"It might be a spectacular sight later." Xiaoxue grabbed my hand and said mysteriously. The mysterious look on the naughty child's face made me curious. I knew that she must have "seen" something through her special eyes. However, I didn't ask because I knew that this child had the same problem as her mother. She would never say what she knew, and she would never say everything. When she did say something, it would be comprehensive and vivid. She would use the subject, verb, and object flexibly. Basically, she was just trying to fool people.
The engineering ship began to release probes with warp functions throughout space. These probes instantly reached the end of this small "universe" with a radius of only tens of thousands of kilometers and formed countless symmetrically distributed spatial distortion generators. The function of these generators was to "invert" space. Space Inversion was a technique that sounded incomprehensible, but in reality … it was really incomprehensible. Its simplest description was: Suppose that space was a Rubik's cube. It had countless levels, and the observer was a creature that could only understand a neat picture. If the side of the Rubik's cube facing the observer was messed up, then that side would be incomprehensible to the observer. Normal space was orderly, equivalent to a tidy Rubik's Cube. The observer was a sentient creature that resided in the space. All information would normally appear in front of the observer on the same level, such as mass, light, gravity, size, and so on. These were all familiar adjectives that could be used to describe foreign objects. Under normal circumstances, they would all be on the same "level." Only then would the observer be able to perceive them. This was the tidy state of the Rubik's Cube. The inverting process was to disrupt this tidy state. After an object was inverted, it was equivalent to the Rubik's Cube being disrupted. All information would drift to another place. Since the observer was a creature that lived on the "current level," to the observer, the inverted object would disappear.
The process and result of doing this were obvious. Just a slight deviation of one value would cause the Rubik's Cube to fall from a "neat" state to an "irregular" state. This operation was usually used to hide and protect important facilities because it had good encryption: as long as you did not master the algorithm, you would never know which side the thing you were looking for had been flipped to. For a low-dimensional observer, the inverted state of the object was actually entering a space that was always one dimension higher than your field of view, and there were countless possibilities in the high-dimensional space (think of the dimensional difference database). It was equivalent to a Rubik's cube with countless steps and faces, and the thing you were looking for was among the countless. Therefore, as long as you did not have the same algorithm on hand to crack the code, the probability of finding the hidden thing was infinitely close to zero.
Therefore, even though the Protoss's technological prowess wasn't bad, they couldn't make heads or tails of an Empire facility that had been solidified by the end of the world and was always in a reversed state. A mathematics student with a master's and a PhD in the Master's program must be awesome, right? But without touching the game, how could he know how much mana a level 90 mage could recover per second without activating a buff? Alright, let's not talk about it anymore.
The Spatial Distortion Generator had completed its synchronization and began to "pull" the dislocated space back to its original position, just like rearranging a Rubik's Cube. Those who had come into contact with the Rubik's Cube would know that although it looked very troublesome, as long as one understood the principle of the Rubik's Cube, it was actually not difficult to reorganize it. No matter how high the order of the Rubik's Cube was, the algorithm for the rearrangement process would not change. At most, it would greatly increase the workload. In the end, the Empire's inverted technology was an encryption method that could not defend against the outside but not the inside. Absolutely no one would have thought that the Empire would one day split and fight against itself. Therefore, many things that used encryption algorithms could be cracked by the Empire equipment. The inverted space in front of us was an example. In less than two minutes, all the dislocated spaces were marked and then pieced together one by one.
In an instant, the hidden truth appeared in front of us.
A huge, blood-colored vortex that seemed to devour the entire world filled our vision … No, this was not just a vortex, but a storm that stretched for tens of thousands of kilometers! The chaotic and crazy colors of blood and black twisted into the eye of the storm, and all of us stood in the center of this storm!
A second ago, there was only chaotic space clouds before us, and the next second, we were in the eye of a storm that could force a normal person to suffer from claustrophobia and vortexophobia. The visual impact was huge, and even I, who had been to a storm planet like the Divine Fog Planet, was shocked by this scene. Shallow Shallow's reaction was even more exaggerated — she disappeared in front of us with a whoosh, only to reappear a few seconds later, patting her chest in fear. "Phew … I switched to my personality and went back to the spaceship to drink some tea, listen to some light music, sleep, watch two movies, listen to two crosstalks, and finally calm down — I have vortexophobia."
Me: "…"
Godfather was also dumbfounded. "… Just for a short while … Alright, as you said, she's pretty good."
I knocked on Xiaoxue's head lightly, knowing that the girl must have wanted to see her father scared, but unfortunately, although this blood-colored storm was indeed frightening, I had seen scenes that were even more frightening than this. Someone who was known to be able to keep a straight face even if Mt. Tai collapsed in front of him, how could he let a brat get what she wanted?
"What's with this storm?" I couldn't help but look at Godfather, but he shrugged. "You ask me, who should I ask? This is your thing — I'm just here to lead the way."
Alright, he had forgotten about that. It seemed that I still had to contact the experts. The experts' reply was that they had already sent out an engineering spacecraft to investigate the storm wall. The experts were also puzzled by the huge blood-colored whirlpool before them. From what they knew, the Empire didn't have any facilities that could produce such a phenomenon. Therefore, many scientists suspected that this was a hypothetical normal facility in this universe that had gone berserk, resulting in an energy storm. Due to the effects of the end of the world, everything in this universe was like a snapshot, fixed in the few hours before the end of the world. Even this energy storm had been in an inverted state for tens of thousands of years.
The few of us hovered in midair. After getting used to it for a while, the huge whirlpool no longer had any impact on our vision. It was just that its blood-red color was very uncomfortable. However, just as I was considering whether or not to put on sunglasses to protect my body and mind, the engineering spacecraft sent me news: They found a workstation within the storm wall that still had energy reactions. If I'm not wrong, that should be the research facility that the Empire had built here back then.
Everyone immediately boarded the engineering spacecraft and headed to the destination. Soon, we passed through the endlessly sweeping storm wall and entered an even more frenzied region. I noticed that the moment we passed through the storm wall, the engineering spacecraft's detector displayed a very high energy reading. Moreover, the energy readings ranged from psionic energy to ordinary electromagnetic energy. It made one wonder if this storm was a microcosm of the end of the world. At the moment when the universe collapsed, all the energy within a radius of tens of thousands of kilometers was sucked in.
Within the storm wall, the energy torrent that swept over was of course countless times more powerful than the eye of the storm. Moreover, it was mixed with a large amount of matter fragments and elementary particles that could not be analyzed. Perhaps, when everything in the world was torn to the extreme, it would inevitably form a red and black tornado. Fortunately, these things that swept over did not pose much of a threat to our shields. We were welcomed by the seemingly spectacular energy storm passageway to the workstation that had miraculously survived. It was a large hexagonal structure that hovered in the air. I reckoned that there was a complete residential area inside. Based on the intact platform at the bottom, it was originally a space structure. Its anchor system must still be operating, because the entire workstation remained stable in the midst of the raging hurricane, like a lonely island in the midst of a tidal wave. The engineering spacecraft found a common locking port at the end of the platform where the hexagonal structure was located. However, we soon discovered that the locking port was damaged, and the workstation itself was no longer responding to any external signals. In the end, we decided to leave the spacecraft a few hundred meters away from the workstation and dogpaddle our way to the target.
… No way! Since it was a scrapped workstation, we could just forcefully connect to it. After smashing the locking port of the workstation platform, the engineering spacecraft and the space workstation formed a dumbbell-like combination. We arrived at the station platform through a twisted and broken suspension bridge.
The entire landing process was perfect, and I felt like I was watching a blockbuster. It would have been even more perfect if Shallow Shallow did not hold up her camera and take pictures along the way.
The assistant technicians and engineers, fully equipped with protective light armor and reinforced shields, alighted from the ship and quickly and orderly assigned their tasks, beginning to examine the rather large abandoned workstation. In fact, they were the real protagonists of the mission. Tasks such as exploring ancient facilities, studying Old Empire machines, and measuring data in the storm core of an otherworld sounded like cutting-edge work, and it was certainly not something a few amateurs like us could handle. Even the Godfather was just here to join in the fun. We're following the engineering ship, and if we put it nicely, we're going to the frontline to command the work, but if we put it bluntly, we're just going to put it nicely, alright?
"It should be a part of a larger space structure. Look at the broken bridge at the end of the platform." Xiaoxue pointed at the far end of the platform. Following her finger, we could see several grayish-white alloy roads extending from the platform. However, they had all been torn apart, and the parts on the other side were nowhere to be seen. All that was left were twisted metal stumps. Pipes protruded from those stumps, and under the stimulation of the energy storm, they were giving off sparks due to some resonance phenomenon.
Visca kept pulling out probes from his personal space. There was a swarm of buzzing bees (I would be embarrassed to say that they looked more like flies) following behind him. After that, the probes disappeared before our eyes. The cat-eyed loli explained, "I sent them to see if there were other workstations nearby. Since this station was preserved, there might be other parts that survived. I'm smart, aren't I?"
As soon as Visca finished speaking, Pandora began to hurriedly release the probes. Sometimes, Pandora was not as smart as Visca. Was it because Visca was too taciturn?
"The energy storm here was originally an abyssal suppression system," a high-level technician reported. Looking at the report, Xiaoxue began to analyze it. "Right now, the probes can't get close to the bottom of the storm, but there might have been a Gate of the Abyss there, which is the entrance to the deep dive. The storm was built around the Gate of the Abyss, and it's probably in a 'self-mirroring' state … Oh, in other words, no matter which direction you enter the storm from, you'll find yourself facing the entrance at the top of the storm. This suppression system was designed to counter the special 'permanent two-dimensional' state of the Gate of the Abyss. It has countless bodies in countless directions, and depending on the observer, it will collapse into a single 'direction' to maximize the suppression of anything released from the Abyss. This system isn't very common because it's very difficult to build, and most Gates of the Abyss don't need to spend so much effort to preserve it for a long time."
Normally, she seemed like an ordinary person, but I didn't expect Xiaoxue to be so knowledgeable in this area. Perhaps it was just as she said, she had received the full set of elite education that a princess of the Empire should receive since she was young. She was a true royal elite, not a cute flower vase — this was the only thing I felt gratified about this child. Of course, what I wasn't gratified about was: In order to give her this level of elite education, just what kind of tutors did Lin Xue and I find for her?
Since the energy storm was mixed with a large number of unknown matter particles (probably all types of matter in the universe could be found in these particles, right?), the energy storm created by the storm crashed into everyone's shields. After the gales collided with the shields around us, the particles were disintegrated, forming a faint halo that looked like a beautiful coating of an iris. Through this thin layer of light, I raised my head to look at the workstation in front of me that had stood in the storm for tens of thousands of years. Suddenly, I noticed a flash of blue light at the top of the workstation.
At first, I thought it was an illusion, but soon, a second flash appeared. The blue light was especially eye-catching against the black-and-red storm. I was now certain that it was the light emitted by a facility at the top of the workstation.
"That place is still operating —" I pointed at the top of the workstation. "It might be a protective device. Otherwise, there is no way to explain how this workstation could be preserved until today."
At that moment, the engineers sent a piece of good news: they had found the entrance to the workstation.
The entrance was a few hundred meters away, buried by a large number of collapsed alloy plates and unknown black crystalline matter. If it wasn't for the X-ray scanning equipment, perhaps no one would have thought that there was a passage behind the pile of rubbish. The engineers directed the autonomous robots to cut down all the obstacles at the entrance, revealing a hexagonal alloy gate. Perhaps the pile of debris had provided some protection, but this gate looked much newer than the surrounding walls. Of course, this was meaningless. Based on the degree of damage to this place, no matter how new the gate was, it could not be used to swipe a card.
An assistant technician removed the data port next to the gate and connected his scanning terminal to the data port. Half a minute later, he reported to us, "We've already taken the internal defense system offline. We can now directly destroy the big …"
* Boom! * A loud explosion interrupted the assistant technician's last word. The alloy gate had a large hole under the bombardment of the conventional artillery, revealing the pitch-black corridor inside. Pandora held her precious hand cannon in her arms and wiped the muzzle. Then, she looked at me with a blank expression. She was trying to take back a round from Visca.
I said, "… Alright, move forward. Pay attention to safety. Do not throw bombs anywhere."
After entering the gate, the first thing we saw was a pitch-black corridor. So, Father himself said, "Let there be light." This made me feel very emotional. Then, following the structure of the workstation that the sentinel probe had scanned, we began to move toward the first room that seemed to contain important equipment. This huge, lifeless building had a weak and strange gravity. It seemed that its gravity generator was still struggling at death's door, but the gravity produced was forty-five degrees from the ground. So, we decisively shielded the gravity field here. After all, it did not affect us much. The long corridor was strangely silent. The sharp whistling of the wind was isolated outside the entrance in the distance, as if it was coming from another world. After leaving the dark red and oppressive sky, I felt that the lifeless workstation was more comfortable. Although, if possible, I would have preferred to get rid of these two things as soon as possible.
The engineers and Schilling technicians were divided into more than ten teams according to the ratio of three to one. As we passed through the fork in the road, we split up. Soon, there was only one team left. They were the high-level technicians and the best soldiers in the team, and they had to move forward with us for the rest of the time. The probe had roughly figured out the structure of the workstation. It was a building with four floors. There were not many floors, but the height was exaggerated. Maybe it was because there were some special facilities inside that took up a lot of space? Only God knows. The workstation was supposed to have five floors, but the topmost part was destroyed, the one that was suspected to be the shield generator. Now, all that was left was a broken crystal dome. It was a pity, because according to the workstation's structure, it was likely the location of important observation equipment, and its destruction meant that a lot of data had been destroyed by the energy storm.
The five Protoss Protoss, Godfather, and a few Protoss scholars followed behind us. Aside from the five, the others looked curious. They probably did not have much contact with the technology of the Empire, and the things here were strange to them. Icetis slapped a Protoss when he reached out to dig at a protruding object on the wall. "Don't be like a bumpkin, okay?"
Godfather smiled awkwardly. Yeah, very awkwardly. These majestic gods were really cute in front of their own people, and a little too cute! Can that uncle over there not take pictures everywhere like Shallow Shallow!? You are a god!
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