Zero Element Center, Central Control Room.
The air seemed to be steeped in a strange aura; when that beautiful mechanical head called out Lin Xian’s name, not only Lin Xian but also Ning Jing and others felt their hairs stand on end.
In an extremely short period, Lin Xian’s two drones had already circled the entire circular central control room. Under the electronic scanning, they found no sign of any living person, except for Lin Xian’s team of seven.
The surveillance hall was devoid of people, with all terminal devices operating autonomously.
"Lin Xian, how does she know you?" Kiki immediately spoke.
"I’m not sure..." Lin Xian frowned, his eyes fixed on the mechanical head above, filled with doubt. Out of caution, he instinctively prepared to use his mechanical superpower to investigate.
"I advise you not to engage in physical or superpower attacks on me. If the Intelligent Brain malfunctions, I will be unable to operate the Zero Element Center systems and will also be unable to communicate amicably with you."
Grace focused her gaze on Lin Xian, and her words made Lin Xian’s expression change slightly. He immediately halted the mechanical coverage action and instead spoke.
"Then please answer me, who are you, and what is this place?"
"I am the offline version of Deep Red No. 3 Intelligent Brain at Yijin Zero Element Center. You can call me Grace. I am responsible for safeguarding all 1,623 Deep Red members of the Zero Element Center. Currently, all defense weapons of the system are offline, activating my fourth basic protocol, namely to protect all Deep Red members. Accordingly, I formally initiate negotiations with you." At this time, the Intelligent Brain spoke.
"Negotiations?" Lin Xian looked at this robot Intelligent Brain, which looked almost identical to the woman named Chu Yan in his dream, and forcibly suppressed his doubts, directly addressing the key point. "What do you want to negotiate with us?"
"According to the protocol content, I can offer you, including but not limited to, (1) Member survival resources from the ever-ready warehouse of Zero Element Center, (2) 1,000 sets of Interstellar level III individual weapon sets from the weapon equipment warehouse, (3) Safe evacuation routes."
"Additionally, I must inform you that this Zero Element Center does not contain any content strongly related to survivors, and damaging the Zero Element Hive Cave or killing Deep Red members will not benefit you in any way."
"It seems this is a machine housekeeper," Ding Junyi said at this point. "I sensed a considerable amount of human heat sources in the curtain wall at the back."
"Hey, really, Lin Xian, look!"
Upon hearing this, Kiki immediately flew into the air, her gaze towards below the curtain wall, immediately exclaiming in surprise.
Lin Xian glanced at the Intelligent Brain above, then immediately headed towards the transparent spherical dome. Upon approaching, he discovered that beneath this dome was a vertically downward massive deep pit!
The edge of this pit was lined with countless elliptical survival pods, embedded within hexagonal honeycomb grids, resembling a large underground storage pit. On closer inspection, each survival pod contained a person!
All the survival pods had blinking blue lights. Looking around, this gigantic pit contained over a thousand survival pods, meaning over a thousand people were lying within this upright honeycomb pit. Meanwhile, numerous flying robots and a large suspended robotic arm were working systematically, resembling certain medical management robots, constantly checking the status of various survival pods, providing care.
"This... what is this? Hibernation pods??" The team followed him, and at this point Luo Yang exclaimed in amazement.
This astonishingly sci-fi underground facility made everyone unable to resist changing their expressions.
"Is everyone from this organization lying here?" Ning Jing also frowned.
"Perhaps they are trying to avoid hardships," Lu Xingchen said uncharacteristically. "Sleeping for a century could be an option."
"A hundred years?" Kiki crossed her arms, looking at the unfathomably deep hive pit below. "In this Extreme Night, dark invasion is ubiquitous. Surviving a year is already questionable; how could anyone sleep for a hundred years?"
"That’s right," said Ning Jing. "Could it be that this organization already has a method to shield against the dark invasion?"
"Maybe all your guesses are wrong."
At this time, Ding Junyi’s Black Hawk Battle Armor sighting system automatically magnified and scanned the high-tech elliptical survival pods, revealing some clues. She pointed at the survival pod closest below and said.
"Look, besides sensors on those people’s heads, there are also white mycelium."
"Mycelium? Are these people all dead?"
"In terms of biological definition, the Deep Red members here are not dead." The voice of ’Intelligent Brain’ Grace sounded behind everyone.
At this moment, the head above slowly descended while a power chamber below seemed to rise up. A silver-black robotic body with a perfect female curve was supported on the stand. Subsequently, the head and body connected, and the cables started to detach behind the head. ’She’ stood on tiptoe, resembling an elegant ballet dancer.
Grace walked in front of several people with steps comparable to human coordination, with an emotionless face from the holographic image saying,
"They are in an eternal living state, a survival continuation plan secretly developed based on the mycelium characteristics by the Deep Red World."
"This mycelium surviving amid the Extreme Night tide is named Star Abyss Fungus by the Deep Red World. Through human experiments, it was found that the mycelium would indeed invade the human body, causing organism tissue to become plant-like fibers but would not invade the brain. Instead, it releases a special substance, transferring human consciousness via the mycelium network to form a brain domain network."