Chapter 956 Inheritance

Most of the races that narrowly escaped the guardians' annihilating natural disasters seemed to have been helped by the people of the stars. Those ancient beings from the depths of the stars are shrouded in a veil of mystery. So far, Hao Ren has not found any reliable historical data or relics about the people of the starry sky in the dream plane. He does not know where those light creatures were born. We don’t know their social form and civilization, and even their language and writing are in the dark. The only thing that can be determined is that these creatures have extremely high technology and are quite familiar with the goddess of creation. If not, It is impossible for them to fight against the crazy guardians after the goddess's fall.

"Did they bring the golden disk?" Hao Ren touched his chin, feeling that the people of the starry sky seemed to be entangled in more and more secrets. "Where did they find the artifact... Before the Founding Star exploded, the golden disk They should all be in the Kingdom of God.”

"Muru once mentioned some special ethnic groups called the 'Eternals'. It is said that they are ancient races that have been living in this universe before the goddess of creation created living things." Vivian suddenly remembered some details, " We didn’t ask carefully at that time, could the Eternals be the people of the starry sky?”

Hao Ren hummed and turned to the old man: "What happens next? When you embark on your journey, will these people of the starry sky still be with you?"

"It is said that they were with us during the first few hundred years of the voyage, and those light creatures lived in the navigation cabin of the Ark," the old man said tremblingly, "but a few years later, they were sure that the artifact had taken effect, so He left, perhaps to help other survivors. Our fleet continued on the road, trying to find a safe place, but the entire universe has been polluted... There are natural disasters on every planet suitable for survival, and all ecology The system is diseased, and there are huge tentacles and poisonous blood pools everywhere. Our artifact can only protect the fleet, but cannot purify the entire planet. After losing several spaceships, the fleet decided not to dock anymore, and we will continue to wander Go down until you find a planet without natural disasters..."

Vivian frowned and asked, "What's going on with the infectious disease?"

The old man gasped heavily and said in a low voice: "No one knows what happened. It appeared suddenly without warning and there is no way to treat it. With our medical technology, we can't find the cause at all. We only know that it can infect adults. , but the impact on children is gradually weakening. The younger the age, the weaker the impact of this disease. However, the mortality rate of adults after being infected is almost 100%..."

"Almost 100%," Nangong Wuyue looked at the old man's face, "Are you the only exception?"

The old man raised his hand, looked at the grooves on his skin, and said in a hoarse voice: "Yes, I am the only exception, because I was very young at the time, oh, very young. It was probably because of this that the plague opened its doors to me. On the one hand - but many people my age are not so lucky."

Vivian raised her eyebrows slightly: "How old were you when you were first frozen?"

"I...I can't remember clearly. I was twenty or twenty-two years old?" The old man's eyes became cloudy again. "I only remember that I was locked in a white room, training, studying day and night, and brainwashing me to master it. That knowledge and skills... because when the disease spread, we found that it was irresistible, just like the ecological disaster that happened in our hometown. It was a super disaster, so we started to prepare for the aftermath. We used a few Years of renovation of the Ark and the construction of the final storage vault, and more than half of the people died in the process. The project almost failed due to lack of manpower in the end... We sent the healthy children into the hibernation facility, and tried our best to keep the younger ones Older children learn knowledge because they will need it in the future, but this is not enough, very not enough... The oldest among them is only thirteen years old, and these thirteen-year-old children only account for less than one percent of the total population. .”

"So there is you," Hao Ren slowly guided, asking the old man to recall more things, "You are the teacher and parent of those children. When the virus in the Ark is extinct one day, you will lead them to rebuild civilization? "

The old man's head trembled slightly, as if he nodded up and down: "Oh, yes, I want to guide them... After the children fall asleep, the adults will fend for themselves, and the shelter will be closed for a hundred years until the ecology The system can only be restarted after it completes a thorough internal cycle. When everything is ready, the children will wake up and start their lives again under the leadership of the 'parents'. But originally, I was not the only 'parent'. We had many candidates, each of whom They were all strong-willed, capable of learning, able to lead a team, and most importantly, had a certain resistance to the plague. But then the other candidates died one by one. The plague only weakened on them, and they had no real resistance. .In the end, I was the only one coming out of the training facility. The children had already lined up to enter the hibernation cabin, and the last dozens of dying people in the Ark held a small farewell ceremony for me. From then on, I have been here. .”

Lily asked curiously: "Why are you placed here independently?"

"For safety," the old man said slowly, "because until the day the vault is completed, our medical scientists are not sure whether I am really not sick at all, or whether I am carrying a 'virus'. If even the last healthy person is If we are all infected with the plague, then we would rather give up the reconstruction plan. So I am sealed here independently. Every ten years, I am awakened and then check my physical condition myself - I remember, those are the ones I used... "

The old man pointed tremblingly at the corner of the room, and Hao Ren saw an old set of equipment placed there, which seemed to have been used for medical purposes.

"Every ten years, I wake up and draw blood, do tests, and check my skull alone," the old man said slowly, lowering his head. "Through a small glass window next to the door, I look at the fifteen-year-old boy outside. Thousands of little cradle, knowing that the blood of my family is still waiting to be continued in the ice, this can give me enough courage. Every time I wake up from the ice, I count the number of times I 'get up'. I told myself that by counting to ten, everything would start over again... until one day I suddenly found myself writing 11 in my notebook - and the vault host was uncharacteristically silent."

The scene was quiet.

"System failure," Hao Ren sighed. "The reactor radiation leaked and spread to the entire cabin. The mainframe of the vault urgently activated the dormant cabin outside. It probably thought that letting people hide in the shelter city would be better than sleeping in the dormant cabin forever. Better. But the machine missed you."

The old man's wrinkled face was frozen in a complicated expression. It was hard to tell whether he was crying or laughing, but there was no surprise in it. He just followed Hao Ren and sighed softly: "I know, there must be a system failure, but now I finally know the details."

Lily found it all difficult to accept: "This kind of accident should not have happened. There is a problem with the program of the vault host, and there is also a problem with the location of the vault. It is separated from the shelter city by the reactor. This is not a good road." Lu, if I could do more tests... Oh, forget it."

Lily didn't say any more in the end, because she knew that the people in the Ark had done their best: their people were dying every day, and the only places they could choose were a few corners in the spacecraft. They didn't know how long they could live, or even every day. No one knows if they will ever see the day the project is completed. By the time the vault was completed, there were only a few dozen adults left on the ship—they had no chance to test the entire system or think of alternatives.

Everything is a gamble, betting that this plan will not go wrong.

But no one is the protagonist, and fate favors no one.

"How did you live after that?" Vivian stared at the old man's face, which was wrinkled, dry and thin. When he first entered this room, he was only in his twenties and full of youth, but now he is old. His appearance disappeared, "How long have you... been awake?"

"I woke up intermittently for a long time. At first, I forced myself to wake up once every ten years. Every time I woke up, I checked my body as planned and prayed that I would see those children standing at the door when I woke up next time. But then I I slowly gave up, gave up on myself, and ate and drank too much - I should be lucky that they left me enough food, because I was the only person in the spacecraft who still wanted to eat, so they simply stuffed the rest of the food into They had no use for this room anyway," the old man showed a smile that looked like crying, "Really, I wasted a lot of time, but later I found that it was more uncomfortable than death, so I went back to sleep and spent my time I was scheduled to wake up once every thirty years, and this continued many times. I found that my hair was gradually turning white and wrinkles appeared on my face, so I was scared. I suddenly realized that I was not only wasting my time, but also wasting my time. Those children outside, so before going to sleep for the last time, I did the last meaningful thing... Oh, yes, that's right, I remembered it, the most important thing, the most important thing!"

The old man suddenly became excited. He raised his hand and pointed to another corner of the room. His face was filled with brilliant light like a flashback. Hao Ren hurried over and saw a long table there, with many manuscripts neatly stacked on it. .

If these manuscripts were stacked, they would probably be half a meter thick.

And if these manuscripts were not surprising enough, then the walls next to them were enough to make him stunned: the wall next to the long table, the ground nearby, and the furniture, almost every surface was covered with dense writing and... Drawings, he followed the marks to the side and finally found that these things were almost engraved in half of the room - it was just that the lights here were dim and most of the walls and floors were covered with debris. He had not noticed it before. these things.

Behind Hao Ren, the old man stood up hard and slowly opened his hands, with a proud light in his eyes: "Our...history."