by <unknown>
Her daughter turned out to have been unfrozen earlier than her, and she even appeared so happy. Together with the dream-like scene around her, Xu Yulan could not have been more perplexed.
Blinking hard, she finally found that her daughter was wearing a tiny Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars badge on the chest, too. There were also the words 'Star Glory Federation' beneath it, except that another bigger word was further below it—'Volunteer'.
"It's been a hundred and seven years since we entered hibernation. We have cruised to the border of the explored universe. This is indeed a new world like we have never seen before!"
Yan Jinzhi held her chest high proudly and pointed at the Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars badge and the word 'Volunteer', saying lightheartedly like a little sparrow, "Mom, I was woken up two weeks ago. I am a volunteer in the fleet now to help those who are woken up later like you to figure out what happened and start a new life in the local country, the Star Glory Federation!"
"It's been more than a hundred years…"
In a trance, Xu Yulan was caught in mixed feelings.
She had never tasted the feeling of a super-long hibernation before. It had never occurred to her that a hundred years would pass after she closed her eyes and opened them again. She could not help but wonder how her hometown, the Green Dragon Planet in the Wild Wolf Sector, was doing, how the Green Valley Fortress that she built up personally looked, and if the apple trees that had been burnt down in the war had grown again.
However, instead of reminiscing about the past, it was more important to plan for the future.
'Volunteer' was a new term for her. She had never seen such a glowing face on her daughter, either.
In her mind, her daughter was always a dutiful, if not meek, little girl who needed the protection of her hands that could drive the heavy magical equipment weighing a hundred tons.
Her daughter had only woken up two weeks earlier, but why did her daughter become so… so…
Xu Yulan thought for a while but failed to come up with an appropriate adjective because she had never seen such radiance on her daughter's face or the face of any 'hominoid' before.
At this moment, the last few words that her daughter mentioned finally caught her attention.
So, there was a country at the edge of the cosmos named the Star Glory Federation. Then—
"The Star Glory Federation has surrendered to the Black Wind Fleet, and this place is now territory of the Imperium, right?"
Xu Yulan knew the style of the Immortal Cultivators very well. The outside probably had nothing but dilapidated buildings left, and she would have to spend the new few days clearing the debris.
Out of her expectations, her daughter shook her head quickly and said, "There was indeed a battle, but we failed. The Black Wind Fleet has surrendered!"
"Well…"
Xu Yulan's mouth was half open, not knowing what to say.
Losing a battle was not a new experience for her.
Perhaps the high and mighty citizens of the Imperium living in the Empyreal Terminus Sector believed in the empty talk that the Imperium of True Human Beings was invincible. But for she who was born and raised at the border of the Imperium which the Imperium and the Covenant Alliance fought over repetitively, this was not the first time that she had heard news of failure.
After the goriest debacle more than a hundred years ago, they had even lost their entire hometown, the 'Wild Wolf Sector', and had to flee in a hurry with the Wild Wolf Fleet.
Before they escaped any further, they had been swallowed by the Black Wind Fleet in what was claimed to be an 'internal reshuffle' and listened to the order of the Black Wind King ever since.
Right now, even the Black Wind Fleet had been defeated and surrendered to a new superpower. Xu Yulan felt that her mind was in a mess, wondering what she belonged to exactly, the Wild Wolf Sector, the Black Wind Fleet, the Imperium, or the federation?
She had seen how terrible the people captured by the Covenant Alliance became after being modified in the 'holy temple', but the 'Star Glory Federation' did not give her such an impression.
After pondering for a long time, she held her daughter's hand and asked hesitantly, "How is your father? Do you have any news about him?"
Yan Jinzhi nodded hard. "Yes. Dad is on this planet, but he and all the soldiers are in the 'rebirth school'. They have to go to class and do labor activities. They are not allowed to go out without permission, but I've spoken to dad through video chat. He is fine and has not even lost a single hair!"
"Rebirth school?"
Having received high-level education on magical equipment for more than ten years, Xu Yulan was certainly not an ignorant housewife. She immediately realized what it was after brief consideration. "You mean a captive camp?"
"It's not exactly a captive camp." Yan Jinzhi hurried to explain. "Mom, rest assured. The starship that dad served on was somewhere else beyond the Star Glory Federation and did not participate in the war to attack the federation. I've asked around. It was a 'battlefield uprising', and they are different from captives.
"Also, dad is a hominoid. Right, we cannot say 'hominoid' here. As an 'ordinary soldier', he certainly should be treated differently from the Immortal Cultivators.
"According to the officials of the federation, the Star Glory Federation is a country of Cultivators that appreciates general equality of all people, whether or not their spiritual roots have awoken. All the ordinary soldiers in the Imperium of True Human Beings were 'cannon fodder' in the first place and people who were deceived and oppressed most. They will learn a lot of new ideas in the 'rebirth school' and spread the ideas throughout the entire Black Wind Fleet!
"Right now, when dad talked to me, he told me that his life in the 'rebirth school' is quite good. He's learned knowledge that he'd never heard of before and considered questions that always escaped his attention. He said that even the Cultivators think very highly of him and will train him to be a teacher so that he could go to other 'rebirth schools' and tell more soldiers of the Imperium about the sufferings of our ancestors."
"Cultivators…"
Naturally, Xu Yulan understood the meaning of the word. While the Imperium of True Human Beings considered the Alliance of the Holy Covenant their No. 1 enemy, the Star Ocean Republic established by the Cultivators was the Imperium's antecedent after all. How could the current regime be justified without elaborating on the corruption of the former regime?
Therefore, in the education that Xu Yulan received, the Cultivators were described to be hypocritical, sanctimonious, shortsighted, idiotic, and selfish people who buried the future of the entire civilization just to satisfy their own sense of justice.
Xu Yulan had never considered if such a theory was correct.
The end of thinking was free choice. If one was unable to control their fate freely, what was the meaning of thinking?
But right now, a few rusted gears seemed to be rolling squeakily inside Xu Yulan's head, giving her the urge to think and making her want to explain everything that she had experienced during the half hour after she woke up.
Licking her lips, Xu Yulan raised another question. "Where—Where are we exactly?"
"Boneyard!" her daughter replied. "The federation has prepared three settlements for us, namely the desert in the Water Crystal Sector, the primitive forest in the Forest Ocean Sector, and the wildness on Boneyard. We happened to be allotted to this place.
"This is a planet far away from the homeland of the federation. Although there is nothing here for now and we have to work from scratch, the gravity and temperature here are agreeable enough. We also have an atmosphere and the relics of ancient civilizations. So, it is a rather acceptable planet!
"Right, very soon, this place will no longer be called 'Boneyard', which is really an awful name. It will restore the name it had more than a hundred years ago, 'Ultimacy'. We will even develop this place into the eighth or ninth Sector of the Star Glory Federation. It will be the Ultimacy Se
ctor!"
Chapter 1878: Everything from Nothing |
Holding her mother's hand, Yan Jinzhi led her to the observatory at the top of 'Vision 24', an enormous starship of immigrants, through a lift.
In this place, Xu Yulan was finally able to breathe her first mouthful of fresh air after a hundred years.
Although the air elements of Boneyard were different from the standard air, and it was much damper with the intense stench of rust, Xu Yulan still could not help but breath deeply until her lungs hurt and her head was dizzy.
After living on a starship for a long time, breathing the synthesized standard air, a lot of people would have similar conditions when they met fresh air that was filled with all kinds of impurities. The phenomenon was sometimes known as 'oxygen intoxication'.
"Look, Mom!"
Pointing at the splendid landscape down below, Yan Jinzhi jumped about excitedly.
Xu Yulan's optical nerves that had been frozen for a hundred years were not adapted to the strong natural light yet. She narrowed her eyes and covered her eyebrows with her hands to block the light. Looking into the distance, she discovered that most of the immigrant starships from 'Vision 7' to 'Vision 33' were scattered in a hilly area not far away from an ocean.
The bright blue earth was full of faults. There were mountains thousands of meters tall and valleys that were equally deep. Compared to them, the 'hilly area' that they were in could almost be called the wide expanse of a plateau.
The surging tides raised by the crimson ocean far away were the most intense ones that she had ever seen. The waves reached the altitude of hundreds of meters easily and danced crazily like countless furious dragons. Despite the multiple layers of seawalls, they were still marching beyond the shoreline for dozens of kilometers and nearby drowned the hill they were on.
However, right above such a magnificent and temperamental ocean, countless bizarre-shaped artificial objects, which looked like weird boats jumbled by too many sails, were still cruising amid the huge waves, chasing the clouds and lightning and declaring mankind's determination to challenge nature.
Xu Yulan's eyes continued moving forward to above the horizon, where the contour of an enormous planet was revealed in the gray sky.
The contour was glittering, like a transparent ring of jade.
At first, Xu Yulan thought that it was an annular eclipse.
But if it were an annular eclipse, the rays around the object would not have been so bright.
Also, very soon, the ring of light shivered lightly. Countless tiny threads of light split out and rotated in the same direction.
Those light threads seemed to be pulling the force deep inside the ocean amazingly. As the light threads changed erratically, the giant waves began surging even more frequently and violently.
Xu Yulan even saw a giant wave that was at least thousands of meters tall rolling up from the depths of the ocean mixed with fire and smoke. It was almost breaking through the atmosphere and flying all the way into space.
Such a splendid view dumbfounded Xu Yulan and made her lost for words for a long time.
"Mother, don't be scared. This is part of the modification of Boneyard!"
A moment earlier, she had grabbed her daughter's hands and tried to keep her daughter behind her to protect her daughter. But at this moment, her daughter was holding her arms and warming her cold fingers with her hot palms.
Her daughter said with a smile, "Everything is good on Boneyard, except that one of satellites is too close to it and has a very strange trajectory. The tidal force between the satellite and Boneyard makes the ocean here particularly violent and causes shocking waves that scourge an area of hundreds of square kilometers. A long way in the future, the satellite will even fall and hit the surface of Boneyard heavily.
"It's because of the two reasons that the Star Glory Federation never developed Boneyard on a large scale in the past hundred years.
"But since this place is our new home now, it naturally requires great modification. The first things to be taken care of will be the tidal force and the collapse of the satellite. Then, we will flatten the mountains and valleys. To realize the purposes, the federation has decided to adjust the trajectory of the satellite and slightly push the 'moon' away."
Xu Yulan widened her eyes and blurted out, "Pushing the 'moon' away?"
"Yes. The Star Glory Federation has never made such a grand attempt before, either. They did not have relevant technological reserve," Yan Jinzhi said. "However, with the technology from the Black Wind Fleet, Kunlun, and Firefly, and with the technology from the federation itself, chances are that it will succeed!
"Of course, we are still in the phase of testing the technology and collecting data and far away from the point of really pushing the moon away. Do you see the weird boats floating in the middle of the tides, which seem to have sails all over their bodies? They are the probe starships to collect the data of the tides and make preparations for the next phase, pushing!
"Five years, ten years, twenty years… I think by the time I grow to your age, Mom, we will certainly have pushed the moon away, tamed the ocean, flattened the mountains to fill the valleys, and developed Boneyard into a real paradise, won't we?"
Her daughter's solemn expression reminded Xu Yulan of something deep inside her heart.
She seemed to recall the time when she first took her family to the then desolate Green Valley Fortress, full of hope and ambition.
Those were the golden years of her life when she was happiest and most energetic.
Xu Yulan overlooked 'Firefly', which her daughter had mentioned, and brooded on the thought that her daughter seemed to have truly grown up after the long journey.
Under Yan Jinzhi's guidance, Xu Yulan looked at the mountains around that rose into the sky. She saw countless towers standing at the summits spurting out hazy mist incessantly, constructing a white barrier near the landing point of the starships.
Her daughter told her that it was an array to modify the atmosphere and cleanse the air.
Boneyard had been a nest of demons tens of thousands of years ago after all. There were too many impurities in the air, and it was unsuitable for ordinary people to breathe for a long time because it would cause chronic illnesses. In the eyes of the ancient people, this was a truly murky land.
Thankfully, the federation had gained abundant experience in planet modification during the hundred years of colonization. At the very least, the technology was mature enough to build up a reservation, cleanse the air in the small area, and even generate a 'microclimate' that was always favorable in a certain range.
The colonization technology of the Imperium of True Human Beings was even more advanced than the federation's. The 'Vision' starships that Xu Yulan and the other immigrants boarded were themselves self-sustainable towns and factories. At the very least, in the first few years of construction, it was unnecessary for them to leave the starships to establish vulnerable settlements.
Right now, all the 'Vision' starships had extended hundreds of fixation limbs, which made them look like spiders, into the ravines among the hills in order to stabilize themselves.
Based on that, the solid shells of the immigrant starships were dismantled one piece after another, revealing the complicated, eye-catching factories and facilities. Some of them were unfolded right next to the immigrant starships, and some were dragged further away.
Defense rune arrays, air cleaning towers, water plants, metal collection, and purification factories… Every immigrant starship was transforming into a small town that had all the necessary infrastructure at a visible speed.
Although Xu Yulan had always thought that she had seen a lot of things, she had never appreciated the picture of so many starships transforming into towns at the same time. The resolution to change the world and alter nature stunned her and even made her feel somewhat moved!
Suddenly, Xu Yulan moved her eyes away from the dazzling scenes of construction to an enormous fold that surrounde
d the hills like a dam.
The circular fold was like a city wall built by the giants. It sealed the hills inside and stopped their further expansion and development.
So, it was necessary to destroy the fold!
On the steep slope of the circular fold that was almost vertical, different areas had been marked. A lot of eight-footed magical equipment that looked like enormous spiders were moving on it quickly and drilled deep holes on the slope with their tentacles.
Xu Yulan knew that such magical equipment was commonly known as a mountain crab. It was a piece of engineering magical equipment designed to detonate abandoned buildings and steep mountains. The eight soft limbs could fix themselves in all kinds of harsh environments and maintain a high speed. The drills at the ends of the tentacles could also dig out holes precisely to send crystal bombs to the most vulnerable parts.
Xu Yulan was good at operating the 'mountain crab', too. That was why she could tell how excellent the pioneer driving the red mountain crab was.
He was moving and digging explosion holes in the crags five times faster than other people. When other people had just dug a dozen explosion holes, he had already embedded a hundred crystal bombs into the mountain on the front. The mountain crab that weighed more than seventy tons was almost an extension of his limbs. His movements were both fluent and enjoyable.
The distance was too far away for Xu Yulan to tell how the explosion holes were dug, but judging from the smooth, skillful movements, there could not possibly be anything wrong.
As she expected, after a boom, not too much smoke was raised when a large cluster of rocks collapsed without a sound without affecting the mountain crabs that were operating nearby.
"This is a true expert!"
Detonation was an art. Blowing up the target with the minimal crystals, the minimal range of affection, and the minimal difficulty of subsequent cleaning required sophisticated knowledge.
