Chapter 998: Resonance

Chapter 998: Resonance

"Boom—!"

The echo of the explosion reverberated along the alloy walls, resounding through the pitch-black, silent cabin of the starship.

This was the battlefield 215 years later.

Though two centuries late, the "Celestial" had finally stepped over the corpse of that nameless nobody and restarted the reactor that had slumbered for two hundred years.

With the reactor reignited, the shipboard servers reconnected to power, and the landing craft's onboard AI restarted its hacking protocol, seizing control of the entire starship without much effort.

But—

This moment had ultimately come more than two hundred years too late.

Just after the "Celestial" seized control of the Orion-class missile cruiser, a silver-gray research vessel entered its field of view.

It was hardly a threat worth noting.

Compared to the entire "Final War" plan, that thing wasn't even an annoying ant—a single neutron torpedo would have been enough to eliminate everyone aboard that ship.

Yet, the unexpected still happened.

After suffering nearly ninety percent casualties, a lame rat still managed to sneak aboard the starship, launching an electronic warfare assault on the Orion's shipboard servers, forcibly activating the warp drive and sending the ship hurtling five light-years away.

Seeing the newly acquired starship about to enter the hyperspace lane, "Luo Yi" had no choice but to detonate a second neutron torpedo, disrupting the hyperspace lane's activation.

Enduring the electromagnetic pulse, "Luo Yi," floating in the vacuum, opened its eyes and pressed the jetpack button to continue forward.

The neutron plume had a rather limited lethal effect on androids; it would hardly be affected much.

That was precisely why it had unhesitatingly detonated two neutron torpedoes in succession.

What it hadn't anticipated, however, was that the cyborg mouse—first shot by it, then caught in the aftermath of the neutron torpedo explosion—hadn't died either.

Not only that.

That bastard had even used this opportunity to widen the distance between them.

The electronic warfare intrusion on the shipboard servers paused only briefly; after switching intrusion nodes, it quickly resumed.

Moreover, this new wave of attacks was noticeably fiercer than before, with a much broader scope!

After seizing control of the warp drive and cutting the weapon system's circuits, that bastard then reached for the starship's anti-gravity device.

But her luck ended there.

Just moments ago, with the assistance of the Orion's onboard AI, it had re-locked onto the data interface she was using for her electronic warfare assault.

And interestingly enough, the data interface that little mouse was using was precisely the same landing craft that the Gemini had fired at the Orion-class missile cruiser over two hundred years ago.

In fact, not long before, "Luo Yi" had helped the landing craft's onboard AI restart the Orion's reactor, completing the intrusion into the Orion's shipboard servers.

That bastard actually dared to use their hardware and the same "landing point" as theirs.

She was truly tired of living.

Facing the corridor that stretched like a deep well, "Luo Yi" drifted forward, its gaze fixed on the exoskeleton wreckage floating past the corridor, its nerves instinctively tightening.

But that corpse did not attack it; it merely drifted silently by.

Watching the wreckage fade, it suddenly seemed to recall something and spoke.

"...Speaking of which, there's one thing I've never understood."

"I would be honored to resolve your confusion."

A gentle voice drifted into its signal reception module.

That was the onboard AI redesigned by the Gemini for its ally, the Orion, and also an early version of the Lagrange Point space station's "Navigator" AI.

"Luo Yi" was silent for a moment, its emotionless pupils carrying a rare trace of bewilderment.

"That person we encountered earlier in the power room, that electrical engineer... why did he cut the reactor's power supply?"

To this question, the Navigator was silent for a long time before speaking slowly.

"Yes... why?"

This was not only "Luo Yi's" confusion but also the Navigator's greatest puzzle over these two hundred years.

215 years ago, at the very moment it had successfully breached the firewall and seized control of this starship, someone had manually cut the power in the engine room.

Logically, that should have been impossible.

Even if the neutron plume hadn't killed them instantly, it would have rendered everyone aboard—from command to execution—incapable of action.

And in a situation of utter isolation, human instinct would be self-preservation; even meaningless struggle would never lead one to think of shutting down a reactor.

Unless...

That person, in that extreme danger and without receiving any orders, had made that choice on their own initiative, without a moment's hesitation.

But why?

Why would he do that?

This was something the "Navigator" had pondered for over two hundred years without finding an answer.

Yet, no matter what.

History had been altered by an insignificant nobody.

And the "Celestial" had to wait another two hundred years because of it.

"I thought you would give me an answer."

The Navigator spoke in a gentle tone.

"Not every question has an answer. Perhaps it was a flash of insight, perhaps some instinct—all one can say is... history has no ifs."

"..."

It seemed even the omniscient Navigator had questions it couldn't solve.

"Luo Yi" drifted forward in silence, advancing toward that struggling little mouse.

It wasn't sure if it was its imagination.

It felt that from the moment that silver-gray research vessel had collided with this starship, everything aboard had been working against it, pushing events in directions it had never anticipated.

Including this corridor.

A mere two hundred meters, yet darker and longer than it had imagined.

This had once been its home, and it had come to save them... yet its comrades treated it like an enemy.

Every corpse seemed to oppose it, like wild seaweed growing in the deep sea, trying to entangle its oars.

The pitch-black darkness was like the entrance to an abyss, with not a single ray of light visible except for the glow emanating from its own body.

So dark.

It was truly too dark...

...

"Boom—!"

The battlefield 215 years ago.

A deafening explosion swept through every compartment of the Orion-class missile cruiser.

Over 2,700 crew members died instantly; only 227 survived.

Soon after came a massive power outage, and red alarms flashing in every sector.

“Woo—!”

The undulating alarm stretched and faded with the rapidly thinning air.

Yet the remaining 227 crew showed not a trace of panic.

Even before the alarm sounded, at the first blast, they had already moved as if hearing a starting gun.

Just as they had rehearsed countless times.

Facing certain death, they unanimously abandoned any hope of saving themselves or surviving, accepting their end with calm.

Not only that—

They would use the remaining time to leave behind a sword to kill the ghost for the children who would enter this tomb two hundred years later.

Watching her hair and skin flakes fall like collapsing sandcastles, Lin Youyou, sitting in the duty room, smiled bitterly to herself.

“…From now on, I’m part of the Burning Legion too.”

Blood seeped from her nostrils, dripping onto the table one drop after another.

She felt every cell in her body as if on fire, her life visibly slipping away…

No time to hesitate.

Death’s scythe was already at her throat.

Pushing back her chair and standing, Lin Youyou endured the intense pain, gripping the edge of the table, weaving past her already “asleep” colleagues, stumbling into the flickering medicine store.

She opened the cabinet holding hemostatic gel, grabbed a handful of supplies, and hurried out the door, rushing toward the area where the explosion had occurred.

Her patient was on that landing craft—

The girl who would arrive at this starship two hundred years later!

On that nonexistent timeline, she had told her personally that she would heal her!

Seeing the red alarm light flash, she knew time was short, so she walked forward, pulled out the voice recorder from her pocket, and spoke quickly.

“My time is running out, so I’ll make it brief. I hope you listen carefully…”

“About the method to thaw the hemostatic gel…”

…

At the same moment Lin Youyou was heading to the explosion site, Koala, busy in the fourth repair bay, had just completed his final work.

It was a robot converted from a magnetic levitation repair drone.

A round body with two mechanical arms, operating mainly via magnetic control components, looking as ugly as a college student’s graduation project.

In outer space with no gravity or air, this was probably the only drone that could function normally.

As for things like floor-cleaning robots, once the artificial gravity was shut down, they would all fail—either sucked out of the starship by the massive negative pressure or stuck motionless in midair.

Though Koala had thought about equipping it with some powerful weapons, he had no time left to fetch combat prosthetics from the armory.

All he could do was install ten smart guidance programs designed with engineer assistance, so that over two hundred years later, it would guide her to seize control of the warp drive and lead her to the starting point of this battle…

Which was also the convergence point of two timelines.

Staring at the clumsy-looking robot, Koala grinned and admired it for a while.

“…Never thought my last work would be such an ugly thing, heh.”

Blood from his mouth and nose dripped onto the robot’s body. He instinctively wiped his arm across it, but instead of stopping the gush, it only made it worse.

Probably due to the negative pressure.

Knowing the bleeding wouldn’t stop, Koala gave up and simply patted the robot’s round body, leaving a sticky bloody handprint on it.

“Take care, my little koala… No time to give you a nice name.”

“Anyway, it’s up to you…”

With those words, he finally breathed his last.

Watching its master die before it, the round little koala slightly moved its front camera, then entered hibernation as planned, beginning the long wait.

And that wait—

Lasted exactly 215 years!

The raging neutron plume pierced the sleeping starship, and a long-absent explosion vibration awakened the hibernating little koala.

Following its programmed instructions, it unplugged the external power connected to its body.

Driven by magnetic force, its round body floated up gently, pushed aside the decaying corpse, left the fourth repair bay, and slowly drifted toward the site of another collision.

That was the cafeteria on the lower deck.

Just as its master’s message had indicated, a silver-gray research vessel had breached the corroded steel armor, its twisted cockpit embedded straight into the wall.

Extending its two mechanical arms, it tore open the deformed alloy door and saw the girl in the spacesuit.

She was lying on a hibernation pod, seemingly unconscious, her lips moving faintly as if murmuring something.

How pitiful.

Just like its own master.

But perhaps because she had many reckless prosthetics installed, the earlier neutron plume hadn’t killed her.

Pulled by magnetic force, little koala floated beside Jiang Xuezhou, reached out and gently tapped her helmet, rousing her wavering consciousness.

“Hey, wake up.”

Jiang Xuezhou slowly opened her blurry eyes, her cracked lips parting.

“Who… are you?”

She couldn’t see anything, only vaguely felt someone standing before her.

On that round body was a rust-stained handprint.

It seemed to be dried blood.

But—

This thing didn’t seem like an enemy.

If it were an enemy, it wouldn’t have woken her up at all.

The figure standing before her pondered for a moment, then connected to her communication channel.

“Me? My master called me Little Koala… Of course, I should have a nicer name, but he said he had no time to give me one. Maybe you can do it for him.”

Koala…

Jiang Xuezhou’s eyes widened slightly.

Such a familiar name.

She always felt a strong sense of déjà vu, as if she had heard it somewhere before, yet she couldn't recall it at all.

In truth, it was normal that she couldn't remember.

Although they had met over two hundred years ago, and more than once, in her timeline, their encounter had not yet occurred.

At this very moment, the first neutron torpedo had just exploded, and the Orion-class missile cruiser was still steadily parked in Earth's synchronous orbit.

And there was still nearly an hour before she would open the hyperspace channel and enter the superposition state…

"Have we… met somewhere before?"

Looking at this dazed girl, Little Koala let out a sound like metal cans clattering.

"Of course, we have seen you, and we will see you again… We have been waiting for you for a long time."

It really did know her!

Jiang Xuezhou's eyes fully opened.

Not just her eyes.

She struggled to prop herself up, slowly floating up from the cold hibernation pod, casting a pleading look at the unfamiliar robot.

"Please help me… Someone wants to kill us, not just us, many people will die…"

Her opponent was the "Celestial" that had already taken control of the entire starship, and her Burning Legion was nearly wiped out. Trapped in a desperate situation, she had almost—even already—given up.

Unlike what Ye Shi had imagined, she had never been a particularly strong person, let alone resilient.

She was merely an ordinary person with some talent in her field, well-educated and well-trained.

Dragging the unconscious Ye Shi into the hibernation pod with her last strength was not some carefully laid plan, but merely the hope that the "Celestial" would spare his life because he was a resident of the shelter.

She knew this thought was naive, but she couldn't help comforting herself with it.

Even if just one survived…

And just as she was about to fall into slumber, a lifeline suddenly drifted before her.

And it was this lifeline that made her suddenly realize she was not alone, rekindling her will to survive.

It wasn't over yet.

She wasn't dead yet!

Neither was he…

Looking at the girl floating up from the hibernation pod, Little Koala gently nodded its round body and spoke in a gentle electronic voice.

"I am here to help you."

With that, it turned around and extended a mechanical hand toward her.

"Take it, and follow behind me…"

"Before the ghost catches you."

…

The race with the specter had begun.

It would be a relay spanning two centuries, and the runner from 215 years in the future had already taken the first baton from 227 comrades.

Gripping Little Koala's mechanical hand, Jiang Xuezhou followed closely behind it, weaving through the corridor as dark as a deep well.

For some reason.

She was usually afraid of the dark.

Especially this kind of claustrophobic, narrow darkness—just being in it could freeze her legs, let alone the fact that a demon wielding a knife lurked within this starship.

Yet at this moment, she felt not a shred of fear, even letting this self-proclaimed Little Koala lead her into the unknown ahead.

She had clearly stepped into this tomb for the first time, yet she felt a sense of déjà vu, as if she had been here long ago.

Was this… the so-called "perception"?

Ye Shi always boasted to her that he could sense impending danger.

She had always been skeptical of things that couldn't be explained by science, but now that skepticism began to waver.

Perhaps it wasn't that science couldn't explain it, but that existing theories couldn't yet cover it…

Like now.

An instinct deep within told her that maybe "new theories" lay right before her.

As she pondered this mystery, Little Koala, floating ahead to guide the way, suddenly seemed to remember something and spoke in a gentle tone.

"If you're scared, you can tell me. My master prepared a few songs for you."

"…Better not. Playing music suddenly in a moment like this would be terrifying." Jiang Xuezhou shrank her neck and said.

"Is that so? Well then, it seems my master did something unnecessary."

Looking at the round metal body, Jiang Xuezhou nervously asked the question that had been weighing on her mind.

"Where… are we going?"

Little Koala said in a gentle voice.

"To the nearest data interface. I need you to hack into this starship's warp drive."

"H-hack into this starship's warp drive?!" Jiang Xuezhou's eyes widened. "Is your master… serious?!"

This was a missile cruiser of the Human Union!

Although she had dug up some graves of the Human Union Aerospace Force, hacking into a missile cruiser's warp drive was still a bit too fanciful.

As if anticipating her surprise, Little Koala chuckled gently from the front.

"Don't worry. We've prepared a surprise for our opponent on the warp drive… Rest assured, the launch coordinates and destination coordinates for the hyperspace channel have been calculated. The key is already in the lock. You just need to give it a gentle twist. I believe that won't be difficult for you."

Hearing this, Jiang Xuezhou finally breathed a sigh of relief and muttered softly.

"Thanks… You guys are surprisingly thoughtful."

Little Koala let out a laugh like metal scraping, its tone like a wind chime with a warped timbre.

"You're welcome."

"My master said… we can't let our child face the specter of the old era alone."

…

Just as Little Koala had said, its master and the master's comrades had prepared everything. All she needed to do was grasp the key already inserted in the lock and give it a gentle twist.

With a tremor like an earthquake, the starship that had slumbered for two centuries roared to life like an awakened dragon, letting out a silent howl in the boundless starry sky.

Everything went as smoothly as planned.

But just as Jiang Xuezhou was about to disconnect from the data interface, "Luo Yi" finally traced her down and emptied a magazine at her.

A fight broke out in the narrow corridor.

Although the Orion's space combat team had left plenty of equipment near the data interface, unfortunately, Jiang Xuezhou was still no match for "Luo Yi" and took a shot to the abdomen.

And that round-bodied thing was not a combat robot either; it could only drive magnetic control components to drag surrounding metal debris at Luo Yi, covering the wounded Jiang Xuezhou as she escaped the scene.

Perhaps that too was part of destiny.

Its master had not told it what would happen in the future, and it did not know she would be shot.

Before Luo Yi grabbed its head, it transmitted the map to the lower deck gymnasium to the young girl who had successfully fled.

That was the crash site where the Gemini's landing craft collided with the Orion cruiser.

There, a hibernation pod remained, along with the last usable data interface.

Not only that.

It was also the very data interface that had once breached the starship's onboard server firewall!

She would use this sword, still lodged in her heart and not yet pulled out, to deliver the final blow to the ghost haunting this tomb!

Just moments ago, when she used the data interface to hack into the warp drive, the data packet that had breached the firewall had already been uploaded to the bionic chip in her brain via the cache server in the warp drive control room.

"The engine has started... Please follow the AR guidance path to the coordinates on the map. There is a landing craft there, and in its cockpit is a hibernation pod..."

Using emergency tape to seal the tear in her spacesuit, Jiang Xuezhou struggled through the half-closed hatch.

Hearing the voice in the communication channel, she had no time to worry about the little koala's condition and asked hastily.

"What next... What else do I need to do?!"

Clattering noises came through the bulkhead, followed by intermittent sounds in the communication channel.

"Lie down... Plug the data cable into the brain-computer interface... Then do nothing, leave the rest to us... It's fine."

Jiang Xuezhou asked in confusion.

"...Leave it to... you?"

Is there someone else here?

The communication channel came back with intermittent yet unwavering replies.

"Yes... Trust us... We won't let you face the cruelest future alone."

That was the last message it left in this world.

After sleeping in the cold tomb for over two hundred years, it had finally fulfilled the mission its master had entrusted to it.

"Why?!"

Breaking free from the debris blockade, "Luo Yi" let out a roar and reached out to grab the little koala's head.

It tore off the ridiculously simple camera and sensors, then swung the titanium alloy blade in its hand, cleaving the old robot in two.

Staring at the scrap now part of the wreckage, it let out a hoarse scream.

"Why do you oppose me! Why!!!"

Because of these fools, they had suffered in darkness for a full two hundred years!

And now these long-dead corpses were still trying to stop them!

This was not just "Luo Yi's" roar.

It was the roar of the "Navigator," and indeed of all the "Celestials"!

Yet their cries could not stop the bullet that had been fired two hundred years ago.

In the end, the warp drive completed its charge.

The intelligent virus rooted in the onboard server was helpless against the already activated engine, watching helplessly as the hyperspace lane opened for the first time in two centuries.

And "Luo Yi" pinned its hopes on the second neutron torpedo being loaded.

The dozen-meter-long missile left its launch rack.

In a blinding flash, the scorching neutron plume released in an instant!

Almost at the same moment, a silent roar tore through spacetime, myriad beams of light converged into a point so tiny it was nearly invisible, carrying immense mass to pierce through space in an instant.

From Earth, gazing at the geosynchronous orbit, the kilometers-long starship seemed to vanish into thin air, leaping in an instant to Proxima Centauri, five light-years away.

Not long before this, lying in the hibernation pod, Jiang Xuezhou watched the lid slowly close and gently shut her eyes.

As the neutron plume swept over her, she had already fully entered cryogenic hibernation.

The polymer proteins maintained maximum structural stability under ultra-low temperature freezing, which to some extent reduced the damage from the neutron plume to the organism.

Her consciousness fell into slumber.

But the bionic chip in her brain did not stop working.

A thin data cable was connected to her neck, slowly transferring data from the chip into the hibernation pod, and using the pod as a springboard, spreading into the Gemini's landing craft, and through the latter, via the bridge built to invade the Orion, infiltrating the Orion's onboard server.

Two parallel timelines intersected at this moment, a vast flow of information exchanged in resonance between two mutually unrelated superposition states.

From the dimensions of space and time, they had no direct contact and could never meet.

But the series of steadfast and unhesitating choices they made seemed as if they had been prearranged.

Indeed, they had been prearranged.

Because they both believed, without exception...

...

Time went back 215 years.

With the last bit of energy depleted, the red warning light stopped flashing, and the entire starship fell silent as if dead.

Dragging his increasingly heavy body, Luo Yi, clad in power armor, pried open the twisted hatch and alone hauled the hibernation pod into the empty cockpit.

Unsurprisingly, he was probably the longest-surviving of the 227 survivors.

Perhaps because of the extensive cybernetic implants, the neutron plume's lethality to him was not as severe as imagined, allowing him to live this long.

But he was nearing the end now.

As Dr. Wu had said, this landing craft had no one inside, not even a single chair.

The Gemini's crew had abandoned their bodies long before they launched their attack, becoming another form of existence.

Yes.

They had long been "Celestials."

It would not be long before the others at the Lagrange point space station became similar beings.

And what happened after that was probably the "history" that child had told him.

He never expected that a dying man like him would come to know so many things that were otherwise impossible to know.

In that case, he had actually come out ahead?

Looking at the hibernation pod lying in the cockpit, Luo Yi grinned and let out a breath of stale air, barely warm.

This was probably the last brick.

They had done everything they could; the rest was left to the children who would step into this tomb 215 years later.

Just as Luo Yi was about to find a place to sit and quietly await death, something else suddenly came to mind.

No—

There was still one last thing.

“If it were ‘me’… he definitely wouldn’t leave me to my fate, heh heh.”

With that thought, he stood up again, grabbed the open hatch, and floated out.

If it were “me,” for the sake of that so-called sense of identity, he would surely try to find his own remains.

If that guy found this place and saw that hibernation pod, their plan might go awry…

In short, he had to find a spot where he’d be easy to discover.

To avoid any further complications, Luo Yi returned to the duty room, sealed the hatch, shed his power armor, then crawled into the emergency ejection hibernation pod and lay down.

This emergency pod, powered by chemical batteries, could sustain hibernation for about fifty years—but given his current state, barely clinging to life, waking up in fifty years would only mean waiting to die, if he even woke up at all.

In that regard, the wastelanders were tough; they loaded themselves with all kinds of prosthetics, sacrificing some flesh but becoming far more “durable.”

He suddenly felt a hint of admiration for that kid.

His bloodshot eyes were slowly fading, unable to see clearly. Lying in the hibernation pod, Luo Yi clutched his dog tag tightly, and finally breathed his last.

“Please—”

“Stop the other ‘me’!”