The scientific research ship is moored in the boundary area of the space air mass, which is about thousands of kilometers away from the obvious material enrichment zone. Looking at it from here, the air mass is like a static cloud mountain range, quietly across your entire field of vision. Inside the air mass, in the deepest part of the deep darkness, you can see continuous flashes of light, illuminating the uneven valleys and cracks inside the air mass like veins. I stared in one direction for several minutes. Although it is impossible to determine with the naked eye at this distance the center of the air mass due to the large size of the air mass, my intuition allowed me to focus my sight in one direction.
"It should be there, it... maybe it came to me."
Sandora glanced at me suspiciously, and there was a little worry in her voice when she spoke: "Ah Jun, are you okay?"
"I'm fine" I laughed immediately, patting Sandora's arm lightly to reassure her "I'm sure I'm not affected by anything, but you know, I sometimes have special intuitions. There's something there It's been sending out signals, it seems that it hopes to communicate with us, but... is there any response from the radar?"
I said the last sentence to the busy information console below. A senior assistant technician was monitoring the information fed back by the general-purpose radar. Hearing this, he immediately reported loudly: "Your Majesty, the radar has not found anything! We are not in the air mass." Any matter other than the normal gas cloud is found inside, and there is no energy reaction beyond the gas cloud itself!"
"That is to say, only I can receive the information it sends, and it is received through a vague intuition" I shrugged at Sandora "Tavier is right, maybe it is a super-common sense substance , It is completely outside the material and information pedigree that the empire has mastered."
"What did you find inside?" Ilsen looked at his servant, a burly male protoss with red armor and hair as red as fire—judging from this feature, he should be someone outside the four major gods. A soldier from the gods, perhaps Vulcan. The burly red-haired man immediately stood up straight when he heard Ilsen's question, and replied loudly: "Yes, master! We have already explored the core of the gas cloud and found abnormal spatial phenomena and a diameter A suspected block of matter of a kilometer, but the target is highly active and may be in a critical state. We are worried about destabilizing it, so we did not act rashly. Now it can be determined that the target is moving randomly within a radius of 200 kilometers from the center of the air mass, but it is not certain Is it subject to external control or is it capable of autonomous control."
"It's a complete mystery, something that even the gods can't see through..." My sister muttered, and at this moment, a report from the front staff came from the communicator: "Your Majesty! The first working group has already contacted the Protoss." Teams assembled! We saw that thing!"
After the scientific research ship docked, Tavel sent an experienced working team to set off to connect with the Protoss staff inside the gas cloud, because he was not sure about the environment inside and whether the hyperspace jump operation of the spacecraft would affect Arriving at "Foreign Object", the working ship that the group took was driven by conventional drive, and it has only now arrived at its destination.
"Take over the picture." Sandora said immediately.
The control hall of the scientific research ship is the same as that of most spaceships of the empire. There is a set of super-large holographic equipment in the central position. Soon the assistant technician sent the picture of the on-site working team over. The situation can appear before our eyes. In the picture, dozens of self-discipline machines and several assistant technicians wearing special protective light armor are advancing cautiously in the turbid clouds. A group of servants are leading the way in front, and their target is a huge monster in the distance. The... ball.
Yes, a ball, we have been looking for it hard, and what we found today after many days is actually a huge ball. According to the report of the servant just now, its diameter is about 1,000 meters: Compared with the working group that cautiously relied on in the past, it can already be said to be huge. From the picture, the ball is not as crazy as everyone imagined, rushing around, on the contrary, it is quiet and... beautiful? Magnificent? Gorgeous? I can't tell, but the shell of this ball seems to be alive, large groups of colorful colors are floating on the ball slowly, merging, gradating, separating, and then entering the next cycle, so bright and constantly changing The color of the color is really different from the cosmic dark spores I imagined at the beginning-by the way, I don’t know what the cosmic dark spores are, but the word popped out of nowhere and felt very emotional, so I used it like that.
"We are already very close. The shell of this thing is highly active, but the non-contact scanning device cannot read any useful data, and all other non-contact devices cannot affect the target. It is like a shadow. It can only I see it, but it doesn’t return any information other than the spectrum, and I don’t know if it has any entity.” The assistant technician leading the team reported, and at the same time, a staff member wearing protective armor in the middle of the screen waved his hand, it seems that he was Speaking, "Your Majesty, the color change pattern on this is regular, indicating that it is a logical artificial product. Judging from experience, this highly active and artificial shell will most likely respond to physical 'contact'. And the Protoss The staff used other means to judge that the shell was in a critical state, and contacting it rashly may have unknowable consequences."
"On what basis do you judge that this thing is in a critical state?"
I curiously glanced at 123's God Servant. Although I know that the Protoss is stronger than the Xiling Empire in terms of comprehensive strength, it stands to reason that the Empire should not be weaker than the opponent in terms of scanning technology, or even slightly stronger than the opponent—after all, the two sides have their own Each technology tree also has its own expertise, and the Apostles of Xiling are better at scanning technology. But this time, on what basis did the Protoss judge that the thing that even the most advanced radar in the empire can hide is in a critical state
The red-haired servant thought for a while and replied loudly: "The intuition of the vice-captain!"
I:"… "
Everyone: "..."
Ilsen: "Ahem, the vice-captain of this squadron has amazing intuition. I know her. That guy has always acted on intuition, and the accuracy rate is 80 to 90 percent... When the radar is invalid, it is also the woman's sixth. Feeling is still useful, isn't it?"
I couldn't help but focus on Miss Lin who was dozing off on the table: "Sixth sense, it's your turn to talk."
"Poke it with your hand, doesn't that thing ignore any non-contact effects?" The eldest lady rolled her eyes and looked over, "The traction field can't be dragged away, and the space warehouse can't be loaded, so sooner or later you have to poke it with your hand? "
Me: "..." Although what she said is very reasonable, she always feels that this kind of statement is more or less worth complaining about.
In the end, we decided to directly contact the sphere with all kinds of weird properties, which is impenetrable even to the scanning equipment of the Empire and the perception of the Protoss, but considering the possible dangers, this work is handed over to the self-discipline who acts with the working group The machines and the people in the work team evacuated several kilometers away, opened the shields of the work ship, and were ready to jump into the space fold at any time to avoid possible explosions and the like. This is not overly careful or unfounded worry, the main reason is that the round ball is too worrying-do you just pick up something on the side of the road and just eat it
Well, Sandora dares...
The self-discipline machine approached the huge ball carefully, and touched the ball under the gaze of hundreds of pairs of eyes. At this moment, many people's hearts were raised, and in the next second, the huge ball lived up to everyone. There was a slight change in the desired place: there was a sudden pause in the ever-changing magnificent colors of its surface. But just when a lot of people thought it was going to be a big bang or space collapse or the sphere cracking or a bunch of little monsters and tentacle monsters popping out of the sphere—
The thing didn't even fart in the end, and continued to pretend to be a chameleon.
The working group relayed what they had detected at the scene: "Confirmed that the object responded to direct contact, but no further changes, no energy, gravitational, thermal or magnetic properties of any kind were detected in the sphere, except visual effects Besides, we didn’t find any properties of the target. Oh, there is one property, the detection machine sent a report of the hardness it sensed, confirming that the outer shell of the sphere is solid, and the type of surface material is probably equivalent to some kind of crystal.”
Sandora glanced at me: "Ah Jun, can you feel anything?"
I was the only person on the scene who might have some connection with the big ball, so Sandora would ask this question, but I didn't feel anything when the color on the surface of the ball stopped just now, so I shook my head.
"Continue to test, if necessary, you can sacrifice a few self-discipline machines to try." Sandora ordered succinctly and clearly, so the working group in front began a series of tests.
They began to let the self-discipline machine directly physical impact on the ball, release electromagnetic pulses on the ball at close range, try to use gravitational traction to affect the target, irradiate various energy beams, and finally even used psionic energy and holy light—no Saying that it has no effect, after being irradiated by high-level energy that is close to the source, such as psionic energy and holy light, the shell of the sphere shows a tendency to collapse, which shows that the target can be destroyed, and its strength is not as strong as we imagined. But other than knowing that the target could be destroyed, none of the other tests we conducted yielded any valuable intelligence.
That orb is a stubborn mute who would rather die than tell us the secrets of its interior.
"According to the data collected now, the shell of the target is solid, has hardness and structural strength, can be seen with the naked eye, and can reflect light normally, but other than that, it has no mass, no radiation, cannot scan the internal structure, and cannot identify The composition of matter, because its mass is zero, it is not even affected by gravitational traction, it is a product that challenges common sense and violates the rules of the world." Sandora looked at the report sent back by the working group, "actually exists, but too many keys are missing Attributes, it's like..."
"It's like a damaged data package. It takes up hard disk space for nothing, but it can't be deleted or moved away. There is an icon but the content can't be read." I took it casually.
Sandora nodded: "Either it was 'born' designed like this, or it was damaged for some reason-I don't mean physical damage, but the original damage at the information level, and then after the damage it It hasn't disintegrated, but survived in the real world."
"It's all possible." My elder sister nodded and said.
I thought about it, and suddenly connected with a certain knowledge point I had come into contact with before: "Why did I think of the black sun?"
"You mean the black celestial body produced due to the lack of key laws?" Sandora nodded slightly, "It can only be said that the surface properties are slightly similar, but black celestial bodies cannot be observed by conventional methods, and they will not be the same as the current world. Anything in it can exchange information, but the thing in front of us... can be seen with the naked eye, and can feel the hardness of the other party through physical contact, so it is not a black celestial body."
When we and a group of experts from Tavel were puzzled, the working group at the forefront had completed all the test methods they could think of, even including crashing an autonomous machine at hundreds of times the speed of sound on the ground. On the outer shell of the sphere: This impact formed a huge wound on the outer shell of the sphere, which fully shows that the target’s “material” technology is actually not high, but the strange thing is that such a completely massless entity suffered from this kind of impact. It didn't even produce the slightest displacement. Well, after some testing, we found more mysteries: the target can selectively ignore certain physical phenomena in the current world view, such as the law of kinetic energy and the like... In fact, this is nothing strange, the existence of the target itself is Already challenging the worldview.
"What the hell is this thing?" Looking at the messy data sent back by the engineering team, Sandora and I fell into deep thought, after a long time of contemplation, I looked up to the sky and sighed again "What the hell is this thing? "
"You said it just now." Lin Xue rolled her eyes and looked over.
"I want to go and see for myself." I found that the working group over there couldn't think of a better test method other than smashing the target with one shot, so I finally couldn't sit still and stood up and said, "You guys wait here—I'll start In the form of void."
Sandora didn't say much this time, she knew that the decision I made under the circumstances couldn't be persuaded. Of course, she also knew that if I drove there in the void form, I probably wouldn't encounter any danger. But before leaving, Bingtis suddenly stood up: "Wait a minute, my concubine will follow."
"You? Why are you following in the past?" Sandora looked at her bad friend, and then thought of something, nervously tugged on my cuff, "You can't touch the dry food of the Lord."
"... You are really degraded..." The rogue goddess looked at Sandora dumbfoundedly, "I am the highest-ranked god clan here, and this land is still the territory of the gods. Now that your head of state is going to explore in person, can I not follow you all the way?"
Sandora was speechless, and finally shrugged: "No way, I suddenly feel that you are becoming more and more threatening recently."
Bingtis originally planned to pull me away, but Sandora stopped her movements after saying a word, blinked her eyes as if she had discovered an interesting new world, and nodded seriously: "You suddenly Remind me - my wife's criteria for choosing a spouse is to be able to fight, fight, and support the family. According to the current situation, there are really not many who can beat the old lady head-on. Among them, I have to choose someone who can support the family, resist trouble, and more importantly, be a male. , and..." As he spoke, Bingtis began to look me up and down, with an unscrupulous aura that only Sister Bing could carry in his eyes, as if picking something in the market: "And in the long run, In the future, apart from Father God and King Huron, I am afraid that you will be the best fighter in the entire void... Congratulations, you have entered my shortlist!"
I:"… "
Everyone: "..."
Anyway, the scene was quiet for a while, and Sister Bing's amazing ability to speak was no less than that of Qianqian in a certain way. The surprising reason is that although she has a good brain, she has a problem with her world view: she dares to say whatever she catches, and treats normal [morality] as nothing. She talked so casually in front of Sandora and the others, but she still rolled her eyes and said that the world has nothing to do with me, which made the people around her veins twitch and unable to react.
I was stunned, and I thought for a long time to sort out what Sister Bing said, and found that from a sociological point of view, this should be regarded as a half-confession, but I observed the other person's face - it was still the usual indifferent look with no heart and lungs . I was a little confused, not sure if the guy was joking or just saying it casually or had no idea what he was talking about: it didn't seem like he was serious anyway.
"Wow, is this concubine so charming?" Bingtis waved her hand in front of me loudly, "Scared out of my wits? Okay, okay, I'm just saying it casually. Besides, even if I'm serious , you are just a contestant who has just been shortlisted, so there is no need to be in such a hurry... Hey, Sandora, let me take your dry food away first?"
After finishing speaking, before we could react, Sister Bing had already grabbed my arm and appeared a hundred and eight thousand miles (this is an adjective) away—we were facing that huge ball that was so huge that no oil or salt could penetrate it. .
"You're killing me." I looked at Bingtis with a bitter face, and complained through the spiritual connection. The other party just said: She just said it casually, but I have every reason to believe that many people don't just follow the ear Listen to "Optimistic estimate that Sandora will kill me, not optimistic estimate that she will form a group with Qianqian Lin Xue and the others to kill me..."
Bingtis also whistled during the spiritual connection: "Well, life needs some passion. I haven't found a partner for tens of millions of years. Isn't it okay to have a mouthful in front of that girl?"
I:"… "
I found myself speechless a lot today.
In order to quickly get out of this speechless embarrassment, I focused on the stubborn and silent huge sphere with a surface as colorful as a chameleon.
In the end, the biggest question in front of me was: what the hell is this shit!