Basically, all the sculptures were damaged. Some of them were even fragmented beyond repair. Even with the computing power of the MDT, it could not repair the missing parts of the sculptures and reliefs out of thin air.
Hao Ren could only let the MDT restore as much as possible the original appearance of the sculptures.
The MDT floated in the air and projected a pale blue light screen in the air a few meters in front of it. In the light screen, time seemed to reverse. The broken sculptures and reliefs were reassembled into images and placed in their original positions. Vines and moss were removed by the image filtering system, revealing the original appearance of the walls and pillars. Less than a third of the scene could be restored. In the parts that could not be restored, the blue light screen projected a large swaying shadow representing "unknown data."
Hao Ren saw the human sculptures: men and women, old and young, of all races. They were neatly arranged on both sides of the entrance of the hall as if they were standing there to display the standard model of human beings.
Further ahead was the "star chart" of the position of the planets. It was carved on a metal plate of five meters in length and width. The metal plate stood like a screen in front of the human sculptures. It not only marked the relative positions of the planets and stars, but also a lot of things were marked with various symbols. After a simple translation, the MDT found that the symbols were explaining the meaning of the star chart.
"Looks like this is a 'guestbook,'" Hao Ren muttered, scratching his chin. "I guess there should be more than one such building on this planet. Perhaps there is such a 'museum' in the center of every large city?"
Vivian shook her head. "We'll have to wait until we find more ruins to know."
The four of them finally stopped in front of a group of reliefs.
"This should be it," Lily pointed at the image on the reliefs with Flamejoy, her golden eyes sparkling.
In the image restored by the MDT, Hao Ren saw a very familiar scene: huge tentacles grew from the depths of the earth and shook the entire structure of the continent, setting off devastating floods and earthquakes. Cities built by humans were destroyed in the face of the disaster. Buildings collapsed, bridges collapsed, and countless magnificent buildings were destroyed.
After a series of natural disasters came the arrival of the Blood Tide. The reliefs depicted the scene in a very vivid way. Large swathes of shadows enveloped the world where humans lived. All kinds of creatures twisted and melted in front of the shadows, turning into chaotic lines and lumps. People who saw these images for the first time would probably be a little confused, but Hao Ren could tell at a glance that it was depicting the process of creatures being swallowed and integrated by the Blood Tide.
And in the last few parts of the reliefs, Hao Ren saw the process of resistance of the indigenous creatures on this planet. They seemed to have built huge steel fortresses and completely isolated themselves from the external environment to resist the attack of the First Born. But just like what happened on Tannagost, these steel fortresses quickly fell. They also sent a large number of mechanical troops to attack the tentacles, but such a counterattack could only delay the disaster. Because they lived on the body of the Terminator, the enemy was the whole world where they lived, everywhere, and there was no escape.
"Look here." Vivian pointed to the end of the reliefs. As this part was severely damaged, the MDT's restored image was also blurred. But there were still some things in the blurred image that could be seen clearly. In one of the images, there was a clear scene of a spaceship taking off. "They seem to have built a large spaceship and launched a large number of people and materials into space, but there was no follow-up after that."
Hao Ren looked thoughtful. He subconsciously reached out to touch the image on the reliefs, but his finger went through the projected light screen and finally touched a layer of rough, corroded metal. "Judging from these images, the indigenous civilization on this planet was indeed destroyed by the First Born. Until the end of the reliefs, the First Born still had an overwhelming advantage … But in the thousands of years after that, I don't know what happened, but the planet became what we see today. The ecosystem seems to have recovered, and although the First Born is still active, it did not continue to destroy the ecosystem, and …"
"And there are also the 'survivors' who drove the bombers and fought the tentacles." Nangong Wuyue slapped the ground with her tail. "Something must have happened after these reliefs that changed the course of events."
Hao Ren nodded. "This planet is not the same as the ones we have seen before. It seems that we need to study it."
In the subsequent exploration, they almost went to every corner of the building. Although there were some discoveries, they did not find any more valuable clues.
On the top floor of the building, they found some sealed chambers wrapped in a special alloy. After cutting open the shells of these chambers, Hao Ren found some completely damaged and irreparable ancient equipment and some human remains that might have been the operators of the equipment. After identification, the MDT confirmed that all the operators had committed suicide.
The chambers were completely sealed. Not only could they not be opened from the outside, but from the looks of it, once the locking mechanism was down, the people inside could not come out. So these chambers were designed to be tombs from the beginning. Vivian guessed that the people in these chambers were the last group of city guards. They used various devices to control the last defense force of the city. After all the defense facilities were destroyed, they ended their lives in these "safe houses."
In the parts of the building that had sunk into the ground, Nangong Wuyue used her water element to find some ancient engine rooms and reactors that were half-submerged. They must have been the "brain" and "heart" of this ancient facility. Due to being soaked in water and age, the engine rooms had completely lost their value. Hao Ren originally hoped to find something like a memory chip in those ancient machines, but in the end, he found nothing.
As for the completely destroyed reactor … the MDT could only determine that it was an extremely efficient fusion furnace, but the specific technical details could not be recovered.
The exploration continued until nightfall.
After the exploration of the quadrangular pyramid building, Hao Ren and his team also checked a few other places in the city. They found a lot of abandoned machinery and weapon wreckage. Lily even found a delicate ship model. Vivian thought that it should be a child's toy. From an archaeological point of view, their subsequent exploration was fruitful. But from the perspective of uncovering the truth of history, only what they saw in the "sculpture hall" was the most valuable part.
Since the existence of the First Born was confirmed, the natural environment in the wild was no longer safe. Hao Ren gave up the idea of spending the night between the ruins and the forest. After the MDT established a coordinate connection with Nolan, they directly teleported back to the spaceship.
The people on the spaceship had been bored to death for the whole day. Due to the damage to the central mainframe, Nolan had to transfer all the computing power to the repair system. So those who stayed on the spaceship did not even get to watch a movie. Everyone was bored, especially the lively Y 'lisabet. The little girl was so bored that she held a screwdriver and wandered around the spaceship all day, which scared the hell out of Nolan.
Rollie was probably the only one who had a good day. As a cat, at least a cat in spirit, she had not developed too many messy human hobbies. She spent half the day napping and the other half playing with a ball of yarn. To be honest, the rest of the people on the spaceship were very envious of the dumb cat. If only they had her temperament, they could each play with a ball of yarn until the end of time …
All in all, the return of Hao Ren and his team immediately ignited the spirits of Y 'lisabet and Nangong Sanba. Even Lil Pea jumped up and jumped on Hao Ren, asking him what he had found after going out for the whole day.
"I found a lot of things, but can you let me take a breather first?" Hao Ren waved Y 'lisabet and Nangong Sanba aside. After sitting in his captain's seat, he looked around the bridge and found that many of the previously destroyed things had now "grown" back to their original state. "Nolan, is the regeneration going well?"
"It's going better than expected," Nolan's voice came from all around. "Because there is no external interference, the repair work can proceed at full speed."
"Have you found any signal response from the indigenous civilization of this planet?"
"Apart from the air units you encountered during the day, I did not find any other signal response."
"Well … Well, there's no rush," Hao Ren waved his hand. "We found some information left by the ancients in the ruins of the city …"
A group of people gathered on the bridge, listening to Hao Ren and his team of four talk about their findings during the exploration trip. Other than Lil Pea and Rollie who were there to make up the numbers, everyone was actively thinking about the meaning behind the reliefs and the information revealed by the few spacecrafts that appeared during the day.
Y 'zaks was the first to speak. "Those reliefs should have been recorded by the last group of defenders on the planet. After the spaceship took off, they retreated to these cities and left the sculptures and reliefs in their last moments. This could explain why the content of the reliefs stopped abruptly after the escape spaceship took off: the people who left the reliefs did not know what happened after that. "
"I think so too." Hao Ren nodded. "The spaceship they launched should have only taken a part of the people, maybe not even one-tenth of the population. The rest of the population was left on the planet. These defenders should have resisted for a while after the spaceship took off, until the First Born completely destroyed all the defenses. During this time, they had time to leave enough information for the latecomers."
Nangong Sanba chimed in. "But the city was not completely destroyed by the First Born. Although it is indeed in ruins now, it is obviously more damage caused by the passage of time. If it was caused by the First Born, the whole city should have been destroyed more thoroughly."
"So I suspect that the First Born's destruction process did not reach the final step," Hao Ren said. "After the humans on the planet died, the First Born's activities probably stopped. That left the relatively well-preserved city ruins and the entire ecosystem."
If that was not the case, what Hao Ren and his team saw when they came here would have been a more desolate world.
Vivian then brought up another matter. "By the way, about the spacecrafts that we saw during the day, what do you think?"
"Survivors," Lily did not think too much at this time. "What else could it be?"
"'Survivors' are not a problem, but the key is … where did they come from?" Hao Ren tapped his finger on the armrest of the seat. "Are they the descendants of the resistance on the surface of the planet, or … the group of people who were launched into the sky?"
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