Don't know whether to say it was expected or surprising - we were not attacked.
The Imperial Fleet jumped into the KN-22D world. There was no heavy artillery fire, no heavily guarded fortress arrays, no gravitational wells and jump disruptors, and even a little bit of communication interference. What greeted us was an empty and cold space. , and an ancient star system that appears to be completely devoid of life.
"Deep space telemetry has discovered the military base of the Fallen Apostle," the intelligence officer reported loudly from the command seat, "but all the bases are in a state of silence, no active targets have been found, and the soul detection response is zero."
"Abandoned?" Sandora frowned, "Expand the telemetry range to the entire universe, release spy probes, and don't let go of any suspicious places—including space folds and abnormal gravitational focus."
I looked at this empty universe. Like most worlds in the abyss, its basic rules were not "friendly", with few stars and few celestial bodies. The celestial bodies are all self-destructed, but the environment here should already be called a blessed land in the entire abyss: at least it still has some formed celestial bodies and relatively regular material activities, just like the star system where the imperial fleet is currently docked, although its The sun is not stable, and the orbital speed of the planets fluctuates abnormally, but at least this is considered a celestial body, and something in the field of vision is always good.
More accurate telemetry results were soon presented to us: there are seven large military bases in this universe, countless small outposts and garrison points, and two galaxies that look like heavy military industrial bases, which can be said to be a comparison of military weights. High frontier world, higher military weight than we predicted, and the only thing that's going on here right now is -- no one.
"All military bases are in a state of silence, with a minimum energy response, and no signs of soul activity. It's like a ghost town that runs automatically after being abandoned," Sandora looked at the report sent by the junior officers, "Spy probes Passing over the nearest military base here...without attack or interference."
The picture sent back by the probe is projected. Its current position is an artificial star system 140,000 light-years away, and it is passing through a large starport of the Fallen Apostle at a low speed. On the picture, you can see neatly arranged small The battleship, the star port building with flashing lights, the rotating star gate calibration ring, and the silhouette of the Eternal-class mothership that looks like a large ghost at the edge of the screen. The picture is silent, and we can only see these things slowly moving in the field of vision. The probe removed its camouflage under our remote control, and even actively released an obvious identification signal, but the dead military base still remained silent. , not even interested in destroying the probe.
More spy probes poured into that star system, and after careful investigation, they finally came to the conclusion: this is an abandoned base, but for some reason all the systems in the base are still on, just like the moment before It seems that the personnel in the base are still working normally.
"Bring the fleet over, and prepare a ship for me." Sandora simply ordered, and I looked at her in surprise: "You want to go there yourself?"
"Anyway, you plan to go there yourself," Sandora looked at me like an old married couple, "I don't know what you are thinking. It's okay, it's just an unmanned base, too cautious will make you look petty gone."
The fleet soon arrived at the unmanned base. This is a star system with four artificial planets. The orbits of various celestial bodies are full of star ports, factories, military depots and integrated orbital stations in an orderly manner. Only these space The facility is wider than the land that humans have ever set foot on. It is impossible for a few people to explore such a vast area. Our main purpose is to go and see what is going on in this base. A large number of spy probes have flooded here more than ten minutes ago, so the structure of the base has been ascertained. We know that its center is located in the northern hemisphere of the second planet. Is there anything that is not militarized
The Royal Fleet hovered in the low-Earth orbit of the second planet, surrounded by various orbital stations of the Fallen Apostles, Sivis couldn't help but look at the star ports and space factories that could be described as close at hand. He muttered in the public channel: "It's the first time in my life that I bring the fleet to be next to these dangerous guys. It feels really strange."
Even if those dark space buildings have been emptied, they can still give people an unpleasant and depressing feeling, which is enough to show how bad the gang of lunatics in the abyss area have left people.
"It's just uninhabited cities," Sandora didn't care much, "If you really feel uncomfortable, you can let the fleet stay away from them, but you must ensure that all the main guns of the fleet are locked on these space buildings. Lingzhen will give these things to us."
At this time, an octave-high voice suddenly came in from the public channel: "What about this ship!"
I don't need to look at the profile picture to know that this is the second lunatic: she is the one who has the most problems among all the shipboard hosts.
"This ship is too big, it's not suitable for you to stay in planetary orbits like you. This ship will not be a companion star for a planet that doesn't even have a radius of 5,000 kilometers," the second madman yelled in the channel , she is now two astronomical units away from us, because the Warsong is too big, she has no way to come to the orbit of the second planet to join in the fun with the Royal Fleet, "This ship also needs to find a place to dock!"
I looked at the structure diagram of the star system: "Then you can transfer to the side of the star. This star was made by the fallen apostles. It may also be a military base. By the way, staying next to it is equivalent to monitoring it. "
The second lunatic was a little disappointed when he heard that there was no battle, but he was happy again when he thought that this was tantamount to tossing around in the enemy's stronghold. The star began to revolve in an orbit of only 0.3 astronomical units. While turning, she also turned on the external unencrypted channel, and greeted the other four artificial planets built by fallen apostles in the star system: "Outside planets, you Okay?" "The planet on the fourth orbit, please let me see your tumbling atmosphere!" "The planet on the third orbit is swaying!" "This ship is named Chen, and I am very happy to come to your base to toss—the first orbit Let me see your passionate North Pole!" "How are you, the sun here? My ship's name is Chen..."
Immediately, I felt that the second lunatic's brain really didn't need to be treated—she thought that other starship mainframes were the same as hers.
We left the fleet in a shuttle, passed through the empty fallen apostle orbital stations in space in a calm and safe voyage, and then plunged into the thin atmosphere of the second planet to the northern hemisphere. over the capital city.
This huge city was built on a plain: the Fallen Apostle has precisely customized the entire planet, so the surface of the planet is basically full of such plains and "mountain edges" that seem to be cut out by machinery. The shuttle was slowly patrolling over the city, with a panoramic view of the city. Usually, I rarely have the opportunity to see the place where the fallen apostles lived at such a close distance. As a result, after observing this place, it seems that there is nothing special about it: the architectural form and normal The city of Xiling is almost the same. It also has an orderly layout and urban arterial roads that can be seen at a glance. I am familiar with the facilities on the surface, and I can almost call out their names and purposes, except for most buildings. Apart from the gloomy main colors, I feel that the settlements of the fallen apostles seem to be no different from the imperial colonies.
"Does the villain in your impression have to face the moon every night with a cloak and a big cloak, and must live in a cave?" Bingtis glanced at me and scoffed at my inertial thinking, "I didn't listen Does the devil also have a private life? When you see the fallen apostles wearing clothes, you should know that they usually worry about whether they should stuff their long johns into their socks... "
Me: "... the fallen apostles don't wear long johns, do they?"
Bingtis: "... The concubine is an example."
"Okay, okay, you two have the time to study these insane things, why don't you save your energy and prepare to go out to find the way," Sandora slapped me and Bingtis on the shoulders, "There is a landing platform below, let's land gone."
The shuttle landed smoothly on an open takeoff and landing platform. For the first time in history, I set foot on the planet where the fallen apostles lived. Although the surrounding scenery didn't have many surprising places, I was still quite excited. With this kind of excitement and novelty, I took a deep breath—the air in this place is so thin, I almost couldn’t catch my breath, and there is absolutely no oxygen in the atmosphere of this planet!
Sandora closed her eyes and diffused her spiritual power. The special talent of the soul taker allowed her to detect enemies better and faster than any life scanning device, but even so she still found nothing: "The whole planet It's all empty, are they really gone?"
Bingtis took out her meteor hammer Bible from the portable space, and gestured to a psionic obelisk in the distance: "Then you said that if I smashed that thing over, would it seduce some people?" An ambush?"
I rolled my eyes at her: "You can try it."
As soon as I finished speaking, I heard a sound of "hoo" piercing the air, and Bingtis' brick Bible came out of my hand and turned into a golden light, and then there was a big explosion like shaking mountains, and the distant The tall tower slowly collapsed. By the way, sister Bing’s throwing of the bible is not only hurt by kinetic energy, it can also produce an astonishing impact of holy light after it hits the target. There are praises: the earth-shattering seal and thunder are not as good as Bingye’s meteor hammer—this sentence The meaningless words are just for rhyme. In short, Bingtis blew up a psionic obelisk a kilometer away on the spot with unprecedented action power, just to see if there is an ambush here.
I stared at this scene dumbfounded, and finally couldn't help jumping up: "Are you really here?"
Bingtis set up a pergola with his hands and watched the smoke and dust disappear after the obelisk collapsed. Hearing this, he turned his head and gave me a blank stare: "Nonsense, I am a person with an ID card, and you know what you say."
"Didn't you get your ID card from Cicaro for two yuan and five a piece?" Sandora stepped forward after saying a word, "It seems that there is really no one here, I scanned it in this direction There is a command post, let's go there to see the situation. Bingtis, put away the meteor hammer and throw it around again, do you believe me and Ah Jun will beat you together?"
"This is the Bible, it's a very serious thing, do you know?" Bingtis said so, but he still honestly put away the big killer that could be thrown out to smash a crater. In other words, this guy also knows himself Is the Bible in your hand not the Seal of Fantian
After walking in this city built by the enemy for a while, I found that there are some differences between this place and the colonial sites in the Empire District: apart from the ubiquitous dark red hue, there is no civilian sight here. Or something "living".
The fallen apostles don't need any life and entertainment that has nothing to do with battles and "great cause". I once heard Harlan say that the days in the abyss area are more boring than the days of the old empire. In the city of other buildings, I finally understand the feelings of the former fallen apostle - such a lifeless place may not even be acceptable to Pandora, after all, the little war lunatic still likes to eat some sweets or sit on the roadside pillars in his spare time Drawing a bunch of contour lines of 1.2 meters, I guess the fallen apostles usually don't even have this kind of spare time.
"This place feels gloomy," Qianqian followed me step by step, and couldn't help muttering as she looked at the empty buildings around her, "It seemed to be like this when the Shadow City was first built."
"People are gone*, but the building is still running." Sandora pointed to a small facility next to it. This is a crystalline spire only a few meters high, used to provide additional energy broadcasts for surrounding buildings, and now it Still running as usual, there are slight red ripples on the surface of the crystal, and a low hum can be heard when you get close. The surrounding buildings are almost the same: all are in a normal operating state, as if the city was full of people and traffic just a second ago.
"When the imperial fleet sent to this world, it didn't detect anyone leaving from here," Sandora thought, "so the garrison in this universe should have been withdrawn before we came here... This explains it anyway. It is not clear that a frontier world should under no circumstances be emptied of armies, and even the evacuation of personnel would be too abrupt: the facilities in the cities have not had time to close."
"What kind of empty city are you still struggling with at this time?" Bingtis curled her lips disapprovingly, "They opened up the barriers of the world and handed over the sovereignty of the entire universe. Is there anything more strange than this?"
We quickly found what Sandora called the "command post", a place that looked no different from the surrounding boxy buildings.
"I sense that there is a large amount of information pointing to this building, and it also has the largest number of backup energy lines in the entire city," Sandora said as she stepped forward to open the door of the command post, "Oh... I really want to They even canceled the access control system."
Pandora and Viska immediately took out two pillar cannons and ran in first. After a while, Viska ran out again: "Brother, there is no one inside! The equipment in the hall is on!"
The command post, like all the buildings we encountered, remained functioning as usual. When we walked into this building, the first thing we saw was a brightly lit and unusually wide hall. A group of public data terminals arranged along the wall displayed a standby screen. Sandora stepped forward to operate several Next, whispered: "The standby time has been more than half a month... It means that the people here have already evacuated half a month ago."
"At that time, we didn't have an action plan to enter the abyss area." Bingtis also fumbled a few times on the data terminal in a similar manner, and then stopped angrily after finding that he couldn't play it at all, "Half a A month ago... they seem to have attacked the God Realm in those few days, right?"
"80% of this world may be left by the spirit of the abyss," Sandora pondered, "that is to say, she made the arrangements at the first time, and the 'new army' of the fallen apostles attacked the God Realm. The border left such a strange place... what the hell is she trying to do?"
Just as I was about to share my opinion, I heard an ethereal female voice out of nowhere in the hall: "What do you think I want to do?"
Everyone was startled by the sound. Pandora and Viska were the first to react. They instantly summoned a large number of floating cannons, but they couldn't find the source of the sound after aiming for a long time. Sandora had already entered a fighting state. Bingtis also put on her Valkyrie armor in a burst of holy light. I frowned and looked around, and suddenly found that all the holographic projections in the hall were flickering.
Amidst the buzzing sound of the equipment speeding up, the holographic images on the standby screen switched one after another into a strange female image: wearing a very ordinary black dress, black hair and black eyes, long hair reaching the waist, and a face Very ordinary, and there is a faint smile on the corner of his mouth.
We have never seen this face before, but the identity of the other party is ready to be revealed. Sandora frowned and looked at the largest holographic projection in the hall: "Abyss Xiling?"
"Meeting for the first time," every abyss Xiling in the hall looked at us with a smile on their faces, and then "they" looked at me and Bingtis again, "Oh, it's not all the first meeting, the new emperor. There is this sister of the Protoss, we meet again."
"What are you doing?" I looked around and saw nothing other than these holographic images such as ambushes and self-destruct countdowns. "So you were finally killed by your own people?"
"Can you not say such a thing with such a happy expression?" Abyss Xiling maintained a calm chatting tone even in the weird atmosphere, just like when we met last time, she watched Sandora's battle Stance and Icetis' Valkyrie armor, and finally look at the swarms of floating cannons in the hall, "Why are you so close to the enemy? You should be very clear that these things can't kill a network consciousness—unless you can put My nodes are all cleared."
Sandora dismissed the flames of the abyss indifferently: "How many nodes do you have left now... Well, we're already here, if you have anything to say, hurry up and say it."
"Oh, it's nothing too important," Abyss Xiling said calmly, "It's just to remind you that it's time to retreat." RS