cubic meters in size!
Just what kind of concept was that?
It was practically a metal city, enough to house tens of thousands of people.
Such a large piece of metal, one that had been purified to be of high strength, just what could it be?
"Full speed ahead!" Xia Fei ordered in a deep voice.
The Tomahawk abruptly accelerated, heading toward its target.
"How could there be such a large piece of metal? Could it be a small planet made entirely of metal?" Phantom asked.
Xia Fei shook his head. "Impossible. The metal detector shows that it's purified, high strength synthetic metal. In other words, it's a man-made object."
Most of the metals in space existed in the form of ores. Although there were many types of ores, they were not pure. According to the metal detector, this large piece of metal was refined from many different metals and forged artificially, so it was impossible for it to be a piece of metal floating in space.
"A man-made object! That's even more unbelievable. You should know that the largest warship in the Pan-Human Alliance is only around 500 million cubic meters in size. That's already the largest warship that humans can build, and there's no bigger warship in existence, yet this thing is the size of three supercarriers. How is that possible? "Phantom was completely shocked, his voice hoarse.
"Could it be that the metal detector is affected by the gravity and got it wrong?" Phantom asked. A man-made object of 1.5 billion cubic meters was far beyond the limits of Phantom's imagination, so he was very confused about it.
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