Chapter 353 — What the Hell Is This, a Poem?

At first there was only a small handful of red, but it swiftly expanded across the whole field of view, until at last nearly all the space stations had shifted into malfunctioning or offline status, and only the last few shining points still twinkled their radiance alone in the void.

Only then did the information stored in the Eternal Slate truly come to an end. A familiar wave of vertigo struck, and Gao Yang's spirit swiftly withdrew from that "transcendent" state. When the scene before his eyes steadied, he saw, exactly as expected, Amber's big round face...

In fact, this half-elf pulled this stunt every single time. Gao Yang had long since gone from accustomed to numb, and by now could ignore it entirely. He simply reached out with practiced ease and shoved Amber aside, then began frowning and mulling things over on his own.

He had discerned a great deal from that last image, and thought of a great deal, and what he saw and thought left his heart unable to settle for a long, long time.

There really were things out in space. A vast quantity of things!

That super-advanced civilization that had left this world so many years ago, sailing off into the distance and never to be heard from again—they had left behind a systematic network of monitoring stations and administrative facilities in the space above this planet. It was just that, with the passage of time, these monitoring stations and facilities had one by one broken down and lost contact. And that monitoring satellite he had latched onto during his first crossing... must be one of the last remaining devices still in operation!

Were those installations still up in the sky now? Gao Yang reckoned that nine out of ten of them were.

They might have merely lost their communications systems, but the orbital control systems had a very good chance of outlasting the communications systems. Perhaps over the long years some space facilities had indeed crashed down onto the earth, but there had to be remnants left behind. After all, that perfectly ordinary satellite he had once clung to had survived; there was no reason why the larger, longer-lasting space facilities should have all crashed instead.

But he could not observe a single one of them... Whether by magic like Eagle Eye or by telescopes using pure optical principles, he could not see any man-made object in space... Could it be that the stealth systems on those space facilities were even more advanced than their orbital control systems?

Gao Yang furrowed his brow and pondered there. Only after finding himself temporarily at a loss did he let out a breath. He raised his head, saw Amber still standing beside him, and blinked slightly. "Hey, you're still here?"

"Of course I'm still here!" Amber planted her hands on her hips. "You shoved me aside just now, and now you turn around and forget?"

"Ah... I didn't notice just now," Gao Yang said, tapping his brow to shake the last lingering trace of dizziness from his mind. Then he stood up and worked his arms. "How long was I 'asleep'?"

"About half an hour, but judging by your face you look like you haven't slept in three days," Amber said with a pout. "I know what you saw, you know. You can sense all sorts of strange things from all sorts of strange places..."

"What kind of way is that to put it?" Gao Yang shot the half-elf a glance. "Put the Eternal Slate away, together with the first one. As for what I saw... even if I explained it to you, you wouldn't understand."

"Hmph, you cheapskate," Amber muttered. Then, as she stowed the Eternal Slate away, she kept grumbling, "Honestly, such a precious thing, and you really trust me to put it away? Aren't you afraid I'll secretly take it and sell it?"

Gao Yang laughed at that. "Go ahead. If you've got the guts, find someone who dares to buy it and sell it. I guarantee that the moment you flash that thing, twenty church knight orders will be coming to hack you to pieces, and don't expect me to protect you then."

Amber immediately shrank her neck, as though those twenty church knight orders had already come knocking. "Eek! You say the scariest things!"