Xyrin Empire

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The large dismantling platform is one of the newly constructed series of comprehensive facilities at the research center, specifically designed to tackle the increasingly numerous large-scale relics of the Old Empire. As the New Empire's territory expands and the Macro World outposts slowly develop into small-scale colonies or military bases, more and more relics of the Old Empire are discovered. The ancient Xyrin relics available for scientists to study have gradually changed from "little gadgets" to large-scale, well-functioning ancient Xyrin equipment, becoming regulars at the research center. Therefore, Taville ordered another expansion of the research center's superspace laboratory and built this comprehensive facility known as the large dismantling platform.

It can be considered a combination of our old analysis laboratory, dismantling center, enclosed Gnaku, and other research departments. Typically, one platform occupies an independent superspace laboratory, where multi-layer space nesting technology is applied to ensure that even the largest objects can be disassembled in an "indoor environment," such as the spaceship fragments dragged from Visca's "head."

In the dark aberrant gravity space, an enormous cylindrical mechanical body is fixed in the air by invisible restraint locks. All the surface coverings have been cut off, including twisted pipes and semi-melted armor layers. They are "stuck" firmly in place due to the surrounding aberrant gravity. Every most inconspicuous part undergoes the most comprehensive checks while multifunctional probes and Xyrin Technicians in white uniforms move unceasingly among the enormous pipes, seeking data recording devices that might have survived. The scientist group commander is a seemingly steady middle-aged uncle. I don't know him, but Taville appointed him, so he must be an outstanding scientist.

Next to the dismantling area are many hexagonal metal platforms floating in the air, distributed unevenly and randomly, connected only by beams of light that seem true or false. These expansive platforms are observational points at various levels, equipped with numerous precision analysis instruments and directly linked to the institute's mainframe. The highest level platform is even directly connected to the Shadow Space's core mainframe—Bubbles. That's why when Sandora and I stood on the platform, we saw Shepard hand-tearing Diablo in the holographic projection…

"Boring," Bubbles' avatar appeared before us. As the core mainframe of the entire Imperial Capital, this girl can manifest her avatar anywhere in the Shadow Space, "The human network crashed, and I couldn't blatantly re-launch all their satellites overnight. So I had to download their games myself, play around with them, but it's really dull, ugh…"

"Alright, alright, all you do is bully Earthlings," I pressed Bubbles' avatar back into the panel, who cooperatively stuck out her tongue and shrunk her neck, "Want to play games? Connect to the Macro World Network, and play with Sky Net, or mess with the Imperial Military Academy campus network; you versus the Misakas, a thousand to a thousand…"

Bubbles' half head popped out from the control panel, imagining the magnificent scene of a thousand Shepards swinging bricks with a thousand Diablos, instantly yearning for it.

Sandora nudged my arm, redirecting my attention back to serious business.

Before me is the bustling scene of scientists dismantling ancient Xyrin equipment. Certainly, it's impressive, but I have grown accustomed to it. No matter what they dismantle before my eyes, it no longer impacts me. What really shocks me is what Sandora just told me.

"I had them scan the Barrier Star's logic core three times," Sandora said, biting her lower lip, "Visca's Glory Starship is peculiar; its logic core is independent. Though it is part of Visca's spirit, she seems unaware of its existence, possibly a result of Visca's extreme mental instability back then. One second, her fragmented consciousness would separate from her soul, and the next, it no longer belonged to her logic system. Thus, the Barrier Star's logic core is chaotic. We used three different methods to scan it to extract all system logs, and even Visca voluntarily helped, only to find herself even more confused than us."

"In the system logs, we found something unusual."

Sandora continued, extracting several straightforward pieces of information and displaying them before me.

"This is the final log before the collision began: Planet Fortress' third docking area, accepting the docking request, docking request approved, starting to guide the target spaceship to land."

I was astonished, I was bewildered, I started pinching my face.

"This is the log during the collision, synchronized, still in the third docking area: Target spaceship landing procedure initiated, docking area barrier released, landing started."

I continued to be astonished, continued to be bewildered, continued pinching my face.

"Stop pinching," Sandora gently teased, "I'm still here watching."

I: "…"

The once upright and heroic Queen has completely gone bad!

"What is the matter with this log?"

The expression on my face turned subtle, looking at the straightforward system logs, holding countless guesses in my heart, but not daring to speak them aloud. However, Sandora has evidently conducted thorough analysis multiple times, and the evidence she possesses can only be described as irrefutable, so her answer was swift and certain: "This is not a collision; it is a guided landing process carried out according to normal procedure—Barrier Star accepted the landing request of the impactor and openly welcomed three great explosions."

"That's not scientific!" I immediately exclaimed, then shook my head, "Of course, nor is it magic—guide landing? Why would Barrier Star guide three starship debris to land? Also, this system log wasn't uploaded to Visca. The little girl didn't anticipate this collision at all; she even broke her coffee table and sofa during the great explosion…"

Right, that accidental loss provided Sandora with a midnight snack.

"But if this holds true, it would explain why Barrier Star didn't issue an air raid warning or activate its defense mechanisms," Sandora continued analyzing this improbable possibility. Despite things seeming more and more off, without further reliable intelligence, she could only assume many unreasonable situations occurred, "because the core system of the Glory Starship recognized the landing procedure, so all warning institutions chose silence. Since the target was in 'normal circumstances' to contact the starship, not a single anti-aircraft cannon raised an alarm. When the collision occurred, Barrier Star's top deck was executing the default port opening procedure, which did not require human involvement—that's more important, any Glory Starship possesses independent operational authority, and most of its operations are unrelated to regular combat sequences. The troops stationed within the base can't know what kind of automatic operations the top deck is undergoing; under normal circumstances, the autonomous operational status of a Glory Starship can only be checked by its owner, Visca, but…"

Sandora didn't finish her sentence, but I knew what it contained: But heaven knows what's up with Visca; her understanding of her Glory Starship barely rivals the formula for an Alpine Lollipop. Making that crazy little girl comprehend what her Glory system logs are for isn't much different from Pandora winning the next Nobel Peace Prize—though the little girl is more likely to conquer the world and award herself a Nobel Peace Prize, which, of course, isn't within our discussion scope.

"The autonomy of the Glory Starship is too high; when it judges an external object as non-threatening, all the warning radars registered within its equipment's registry default to safety. This was originally designed to enhance equipment execution efficiency," Sandora sighed, "originally this was normal. The Glory Starship was the most reliable weapon owned by the Xyrin Empire and its error rate was lower than any other equipment, yet only Visca proves an exception."

"Putting this aside, why would the Moon Base guide three starship debris to collide with itself?"

I raised my hand and pointed at the wreckage No.1 being gutted open, the very culprit that caused the massive explosion on the lunar surface and directly led to the ERROR-35 incident with my kid's mom is being disassembled, and only now do we discover that it had submitted an entry request when it crashed – this situation is as absurd as Bin Laden applying for a trip to Washington and getting approval from American Airlines!

"I have a guess," Sandora flicked her golden hair beside her ear and revealed a complex smile, "perhaps it was an unsuccessful crash landing…"

Me: "…Ah?"

"These three things have basically been identified; the two smaller wreckages are acceleration modules from the vector movement engine, and the larger wreckage is a universal buffer plug-in from the warship energy core. They all come from the same spaceship, an already disassembled Eternal-class battleship."

Sandora looked at the distant construction site, her voice steady and calm.

"The origin world of this battleship is still unknown; the massive explosion destroyed the data recording devices on the three universal modules. But at least one thing is certain: neither the acceleration tube nor the large capacitor has the function of sending landing signals. Before the collision, the request for landing should have been sent by a spaceship, not by these three fragments."

"So…" I understood what Sandora meant and furrowed my brows, "there was an Eternal-class battleship wanting to make an emergency landing on Barrier Star at the time, but it couldn't hold on before landing…"

Sandora picked up my words: "That battleship likely was on the brink of collapse before requesting emergency landing. After the space gate for cross-world transmission opened, it exploded into fragments on the other side, leaving only two accelerators and one large capacitor to ultimately crash on the Barrier Star. The only question now is that a normal Imperial Battleship Captain would never do such a thing; they should judge their spaceship's condition themselves, and if successful emergency landing seems impossible, they would choose self-destruction rather than forcing a landing and endangering comrades. Unfortunately, the navigation deck of that unlucky spaceship couldn't withstand the World Gate; otherwise, we would have more data for analysis."

"I've realized how much has been deduced," I sighed sincerely, producing a wave of reflections on this disastrous emergency landing. Emergency landing is a term that tightens one's heart; these four words aren't merely Hollywood's way of catching the eye. Only by personally witnessing the striking scene of a giant spaceship plummeting to the ground with exhaust smoke trailing can one comprehend the brutality of it. The spaceship crashing on Barrier Star was unfortunate, and I can imagine its tragic attempt to rush towards the space gate while nearly disintegrating, and its miserable state of being shattered into pieces right at the nth degree of the space gate. This Traveler failed to hold out until returning to base… Wait, returning to base?!

"I say, is that unfortunate spaceship Visca's from the past!"

Pointing at the accelerators now reduced to a heap of non-flammable trash, I looked at Sandora with a shocked expression.

"You finally thought of it," Sandora shrugged in amusement, "We finally realize we've been neglecting a question all along: Where exactly was Visca's army at that time."

My mind was racing, with conjectures rolling out at tens of T per second, those secrets of the Ancient Era flashing back and forth. I started to wonder what odd state Visca's army was in back then: Did they have middle-level commanders with any normal worldview under an extremely abnormal Supreme Commander?

Alright, I know I might be overly surprised, and my thoughts are somewhat derailed.

"Wait, if this is Visca's spaceship from back then, it could make sense for an emergency landing on Barrier Star, but wasn't Visca originally part of the Fallen Apostle camp? These wreckages…"

"It's a mystery, I hoped Visca would recall something, so I had her go to scan her Memory Core, but the chances are slim," Sandora shook her head, "There's no Abyss reaction on any of these three remnants, and they appear exactly like regular Imperial Military Equipment in every respect. So, I guess they must have belonged to Visca before she joined the Fallen Apostle camp, but nobody knows what the spaceship experienced after its Supreme Commander became a Fallen Apostle, why it remains in 'pure' status until now, and whether it has any companions, all of which evidence likely disappeared in the space storm."

"Could it be instead," I mused, rubbing my forehead trying to activate my not-so-skilled deduction skills, "If Visca's troops split when she joined the Fallen Apostle camp, some commanders rebelled turning into an independent fleet?"

Sandora gave me a peculiar look: "That's a bold guess, Visca's Destruction Army is indeed capable of such actions. She created armies under the lack of necessary equipment and Xyrin Mother Machines, creating soldiers forcibly different from complete Xyrin Apostles, so it's not impossible for a rebellion."

But all of this is just speculation, the real situation can only be known possibly by Visca, and that girl is still a clueless little madman, thus the clues are as good as broken again.

Yet gaining such intelligence within a single day was beyond my expectation, now we know all the wreckages come from an Eternal-class Battleship, presumed to be remnants of the Destruction Army, and we've even conjured the notion of possible splits in Visca's former troops with some possibly still alive. These myriad pieces of intelligence have already sufficed to keep the Command Center commanders excited for several days, even though I feel they may not all be good news—this statement might embarrass Visca, but I think the Destruction Army, whether split into Fallen Apostles and non-Fallen Apostles, none are any good, after all, they wiped out many worlds even without Abyss control back then. This is akin to Beijing Roast Duck chefs suddenly dividing into two factions, one insists on roasting, the other starts favoring braising, while they've split, the ducks remain innocent… it's the same isn't it…

Thus I sadly realized, if my speculation today turns out true, then we would not just have Fallen Apostles to deal with but perhaps an additional army, even if its scale might not match the former.

This troubling speculation hasn't been verified yet and is already influencing my mood adversely, although I'm not worried whether these presumed remnants of the Destruction Army really exist and whether enmity with them would affect Visca's sentiments: in fact, that cat-eyed little girl holds no attachment to the Destruction Army she established in the past, most times she would even forget she had such a bunch of heartless killers under her command. Based on sporadic descriptions from Visca and accounts Bella occasionally informs me when clear-headed, that little girl certainly partook in many efforts where she vanished without a trace amidst the frontline gunfire, during that era, Visca was an "actionist" even more unfathomable than Qianqian, hence I believe Visca holds no emotions towards her old forces.

Emerging from the dismantling platform, I went to see Visca. The little girl was undergoing deep memory core scanning and had already crashed six mainframes. Outside the entrance of the scanning center, a line of mass-produced Bubbles with spiral-dotted eyes were rebooting one by one, while Pandora stood like a delicate porcelain doll at the doorway. She had received information about a certain failed crash landing and merely nodded slightly when seeing me.

"If it's an enemy, kill them all."

The awkward twin sister conveyed with a single sentence her resolve to protect her sister.

Noon arrived, and Miss Lin woke leisurely after a morning nap. She had already regarded this place as her home, shuffling downstairs wearing fluffy cartoon slippers like a sleepwalker to have a meal. The low blood pressure after waking seemed to be a common ailment among young ladies, Lin Xue was no exception, in conditions of waking from deep sleep, she would undoubtedly appear in a daydreaming state, and it often gave me the sole opportunity to gain the upper hand in any struggle with her, like adding chili oil to her meal or secretly reversing Miss Lin's chopsticks. Every time I relished such activities to the fullest, and Lilina would rate them as typical manifestations of reversing intellect growth.

I was now engaging in such activities beneficial to mind and body health: cautiously drinking dry the soup in Lin Xue's egg drop soup bowl and placing the empty bowl before the closed eyes dining young lady…

Then, the doorbell rang. (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, please visit Qidian.com to vote for recommendations or monthly votes. Your support is my greatest motivation.)