"You mean this damned monster actually has intelligence? Please, don't say such horrible things."
Schroederes immediately retorted.
"But if that's not the case... how could the central control console have ended up like this? And we just encountered those disgusting things outside. There might be more on our way back. The people in this aircraft were probably eaten by those monsters, which is why it was abandoned here..."
"I'm not giving up," Lina said reluctantly. She looked unusually dejected, which was understandable, as she had been very positive throughout the journey.
"Honestly... I was hoping to get the star map or coordinates... and then go home..."
As she spoke, Lina's voice choked with emotion.
When she said "go home," she certainly didn't mean going back to the Apollo from here.
"Hey, don't give up hope, maybe we can still find something."
Even through the mask of the exploration suit, Lin Xi could see that Lina's eyes were already a little red, so he had no choice but to bite the bullet and comfort her.
"Yes, I don't think things are that bad."
Schroederneres was also comforting Lina.
Although he didn't seem to really believe what he was saying.
However, after carefully examining the ruins of the central control console, Lin Xi eventually discovered something.
He pried open the tangled mess of wires and rusted metal plates, revealing electronic components that were now completely useless...
Finally, beneath the completely corroded components, some silvery-white metal plates were revealed.
This is the motherboard for the central control console.
Lin Xi felt a sense of relief when she saw it.
Just as he had vaguely guessed, although the insect's blood could corrode the control buttons and wires on the console, the mainboard at the bottom probably wasn't in much trouble... Otherwise, the aircraft wouldn't have automatically sensed the presence of humans and turned on the lights when they entered, and the controller and personal operating system in the cryogenic chamber wouldn't have been functioning properly.
Even the thick metal door of the central control room can be opened and closed normally (although the biometric authentication device seems to be malfunctioning).
Lin Xi shared her guesses and discoveries with the two people behind her, and sure enough, the two, who had been extremely depressed, suddenly became very excited.
"Wait, if we look more carefully, there might be even more useful things here!"
"Ha, right, there might even be backups of the star map and coordinates."
Lina even went so far as to say something out of the blue.
However, although this speculation was somewhat far-fetched, the other two people present did not intend to refute her at all.
Schroederes even frantically searched the dark control room.
He haphazardly turned over and kicked away the monster corpses piled up near the ruins of the central control console, his searchlight sweeping erratically across the ground.
"Bang--"
Not long after, a crisp metallic clang came from beside his feet.
Schroederes cried out in pain and then hopped up on one foot.
"What the hell is this thing?!"
He cried out in alarm.
Three searchlights simultaneously fell on the object he had mentioned earlier, and its smooth metal surface immediately reflected an arc of light.
Lin Xi's gaze instantly sharpened.
He quickly crouched down and swept the remains of the strangely shaped insects off the metal objects on the ground.
After a quick cleanup, the thing was finally revealed.
It is not very large; it is a uniform and regular flat oval object with a slightly dark metal plate covering its back. A round head is embedded in the center of its body, and eight mechanical arms are evenly distributed under its body.
Sensors, infrared detectors, spectral analyzers, and other detection equipment are all shrouded under the semi-transparent synthetic material of the "head," and those round, bulging lenses suddenly look like its eyes.
At first glance, it looks like a jellyfish toy made of steel and synthetic materials, which makes it even look a little cute.
However, anyone who knows what this thing actually is would not think that way.
“I’m starting to think I’m dreaming. Is this real? There’s this here… This is a ‘ghost,’ right? This isn’t some movie prop… This is real.”
Schroederes let out a low, dreamlike murmur.
Lin Xi could understand his shock; in fact, he himself wasn't much better off.
"ghost".
These were the most famous military mechs three hundred years ago. It is said that the Del Corporation, which produced this series of mechs, had the shadow of the Anya people behind it. The mechs they created had nightmarish mobility and high killing efficiency.
The "Ghost" mechanical warrior, which was the first to be introduced and the most widely used, is the most famous of them all. Its most famous achievement is that with a formation of 100 Ghost mechanical warriors, the Earthlings remotely controlled them from tens of millions of kilometers away to directly annihilate hundreds of millions of Martian leeches. With just 100 mechanical warriors, the Earthlings easily wiped out that troublesome and terrifying native Martian creature and successfully established their own colony base on that planet.
However, it was probably precisely because of the terrifying abilities displayed by this series of mechanical warriors produced by Del Corporation that these robots aroused the fear of Earthlings.
The mechanical warriors are considered inhumane weapons by the Earth United Government and are banned throughout the solar system.
Del Corporation spent a lot of money in the protracted litigation and eventually went bankrupt—however, the production technology and data they possessed also vanished without a trace after the company officially declared bankruptcy.
When the last mechanical warrior aged and was decommissioned over the long years, this bizarre and powerful killing weapon became a legend.
However, now, the legendary lifeboats of the Providence have appeared.
Killing machines, considered legendary weapons, have also appeared.
Suddenly, the reason for the mountain of monster corpses became clear.
“My God, I get it…” Schroederes suddenly clapped his hands. “Del Corporation’s products are prohibited within the solar system—but Providence’s destination wasn’t within the solar system! They must have signed an agreement with Del Corporation and brought these mechanical warriors with them! That way, even if there are troublesome things like Martian leeches on AS192, they can deal with them easily—”
Lin Xi frowned as he looked at the "Ghost" type mechanical warrior on the ground. He tentatively squatted down to examine it more closely.
Compared to the corpses of those monsters, this thing's outer shell was intact and completely undamaged, but it still stopped all its functions.
Lin Xi quickly discovered more mechanical warriors beneath the corpses. Just like the first one they found, all the parts of these mechanical warriors were intact, and several of them even retained the combat posture they had been in at that moment. However, they were now completely frozen in time, remaining motionless there, spending hundreds of years in the darkness alongside the gradually decaying monster corpses, which had eventually become nothing but empty shells.
"Lina is right..."
After checking all the mechanical warriors, Lin Xi returned to the vicinity of the central control console once again.
He stared at the badly damaged control panel and muttered to himself.
"This was a design flaw... The mechanical warriors produced by Del Corporation were too powerful. To be on the safe side, they must have been directly controlled by commands from the central control console. The monsters discovered this, and when they realized they had no way to resist these mechanical warriors, they corroded the central control console with their own blood."
"...Then those mechanical warriors stopped operating immediately after losing command. Until now."
"Wow!" Lina and Schroederes exclaimed in unison.
A moment later, Lina's excited voice rang out: "Hey, does this mean that if we can restore the motherboard of the central control console, these mechanical warriors can also resume operation? If so, we won't have to be afraid of these bugs here anymore."
"I...I think so."
Lin Xi was taken aback, and he paused for a moment before answering.
That's strange.
He thought to himself.
The things they found here were crucial to their survival afterward.
But why did he feel so uneasy? It was as if a voice in the darkness kept reminding him... that something was wrong.
Oh, and Jerry too.
Was Jerry acting so strangely in the first place, and then leading them here, just so they could discover this aircraft and these things in the central control room?
Upon thinking of this, Lin Xi's initially high spirits quickly plummeted.
Lin Xi put the motherboards he found into his backpack, and then he called out to Lina and Schroederes.
“We’d better get out of here quickly,” he said. “After all, we don’t know if there are more bugs on the ship. Let those annoying mercenaries on the Apollo go; they’re definitely more professional than us.”
Reminded by Lin Xi, the two, who had become slightly carried away, quickly shivered and hurriedly walked out of the aircraft.
rustle--
However, just as they were leaving the central control room, Lin Xi suddenly stopped.
He suddenly turned around and looked at the central control room, which had returned to darkness.
"What's wrong?"
Lina asked in a panic.
"No...it's nothing."
Lin Xi turned around, gripped the gun in his hand tightly with some nervousness, and whispered.
Perhaps because of his previous encounter with those two terrifying and disgusting giant insects, he was somewhat paranoid... Lin Xi felt as if he had heard the insects' horrifying voices once again.
The sound of countless feet rubbing against a metal surface.
rustle--
rustle--
...
This illusion persisted even as Lin Xi, Lina, and Schroederes retraced their steps.
He felt his muscles were about to twitch from excessive tension, as that strange sound kept following them, seemingly out of nowhere.
Several times, Lin Xi was already prepared, watching those disgusting monsters emerge from all corners, waving their thick, brownish-red tentacles and ferocious mouthparts at them.
However, in the end, all those strong premonitions proved to be false.
Their journey away from the aircraft was relatively smooth. During this time, Lina and Schroederes also managed to get themselves new gas cylinders and fresh water from the living facilities storage area in the warehouse district.
...
“You made a big mistake, Lin Xi, you shouldn’t have done that…”
A strange woman stood at the end of the corridor of the Apollo spaceship. She walked step by step toward Lin Xi and then spoke slowly and softly.
She seemed oblivious to her own predicament—her body was covered in blood, a deep wound in her abdomen, the muscles of her abdomen turned outwards, her abdominal cavity exposed to Lin Xi, revealing what was enough to drive anyone mad: half-human, half-insect infants huddled together in layers, their faces wrinkled, their skin smeared with mucus and their mother's blood.
"Sizzle... sizzle sizzle sizzle..."
The buzzing of insects emanated from their deformed bodies, their terrifying faces pressed against the edge of the woman's abdominal wound, like children peering curiously out of a window.
“Liz…”
Lin Xi finally recognized the woman's face.
His heart was immediately gripped by fear.
He almost screamed, but it felt like something was stuck in his throat, and he couldn't utter a single word.
In the blink of an eye, the scenery surrounding him changed.
Lin Xi was horrified to find himself back in the aircraft's central control room.
This time, however, the central control room wasn't completely dark; the crimson light of the emergency lights illuminated everything inside.
The insect corpses that had withered and decayed into empty shells in Lin Xi's memory have now all come back to life.
Some of them look almost like normal humans, except that their pupils are covered with countless tiny black dots.
Others, however, are incredibly disgusting and terrifying humanoid insects, though their facial features vaguely resemble those of humans.
They were shattered, with only fresh fragments lying on the floor, beneath the cold mechanical arms of those mechanical warriors, their twisted faces staring unanimously at Lin Xi.
"This is a mistake...this is a...mistake..."
They opened their mouths wide at the same time, and a mournful and desperate sound kept coming from inside their dark bodies.
"This is...a...mistake?"
Lin Xi closed her eyes and murmured the same words repeatedly.
"Dr. Lin Xi! What's wrong?!"
Suddenly, Lina's voice came through.
Immediately afterwards, Lin Xi's body lurched violently, and his head snapped back, slamming heavily against a metal plate.
He immediately came to his senses.
What came into view were Lina and Schroederes' concerned faces, but without the protection of exploration suits and helmets, the two of them looked somewhat unfamiliar.
Lin Xi was momentarily dazed. The vibrations of the patrol car and the sound of the tracks rubbing against the alien ground accompanied by the roar of the engine.
The cramped environment brought Lin Xi back to his senses—he was currently in a patrol car heading towards the Sun God.
"I...I think I just fell asleep and had a nightmare."
Lin Xi's lips parted, emitting a dry, hoarse murmur.
In an instant, everything that had happened before rushed back into his mind—
After leaving the aircraft from the Providence, they found their companions who had stayed behind and Jerry and the others who were still unconscious.
They thought they still had a long way to go in their cave exploration. But to their surprise, the companion who stayed behind made a new discovery while waiting for them: right behind the aircraft was an elevator that led directly to the ground.
Although buried by sand, the remaining structures in the man-made cave indicate that it was originally used to transport large aircraft from the bunker to the ground-level elevator platform. However, an accident three hundred years ago caused the elevator platform to tilt, permanently trapping the aircraft inside the underground cave.
Perhaps God finally felt that He had inflicted enough misfortune on the exploration team, so this time, He decided to grant them some luck—the elevator, which was originally intended for the logistics personnel to use for maintenance of the lifting platform, is still in a usable state!
Lin Xi and the others, carrying their unconscious companions, arrived at the surface from underground with incredible ease.
Although the location had long since deviated from their intended exploration point, no one was really thinking about their exploration mission anymore.
Lin Xi used his personal terminal to send a distress message and their current real-time location to the Sun God spacecraft.
They didn't wait long. The search and rescue team, which was already conducting operations nearby, immediately located them.
In the previous series of events, Lin Xi had already developed a fairly good relationship with Lina and Schroederes, and they even boarded the same patrol car.
Then, Lin Xi fell into a deep sleep due to excessive fatigue... and then had that very uncomfortable nightmare.
"Dr. Lin Xi, don't look so gloomy. It's such a waste of your face."
Lina stared at Lin Xi for a while, then half-jokingly looked at her, clearly in high spirits after her narrow escape from death.
“After what happened, it’s normal to have nightmares. I suspect I’ll still have nightmares for a long time after I get back to the spaceship, but look at us now… we’re all still alive. What could be better than that?” Schroederes said with a smile, following closely behind Lina.
The search and rescue team members sitting next to them gave the three of them strange looks.
Clearly, they were a little uncomfortable with the harmonious relationship between the three of them.
Lin Xi's reputation on the Sun God wasn't good... While the undercurrents of rumors weren't enough to make everyone wary of Lin Xi or want to kill him, no one wanted to get close to him either.
In fact, when news arrived that Lin Xi and the exploration team had disappeared and perished in that unprecedented and terrifying storm, many people on the ship secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Who would have thought that Lin Xi was still alive?
This is simply unbelievable—anyone who experienced that storm would think so.
Lin Xi certainly didn't miss those people's gazes, nor the subtle, malicious stares they gave her.
However, at this moment, he had no energy to care about those people.
His head was throbbing, and his mind was in complete turmoil.
Even though Lina and Schroederes tried to calm him down, he still couldn't shake off the inexplicable sense of panic.
Every now and then, he would think of the trapped mummies, the insect corpses in the central control room, and... the mechanical warriors produced by Del Corporation.
"Ghost" type killing machine.
Although he, Lina, and Schroederes only conducted a very basic exploration of the aircraft, based on the information they had obtained so far, they seemed to be able to make a rough guess about what had happened inside the aircraft.
Regardless of why the spacecraft appeared on the elevator platform, one thing is certain: many of the people inside the spacecraft have already shown symptoms of being parasitized by alien insects.
Perhaps some of the worms inside people's bodies escaped, or perhaps they were invaded by worms from the outside. In any case, someone managed to activate the Del mechanical warriors through the central control console to eliminate the worms... At the same time, they sealed all the people who had been parasitized into cryogenic chambers and carried out a mass slaughter.
But in the end, the monsters still broke into the central control room, corroding the control consoles with their blood and halting the operation of all the mechanical warriors...
Lin Xi kept replaying everything he had seen before, and the feeling of unease was so intense that he felt dizzy.
Where did things go wrong?
He couldn't help but think.
Or perhaps... it was all just his delusions after being overly frightened?
Lin Xi observed Lina and Schroederes, who were clearly much more relaxed, without showing any emotion. The self-doubt and irrational fear in his heart almost tore him in two.
However, these chaotic emotions were briefly put aside when he jumped out of the patrol car and saw Bryce and Elisa waiting there.
"You damned bastard—"
Bryce hugged him, then cursed at him viciously.
If someone who didn't know the situation saw him now, they would probably think that he had some deep-seated hatred with Lin Xi.
Elisa watched their reunion from the side, her face beaming with an irrepressible smile, but her eyes were already red.
"Forgive this guy's foul mouth... You know, before this, your brother was already crying his eyes out several times because of the news of your disappearance."
She leaned over and hugged the two boys tightly, then ruffled their hair vigorously.
Then, in front of Bryce, she said this to Lin Xi.
"Hey, don't talk nonsense."
Bryce's face immediately turned red.
Author's Note: Number One: Director...why haven't I appeared yet? (His face gradually darkens)
The author (who is also a terrible writer): Yeah, why? It's definitely not because I can't think of a good-looking male lead...
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