Chapter 1423 — Taking the Long View

"And to think you once swore up and down that you were the Chosen of the Night." Gao Yang waved a hand, but just as he was about to say something more, he heard the door of the observation room suddenly pushed open. He turned toward the sound and saw Tyr poking her head in.

"Gao Yang, I knew you'd be here!" Seeing only Gao Yang and Amber in the room, Tyr immediately broke into a smile, and her long tail wriggled in after her as she entered, remembering at the last moment to close the door with its tip. "I've been looking all over for you."

"…You've turned those six clones back into a tail again?" Gao Yang had meant to ask why she'd come, but then he noticed the long tail behind her and remarked offhandedly, "I thought you planned to keep those six clones around long-term."

"Oh, the conference is over, so why would I keep them? Controlling seven bodies walking upright all day is exhausting," Tyr immediately wagged her tail tip. "Walking in this form is way more comfortable—at least the center of gravity is stable…"

"…I'll never really understand how you Sea Demons think," Gao Yang cleared his throat twice before asking, "You've been looking for me for a while? What's the matter?"

"Oh, just to let you know, I've reported all the results of the Tarash Conference to the Queen. Antaveen is making preparations now—in a while a transport ship will reach the Loren Continent and bring over all the runestones we've salvaged so far. While it's at it, it'll haul a shipful of 'cargo' back," Tyr said casually. "Also, the Queen says she'll specially assign some sisters skilled at the butterfly stroke in the netherways to infiltrate the Deep Blue Netherway, to search for the whereabouts of other runestones and to set up signal relays."

"In theory, once those signal relays detect a runestone they'll try to establish a more stable and controllable transmit-receive link. I don't know if the method will work, but trying a few more times can't hurt."

Gao Yang nodded slightly as he listened to Tyr, while Amber beside him thought for a moment and then asked, "Speaking of hauling a shipful of 'cargo' back… have you really decided that? As one of the main legions in this wasteland war, even though you're not a nation of the Loren Continent, you're entitled to a share of the joint development. And in the end you asked for just a small chunk of the Reverse Tide's corpse…"

"To us, that's far more useful than any 'resources' on land," Tyr laughed, and quietly wiped a bit of drool from the corner of her mouth. "The deep sea has everything we need, far richer than anything the land can give us. And by comparison, the corpse of a god is far rarer…"

Gao Yang had sharply noticed the glistening trace at the corner of the Sea Demon lady's mouth, and his expression turned peculiar. "Honestly, can you really bring yourselves to eat that stuff?"

"Of course we can, of course we can," Tyr nodded eagerly, her tail tip tapping rapidly against the floor with a pat-pat-pat sound as she did. "Don't you two really think it looks pretty good? I went and took a look—that flesh… *slurp*…"

Gao Yang and Amber: "…"

"Oh, there's no point telling you two, you wouldn't understand anyway," Tyr could tell from their expressions that there was a serious species gap here, and as a Sea Demon she was long used to such gaps with land races, so she waved it off carelessly. "You have no idea how many bizarre things there are in the deep sea. Something like the Reverse Tide, put in an Antaveen restaurant, would at most be a big meatball… ah, I won't describe it anymore, I can see you two are about to throw up. But then again, we're not hauling that thing back just to taste something fresh—it's mainly for research…"

Sea Demon technology allowed them to extract extremely pure and powerful energy from a god's corpse, energy the land races could not yet master but which could power their colossal starship. Gao Yang knew this, and he also knew that the Sea Demons' starship repair project had made tremendous progress over the past two years—as they gradually developed a perception of this world's "magic," the Sea Demons had finally found a way to counter "law deviation." They had successfully restarted many of Antaveen's units, and though full activation of the starship was still far off, this race that had been trapped on a "primitive planet" for hundreds of thousands of years… now finally had a glimmer of hope.

At this thought, he could not resist asking curiously, "Speaking of which, how's the repair project on your ship coming along?"

"I hear it's going pretty fast. We can now keep Antaveen's core fusion tower running stably for a while, and the energy output efficiency has reached over fifty percent," Tyr said cheerfully. "As long as energy isn't a problem, lots of things get much easier. But I don't know the details—I'm not a deepwater technician or a deep-sea witch, after all… oh, right, one more thing!"

As if suddenly remembering something, Tyr's voice rose sharply, startling both Gao Yang and Amber, and then she raised her tail tip and said with a solemn face: "I heard… they got the superluminal communications array running. Only for a very short time, though."

"Superluminal communications array?" Gao Yang was stunned and instinctively exchanged a glance with Amber beside him. After a two-second gap in his thoughts, he suddenly realized the significance behind it.

One thing flashed through his mind like lightning—communication between the stars!

"Antaveen has superluminal communications capability?" he asked instinctively, but then immediately continued, "Ah, right, of course you have that capability. It's a colossal vessel built for deep-space migration; communicating across astronomical scales would necessarily require overcoming that problem… Your superluminal communications array ran for a while—does that mean that, at least for a short time, the thing is usable?!"

"Ah… of course it's usable," Tyr said, apparently startled by the sudden, unusually grave expression on Gao Yang's face; her tail stiffened for an instant before she nodded hurriedly. "Though it's extremely unstable—we originally meant to use it to search for the other three sister ships we lost contact with, but the main antenna crashed right after completing a single scan… Right now the Great Witch Hathaway is trying to find the fault inside it…"

Amber looked at Gao Yang, then at Tyr, and racked her brain for a good while before she finally caught up with the conversation. She spoke to Gao Yang hesitantly: "Um… I don't really understand what a 'superluminal communications array' means, but I think I've guessed what you two are talking about. You're not thinking of… using that communications device on Antaveen to respond to that 'signal' we received, are you? I mean, while that device is still usable…"

Gao Yang's brow was tightly furrowed, as if engaged in intense deliberation, but in the end he shook his head. "…We can't be that reckless. Responding rashly to an alien civilization that very likely surpasses our own is hardly a wise move. This matter needs to be discussed slowly—and besides, Antaveen's superluminal communications array may not even be able to accomplish this task. From what you describe, its condition is truly dreadful—and the Sea Demons may not be willing…"

(End of this chapter)