Anu Lili gently pressed the control button on the top of the small device in her hand. I was surprised to find that no matter where we were, this high-tech device's switch was usually pressed. This ridiculous thought flashed through my mind. Then, I felt the space around us distort. A stable teleportation channel was being projected around us through a remote device. Anu Lili seemed to be waiting for the 'ordinary people' in front of her to show a shocked expression. I couldn't help but poke Miss Lin's arm. "Hey, Miss Lin, shouldn't we be surprised?"
Lin Xue rolled her eyes at me. Just as she was rolling her eyes, the teleportation was activated.
The light in front of us distorted violently. We experienced a sense of weightlessness and disorientation for about ten seconds. When this not-so-sophisticated teleportation was over, everyone's vision finally stabilized. We had been teleported to a vast, enclosed space, and … we finally saw something that matched the high-tech background.
The space was about the size of two or three football fields. It was more than ten meters tall and roughly square in shape. The ground was divided into several areas using straight blue and black lines, which made it look like a warehouse that had been emptied. The ceiling and the walls were covered in silver-white alloy. The ground was a darker grayish-white. It looked like the armor plates of a battleship. The soft floor lamps on the ground and the cold lines on the ceiling gave off a high-tech feeling. However, not all of the lights were working properly. Many broken lighting equipment and the wear and tear marks on the alloy floor showed that this place had been here for a long time. I looked around. It was empty in all directions. There was no one in sight. It even gave the illusion that this was an empty base. However, in the warehouse area near the wall, I saw parked small aircrafts and ground vehicles. They looked bright and shiny. It was obvious that they had been maintained recently. On the wall furthest from us, I saw a half-sealed hexagonal metal gate. It was slowly opening.
The atmosphere here gave me the feeling that this was a secret base. And it was obvious that this was a military base.
A faint blue light flashed in Sandora's eyes. Then, she told everyone her findings through the mental link. "This place is deep underground, already in the core of the planet. The entire base is enveloped in a layer of high-strength material shield. It is immersed in magma and seems to be floating with the magma. I can't see any signs of it being fixed. I guess it can completely escape from the core. Also, I found a high-strength shielding field generator and very clever camouflage equipment on the outer shell of the base. Ordinary radars can't see this ten-kilometer-long thing at all. They might just think it's a magma whirlpool. I will order the agents on the other two planets to check the planet's core. There should be more than one such base. "
I quietly glanced at Shadora. "Why do I suddenly feel like I'm inviting a wolf into the house? We are wolves."
Sandora was speechless.
Anu Lili shook her head from side to side. It seemed that the teleportation had put a lot of pressure on her. After a while, she raised her head and looked at us in surprise. "Don't you feel uncomfortable? People who are teleported for the first time will even faint on the spot … "
Lina thought for a moment, then fished out half a packet of ketchup from her pocket and put it to her mouth. She fell to the ground with a thud. I felt a pang of pain for her. The floor was as hard as diamond.
Anu Lili was stunned for a while. Her lips seemed to be trembling. "Err, it seems that you are very adaptable to teleportation … Alright, I will bring you to meet our compatriots first. Try not to touch anything on the way. You may find it hard to believe, but everything here is real, and we are now very, very deep underground — deeper than any pit you have ever dug or seen. I have seen the reaction of the other newcomers when they first came here. Everyone would be shocked … Huh? Aren't you surprised at all?! "
Liliana, who was playing dead on the ground, sat up. "Boss, I can't handle this."
Sandora gritted her teeth and threw Liliana to me. "Look at this clown! My superpower isn't for her to deal with the aftereffects! Anu Lili, look into my eyes … "
Anu Lili was stunned. Then, she led everyone to the fully opened metal gate. "This is humanity's last territory, the last place where we enjoy freedom. At least for now, this place is safe. Their eyes can't see the existence of the sanctuary. But once this place is exposed, humanity's last hope will be gone. So, I was wary of you at first. I had to do this … You probably won't be able to understand anything that happened here in a short period of time. So, for the time being, you will receive intensive training in this sealed base. You will have to relearn the most basic knowledge and understand the erased history. You will know where we came from and how we ended up like this. You will also have to learn how to fight and use weapons, even though you might not be able to use them for an entire generation. These things will be very difficult, especially for adults. But I'm glad that there are three children among you. They are at the perfect age to learn and won't have to go through the painful process of reconstructing their knowledge. They will definitely become important figures when they grow up … "
I silently patted Pandora and Visca's little heads. If Pandora and Godzilla didn't count, these two probably wouldn't be able to grow up. As for Liliana, she was a weirdo. We could just take her out of the primate category and do some research on her own.
"Is this the legendary resistance group? It's a resistance group, right?! " Shallow Shallow looked around excitedly. The things here definitely weren't super high-end for someone like her, who dealt with Empire technology all day long. But this girl was born to be lively everywhere, especially when it came to the super cool "resistance group at the end of the century" setting. It was the right choice for Shallow Shallow to encounter this group. I guessed that if it wasn't for someone pulling her back, she would have already run to the center of the base with a megaphone and yelled, "Kings, Marquises, Generals, Have Guts!"
"Resistance group?" Anu Lili looked at Shallow Shallow strangely. "You're performing much better than the other newbies. You're very quick-witted, and you're very receptive. You should know that most people, even those who have received the second immunity, will have their thinking become stiff due to the amount of information they've been exposed to since birth and the long-term blockage of knowledge. Many people need several months to understand that the earth is spherical … Oh right, you'll come into contact with this knowledge as well. We're actually living on the surface of a spherical earth … "
Liliana instantly exclaimed exaggeratedly, "Wow! The world is spherical? Then why won't the people on the other side of the ball fall into it? "Then, she secretly made an 'OK' sign to me and Sandora. On the other side, Anurili smiled. For her, the script was finally right …
The others and I rolled our eyes. Hunting lolis was much more fun. Why would Liliana be in the mood to do something like this every day? Not to mention, she seemed to enjoy it so much …
"By the way, is there no one in the base?" We followed behind Anu Lili for almost ten minutes. We had already left the spacious hangar-like space and entered a brightly lit alloy corridor. However, we didn't see anyone along the way. It was quiet all around us, except for the faint hum of some hidden equipment when we passed by. That was probably the security system scanning for suspicious people. However, there was already a camouflage information barrier around us. In the 'eyes' of the relatively outdated equipment, we should be no different from the natives of this planet.
"No, there are hundreds of thousands of people here." Anu Lili kept quiet for a while, then said a number that shocked everyone. "Hundreds of thousands!" I had thought that there might be a resistance group behind Anu Lili, but I didn't expect the number to be in the hundreds of thousands! Anu Lili then continued, "The base is divided into several layers. The outer layer is guarded by automatic guards. Most of the people are in the inner layer and the core area. The instructor is personally commanding everything from the core area. Now, we are heading to the inner layer. Once we pass that gate, we will reach … "
Anu Lili raised her hand and pointed ahead. At the end of the corridor, a heavy metal gate stood there quietly. When we got closer, we saw a translucent holographic screen floating in front of the gate. To be honest, I still hadn't fully adapted from the early Iron Age to this post-interstellar fallout shelter. Especially since Anu Lili was still wearing the clothes that had been left on Earth for at least two thousand years. No matter how I looked at her, she didn't look like she could control these high-tech gadgets before her. The scene of her performing the tissue fluid test and password verification in front of the gate reminded me of the story of Zhuge Liang using a torpedo boat to borrow missiles … What the hell is going on?
But that was just my imagination running wild. The setting of this resistance group at the end of the century was quite interesting. After a series of complicated identification procedures, Anurili opened the door to the inner section of the shelter. Immediately, we could hear people talking on the other side of the door. She smiled and gestured for us to enter (I'm guessing that's what this gesture meant), "Come and see the truth of this world."
We passed through the gate.
Then, we saw an enclosed world that looked like an ecosphere colonized by a starship.
The inner layer of the shelter was a ring-shaped city. The entrance to the city was on a huge support beam at the edge of the city. From there, we could almost see the entire ecological zone! The entire ecological zone appeared to be a very regular wide ring, like a flattened donut. The base of the city should be on a steel ring, and the sky above it was covered by a fully enclosed holographic shield. This shield could produce a realistic view of the sky to match and maintain the habits of the residents in the ecological zone towards the living environment on the surface. A circular canal ran through the entire ring of the city, and along this man-made canal were neat and densely packed buildings. I only needed to observe carefully to notice that almost all these buildings had been modified to varying degrees. Many things on their surface were obviously not the same as the original framework. These additions must have been made for combat or defense purposes. This shelter itself must have the function of a combat fortress.
And yet, such a lone fortress … Could it really resist the Melovans who wielded the superweapon of the old Empire?
Anu Lili once mentioned that these humans who had escaped control (Fine, I know they are not Earthlings, but aliens also have the right to call themselves humans, don't they? When in Rome, do as the Romans do) planned to use a dozen generations of accumulation in hopes of one day rebelling against those "gods". But to be honest … I'm not pouring cold water on them, but based on what I saw in this base and the current state of this planet, even if the Melovans stopped developing, these natives would not have any chance of rebelling within a few dozen generations.
But these thoughts only circled around my mind a few times. On the surface, we acted dumbfounded to lessen the resentment of the artificial machine, Sandora — and in truth, we were indeed a little dumbfounded. Although Anu Lili's dream of freedom seemed difficult to realize, the resistance organization she was a part of still had such a shelter and the scale of hundreds of thousands of people despite the Melovans' impenetrable imprisonment. It was astonishing enough.
At this moment, a small spaceplane flew toward us.
I narrowed my eyes. This spaceplane looked like an elongated hexagon with two layers. The outer layer was a dark blue hexagonal frame, and the inner layer was a hexagonal body that bulged in the center. I could not see its regular engine, so this was probably a spaceplane driven by anti-gravity and stepless vector propulsion technology. I had seen this thing once before — it was in Anu Lili's painting.
That day, we accidentally saw a scribbled painting in her room. At that time, we guessed that the thing in the painting must really exist somewhere. Now, our guess was confirmed. However, the aircrafts and buildings in the painting were all located in a vast world, not in a cramped underground shelter like the one in front of me. I guessed that the painting probably represented Anurili's imagination of the future — that she would obtain freedom, and that the people in the underground shelters would be able to return to the surface one day.
The small spaceplane slowly descended on the high altitude platform we were on. The hexagonal frame around it moved down to form a structure similar to landing gear. After the cockpit door opened, a young man who looked even younger than Anu Lili jumped out. He looked like a native of this planet, but he was wearing a well-ironed sky-blue uniform. On his shoulder was a bright-colored emblem: three intersecting lightning bolts. He also carried a dark leather bag that looked like a military foldable bag and some strange gadgets. This kind of attire was the standard image of a starship soldier — of course, I was referring to my first impression of him. The young man quickly ran to us and greeted Anu Lili, "Sister Anu Lili, I was patrolling when I saw your identification signal light up. Why did you suddenly come back?" Then, his gaze fell on the group of people. "Who are they?"
"Newbies, perfect second immunity users, all of them." Anurili's face was filled with uncontrollable pride and joy. "They've been wandering all this time. To avoid being tracked by those guys, they coincidentally wandered to my village."
The young man who looked like a shelter inspector looked at us in surprise. He jumped up excitedly, "The entire family?! Sister Anu Lili, are you sure you're not mistaken? The entire family?! "
"Yes, it's true. It's an immunity situation that appears in the form of a family. The mutation that the scientists had guessed has finally appeared. It's an immunity factor that can be passed down in a family. It might even have the ability to spread its genes. Now, we need to find Teacher. We must let him see this for himself … We will take a huge step forward because of this! The appearance of a passive healing agent and a natural immunity gene will definitely liberate a large number of humans. "
"Then, Sister Anu Lili, will you be able to reform yourself?" The young man's eyes glowed as he looked at Anu Lili happily. "If the natural hereditary antibody appears, the antidote will be developed soon. You won't have to collect data anymore! After all, you're a person with secondary immunity … "
Anu Lili's face dimmed for a moment. Then, she shook her head gently. "We'll talk about this later. Right now, I'm not sure if the hereditary antibody will work on the antidote. Let's go find Teacher first. "
The young man didn't notice the change in Anu Lili's expression. Perhaps he was completely immersed in joy. It seemed that our appearance meant a lot to this shelter … Mm, I should say that our fake identities meant a lot to this shelter. Anu Lili said that she wanted to bring the newbies to meet the 'teacher'. Based on what I heard earlier, I guessed that the teacher should be the leader of the entire resistance organization. Now, we were also very interested in him. A person who was able to organize an army of hundreds of thousands of rebels in such a desperate situation and build a refuge in the core of the planet, his actions were definitely worthy of being called a hero. Looking at the look of approval on Shadora's face, I believed that even by the standards of the Queen of Xi Ling, that leader was worthy of praise.
Of course, the young man's small aircraft wasn't big enough to carry so many people. It didn't seem to have a space-expansion device in the passenger cabin. Or perhaps the resistance organization didn't have the relevant technology. So, he called his superior and explained the situation here. Then, a large aircraft that was probably a large transport appeared from behind a support beam far away. Anu Lili and I boarded the aircraft. We said goodbye to the young man who looked like a tiger and headed for the core area of the shelter.
"He looks like a cheerful young man." In the empty passenger cabin, I casually commented on the patrolman who was at most a big boy. "Has he been living in the shelter all this time?"
"He was born here," Anu Lili replied.
I immediately looked surprised.
"Many people live in the base for a long time. This is the home of countless generations of people." Anu Lili's eyes were a little distant, as if her mind had flown far away. "Therefore, many people in the base were born and raised here. When I was ten, I was discovered by a patrolman who came from the base to investigate the situation on the ground. So, I am considered a 'new resident' here. As for the young man, his grandfather was born in the base, so he is called an 'old resident.' But these terms are just for the sake of convenience. Essentially, we are still a family. We help each other, support each other, and work together without any prejudice. After all … in this world, we have no one else to rely on … Oh, we have reached the core area. "
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