Hao Ren walked along the long bridge in the air and came to the thing that looked like a console. He saw that it was as clean as new. There were no buttons on it, only a silver-white metal panel that was as shiny as a mirror. He reached out to touch the edge of the panel and found that there was not a speck of dust on it.
Not only the control panel, but the entire cylindrical space was also dust-free. The last door that they had passed through earlier should have had a dust-proof function, and the space itself should have a dust removal system. Without a doubt, this was the location of the Ultimate Vault.
"What is this?" Lily came over and asked curiously.
"It should be the manual control for the mechanical arms." Hao Ren looked up at the neatly arranged metal brackets and rectangular containers in the cylindrical space, as well as the slideways and mechanical arms that connected them. At the same time, he reached out to touch the eye-catching light green line beside the control panel. "Based on my experience in the control room, the touch panel should be activated by touching here … Oh, that's it."
Under his touch, a series of complex geometric patterns appeared on the silver-white metal plate. Then, these geometric patterns slowly stabilized and formed a preliminary interface. As expected, the operating system was locked and required identification to enter. However, the control panel did not seem to be using the mechanical key that the ark captain carried around with him. It required a password.
This password was not a problem for the MDT. The MDT floated to the control panel and used a blue beam to connect itself to the control panel. The image on the panel immediately showed a bunch of interference spots. In a matter of seconds, the system was cracked and an easy to understand operation window popped up. Hao Ren tried to activate some of the functions on it, and the neatly arranged containers in the cylindrical space immediately moved. A row of brackets was lowered from the sky and steadily stopped next to the long bridge in the air. The rectangular metal boxes hanging on the brackets slid down to the groove next to the railing of the long bridge. With a few soft sounds, the containers opened.
Lily immediately ran over to check. She saw that the metal box was empty. There were only some removed catheters and a viscous liquid left in the empty container.
"What are these things?" Vivian also went to check the situation in the metal box. She was a little confused.
"They're hibernation pods. I'm guessing, but I'm not far from it," Hao Ren said slowly. "These are all hibernation pods. There's a total of 150,000 of them."
"Hibernation pods?" Vivian was no stranger to the term. However, she looked at the size of the metal boxes and felt that something was not right. "Isn't this a little too small?"
"Because these are prepared for children." Hao Ren walked over with the MDT. The MDT had already synchronized its data with the control panel and easily took over all the functions. It turned on the holographic projection and displayed the data it had obtained from the control panel.
A name list was opened. Hundreds of faces appeared on the projection and scrolled down quickly. Every face was a child.
"The oldest is no more than 13 years old, and the youngest is only three." Hao Ren pointed at the projection above the MDT. Along with the names and photos of the personnel, some basic information of the vault, such as the system log, was extracted. "This final vault is used to store children in hibernation state. It was built 892 years ago, and the last time it was opened was 815 years ago."
"That means it has been frozen for decades …" Nangong Wuyue poked the viscous liquid in the metal box with the tip of her tail. It was a substance that could maintain biological activity at low temperatures. "The key question is, why are there only children? Where are the adults?"
"Do you still remember the last captain we met in the control room?" Hao Ren looked up. "He died of a chronic disease. This disease slowly eroded his skull. I suspect that all the adults have died of this disease. Only the children are left. "
"But we only found one set of bones." Nangong Wuyue's tail curled up. "How can we be sure that the other adults have suffered the same fate?"
Hao Ren had thought about this earlier and had some speculations. "Do you think a person with this disease can still be the captain of an ark? Furthermore, this disease was very slow. The people on the ark had plenty of time to choose a new captain who was healthy, but they did not. The last captain had died of illness while on duty. There was only one explanation for this: they had no choice. There were no healthy candidates at all. Everyone was sick. And here … "
Hao Ren pointed at the neatly arranged silver metal boxes in the air. "The children didn't get sick. This is the reason why the last ark's civilization was broken. "
He knew that more than half of what he said was speculation, but these speculations were completely tenable. Moreover, he couldn't think of any other more reliable reasons. However, he could not explain the more fundamental question: How did this strange and suspicious incurable disease come about? Why were the children the only ones who survived? When the captain of Terra Firma led his people to their deaths, the other arks were still fine. How did this disease appear out of nowhere?
And there was another question. This was even more suspicious than the strange disease. How did these humans, who were not technologically advanced, get their hands on the Goddess of Creation's divine artifact, and even designed a simple yet effective amplification system for it?
"Is there anything else in the database?" Hao Ren knocked on the MDT's shell. "Staff diaries, audio recordings, video recordings, anything."
The MDT was communicating with the mainframe of the 'Final Vault'. It tried its best to extract the remnants of the old system. But it was just a vault after all. There was not much useful information. In the end, the MDT found the most valuable information. It was a few fragmented video clips.
"These are recorded by the surveillance system. They were recorded when the facility was turned off and when it was turned on," the MDT said as it began to play the clips it had found.
The first clip showed the children entering the hibernation pods. On the screen, children could be seen lining up neatly on the long bridge. Some children who were too young were even carried in the arms of older children. The older children seemed to know what was going to happen. Occasionally, they could be seen comforting their younger brothers and sisters. Throughout the entire process, no one cried, and no one was timid. All the children stood quietly in the line, waiting to enter their hibernation pods. Beside the line, there were a few adults. The latter were wearing unusually thick isolation suits. Every inch of their skin was wrapped in white protective clothing. It was as if they were afraid of spreading the virus to the children. These adults were probably the last operators of the ark. They were obviously in poor health. Some of them even swayed as they walked. But there were not enough people on the ark to do this work. So these patients could only insist on sending the seeds of civilization off.
After the last batch of hibernation pods were placed on the scaffolding, the adults in isolation suits left the place. The door closed, and the last generation of the ark began their seventy-seven years of ice.
"Next is the record of the facility's opening. It was recorded by the surveillance system 815 years ago," the MDT said as it played another clip.
At the beginning of the clip, Hao Ren saw chaos.
It was still the long bridge in the air, but the situation on the bridge was chaotic. A series of red lights flashed at the edge of the screen, and a series of sirens could be heard from outside the screen. The hibernation pods were released in batches onto the long bridge and several additional "unloading points" around the cylindrical space. The children who woke up from the hibernation pods panicked. Under the guidance of the lights and some of the older children, they fled the place in a hurry. This video was much shorter than the previous one, and there were only a few messy shots. After the clip ended, Lily asked, "What happened at the back?"
"I'm afraid the facility was accidentally activated. They should have been hibernating for a longer period of time!" Hao Ren frowned. "But they were awakened prematurely!"
Lily's eyes widened. "Accident? What accident? "
It was not Hao Ren who answered her, but the MDT. "The reactor malfunctioned! Do you remember the radiation in the outer zone of the Furnace of the Ancestors? That radiation appeared about 800 years ago. At that time, the reactor suddenly broke down! "
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