After hearing the news, Nolan was also taken aback. She also didn't expect that Zhuo Mu would receive such a bunch of signals from deep space by accident after arriving here—and the guesses and associations put forward by Hao Ren , although Ms. Jianniang has reservations, she also feels that this incident is not a pure coincidence.
Maybe it has something to do with the giant antenna in orbit...
As a result, the long-distance thinking array that had just quieted down became lively again in an instant. Various giant facilities made low buzzing sounds of energy flow switching, and groups of autonomous machinery and engineering drones flew out of their resting hangars. , began to physically connect the remote thinking array and the crystal resonance antenna. The outpost itself was also affected: the lights in some areas were temporarily turned off, energy control also sounded on the base broadcast, and some areas were temporarily closed.
This is because all the facilities here are temporary constructions, and there has never been any experience in designing such a base before, so many things only meet the needs of their own operation, and they are more or less inconvenient in the face of unexpected situations. Inconvenience—No one ever thought that Zhuom's long-distance thinking array needs to be connected to the large antenna used to search for signals, so when connecting these two systems, one of the energy modules has to be temporarily shut down, and the outpost responded Part of the energy of the furnace has to be transferred to the long-distance thinking array.
Fortunately, this emergency process did not take too long. After the physical connection of the two systems was completed, the energy control computer quickly completed the calculation of the system coupling requirements, and reset the operating parameters of the two sets of energy modules. The outpost The energy control lasted less than twenty minutes and ended.
However, the commotion here has alarmed the friends in the base, Lily was the first to rush over, and yelled loudly as soon as she showed up: "What's wrong?! We're fighting with something again Huh? I was typing in the house and suddenly the power went out - thankfully there is a backup power supply... "
Vivienne appeared next to her: she was making snacks in the kitchen before, and she didn't hear any movement outside. She came out after seeing Lily yelling and running outside to see the excitement. Then there are the Yizaks and the two, the Nangong brothers and sisters came last, and Gun Miao and Doudou did not appear.
At this time, the cat girl should be adventuring in a corner of the base. A little light change is completely commonplace for a wild cat who has been wandering in the dilapidated ancient city since childhood, and Doudou has already gone to sleep obediently at this time.
"The signal received by Zhuomu..." Vivian was also stunned for a moment after hearing what happened, and then looked at Hao Ren uncertainly, "Are you sure these communication signals are related to the crystal resonance we are going on?"
"Of course I'm not sure, I'm just guessing," Hao Ren spread his hands, "Zomu has just confirmed that what he hears is delayed by at most a few minutes, and it belongs to faster-than-light communication, which means that those signals are not in many places. The "ghost radio waves" that have been lingering in the universe since they were sent out years ago, were sent shortly after we turned on the antenna. When these two things are put together, it is difficult not to associate them."
Y'zaks rubbed his chin: "Then judging from the content of these communications, the crystal resonance signal we released caused great trouble to the person who sent the communications...even a crisis. Wait a minute, is the antenna still functioning?"
This was the thing that made Hao Ren want to cry the most. He squeezed his forehead: "The key is that it is not so easy to stop! The crystal resonant antenna looks complicated, but in fact what we built is a giant antenna And the energy array plus a shell, the real core component is the big crystal dug out from the depths of the earth - and the working principle of the crystal itself has not been understood yet. What we are doing now is simply to poke Touch this crystal for a while, and then it starts to release signals continuously. The system we built is just passively scanning for possible echoes in the universe... "
Hao Ren explained the process in this way, and Y'zaks understood what was going on: the crystal resonant antenna was made by combining two completely separated parts, and the one responsible for sending out the signal was the divine crystal. The gadget is produced by the Goddess of Creation. Currently, Hao Ren's research on it is limited to knowing how to poke it so that it can send out signals. The main antenna system created by Nolan can only receive passively, and has no ability to control the crystal. …
Lily thought for a while, then raised her hand: "...the communication that Zhuomu received should be scolding right now?"
Hao Ren sighed: "There's been no movement for a while, maybe he gave up the treatment. Of course, it's also possible that..."
He was interrupted by Vivienne before he could speak the second half of the sentence: "The person who sent the communication should be fine—since the communication they sent can be received by Zhuomu, then they should have been in the area we can observe It’s within the range, at least not too far away. The guy who has the ability to communicate faster than light and has survived in this star cluster X is definitely not easy. Even if he is really attacked by something, he won’t be unable to send out any movement .”
"Well, it makes sense," Hao Ren was somewhat relieved after hearing Vivienne's analysis, and he nodded lightly, "At present, our various antennas cannot receive this communication signal, and Zhuomu's 'function' Limited, so I can receive the signal but not be able to determine the location of the other party. Now I have connected the data processing center of the remote thinking array with the antenna array. If everything goes well, maybe we can make the two systems work together to lock the signal source. "
This is the only thing that can be done now, but Hao Ren is not willing to just wait like this - in the process of trying to find the source of the signal, he issued a combat readiness command to the drone group in the nearby area, and all the armed drones that had just walked off the production line Humans and machines are gathering towards the parent star of the agent, while the engineering drones dragged components from the nearby lairs and assembled a huge jump acceleration track over the parent star.
Once the signal source is locked, Hao Ren can guarantee to push the drone army over there in the shortest possible time no matter what emergency happens there.
In this eerie ancient galaxy, drone swarms mean safety.
"What kind of trouble do you think those who sent the message encountered?" After finally relaxing, Vivian asked Hao Ren's opinion on this matter.
"There is too little information, there are only a few communications that come over by accident, and we can't analyze anything at all," Hao Ren shook his head, "But judging from those few words... the person who sent the communications is trying to avoid communicating with the outside world. , because crystal resonance signals are forced to be two-way, and when we send signals to them, they will inevitably generate feedback signals—although we don’t know why the antenna system we made can’t receive feedback signals from space until now, but this process is definitely It exists. So it is very likely that our behavior of 'calling the microphone' caused the other party's communication silence to be broken."
"Are you trying to avoid revealing your own signal..." Vivienne thought thoughtfully, "Could it be that you are fleeing or hiding?"
Hao Ren looked solemnly, looking up at the stars: "Nine times out of ten, this is the case."
And at the same moment, in the depths of the stars beyond the reach of eyes, an extremely huge space floating object is flying in the dark space.
The shape of this colossal monster is like an irregular short cone. One end of the cone is a broad surface with a curvature, and the other end is a fragmented tip. The conical section is full of twisted tears. Gaps and broken pipes, as if torn from something larger.
If you are an experienced space adventurer, you can tell that this is actually a planetary fragment the moment you see this thing—you can roughly judge from the curvature of its upper surface and the length of the entire cone fragment, it probably originated from A third-sized portion torn off of a planet.
This huge planetary wreckage is floating in space, but it is not lifeless and dark. In fact, its surface is covered with light sources, large and small, which brighten the entire wreckage. On the "surface" part of the planetary fragments, a large number of obvious man-made traces can be clearly seen: there are many tall towers like cannons erected on the ground, and magnificent palaces and cities are built around these towers. In addition to man-made structures, you can even see vast jungles and grasslands—they are lush and vibrant, and it is completely unimaginable that these things actually exist on a piece of celestial body fragments that are wandering in the universe.
Obviously, it is the light source and living environment produced by the artificial facilities left by the celestial fragments that preserve these plants.
Although the "surface" of the planet's debris can still be called vibrant, other parts of it are not so optimistic: a large number of tearing and collapsing structures can be seen on the edge of the surface, and the crust collapsed shattered, exposing the deep layers that have been destroyed. Pipelines and mechanical facilities that have lost their functions, huge electric arcs are swimming on the surface of the conical base of the celestial body fragments, constantly triggering small-scale explosions and fires, sparks splashed everywhere, and material leakage even occurred in some places: like Something like a cloud of smoke erupted from the lower half of the planetary debris, shrouding the tail of the entire conical structure in a mist.
There is a vast grassland in the center of this "space floating island". In the center of the grassland, there is an ancient meeting place. Huge metal obelisks are arranged in a ring. The center of the obelisk is enough to accommodate tens of thousands of people. metal platform.
At this moment, on this metal platform from the last era, a large group of strange creatures with shimmering bodies are gathering together, discussing things noisily. These creatures have a figure and appearance similar to elves, but they have a transparent texture that is almost like a spirit body. It is difficult for them to distinguish between men and women, and they wear almost the same clothes that look like spirit bodies, and their bodies and clothes are emitting light. Giving a soft halo, these "goblins" gathered in large groups, jumping bright arcs among each other, and their arguments were crackling like these arcs, chaotic:
"I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm really going to die this time! Those people are still signaling!"
"Our shielding interference has exceeded the limit! If we can't control it, we will be exposed!"
"You stupid, we've been exposed! We've been exposed for two hours!"
"It's obviously three hours!"
"A few hours doesn't matter at all! Those bad guys are coming to fight is the most important thing!"
"We can't fight, we can't fight, we don't even have a working gun..."
"Aren't there a lot of cannons outside the Great Plains..."
"You stupid! It's all broken, it's all broken! Now there's nothing the guardian giant can do if he's still alive!"
"What to do, what to do, the goddess gave us a task when she created us, and we are going to mess it up!"
"That's right, the queen, the queen! Let the queen come out and make an idea!"
"The queen, the queen, the queen, the queen..."
"..."
"... It's over! We don't have a queen!"
"Die, die, die, die..."