Chapter 427 Ancient Heritage 'Wind Calyx Fruit' Shui Yanqing
"Drip-tick-tick-tick-"
In the white sterile ward, the detection instrument issued a regular prompt sound. The old man leaning on the bed wore a breathing mask and was connected to many sensing devices to monitor his life status. The retention needle on his wrist was connected to the medicine bottle, and the colorless and transparent liquid was slowly injected.
The room was very quiet, and no sound could be heard from the corridor outside. The only glass window was not a pleasant natural scenery, but rippling water waves.
Time passed quietly, and the dust in the room slowly settled. After an unknown amount of time, a slight sound of footsteps broke the silence, coming from the corridor, and then opened the door.
A girl with fluffy light blue short hair walked in. She was wearing a white long-sleeved thin coat, like a scientific researcher, but she did not wear any badge pins that symbolized her profession.
Walking to the bedside, she first glanced at the detection instrument, and then sat down, looking at the sleeping old man, letting time flow slowly.
About half an hour later, she stood up and pressed a button on the instrument, and then the upper part of the bed slowly lifted up. After a slight stimulation, the old man slowly opened his eyes.
The gray eyes that had lost focus looked around, and seemed to barely recognize the girl in front of him.
"You're here." His voice was weak, and if it wasn't for the extraordinary silence here, I'm afraid no one would be able to hear it clearly.
"Yeah." The girl gently stroked the old man's forehead.
"How long have I slept?" The old man continued to ask.
"35 days and 4 hours." The girl replied.
"So long, cough cough." His body trembled, and his withered fingers pressed on the bed. He wanted to sit up, but couldn't do it.
"I'll help you." The girl helped the old man sit up, and then patted his vest.
"Thank you, it will be better now." After the old man sat up, he took a while to speak gradually.
"It seems that I don't have much time."
"No, I customized the best medical plan for you, and I can still stick to it." The girl comforted.
"It's useless. The limit of genes is there. No matter how good the medical plan is, it won't work." He has lived for more than 200 years. This is almost the limit of human beings.
"If gene editing is carried out..." The girl hesitated.
"No, the Federation has long banned research in this area. Although I have fought fiercely in the past, but-" The old man spoke slowly.
"I have lived long enough. There is no point in tossing and turning."
He stretched out his hand and groped for a while to grab the girl's wrist.
"You should be 18 years old this year. You can go to the Central Star Region to study and don't have to stay here anymore, cough cough."
"But I..." The girl bit her lip and wanted to explain something, but she didn't say it in the end. Maybe she knew that her reasons could not convince the old man in front of her.
"I know, I understand, hehe." The old man tried to make himself look like he was smiling and stroked the girl's head.
"You are still as cute as when you were a child when you act like a spoiled child."
He spoke slowly with nostalgia, and then there was a long silence.
After resting for a while, the old man accumulated some strength and continued to speak.
"That's it. It's time to say goodbye. Now that I see you grow up healthy, I have no regrets."
"But..." Looking at the old man, the girl's eyes slowly filled with tears. She kept blinking, then lowered her head and quietly wiped them away.
The slight sobbing spread in the quiet ward, and it slowly stopped after a long time.
"I." After saying a word, the girl paused again. She closed her eyes and slowly opened them again.
"I'll sing a song." After saying that, the girl hummed a melody softly.
This melody has no lyrics. It is a little sad in the silence, and memories in the loneliness. There are also some sobs in the light voice, which makes people cry.
Listening to this song, the old man leaned on the bed with peace of mind and slowly closed his eyes. The prompt sound of the detection instrument beside him became weaker and weaker, and the intervals became longer and longer, until it finally returned to complete silence.
After humming this melody, the room became quiet again. The girl stared at the old man who was no longer breathing, just sitting there motionless, and then lying on the bed and crying.
Tears stained the sheets, and her back rose and fell from time to time in her sobs, and occasionally she could hear a few sobbing coughs.
After several hours, the girl finally came to her senses and slowly stood up. Looking at the old man whose face had turned gray, she carefully pulled up the sheets and slowly walked out of the room.
Leaning against the cold and quiet corridor, the girl looked at the reflection on the ground and was in a daze for several minutes before she stood up again and walked to the end of the corridor.
[Welcome, Miss Shui Yanqing, may I ask how to deal with the body of patient No. 11843?]
A light blue projection screen appeared at the end of the corridor.
"Cremation, and then seal the ashes."
[Received, arranging for the autonomous unit to move the body]
"Yes."
After saying that, the girl sat on the horizontal chair on the side of the corridor and continued to be in a daze until half an hour later, when the hemispherical autonomous unit moved in front of her and handed her a silver-gray metal box.
The box was sealed, with lines of letters on it, recording the name of the owner of the ashes and the time he lived.
{Newman Funkel Ivanovich, 1037.10.05-1255.07.14}
The girl's fingers gently stroked the letters engraved on the metal box, and she fell into memories. That should have been a day more than forty years ago.
...
The sky full of ice sand was swept by the strong wind, blowing across the earth. Under the dim sky, the world full of ruins was dead silent. There were abandoned building wreckage and exposed mechanical fragments everywhere. The once powerful war machinery was torn into two pieces, half buried in the soil, and half covered by ice sand. Only a few corners were still standing in the wind.
This is a cold and forgotten world. The snowstorm has lasted for nearly a thousand years. The water vapor on the planet has turned into ice crystals and snow sand because of the cold temperature. The sky is always covered with dark clouds and snow sand. There is no light, dim and depressing.
The extremely low temperature not only makes it impossible to see living things on this planet, but even the most basic bacteria and other microorganisms are difficult to survive. This planet is an ancient battlefield left over from the Fifth Era. It is filled with supernatural poisons and various strange radiation pollution.
If there is anyone willing to come here, it is probably only those archaeologists who are curious and willing to risk their lives.
Wearing a thick protective exoskeleton armor, Newman walked slowly in the cold snowstorm. The searchlight on his head and the scanner looked around and searched for possible clues. Beside him, there were several autonomous units walking close to the ground to assist the scholar in the search.
A few minutes later, Newman found a collapsed passage in the ruins. Through scanning, he found that there was a road leading deep underground, so he began to clean up the debris that buried the passage.
With the help of the thrust of the exoskeleton armor, he slowly moved away the building debris that overwhelmed the passage, and then asked the autonomous unit to assist in the excavation. It took about 11 hours to finally clear a viable passage.
However, at this time, his physical strength was almost exhausted. After entering the tunnel, he leaned against the wall and slept for six hours before he started to move again.
Five days later, Newman moved down through this passage intermittently, encountering various collapses and blocking obstacles along the way. Fortunately, he was well prepared and finally passed them one by one. As he continued to go down, the temperature gradually rose, and at least the water no longer froze.
His fingers scraped across the wall, and moss with green fluorescence fell down. The transparent box placed by Newman caught it, then carefully sealed it and put it in the collection box. He stood up and continued to move forward, his eyes constantly scanning the surrounding walls until he stopped under a bulletin board.
The paper posted on this bulletin board had faded long ago, but because of the harsh environment, there was no microbial corrosion, and it still did not degrade, allowing him to use a scanner to analyze the original handwriting on it.
[Safety items, please keep a low profile, magic can make you discovered, you are not allowed to go out without permission, all actions must comply with the instructions, if you find anything unusual, please refer to the instructions, don't...]
The bottom one is '-Hydrofoil Rescue Association Seal' .
According to the analysis of the handwriting molecules, this should have been printed at the end of the Fifth Era. At that time, wars were everywhere and civilization was regressing. Delicate electronic products such as display screens were far less convenient than ancient paper notices.
(The term "rescue society" should have appeared about 4,000 years after the Fifth Era. At that time, most of the inhabited planets were occupied by the "new races", and the remaining native humans and branches had to stick together, avoid wars and hunts, and survive on the polluted and irradiated planets. Thus, various forms of rescue society organizations were born.)
Newman searched the information in the database and then went further forward. This should have been a medical institution of the rescue society. Many remaining beds and treatment and testing equipment can be found, and even some dried corpses can be found.
Although the strong radiation and toxicity destroyed the environment, it also made it difficult for many microorganisms to survive. These corpses were not degraded, which became excellent research materials, allowing today's scientists to explore the situation of that era and even extract the extinct "new race" genes from them.
After collecting several gene samples and sampling data, Newman felt a sense of excitement and satisfaction. Although this expedition was dangerous and a life-threatening one, it was worth it. He had not much time left, and he came here with the idea that if he failed, he would be buried underground and leave his body as a sample for future generations.
But now it seems that he is lucky. Not only did he not die, but he also found this undiscovered place in the ruins.
Continuing to explore, he found many corpses one after another, and even many traces of battles along the way.
(This is...)
He bent down and looked at the wreckage on the ground carefully. In the filter of the scanner, there was a bright red mark on the cheek of the corpse, "non-native human".
He carefully took off the silver-powder gradient scales with tweezers, and then put them into a small sealed bag. Then, with the help of the records in the database, he kept searching and analyzing, and finally found the matching description information.
[The Light Scales, one of the extinct "new races", belonged to the dark sun Erebus. They were named after the few shiny scales on their bodies. These scales were the product of genetic modification, which enabled the Light Scales to efficiently promote the Ekakar particles and generate special signals, allowing them to sense and communicate with each other, and even resonate with each other, build a network, and cast the throne of God. ]
Compared with the original human races, the 'new races' always have various characteristics and advantages, which is why they can quickly replace the original humans in the early Fifth Era.
After carefully collecting this rare material, Newman continued to move forward, and there were more and more corpses along the way. There were also many traces of cutting, burning, and piercing in the passage. In the end, he even found the corpse of a Sequence 7 Transcendent. Such a high-level Transcendent should be a big shot in the Fifth Era.
After dragging these corpses away and carefully scraping off the dried blood, he looked at the closed door in front of him, with some hesitation and expectation.
There is no doubt that the two parties should be fighting for what is behind the door, one attacking and the other defending. I just don't know if there is an escape route behind this door, or some treasure hidden.
(Let's get started. We've come this far. If we give up because we're afraid of some danger, we'll regret it even when we die.)
Since he didn't have much time to live anyway, he might as well take a gamble. Newman took out the hilt from the side of his exoskeleton armor, then injected his magic power into it. With a hum, a blue stream-type lightsaber appeared in an instant.
He held the hilt and slowly cut the door. The molten metal liquid and strange smoke filled the air. If he hadn't been wearing the best protective clothing, he might have been poisoned to death here immediately.
After the intense cutting, the door finally fell down, raising a cloud of dust and rust. Newman put away the lightsaber and took two steps forward. He felt extremely weak and had to lean against the wall to catch his breath and rest.
(I'm old, and I can't swing the lightsaber anymore.)
He took advantage of the break to look around the room and was slightly delighted to find that this was not an escape route, but some kind of high-end research laboratory. The various instruments left inside were still roughly the same as before. It seemed that the protection here was exceptionally good. Even the highly toxic and radiation on the planet did not interfere with the interior of the laboratory.
After resting for a while, he continued to move forward, constantly testing the equipment here, hoping to find something like a memory chip, or other recorded information, and finally his attention stayed outside a closed dormant chamber.
As if there was a strange feeling, although it had not been opened yet, he thought there should be some kind of living life inside.
But this is indeed not a place to open it. If there are really living things inside, they will probably die quickly due to exposure to the poison and radiation.
Holding this heavy dormant chamber, Newman tried to move it, but found it was still too heavy, so he summoned the auxiliary self-discipline unit and simply built a simple trailer on the spot, and then put the dormant chamber on it.
After doing all this, he pulled the heavy dormant chamber out of the passage, but this time the return trip was not as easy as when he came.
In order to transport the dormant chamber out, he had to stop dozens of times along the way to clean the passage. It took him twelve days to return to the ground, and at this time, the supplies he had stored with him were almost gone.
There was still a long way to go before the ship's docking point. In order to return smoothly, Newman had to abandon some less important specimens and supplies, and then calculate what he needed to return.
Then he began the most difficult part of this expedition. In the last half month, his food was exhausted, and the water was recycled with the help of a purifier. At the end, his consciousness was almost blurred and trance. If it weren't for the auxiliary AI that helped him correct the direction and guide him to avoid the big snowstorm, he would have been buried in a ruin.
Fortunately, this journey was finally over. He returned to the ship's docking point and took the heavy dormant chamber on board the ship and began his return journey.
After about 6 years of dormant superluminal navigation, the ship finally returned to the nearest federal space station, and everything on the ship was strictly sealed and monitored.
Three months later, after the expert group reviewed and tested, Newman and the dormant chamber were sent to another special research space station in an uninhabited star field, and then the dormant chamber was opened under surveillance.
"This is..." Looking at the girl lying in the dormant chamber, the people present couldn't help but be surprised, and then excitedly and expectantly carried out various tests and research.
About a year later, after many harmless inspections, analyses, and studies, the researchers were able to determine the girl's identity.
"She should be a hybrid of the 'Light Scales' and human adaptors." The genetic analysis chart showed.
"Although she inherited some of the specialties of the 'Light Scales', because of the mixing of the adaptors' genes, she cannot use the Light Scales for mind resonance, which means that she has cut off the 'Network Veins' and cannot become the basic node of the Throne of God."
"In order to prevent the 'new race' from being contaminated by the genes of the original humans, there was a kind of reproductive isolation when they were born, and the birth of this girl broke this taboo."
"She is most likely not the product of normal reproduction, but a test subject of the original humans at that time to fight against the 'new race'. That is, she is the product of gene editing, which allows her to have both the advantages of the 'Light Scales' and not become a nutrient node for the Dark Sun."
"No wonder this rescue was wiped out by the 'Light Scales' at that time. Perhaps their plan was discovered and exposed."
"What should we do with this girl now? According to current federal law, she does not qualify to be a 'human'."
"If nothing unexpected happens, she may have to live in the laboratory all her life, or we don't need to wake her up and let her become a living specimen in eternal sleep."
Originally, the tone of the arrangement was set here, but after the discoverer Newman woke up, he strongly opposed this decision.
"Why not let her come back to life? She poses no threat to the existence of the Federation at the moment, and isn't her birth the wish and miracle of those pioneers? They found another way back then, and if they continue along this path, maybe they can also end everything in the Fifth Era."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Newman, your idea is very dangerous. Since the establishment of the Federation, all actions related to modifying the genes of the adapters have been banned. This is to avoid a recurrence of the disaster at the beginning of the Fifth Era."
"As for a certain possibility you mentioned, I don't agree. Even if humans at that time could use this technology to gain the same advantages as the 'new race', without the singer who connects everything, we would still find it difficult to fight against the dark suns. This is the greatness of the Throne of God." "
However, humans have been complacent for nearly a thousand years. Since the end of the Fifth Era, all technologies related to human gene adjustment have been banned, which has resulted in the lifespan of human individuals being always limited, and some remaining diseases and defects are difficult to cure. I understand the dangers of gene modification, but if it continues like this, it will undoubtedly be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and we will always stay where we are."
"The Federation is now safe and powerful enough. Why can't we slowly restart these studies and find a way to avoid the birth of the Dark Sun and allow humans to continue to evolve!"
"Dr. Newman, it's useless for you to tell me this. If you really want to change, then convince the bigwigs in the Central Council, the representatives from many star fields, the leaders in various fields, and the singers who represent the will of the masses. With the Central Council's special permission, it is possible to realize your idea by amending the Federation Constitution." The researcher pushed his glasses and rejected Newman's proposal.
"I will do it."
For about 20 years, Newman has been working on this matter, but his influence is undoubtedly like a stone thrown into the sea, with no reaction. The traditional concept of the Federation since its establishment has made countless people choose to ban genetic modification, even if the life span of humans is limited.
With the aging of his body, even with various means of assistance, Newman gradually felt that he had reached the limit of his life and that he didn't have much time left.
This former Sequence 7 Beyonder can only lie in bed for most of the future, slowly waiting for death to come.
However, just when he was about to give up and face death, fate played a joke again. The sleeping girl woke up and was found to have the talent of a singer.
This discovery shocked the entire laboratory, and all news was blocked afterwards. After continuous analysis and discussion by the top scientists of the Federation, and even several heated debates, the girl was finally granted freedom as a singer.
"Since she is a singer, it is the manifestation of Isanisha's will. We cannot stop her from waking up and being free."
"Give her a name, Dr. Newman, this is your honor."
"A name..." Newman thought weakly while lying on the bed.
"Because she was found by the Water Wing Rescue Society, and she is also the legacy of the Water Wing Rescue Society, let's give her the surname Shui."
"She was born to fight against the dark sun, so let's name her 'Yan Qing', which hates the scorching sun on a sunny day, like a torrential rain that extinguishes the flames."
"Okay, now officially register the identity of this singer, and her title is 'Wind Calyx Fruit' Shui Yan Qing."
"The fruit that floated in the wind was caught by a hand that stretched out by chance. She is really a legendary singer. Her birth probably also represents some kind of invisible will."
"The dusty sword of gene editing may gradually be unsealed because of her appearance, and whether it can be realized in the end depends on her influence in the federation as a singer in the future."
After writing this sentence, the researcher slowly closed the record book.
(End of this chapter)
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