Chapter 241 The Blind Spot of Time
The figure of "Night" disappeared in the shadow of the ruins, and the scribbled map on the ground became their only guide.
"Let's go." Su Wanqing was the first to take a step. The backpack on her back was quite heavy, so she took every step firmly.
The team followed the markings on the map and made their way through the wreckage in the northwest part of the city.
The buildings here collapsed more completely, and the twisted steel bars were like the skeleton of a monster, blocking the way in all directions.
They had to climb and jump between broken floors and suspended corridors, and every step could cause a new collapse.
Overhead, a silver detector glided by silently like a ghost, and its beam of light swept through the ruins.
Lu Zhao stared at the terminal on his wrist, and the numbers on the screen kept jumping.
"There are still 7 minutes to the next blind spot. We must speed up." His voice was low, but it could not hide his urgency.
As soon as he finished speaking, a detection beam swept through the hole above their heads, almost brushing Xiao Ran's back.
He immediately pressed himself into the shadow of a concrete slab and lay motionless until the beam of light moved away.
This kind of dangerous close encounter has happened several times along the way.
They finally arrived at the final location marked on the map, the top of an unfinished building with only the load-bearing structure left.
Looking up from here, the huge bottom structure of the Weaver mothership is clearly visible. Like an inverted mountain, it floats quietly about three hundred meters above the city, casting a suffocating shadow.
"Get ready." Lu Zhao's finger hovered over the terminal screen, his eyes fixed on the countdown.
Everyone held their breath.
"Three, two, one... Blind Spot begins!"
The moment he finished speaking, the flowing silver luster of all patrolling detectors in the sky dimmed, and their movements became sluggish, as if they were dragged by an invisible force.
“Now! We must enter the mothership within three minutes!” Lin Che shouted in a low voice, and was the first to grab the cable of the traction device that Lu Zhao had already prepared.
With the help of the wreckage of the building and the powerful traction device modified by Lu Zhao, the five people began to climb to the bottom of the mothership.
The humming sound of the cables was particularly harsh in the silent air.
While soaring into the air, Su Wanqing could clearly see the erased urban area below.
It is not simple destruction or disappearance, but pieces of absolute "blankness", as if several pieces of the canvas of reality were wiped off by someone, revealing the empty background behind it.
Xiao Ran held the cable tightly with one hand and protected Xiao Ling in his arms with the other hand, trying hard to maintain balance in the air.
The wind whistled in my ears, and the outline of the mothership rapidly enlarged in my field of vision.
Lu Zhao's voice came from the communicator, with a countdown: "Thirty seconds left!"
At this moment, at the bottom of the mothership directly above, a gate of a maintenance passage quietly slid open, and just as "Night" described, a dazzling energy aftermath gushed out from it like a short waterfall.
"Hurry! Follow the energy wave in!" Lu Zhao shouted.
The five people tried their best and pushed the traction device to the maximum power. Their bodies rushed towards the energy light curtain like catapulted stones.
Just at the last second before they entered the tunnel, the three-minute blind spot time ended.
Behind them, the detector returned to its normal silver luster, and the maintenance passage was closed, isolating all sounds from outside.
They successfully infiltrated the interior of the mothership.
The space here is much wider than imagined. This is a huge hemispherical space with no visible boundaries. The inner wall is covered with countless small crystal cabins emitting faint light, densely packed like a honeycomb.
In each cabin, there is a frozen scene suspended, a fragment of time that has been frozen.
They saw ancient soldiers in iron armor charging on the battlefield, factories with billowing smoke during the Industrial Revolution, and the modern cities they were familiar with with their bustling traffic... This place was like a giant museum that housed time itself.
“This is the time collection library.” Lin Che said, his voice seemed a little floating in this empty space. “The Weavers not only erase time, they also collect all the historical fragments they think are worth preserving.”
Everyone walked carefully between the crystal cabins, and were speechless at the sight before them.
"That's... us!" Xiao Ling suddenly pointed at a group of cabins on the left and exclaimed.
Everyone looked in the direction she pointed and was stunned. The records in those cabins were exactly the fragments of their past reincarnations.
In one scene, Su Wanqing is wearing a white coat, struggling to survive in a laboratory full of instruments; in another scene, Lin Che is covered in wounds, searching for something in the ruins; next to him, Xiao Ran is carrying the young Xiao Ling on his back, desperately escaping from pursuit in the alleys of the city... Scenes of failure in the past are displayed here as specimens.
Lu Zhao walked quickly to the records and carefully studied the data stream flowing on the outer wall of the cabin with a frown on his face.
"This isn't just collecting... this is evaluating! The Weaver is evaluating us, evaluating whether humans are worth being 'saved'!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a huge curtain of light slowly rose in the darkness of the central area, displaying countless weaver symbols that combined into an assessment report.
Lin Che tried to interpret the above content based on his awakened memory.
"In the first and second reincarnations, humans were labeled as 'ordinary adaptive species'... The third time, they were labeled as 'potential mutants'... The fourth time, they were 'creative thinking creatures'..." His voice became increasingly deep, "The fifth time, which is now, is labeled as 'final evaluation'..."
"What does the final assessment mean?" Su Wanqing looked towards the control room. "Are they going to collect us or let us go?"
Just as everyone was thinking about it, Xiao Ran's attention was attracted by a smaller fragment of time on the side.
He walked over as if being pulled by something, and was surprised to find that the scene inside was his father's secret laboratory.
In the picture, the father is injecting a golden liquid into the unconscious young Xiaoling. On the computer screen next to him, a gene chain pattern extremely similar to the Orion sequence is displayed.
Xiao Ran tried hard to identify his father's lip shape and read out the silent words: "They are coming... I must protect you... This gene combination may be the only defense..."
At this moment, Xiao Ran understood. His father had never been a mad scientist. He had long known about the threat posed by the Weaver.
He turned around and pulled Xiao Ling over to let her watch this memory. Xiao Ling looked at her father and herself in the picture quietly for a long time before she whispered, "I always thought my father was a crazy scientist... It turns out that he was protecting us."
Her distinctive purple eye flickered slightly. "Those experiments... gave me special abilities... allowing me to resist their detection."
Xiao Ran hugged his sister tightly. "Dad never explained... If I knew the truth at that time..."
"He can't say it," Xiao Ling shook her head, "If he does, it might attract more attention."
The brother and sister looked at each other, and their resentment towards their father turned into understanding and respect.
This understanding made them more determined to complete their mission.
"The third core!" At this moment, Xiao Ling suddenly pointed to the distance, the largest crystal cabin located right below the entire space.
Everyone looked over. Sure enough, in the special cabin directly below the central control room, a core was quietly suspended in a complex energy field, emitting red light.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
