Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1499: Occasionally Checking Your Own Coffin

Chapter 1499: Chapter 1499: Occasionally Checking Your Own Coffin

Ding Ling had already arranged everything here in advance, to ensure our "work" wouldn’t be disturbed—she had cleared all unrelated personnel from the relics ahead of time and set up blockade zones and monitoring posts around a large area of the mine entrance to prevent anyone from accidentally approaching this place. These are work experiences accumulated over the years since Imperial relics are generally not very safe. There have been incidents where items exploded within relics and minor Ghost Energy leaks occurred: what’s considered a "minor leak" by Xyrin Apostle standards can be a catastrophic disaster by human standards. At that time, "Boundless Love" and the Superpower Team had quite a hassle dealing with it, so now any secret organization on Earth would be extremely cautious when encountering these dangerously glowing "alien relics."

"Only a few staff who initially saw the holographic projections in the relics are inside," Lin Feng led us close to the mining corridor crack emitting blue light, "Though they’re our people, it’s still better to clear some of their memories. A human appears in alien relics, especially a ’Boundless Love’ high-level cadre—this can’t be kept secret from the Superpower Team either."

The dark and narrow inclined shaft was filled with filthy and unpleasant air. Despite the powerful fans continuously ventilating the path, it was difficult to dispel the scent accumulated over half a century. However, the smell wasn’t unbearable, so we didn’t fuss about deploying shields. We reached the end of the inclined shaft and confirmed that the blue light emanated from several wide cracks in the ground and passage walls, and beside the shaft was a clearly newly excavated small passage, where the blue light was more intense, apparently leading inside the relic.

"We can’t explain what’s going on with these blue lights," Lin Feng shook his head, confused, "We’ve searched the entire area and found nothing resembling a light source. The blue light seems to appear out of nowhere from the relic’s surrounding space, then permeate a thick rock crust, finally emerging from these cracks. So what’s the purpose of these lights? Are they really advanced, possibly a power reactor?"

"If it were a power reactor, the surrounding area would already be barren," Sandora walked toward the small passage beside the shaft, "If I’m not mistaken, these are just energy-deficient warning lights; the focus field is broken, so they spread pretty far."

Lin Feng mumbled softly: "Damn..." Thousands of words condensed into this phrase.

We walked for a short while through the newly excavated small passage and quickly found that beneath our feet wasn’t gravel and rock fragments but familiar Starship Alloy. After turning a corner, the scene suddenly opened up: a massive underground cavity appeared in front of everyone. The cavity was over ten meters high, with dark surroundings almost indistinguishable at first sight. Many temporary strong lighting sources had been set up around but could only illuminate a very limited area. The cavity’s ceiling and nearby walls still appeared to be natural rock, but our feet clearly stood on a layer of Alloy Armor, already covered with dust and debris from the cavern ceiling, though some areas had been cleaned, revealing the silvery metal beneath. I squatted down to touch the metal plate, professionally nodding: "Starship Armor Plate; this is a Spaceship wreckage."

Lin Feng immediately looked at me with admiration: "Brother Chen, you’re really professional..."

"Stop bragging," Sandora vigorously slapped me, "The armor brand says ’Ship Cannon Armor Plate.’ "

Everyone: "..."

I coughed awkwardly and looked at the huge cave and alloy armor beneath our feet, confirming that we were actually standing atop a Spaceship wreckage and the entire copper mine sits perfectly above the Spaceship. I didn’t know how such a gigantic thing was buried here, but it shouldn’t be just natural geological activities that buried it this deep—if not mistaken, there must have been substantial collisions here, causing the whole Spaceship to submerge underground. In the subsequent geological activities, the Spaceship kept sinking (it’s possible the remaining energy melted the rock base beneath the Spaceship for a period), eventually forming a large cavity.

The old copper mine was originally "embedded" within a relatively stable rock band, positioned directly above the Spaceship cavity’s shell-like rock layer. But as the copper mining continued, the rock band’s strength declined, the arch-like rock crust began to crack and sag, and people eventually had to abandon the mine. So this means...

I looked up at the cave top above: "The thick layer of rock above us, and the entire mountain range up top, is actually suspended on an arch, and this arch got hollowed out by mining..."

My voice just fell, and the little doll shrank its neck: the little guy was finally afraid too.

"So, also please deal with this here," Ding Ling lowered her voice, seeming afraid even her voice could bring down the cave, "We’ve conducted a technological analysis, ensuring it won’t collapse shortly as the mountain and surrounding rock form a triangle-like structure akin to a second arch. It’s fairly comforting yet; however, this area sees ample seismic activity. If there’s any misalignment in this ’triangle-roof’ after an earthquake, combined with this Spaceship cavity already subsiding... then it’s the whole mountain sinking straight down."

Lin Feng couldn’t hold back at this moment and mumbled: "Why do you build Spaceships this big, this one spans several kilometers."

"Several kilometers belong to small ships, alright?" I glared at the other, "Empire creates Spaceships for fighting in outer space; crashing on planets can indeed be classified as amateur activities. And for such an immense discovery... why didn’t you tell Lin Xue?"

Usually, any finding from the Superpower Team would be communicated by Lin Xue, considering she holds roles as both a Superpower Team cadre and Imperial Empress (though she’s barely active in the first role), yet Ms. Lin didn’t meddle this time, so I went ahead and asked.

"Her? The organization almost removed her," Ding Ling sighed, "Not a dismissal but she spends about three hundred days annually outside somewhere doing things for you while ’Old Master’ pampers her excessively, thus the organization can only ignore the act and treat her as disbanded. Unless she actively seeks work, no tasks are assigned to her anymore. As for this relic discovery, initially everyone thought it was similar stuff as past findings, intending to let Boundless Love handle it directly until noon when the relic suddenly activated, and your sister shined brightly; only then did we realize it’s potentially life-threatening and hurriedly notified you."

Finally, I nodded in understanding, secretly lighting a candle for Ms. Lin: Lin Xue’s engagement in Empire affairs was moving, but clearly it’s like a married daughter spilling away, feeling unjust for her parents and Mr. Lin...

Entering the Spaceship took little effort, as it was already open: a spare passage was entirely revealed without any signs of damage, apparently opened during regular procedures, quite intriguing: were there survivors aboard when the Spaceship crashed on Earth seventy thousand years ago? Otherwise, who opened the door?

Along the spare passage, the group entered the Spaceship interior. Based on corridor length and Sandora’s scan of the Spaceship framework, this should be upper deck sections on the ship, situated in low-alert upper layer zones (the ship’s deep layer zones remain sealed, inaccessible by Superpower Team members). We encountered some Superpower Team staff within a cabin: they accidentally learned the shocking secret this time.

"Captain Ding, Captain Lin," as soon as a few staff saw us appear, they enthusiastically approached, one greeting Ding Ling and Lin Feng, "This place is truly exceptional, you know if we opened those doors upfront, how vast would the space inside be?"

"Stop risking lives, alright?" Ding Ling immediately scolded the other, "This thing can destroy Earth if activated. By the way, you all still remember what you saw on those projectors earlier, right?"

The staff nodded immediately, then one with sharp eyes promptly noticed the Big Sister behind me but before speaking, Sandora stepped forward releasing Mind Interference.

Following mild, harmless spiritual power impact, the staff temporarily seemed bewildered and upon clearing up, their gaze at Big Sister showed no anomalies.

To test the effectiveness of memory wiping, Lin Feng approached and tapped one staff member’s shoulder: "Old Zhao, remember when we went to Yunnan..."

"Oh, you borrowed two hundred bucks from me that time; I almost forgot," the tall man called Old Zhao quickly responded, "You’re so careless to let yourself be pickpocketed."

Lin Feng looked astonished, and while begrudgingly extracting money from his pocket, secretly threw glances here: "Brother Chen, this isn’t as promised..."

I glared hard at this mischievous boy, educating him through the spiritual connection: "Nonsense! Sandora only blurred their short-term memory from this afternoon, she didn’t turn them into fools!"

A few of the onsite staff already couldn’t recall what happened at noon, and were quickly coaxed out of the cabin by Ding Ling and Lin Feng. Then Lin Feng seemed to have something on his mind, hesitated for a moment before speaking: "Brother Chen, to be honest, what we found this time is larger in scale than ever before..."

"So what’s the point?" I looked at this kid, not knowing what he’s thinking.

"Previously, what we discovered were caves, altars, pyramids left by ancient people, which at most contained equipment used by Xyrin Apostles tens of thousands of years ago, the largest scale was just a small outpost," Lin Feng said slowly, "However, this time what we discovered is a spaceship a few kilometers long, and it’s as intact as new, this is a different nature than before, I’m afraid when it comes to cleaning up, a massive memory wash will be necessary. I’ve been pondering ... These things really can’t let humans touch even a little bit?"

I understood as I looked at Lin Feng, it’s not unusual for him to think of these things. Not to mention, just looking at a few kilometers long alien spaceship lying on Earth while having to hold back from revealing it is enough to drive someone with a big mouth crazy, if it were me I’d definitely be itchy too. But I still had to explain the situation to him: "Don’t even think about it, we have an Expert Team for analyzing various civilizations as a whole, there are strict standards for which civilization can interact with the Empire at which level, Earthlings contacting these world-destroying things are frankly too early. Not to mention anything else—once the news of this spaceship leaks, do you believe there’ll be a world war within three days? Then the Empire would have to intervene and reorganize world order, ostensibly promoting human civilization but actually ruling the world. I’m telling you, this is definitely not a good thing for a native civilization."

Lin Feng opened his mouth, but ultimately remained speechless.

I patted his shoulder: "Don’t think the Imperial Code is rigid, I used to think many regulations were rigid too, but then I read the material, and behind every regulation are dozens and hundreds of races summarized at the cost of species extinction. Texts concerning the progress of civilization, a single word can mean billions of lives."

Lin Feng and Ding Ling simultaneously stuck out their tongues, neither of them spoke.

"This ship doesn’t look like it was built with a standard structure," Sandora had already done a preliminary scan of the ship’s hull by this time, the spaceship has been scrapped here for years, the power core has long ceased operation, the remaining energy reserves were scarce, naturally, there’s no interference shielding as mentioned, Sandora easily mastered the overall structure of the spaceship, she looked around, and found the data terminal in the cabin, "These data terminals are directly connected to the mainframe, let me see its state..."

"Sister, these are things you used back in the day." I lightly nudged Big Sister’s arm, muttering. "Do you have any thoughts on that?"

"Not much of a thought," Big Sister shrugged indifferently, "As I’ve said before, things from those days have long been forgotten. If I must say I have thoughts... It would be the notion: So turns out back in the day we arrived on Earth by spaceship..."

"But according to Lin Xue’s backcasting results, weren’t the few of us floating to Earth as fragments of souls back then?" I still thought this question was a bit contradictory, and couldn’t help but mutter.

Sister didn’t dwell too much on this issue: "By the time you encountered me, Reiji—also Lin Xue’s previous life—was already deceased, it makes sense that her backcasting results would be somewhat inaccurate. Besides, even as fragments, there was no saying we couldn’t pilot a spaceship, things related to the Empire, how many can you explain with common sense?"

Thinking about it, that’s indeed the case, the issue truly isn’t very significant, and currently, what I care more about is another matter: After failing to save the world with Big Sister (previous life), we apparently didn’t perish immediately. Judging by this spaceship stranded on Earth, it looks like we at least had one last breath (why does saying this sound so awkward?), how did we end up on Earth? Did we continue to be active for some time after landing on Earth? Or were we all dead even before that, and this spaceship automatically navigated here? 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

I mulled over these questions in my head, thinking about them over and over, becoming more bizarre the more I thought, eventually ending up with a cold sweat on my forehead... Hardly imagining how I perished back then, detailing even what I was doing at the time of death, this is indeed peculiar.

By this time, Sandora had successfully activated the cabin’s data terminal, the old machine emitted a very faint humming sound, then displayed a large array of chaotic images, Sandora quickly switched pages, frowning gradually: "No wonder it booted without authorization... It was operated by a few Earthlings, the permission identification database is actually empty?"

Upon hearing that Sandora made progress, I quickly leaned over to check out the situation, only to see the data terminal refreshing its database entries, each entry’s reading permission was N/A—absolutely open state.

"No permission control?" I was dumbfounded, Xyrin Apostles’ creation surprisingly lacks a permission system, this is just as horrifying as Dingdang scoring a perfect test score, "...The root database is completely open! Anyone can control it."

"But the database is in read-only status, and the read-only lock is very meticulous," Sandora quickly said, "Although everyone can turn on the equipment here, no one can modify what is stored in the database, this indicates the security mechanism of the database is still functioning, this open permission state might have been deliberate... Ah Jun, what do you think?"

Unexpectedly, Sandora threw this question at me, but after some serious thought, I had a bit of an idea: "It’s open for reading, perhaps Big Sister in her previous life considered the possibility of her own reincarnation, and after reincarnation, the spaceship might not acknowledge her previous permissions, so she took advantage of her ability to control the spaceship to set the database and other things to open status, allowing herself to use them after reincarnation... My goodness, why did I suddenly recall the burial goods left in tombs for the deceased to use in the afterlife?"

Big Sister said not a word, came over and twisted my ears left three circles right three circles straight away...

However, my guess should still be reliable: Regardless of how long we survived on the spaceship after the tower-overrun failure back then, Sister (in her previous life) should have made arrangements for her reincarnation, she was then the top leader of the Fifteenth Day Zone specializing in development, well-versed in Soul Studies, naturally considering major issues like losing reincarnation permissions. Perhaps that’s why she opened the spaceship database but set it to read-only.

It’s just that Sister probably didn’t anticipate her reincarnation would become so complex because of the Void Creature.

While we were about to activate the database according to log order, Lin Feng’s voice suddenly came from behind: "Uh... Should we step aside?"

I turned my head to see both Lin Feng and Ding Ling had subtle smiles on their faces, the latter opened her raspy voice: "Feels like we’re seeing some incredible stuff, this counts as your secret, right?"

"Actually, letting you see wouldn’t have much impact," I rubbed my chin and said, "But you might as well step out—staying here would leave you seeing things as confusing as ever."

"Then we’ll head out first, gather all the parties involved in this incident, don’t forget to come tidy up afterwards." Lin Feng left this remark, then exited the spaceship with Ding Ling.

Sandora then turned to the data terminal: "Alright, now let’s see what you left behind in your previous lives..." (To be continued. If you like this work, welcome to radian.com to vote for recommendations and monthly votes, your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please go to m.qidian.com to read.)