Standing in Iona’s control room once again, Fang Zheng couldn’t help but take a deep breath as he gazed at the starry skies before him.
He didn’t know if his speculation was correct, but if it was as he had thought, then he would have more freedom to choose—The Heavenly Dao Palace wouldn’t need to stay secluded in a corner of this world but could directly serve as a true city beyond the heavens. Moreover, Fang Zheng might even be able to start exploring other places, embarking on new adventures... In short, once they stepped into the Star Sea, the possibilities of what they could do were endless. After all, compared to the ground, the universe offered far greater freedom.
Fang Zheng nodded at Iona, and then quickly, the three warships with Iona in the lead ascended swiftly, heading towards the high skies.
"Current altitude... eight thousand meters..."
Iona operated the warship while reporting back to Fang Zheng.
"Nine thousand meters... ten thousand meters..."
Truly befitting of a cosmic warship, in just a few short minutes, the three vessels reached an altitude of thirty thousand meters. What excited Fang Zheng was that this time, his system interface functioned normally, no warnings popped up anymore.
It seemed his guess was correct!
"Continue to ascend."
"Understood, Captain."
Following Fang Zheng’s command, the warship accelerated once again, and the once azure sky in front of Fang Zheng gradually began to darken. The three warships pierced through the cloud layer and shot straight up into the sky. In less than five minutes, they broke through the atmosphere and arrived beyond this continent... Finally, as the warships turned around, Fang Zheng saw for the first time the true face of the land he lived on directly.
It was a gigantic blue planet.
From the exterior, it looked very similar to Earth’s outer space photos from Fang Zheng’s memory, but there were also many differences. For example, in some areas of this planet, Fang Zheng could clearly see patches of pitch black, murky substances covering the surfaces. They appeared as if the planet had several festering sores. Besides that, at the poles, Fang Zheng could see something similar to tornadoes. They spun around creating vortices, penetrating deep into the planet’s core—Fang Zheng saw clouds pouring out continuously, as if the poles of the planet were "producing" clouds in this manner.
"Good, good, it’s still spherical."
Fang Zheng put his hand over his chest and breathed a sigh of relief. Although this was what he had believed before, he was a bit apprehensive that the physical laws of this world might differ from what he knew. In fact, Fang Zheng had braced himself for the possibility that upon leaving the planet, he might turn around to find their world was flat as a chessboard... Now it seemed the operational laws of this world were still normal...
But before Fang Zheng could exhale completely, suddenly a sharp alarm sounded, startling him. He initially thought it was another warning from his system, but upon seeing the flashing red radiance before him, Fang Zheng realized the warning came from the warship itself.
"Report to the Captain, we have detected numerous unidentified objects in high orbit..."
"Unidentified objects?"
Startled by Iona’s report, Fang Zheng was taken aback, and very soon, Iona stretched out her hand and swept it forward. Accompanying her motion, the screen in front of Fang Zheng changed.
In the pitch-black starry sky, a golden-colored metal object, shaped like a four-pointed starfish, floated serenely in orbit. And indeed, Fang Zheng needed only one glance to confirm that this was certainly the handiwork of the Goddess of Order.
One needs only look at the curving tendrils and the similarly crooked patterns on it! These were undoubtedly spawned from the same source as that bathhouse Fang Zheng had visited below!
If there were only one or two, it wouldn’t be a problem; at most, it meant the Goddess of Order wanted to make an international call or watch some satellite TV channels, which Fang Zheng could somewhat understand... But the issue was that there were thousands of them!!
Yes, these objects, looking like twisted starfish, almost densely packed the entire planet, covering all areas at various altitudes so tightly! If one were to look from outside, Fang Zheng was sure the planet would appear as if a canary was trapped inside a spherical metal cage!
"Nymph, check it out and see what those things are."
At this moment, Fang Zheng no longer had the leisureliness of "coming out to see what the Star Sea looked like". After all, he’d traversed so many worlds and was no longer that greenhorn he once was. The sheer number of these "satellites" was clearly unusual. And judging by their appearance, it seemed as though they encapsulated the entire planet securely. Of course, this was a metaphor—the warship could easily pass through the gaps between these satellites if it really tried. But he chose not to do so. If this was indeed something set up by the Goddess, then why would she do this?
Was this device meant to confront something inside... or outside?
Upon hearing Fang Zheng’s command, Nymph immediately sprang into action. Rings of light flashed in her eyes, spinning ceaselessly as she searched. At that moment, Nymph’s voice transformed into a robotic, electronic tone once again.
"Target scanning initiated... analysis underway, energy field core fluctuations detected, attempting to identify... Firewall found, bypassing the firewall... Success, entered the first layer... Data encrypted. Decrypting... Warning, abnormal intrusion detected, a countermeasure will trigger in ten seconds... nine seconds..."
"Oh, for goodness’ sake!"
At the same time, Fang Zheng noticed that the once silent sea stars all around had suddenly begun to twinkle with light, and at the same moment, a message came from Iona.
"High-energy reaction detected inside the satellite!"
Meanwhile, Nymph continued with her task, unhurried as ever.
"Decoding successful, entering the first layer of the database, disabling defense mechanisms......retrieving data......."
As she reached this point, Nymph closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Data synchronization complete, beginning playback."
As she spoke, Nymph opened the personal terminal in front of her and pressed a few buttons. Soon, Fang Zheng saw a voice come through on the large screen before him.
"Hey there, my dear children."
The voice was female, its age hard to discern, but it sounded quite young and also rather cheerful.
"I’m the Goddess of Order, you know. I’m not sure if you remember me, but that’s not important. What’s important is that since you’ve accessed my message, it means you possess the skill and ability to head to the Star Sea. Oh, did that alarm just now give you a scare? Hahaha, I designed that on purpose, mainly to spook you and test your resolve. Now it seems you’re doing quite well. If you’re upset about it, come hit me then!"
Why did the voice sound so annoying?
Just then, the cheerful voice suddenly turned serious.
"Alright, although I’d love to chat more with you and my children, unfortunately, this is a recording, I can’t see you now, nor do I know what you’ve become. But I’m delighted that you’ve left this cradle. Remember, the Star Sea is an exceedingly dangerous world, our enemies have never ceased trying to erase us completely... I’m sorry, but for now, you cannot leave just yet. You must prove yourselves capable of passing the trial, otherwise, as much as you are my dearest children, I can’t just let you go."
Then, the voice returned to its previous jovial tone.
"Oh, right, I forgot to warn you. This trial isn’t easy to pass, and don’t forget, Chaos is always our enemy. See these satellites? Yes, they’re prepared just for you. If your world has been eroded by Chaos to a point of no return, then the ’Everybody Come Together’ system will immediately activate and turn all life on this planet to ash, alright? Don’t hate me, I don’t want to do this either, but since you’ve reached this point, I’ll have no choice.....Rest assured, you won’t be annihilated. When this era ends, anew cycle of life will begin, and I’ll pray for them too.....So if you can’t do it, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough, don’t blame me, ah. Dragons push their young off cliffs to help them grow, as a mother, that’s all I can do."
With that, the voice let out a giggling laugh.
"By the way, I’ll send you the coordinates, which contain everything you want to know. The passphrase to unlock them is from the sacred book of......*"
But to Fang Zheng’s surprise, just as it reached the end, the voice suddenly went silent.
"What’s going on here?"
".....Playback over."
"The record ends there, Master."
Sensing Fang Zheng’s puzzled gaze, Nymph spoke up.
"There’s only one piece of information left."
As she said this, a line of very strange text appeared on the screen before Fang Zheng.
"These are coordinates left in ancient language, and......."
"And a sentence.....’I deliberately didn’t finish, hahaha, guess on your own!’......."
Can I just strangle that Goddess of Order?
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