Hao Ren drove his official car, which could do almost anything except become Optimus Prime, on the desolate planet. He looked at the huge, old, and depressing steel ruins flying past the window. They were now passing by a giant engine that was in an extinguished state. The engine gave off the feeling of a strange-looking extinct volcano. It had the shape of a mountain, thin at the top and thick at the bottom. Thick pipes and alloy frames could be seen on the black shell. Some old and mottled traces were distributed on the high 'mountain', which was probably the rust caused by the planet's atmosphere when it was still rich.
Lily had been looking out of the window. She sighed and said, "The machine is still alive, but the people are dead … Who created these things?"
"There are no signs of advanced life, only some microbes, barely surviving in the extreme underground environment." Hao Ren looked down at the control panel of the car. The place where the fuel meter and mileage should be displayed was actually a virtual screen. On it was a complex radar map and communication interface with the Petrachelys. "The humans on this planet may be dead … Of course, they may be hiding in some shelters, but we haven't found them yet."
"The second possibility is not high," Vivian shook her head. "It's just intuition."
"You said that these engines are operating automatically?" Hao Ren turned to look at Vivian.
Vivian still shook her head. "I don't know anything about engines. I just feel that this place is lingering in the atmosphere of death … The Blood Clan is very sensitive to this kind of atmosphere."
They did not linger near the dead engine. They just made a small detour and left a few images before continuing on their way. The huge thruster that was as magnificent as a mountain was soon left behind. They continued to move forward. After passing by more huge pipes and steel ruins, they encountered some other sporadic buildings that looked like sentry towers and bunkers. These things could not help but remind them of a military base. It seemed that before the giant engines were completed, there was a war on this planet.
However, all traces of the war had been covered by a thick layer of snow. Only these sporadic ruins on the high ground could still be seen. Unless they stopped and did a detailed scan, it was difficult to know what was hidden under the thick layer of solid carbon dioxide and ordinary ice.
The car continued to move forward, and the surroundings began to warm up. Near the horizon, they could clearly see three blue and white flames rushing into the sky, and the giant engine below the flames. The thermal radiation of the plasma flame dispersed the cold within a certain range, allowing the carbon dioxide to return to the atmosphere. It even melted the ordinary ice and snow within a certain range, and they could finally see normal soil and stones on the road.
From time to time, there was a crackling sound outside the car window. It was the sound of the wind blowing sand and dust against the car's shell. The operation of the giant engine had caused the nearby dry ice and other substances to return to the atmosphere. These gases that were heated and expanded rose into the air and spread into the distance before cooling into ice shards and were rolled back to the engine in the lower atmosphere. The sublimation, expansion, descent, cooling cycle repeated, rolling up a never-ending wind at the edge. The engine was the only place on the planet with an atmosphere.
The engines were so huge that they even produced natural weather-like phenomena during their operation. However, the effect of these phenomena was quite limited. Each engine had a 'ring of wind' around it. After passing through this ring of wind, the front became lifeless again.
After moving forward for a while, Hao Ren and the others also accidentally found the ruins of a city.
The city was built on high ground, and because it was near a running engine, the heat of the plasma flame melted the nearby ice and snow, so the city was not covered in white. At the request of the Nangong siblings, Hao Ren drove into the ruins of the city and saw orderly high-rise buildings everywhere. Although the style was very different from that on Earth, he could still feel from the exquisite planning and the high-tech building design that there used to be a powerful civilization here.
And unlike those dark and gloomy engines, the city used to have beautiful colors — there were detailed decorations on the outer walls of the buildings, colorful advertising patterns on the streets, roofs, squares, roads … all these places were not rigid. Hao Ren drove through the middle of a twin building. He saw that the shape of the two buildings was like a pair of plant buds growing symmetrically, and the buildings were connected by slender and elegant arc-shaped bridges.
Buildings of this scale could be seen everywhere in the ruins of the city, and the styles were also varied. Some were elegant, some were as rough as those huge engines, and some were not even clear whether they were used for living or simply for decoration. Lily looked at the old buildings with her mouth open, imagining a sunny day, this alien city welcomed a busy day, the buildings were covered with brilliant colors, the streets were filled with quiet and idle people, and there may be agile civil aircraft shuttling between the buildings … However, these imaginations receded like the tide, and she still saw a lifeless scene.
Those empty buildings stood lifelessly in the darkness, facing the distant stars in silence, with a rigid and cold face to welcome the uninvited guests.
And in the background of the city buildings, the entire night sky was divided into two by the plasma beam.
"There's no sign of life," Hao Ren looked at the radar on the car. "And the city has been abandoned for a long time, I guess at least 10,000 years."
Hao Ren's statement was not a wild guess, he now more or less had some knowledge and judgment in this regard. He felt that this city should be the product of the completion of the engine, because once the engine was started, the planet would leave orbit and enter space, and the natives of this planet obviously did not have the ability to maintain the entire atmosphere without the sun. So after they finished building the engine, they had to abandon the city on the surface and move to underground shelters or hibernation facilities.
And if the engines did not start 10,000 years ago, then everything was even simpler: the residents of the city must have died in the disaster.
Vivian asked softly, "Why do you think they changed their planet like this?"
"Obviously to escape," Hao Ren looked at the huge plasma flame in the distance, "and I guess it's most likely the First Born … or the disaster caused by those brain monsters. Other than the disaster of extinction, what else could make a race push their own home planet into the path of wandering? "
Lily clung to the back of Hao Ren's seat, rolled her eyes for a while, and shook her head. "Obviously, there's something wrong with their escape."
Vivian was surprised by the husky's occasional flash of inspiration. "How do you know?"
"Because this planet only set off a hundred years ago," Lily's ears twitched. "The vengeful spirit took the Nangong couple and teleported them to this planet a hundred years ago. At that time, the starry sky in its memory was seen near the pile of sun embers, which means that a hundred years ago, this planet was still in its own solar system. The apocalyptic disasters of this universe basically happened ten thousand years ago … so the escape plan of this planet had obviously failed. Say, you really didn't think of this? "
Vivian was very honest, "I just didn't expect you to think of this."
"I'm not stupid." Lily rolled her eyes and lay down on the seat, ignoring Battie.
Hao Ren smiled as he watched the two quarreling. "Lily is right. Since this planet wanted to escape, it should have set off 10,000 years ago. So there must be something wrong with it that caused it to stay in the original solar system for 10,000 years, until the Nangong couple was brought here … I'm afraid the problem happened a hundred years ago. "
The team wandered around the city for a while, but in the end, they were disappointed. There were no complex signs of life, and there were no signs of human life in the short term. Although the entire city was shrouded in a relatively warm environment, and they could find liquid water and moss-like basic plants, it seemed that the parents of the Nangong siblings did not live here.
However, the Nangong siblings were a little excited: the environment in the city was obviously enough for a siren and a demon hunter to survive. Although it was not comfortable, it was enough to survive. And there was more than one such "livable" area. Every flaming engine might have survival conditions near it. Since there was no such place in the city, they could continue to look.
Until they searched the entire planet.
(I'm going out again today, so I'll have to update in the morning. Also, please pay attention to the safety of online shopping funds. I heard that a reader was scammed by a phishing website because he bought GB online and lost 20,000 yuan. This world is really dangerous.)
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