The three people left from the emergency exit on the top of the transport vehicle and came to the door of the maintenance passage. They turned the handle clockwise according to the arrow sticker on the gate.

The gate is not in a very good condition. It takes two people to exert force at the same time to barely move it. You have to know that this also requires the auxiliary power of the exoskeleton. Ordinary people will definitely have no chance of getting through.

While helping, Liu Haiyang noticed something strange, but considering that this might be a special place, he didn't think about it any further.

They rotated five times in total, and the gate opened with a sound of deflation, revealing an oval opening about a meter and a half high. Around the edge of the opening, a black substance condensed, feeling somewhat brittle to the touch, resembling something like obsidian.

Song Yinglong broke off a fluorescent light stick and threw it into the passage. The faint blue fluorescence reflected multiple times on the wall and transmitted the internal situation back to their eyes.

Inside was a passage slightly wider than the gate, suitable for just a person, but still a bit cramped compared to the size of the exoskeleton. Deep within, it was pitch black; the facility's emergency lighting system must have been disabled. Cables ran beneath the passage, their texture rough. Defective lights were placed close to the ground, while the ceiling was surprisingly smooth.

"Okay, let's go in!"

The three of them lined up in a line. Zhuangzi volunteered to be the vanguard, Liu Haiyang walked in the middle, and Song Yinglong brought up the rear. They didn't collect the discarded glow sticks; instead, they threw one out every few steps, leaving them there to illuminate and mark the route. Furthermore, the exploration was only planned for two hours, but the glow sticks were effective for four.

After Song Yinglong entered the passage, he closed the gate. Since the door had been opened once, closing it was not as difficult as at the beginning.

With minimal lighting, they were able to avoid tripping over the debris that occasionally appeared on the route. Zhuangzi, walking in front, noticed that the garbage was usually lying upside down on the ground. However, as the front row, his priority was to avoid possible danger, not such trivial matters. There was no sound in the passage, and even if there was, the near-vacuum environment made it difficult for sound waves to travel very far, so he could only hear the sound of his own footsteps.

He walked all the way to the end of the passage before stopping and waiting for the people behind him to catch up.

"Have you found anything?" A red laser flashed on Liu Haiyang's exoskeleton helmet.

"A body was found, but the consciousness chip was removed."

Zhuangzi used a crowbar to poke at the corpse against the wall. Under the fluorescent light Liu Haiyang held, the frozen, whitish brain matter spilled out of the opening on the top of the head the moment it fell to the ground. This indicated that a search and rescue operation had been organized after the disaster, but they must have acted in haste, otherwise they would have taken the body with them, or used a more "elegant" dissection method.

"Never mind it, open the door, and let's keep going." Liu Haiyang waved behind him. Song Yinglong, who was a few steps behind, quickly approached, grabbed the rotating handle, and followed their force.

This door wasn't that difficult to open. The two helpers only used a little force at the beginning, and it was Zhuangzi who did the rest. After the door opened, they threw two more glow sticks in. After making sure no one was there, they quickly and quietly passed through and controlled the strategic points - the two corners of the corridor.

The corridor perpendicular to the maintenance passage was filled with air, with a pressure slightly lower than normal and an oxygen content below the limit for breathing. It was generally circular and not connected to any room, but there were two stairwells arranged opposite each other.

"Fuck, you guys need to come over and see this!"

When the three of them reached one of the stairs, they suddenly realized that what they saw outside was not a spire, but an escape area buried deep underground.

The entire building was completely upside down, with the staircase steps suspended overhead and the metal plates marking the levels upside down beneath their feet. Liu Haiyang didn't know what kind of power could flip such a building to the ground, but the moment he saw the stairs, he understood Sigma's confidence.

Now, he could easily imagine: the vast majority of the energy released by the explosion (assuming it was an explosion) must have been directed upwards, destroying the upper half of the facility long ago. However, some personnel within the facility must have known the time of the disaster and moved important items to a safe area, thus avoiding the disaster. They later managed to contact the mothership, intending to trade some valuable items for a chance to survive. Unfortunately, those personnel misjudged the value of the items, leading to the wrong order from the higher-ups to "fight at all costs."

Normally, they should have reported their findings immediately and sought further instructions from a higher-level commander. However, Liu Haiyang was already the highest-ranking officer here, and it would have been impossible to contact the Diamond Star, which was several hundred AU away, in a short period of time. So, he chose to continue forward, specifically to find the data block Sigma had mentioned. He had a hunch that it was nearby.

Of course, even if most of the building was destroyed, there was still a lot of space left in the "spire". It would be impossible for just a few of them to search every floor in more than an hour. Liu Haiyang had to choose the most promising place.

——Upward, it must be upward!

Time was running out, so the group decided to take a risk, abandoning all tactical actions that could bring safety and climbing to the top of the flipped stairs as quickly as possible.

The back of the stairs was naturally not convenient for quick movement. They slipped on it many times and it took them twice as much effort as usual to reach the second-to-last floor. Then they had to face the explosion-proof airtight door several meters above the "ground".

However, they have plenty of ways to deal with this airtight door, and knocking on it is the least labor-intensive one.

The three exoskeletons provided the best proof of safety. The airtight door was quickly opened from the inside, and a white-haired old man wearing a breathing mask poked his head out to inspect the situation. "You're too late!" he complained.

Liu Haiyang asked, "Where is the thing?"

"There were five of us originally, but now there are only two left." The old man spoke to himself as if he didn't hear the question.

"Old man, how are you doing now? Can you still walk? We can rescue you out." Zhuangzi tried to stroke his fur.

"Two! Two! How long can they stay in there?"

Liu Haiyang noticed the man was somewhat disoriented and immediately decided to use force. He gave Song Yinglong a look, and Song Yinglong slowly approached the wall, moving out of the old man's sight, crouching and assuming a tiptoeing position. Then, while the old man wasn't paying attention, he dodged, stepped on Song Yinglong's shoulder, and leaped onto the airtight door. He first used a crowbar to hold the door closed, then grabbed the old man's dwindling hair and pinned him beneath him.

After a while, the noise inside the door stopped, a rope hung down from the door frame, and then Liu Haiyang's voice was heard: "Come in, we have a lot of work to do."