Chapter 722

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The factories in Black Street operated day and night; the dense black smoke from the towering chimneys shrouded the entire city. When standing at a higher point in town, one could even see the haze descending slowly from the sky like a veil. The smoke left a coat of gray and black soot in the neighborhood. That was one of the things that gave Black Street its name. In the modern world of the Nanomachine Swarm, many heavy industries were still unable to get rid of traditional production methods due to technical limitations.

In Black Street, large machinery and arms factories were the biggest industries.

Hao Ren exited the crowded slum and saw the towering factory buildings lining the streets. There were giant reactor towers and pressure vessels in the urban areas. He could hear the roar of the machines coming from the nearby factories as he walked along the street. Meanwhile, people were hustling along the sidewalks on both sides of the road. Most of them were the poor, emotionless and dressed in shabby clothing. They had just finished their synthetic food, and they were now flocking like ants to the factory—the mechanical beast, which engulfed and kept them alive at the same time. Some people used rags to cover their faces to protect themselves from the dust in the air. But the dirty rags were not any cleaner than the air they breathed. The atmosphere was slowly contaminating and irreversibly destroying their lungs. They had to rely on the Nanomachine Swarm to prolong their lives after the age of 30 or 40. After that, they would quickly die.

“Since the Nanomachine Swarm are still in use, why didn’t anyone think of using these things to solve the pollution problem in the city?” Hao Ren murmured to himself.

A loud, low voice came from the side. “Solve the pollution? People who thought this way had all died decades ago. Now it is an era where people only live day to day.”

Hao Ren turned his head and surprised to see Ulyanov behind him. “Hey, when did you come here?”

“This is where I come often. I know the slum very well,” Ulyanov looked up at the factories not far away. “Yesterday someone reported that after you left the base, you disappeared into the alleys of the slums. Nolan let me come to collect your body. It’s a surprise to see you on the main street. Well, it looks like you have survived your first night in the dark alleys. What makes you so interested here?”

“Nothing, just mooching around,” Hao Ren knew that Ulyanov was still suspicious of him, so he answered casually. “I have told you before; I can’t always stay with you guys, I need to find a place to stay. Don’t worry; whatever I do I’m not an enemy of Gray Fox.”

“Nolan couldn’t care less. I’m just busy body here,” Ulyanov said. “It’s better not to come to this place. Many people here are no fans of Gray Fox. You’ll get yourself into trouble.”

Hao Ren gestured with his hand as if saying he understood. “Tell me: is there any additional cost for solving the urban pollution with Nanomachine Swarm? Is the thing not self-sufficient?”

“The Nanomachine Swarm is indeed self-sufficient, but the control center is costly, and the bigger cost is these—” Ulyanov said, raising his hand pointing to the poor people from the slums. “The factories don’t need healthy men to operate the machines. The city does not need the elderly. The mission of these slags is work in the factory until they are forty-five years old. The owners of the factories don’t like strong and smart workers; it would be best if the workers are illiterate and no retirement needs. So there is no need to let them live for too long. As for the factory owners and warlords, they have their own ecological houses, isolated from the outside world. They have also said that there will also be a meadow, cheap and quickl to build, for the people to enjoy.”

Hao Ren listened on, wide-eyed. As an earthling, he could not understand this thinking. “Maintain this status quo? Isn’t it a little too short-sighted?”

“Short-sighted? What is your long-term vision?” Ulyanov laughed hoarsely. “To improve the environment and To recreate a vibrant and sustainable society? I remember that many people had the same thinking decades ago. But it turned out that no one could live long enough accomplish these goals. Someone says that every regime in the world could only last for an average of four and a half years, no one will invest in business longer than this cycle.”

As Ulyanov finished, he patted Hao Ren’s shoulder. “Short-sightedness is necessary because most people cannot live beyond what they could see.”

Hao Ren blurted out. “But you live long enough…”

“Because I’m just alive,” Ulyanov turned. “Since I the injury, I could no longer bleed but only electrolyte and nutrient medium. My goal is simple—to be alive. This kind of person would live long enough.”

Hao Ren was speechless. In a world of chaos, thinkers and enlighteners might be the first to die because they were using the energy for survival in other things, such as dreams. The MDT suddenly mumbled in his mind. “This is why grasses can transcend into immortals while fruits and vegetables have not the chance to even dream: they make wishes in the morning, but people stewed them in the afternoon. Who can still have dreams when they cannot even live long enough to see dreams come true?”

Let us give credit where credit is due; as bitchy as the MDT was; it did make a pretty good conclusion.

Hao Ren followed Ulyanov back to the Gray Fox base. While they were turning into a corner and nobody was looking, he reached into his dimensional pocket and quickly yanked out a silver-gray gadget. The tiny device looked like an inconspicuous metal toad, but it landed quietly on the ground and quickly slid into a dark corner. It was a beacon transmitter that Hao Ren had produced on-board factory on the Petrachelys in the morning. The beacon would automatically find the weakest spot to unfold itself and then transmit a powerful navigation signal into space. As long as Zorm was in the Plane of Dreams, the drone clusters would be able to pick up the signal and find it.

Even it was tens of billions of light years away.

But things would get more complicated if the distance were not purely physical. And it did seem so.

He had no problem contacting CARS and the drone clusters from the planet Zorm, which meant that the data link is stable. But the problem was that he could not trace the exact location where the signal came from. It was like hiding its IP address to stay anonymous. Meanwhile, CARS and the drone clusters were unable to resolve this anonymity unidirectionally. That was why Hao Ren had to plant an active beacon transmitter on planet Zorm. He had also considered that the beacon might fail, and when this happened, he would consider releasing a probe from here to see if it could navigate its way through space and reach the regular universe, and if so, at least that meant space was continuous. If not, he could figure out the extent of the distortion. It was one of the backup plans.

After leaving the factory district, Hao Ren looked back at the towering black buildings. “This place is depressing.”

“Maybe. At least people can still live on here. The factory is the only choice for most people, the wasteland outside is worse,” Ulyanov seemed to be sighing, or maybe he was laughing silently. “The only hope for the ‘slags’ here is becoming cannon fodder for some mercenary group. As long as they can survive for a few weeks, they will be able to live like a normal human being; all their diseases would heal. You know, it is simple to cure their lung and blood diseases—as simple as a tube of Nanomachine Swarm and thirty-minute time. But this is the most precious resource of Black Street. There are limited rations. Everyone in slums is willing to trade for this treatment opportunity with all they have. So I’m still very curious about the reason for Khiton’s treachery. When Nolan pulled him out of the ghetto, his lungs were almost gone; his blood had accumulated forty years of toxins and failed, inferior Nanomachines. A typical slug, without being selected as cannon fodder, Nolan gave him the opportunity to live yet he turned out to be a traitor.”

Hao Ren remembered Khiton’s diary, which he had seen. He whispered. “Probably he was brainwashed or something.”

“The Rangers brainwashed him? Ulyanov laughed. “Yeah, maybe. He was simple-minded.”

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The next day, Hao Ren called everyone to the living room and told them about his experience the day before as well as the series of tests he conducted at night.

“This planet called Zorm is strange. I still can’t figure out its location in the Plane of Dreams. It’s a region in the universe that we haven’t explored before. I haven’t had time to study the sky there, but there were interferences and delays when contacting CARS from there. I think there’s a great physical distance between the two,” Hao Ren said as he sat on the sofa, divulging his suspicions. “Other than its unknown location, its mapping relationship with the Surface World seems abnormal too. You can’t bring things out to the Surface World, but you can bring things in. Activities in Zorm don’t affect the body in the Surface World. It seems that information flow is unidirectional; you can’t teleport from Zorm to other planets in the Plane of Dreams because there are no exact coordinates. And most importantly, the MDT turns into a dead body there.”

“The connection between the rest of the Plane of Dreams and the Surface World is normal. There are no changes in the parameters of the universe,” the MDT chimed in. “We can rule out the possibility of sudden changes in the Wall of Reality. Now it seems that all anomalies are within planet Zorm or the space around it.”

Nangong Wuyue was curled up like a snake next to the coffee table. She shook her body when Hao Ren and the MDT finished speaking. “Who can understand what the two of you just said?”

Hao Ren waved his hand and said, “That’s the reason why I asked everyone to join the meeting and be serious. At least there might be some progress.”

“I’d rather do something simple and crude instead of studying these things,” Lily said, slumping at the coffee table. “Like getting in on some action on the battlefield. I won’t flinch if there’s a fight,” the shameless maiden admitted.

“There are probably many occasions where you need to fight. But there, war is fought with weapons. There are no aliens and magic in that world. You probably won’t be able to do anything there.” Hao Ren shook his head. “You’re going to set off panic or become a celebrity because the humans there have never seen anyone who can transform into a five-meter husky. You’ll be a superstar.”

Lily thought for a moment and then continued to slough at the table. “I’m not going. It’s no fun.”

“Most likely, the unusual space in the Plane of Dreams is related to the goddess,” Y’zaks guessed, scratching his jaw. “Could planet Zorm be next to the battlefield where the deicide happened? Or maybe, the deicidal event brought it into some sort of vortex?”

Hao Ren frowned. “You’re saying that the impact of the goddess’ death sealed off the space around Zorm and changed the law of the universe there?”

Y’zaks nodded slightly. Despite his rugged appearance, the great demon had a scientific aptitude better than anyone else’s. He could talk about the universe like a real astrophysicist. “According to the guardian, the explosion of the Star of Creation flung the entire battlefield into a place called ‘the Dark Region’. We guessed that the Dark Region is an abnormal spatial structure. It’s unpredictable, discontinuous and incompatible with the regular universe. Although no one has seen it, doesn’t it seem similar to the situation on Zorm? Perhaps the place you went to is where the goddess fell!”

The words struck Hao Ren like lightning. There was a real sense of anticipation in him, which he found hard to ignore. But he quickly calmed down from the excitement. He had a gut feeling that the Dark Region or the “death place of God” was not a place that one could easily reach. If one could go to the place where the goddess fell by just dreaming, then the explosion of the Star of Creation 10,000 years ago was child’s play.

However, Y’zaks’ conjecture sounded reasonable. At the very least, Hao Ren was willing to believe that the state of Zorm was somehow related to the fall of the goddess. He remembered the information he had found on the Internet in Zorm. “On the planet of Zorm, legend has it that there was a religion that involved worshiping the Creator until the war broke out. As science and technology developed, they treated Creator-worshiping as purely spiritual sustenance. Regardless, the religious system remained. But puzzlingly, after the fall of the goddess, planet Zorm escaped all ecological disasters. The First Born did not find them, and the guardian giants did not come after them. I checked their data; there wasn’t even an ‘underground tentacles’ entry on the Internet there.”

Y’zaks whispered, “Even the Hollettans didn’t know there was a First Born on their planet before we went there.”

“But at least the Hollettans knew that there was a catastrophe 10,000 years ago. As long as there are survivors, it’s impossible to have no record of the event,” Hao Ren said, as he had long thought of this. “Moreover, the technological strength of Zorm before the war was significantly higher than that of Holletta’s. Their industrial system required a large number of minerals. A large number of minerals means that they would have dug deep into the ground—could it be possible for them to not bump into any tentacles of the First Born in the earth after digging for 10,000 years?”

Everyone looked at each other. No one could answer the question.

At last, Vivian sighed and broke the silence, “The samples of civilization we found in the Plane of Dreams are still too little to compare with the entire universe. We won’t be able to establish any rules at all, so we shouldn’t be surprised no matter what happens. To put it plainly, we haven’t yet reached the point where we can have an inference.”

The MDT interjected, “The job of an inspector can’t afford to work on inference alone.”

Hao Ren bit his nails and thought for a moment. Something else suddenly came to mind. “Vivian, do you think there will be anything big coming up soon regarding the vanishing hostility among the otherworldlings?”

Vivian held her arms and leaned on the sofa. “Nothing will happen even for the next one year. I’ve given my old buddies a heads up. They’ll keep an eye on the bunnies and the pups. Even the demon hunters aren’t fools.”

She continued, “And most of the otherworldly races are already very weak from starvation. Even if they want to fight, they need to get more nutrition and gain a bit fat first.”

“Thanks to the demon hunters, it seems that the otherworldlings won’t be able to make a comeback any time soon.” Hao Ren grinned. “Since nothing’s going to happen on Earth for a while, I’m going to focus my attention on Zorm for now.”

Then Hao Ren returned to the basement with the MDT. He connected the MDT to the hibernation pod that he was doing the tests with the day before and switched on the navigation system of the Petrachelys. He wanted to extract his spiritual navigation information on Zorm and convert it into real physical coordinates in the universe of the Plane of Dreams. With the coordinates, he could enter the Plane of Dreams physically through the Tannagost spatial rift, then fly the Petrachelys directly to planet Zorm. By then, whatever alien dimension there was would be laid bare before him.

But as expected, things were not as smooth sailing as he wanted them to be.

“The conversion failed. Place not found,” the MDT gave its simple reply.

Hao Ren was wide-eyed. “Place not found? It’s not a problem of the coordinates?”

The holographic image, which the MDT projected showed a set of complex data and graphs—it was the trajectory Hao Ren had left behind on the previous day when he entered the Plane of Dreams through his dream. “I got an outrageous coordinate. Theoretically, it’s impossible for this coordinate to exist in the material world. Following this coordinate will only lead you into a void.”

“In other words… there’s no way to get there through the rift in Tannagost, right?” Hao Ren said. He could feel his tooth aching now. “Could it be that the planet isn’t in the Plane of Dreams?”

“I’m certain that it’s still related to the ‘spiritual trajectory’. Something interfered with the route to Zorm in your dream, so I couldn’t calculate the exact coordinates of the planet.” The MDT read the report to the letter, and this time, it began to show that it could contribute meaningfully. “Since this didn’t work, I have another suggestion—the next time you enter Zorm, plant a beacon transmitter there and lead the Petrachelys using the navigation signal. If this fails, it means that Zorm is in an encrypted space that you and I can’t decode. You can then apply for a higher level of technical support.”

Hao Ren blinked. “There’s advanced technical support?”

“Of course. The Empire will provide sufficient technical support for inspectors. But usually, the technical support the Empire sends is just explosives of various kinds, and occasionally, engineers who are good at making explosives.”

“…So, in the eyes of the Xi Ling Celestials, blowing things up is the only way to solve problems?”

The MDT looked emotionless—of course, how can you expect a machine to show emotion? “Blowing the problem up is indeed an effective means of problem-solving.”

“Forget it. I’m not counting on the Empire’s technical support.” Hao Ren sighed, burying his face in his hand. “And to tell you the truth, I have a lot of backup plans myself.”