Chapter 889 — A Fleeting Glimpse

But suddenly, a small portion of this giant space ring "awakened." On the side facing the planet's surface, several lights blazed up without warning; within the corresponding ring-chambers, lights flickered in and out of being. Maintenance robots that had slept for millions of years crawled out of their hibernation pods; precision, advanced survey drones raced swiftly along the rails on the ring's inner face. This colossus seemed to stretch itself, as though it might break free of its long slumber the very next second.

Yet the awakening process halted as abruptly as it had begun—the lit region ultimately remained confined to one small patch on the ring's inner face. The rest of the giant ring's structure still held to its deathly stillness; nothing in the darkness answered.

On the side of the giant ring facing the ground, outside a certain chamber structure cloaked in darkness, there gaped a massive breach. Radiating tears stretched from the armor plating all the way to beside a polymer dome; shattered fragments still drifted near the breach. The inner airtight doors had sealed themselves automatically; the power systems had gone offline years ago; the sparks and smoke of that time had long since dissipated into the depths of space, leaving behind only the hideous, dreadful wounds in place—and a few drops of pale golden blood...

...

"Error. Unable to activate Sector C-18. Subsystem offline."

"Takeover failed. Error. Unable to activate Sector C-18. Subsystem offline. Backup systems unresponsive."

The ceaseless prompts rang out in his "mind," and Gao Yang at last gave up his futile efforts.

His gaze came to rest upon the far end of the ocean southeast of the Loren Continent. There, far from human civilization, across the endless expanse of sea, he could already make out the winding outline of a coastline.

He recalled the intelligence he had previously gathered, separately, from the Sirens and from Selina Gale—

Seven hundred years ago, Gao Yang Cecil and the last Storm Priests had undertaken a mysterious voyage. They had first headed east across the Loren Continent, and afterward, with the Sirens' aid, set out along a safe route to the south...

Southeast of the Loren Continent, Gao Yang Cecil's expedition had discovered a new continent, and deep within that land stood a tower that pierced the heavens...

That tower seemed to bear some connection to the colossal towers the elven ancestors had seen upon the southwestern seas, and when Gao Yang Cecil had ventured alone into the depths of the continent all those years ago, it was highly likely that he had climbed that giant tower and received some manner of "revelation" within it...

Now Gao Yang was almost a hundred percent certain that he was looking upon that new continent.

What had existed only as data in intelligence reports was now confirmed; evidence long since swallowed by history he now beheld with his own eyes.

The new continent to the southeast of the Loren Continent did exist! That landmass Gao Yang Cecil had visited in his day lay across the distant seas east of the Silver Empire!

But he could only confirm that the continent existed; he could not see into its interior—though he now possessed a broader vantage, he still could not break past the limits of his observation range.

Of that tower out on the ocean, at least, he could still make out the base and a portion of the shaft; toward the continent... he could see only the coastline.

Gao Song swept his gaze from east to west, then from west to east again, and each time his vision reached its limit, the prompt tone of the subsystem going offline sounded in his mind.

This was not the same as when he observed the earth by satellite—with satellite observation there was no such prompt; the edge of the field of view was simply the edge, with no false alarms.

The subsystem was offline, so other regions could not be activated; because other regions could not be activated, he could not observe anything beyond his field of view. This meant that the space facility he was currently linked to was of a scale far beyond imagination—originally, this facility should have been able to observe those two giant towers, and even targets farther still.

It was only that for some reason, most of its structure was presently offline, so that Gao Yang could activate only a portion of its "lenses."

In that strange, inhuman state of perception, Gao Xi mused slowly. He could not "see" his own condition, nor determine his surroundings; with only a single viewpoint facing the earth, he could judge only by inference what it was he was truly linked to.

It might be an orbital facility even vaster than a satellite, with a more complex structure and function; perhaps it was divided into several modules, each capable of operating independently—which would explain the damaged regions and the problems with the subsystem.

Then... was there a way for him to figure out where the fault lay, or to try repairing the thing? For instance, activating some auto-repair function or other...

Gao Yu knew his idea was a bit fantastical, but he still instinctively issued a command in his "mind"—he did not know precisely how to inquire or command, so he could only try, slowly:

"What is the current status of the subsystem?"

"Error. Unable to query subsystem."

"Is there any repair plan?"

The system prompt tone answered with silence.

"That subsystem—is there any redundant system that can replace it?"

The prompt tone remained silent.

Afterward Gao Yang tried several more different questions, yet still received no answer he wanted.

The so-called subsystem seemed to be damaged quite thoroughly, and the voice that responded in his mind had no usable repair plan of its own—it might even be broken itself, so that faced with certain questions it simply lacked any response at all.

At last, Gao Yang asked a final question in helplessness: "How exactly did the damage happen?"

This time, the prompt tone that had been silent through several rounds of question and answer unexpectedly responded. Gao Shao immediately heard a voice sound in his mind: "Keyword detected... query complete. Beginning playback of system log."

Before Gao Yang could form any thought, he felt his vision blur, and in the next second he saw a new scene appear before his eyes:

It still looked like a picture overlooking the earth, but around the edges of the image there now appeared symbols and text bearing parameters, displaying respectively the planetary data and the energy readings of the giant planet at the time. He realized this was an observation record from long ago, and from it he deduced—this thing had been running automatically all along, without any intervention from him, the "satellite spirit," continuously collecting data on this planet!

Along with these surfacing thoughts, he began to watch this image record from long ago in earnest.

At first, the image showed only nearly motionless land and atmosphere, and this scene lasted for nearly half a minute.

Then, a gleam of radiance suddenly appeared in Gao Song's field of view!