Chapter 1449: Xia Chen slumbers Eternally Here!
The search began.
Traveling Buddha and Xia Fan headed off in different directions, Traveling Buddha to the stern while Xia Fan went to the bow, where the command center was located.
Whoosh!
Traveling Buddha appeared rather confident as he rode the space hoverboard, riding it like a skateboard toward the rear of the ship. His occasional shouts showed that he was rather enjoying himself.
!!
Traveling Buddha wasn’t just an unconventional person, he was also very playful. He considered searching for usable modules and exploring the ruins of Ashen Dragon and Hidden Moon very fun games.
Xia Fan chuckled helplessly, and then used his speed to charge off in the other direction.
He was shocked by the immensity and complexity of the Avatar’s structure. He had once dreamed about owning this sort of giant ship one day.
Alas, within the union, warship usage was strictly regulated, and even the elder statesmen of the Special Investigation Bureau didn’t have the right to own such a fierce capital ship.
Even in the future, if Xia Fan was able to get his hands on an enormous ship like the Avatar, he would have to stay in the Outer Frontier. The government would never permit him to bring it back to the Union.
Xia Fan was very fast, and he moved swiftly through the layers of a vessel, searching for usable modules, and also for traces of his family.
The Skywing uniform remnant Xia Fan had found in the black market showed that the Skywings had suffered casualties in this battle. However, Xia Fan wasn’t sure where his family member had been buried. If he could find the grave, he wanted to pay his respects.
—
Time flew by. Even with Xia Fan’s speed, he still needed a long time to thoroughly search the giant Avatar.
He found many one-man hoverboards floating around in a cabin. Standing on one and holding the handlebars, one could swiftly fly through the various compartments.
Judging by that, it could be seen that the crew members who had lived on this ship had also needed transportation tools. After all, this carrier was just too big.
After spending an entire day, Xia Fan finally arrived at the command center.
That was actually quite fast. Traveling Buddha had yet to shoot out his signal flare, meaning that he had yet to find a usable module or any strange areas.
At the start, Traveling Buddha had been brimming with the desire to search the carrier, but after a long time finding nothing, he was probably getting bored, right?
The command center’s sealed door had been blasted open from the inside, clearly the work of the Skywings.
The damage done by high-speed punches was clearly different from the damage done by cannons. The marks left by the Skywings had no rhyme or reason, as savage as the biting and clawing of wild beasts.
Xia Fan entered through the destroyed door.
As a supercarrier, the Avatar had a huge command center that spanned six floors. In the center was a skywell and the captain’s chair.
Based on the number of seats, the carrier probably required several thousand technicians and staff officers in order to be considered fully manned.
The entrance was on the sixth floor. Xia Fan stepped over to the skywell and looked down. He saw that someone had taken the captain’s chair and replaced it with a memorial stele.
“What is that?” Xia Fan was curious and jumped down.
Standing in the center of the skywell offered him an excellent view. In front of him was a massive ceiling-to-floor window, surrounded by various command stations. When standing here, the captain could observe and command the entire area.
There were words carved on the stele. At the very top was the winged insignia of the Skywings, which left Xia Fan stunned.
Before he could read the words on the stele, he noticed that there was a sleeping capsule behind the stele.
The sleeping capsule had probably been moved over from another room. Once the captain’s chair had been removed, the sleeping capsule had been installed in its place. It had been linked to the energy system and had a liquid nitrogen cycler installed.
But what left Xia Fan confused was that the sleeping capsule was open, and there was no body inside.
Frowning, Xia Fan studied the memorial stele.
This was a very strange memorial stele. Alas, Xia Fan had never seen his parents or his family, or else he would have recognized that this memorial stele had the traditional flying eaves of Chinese buildings.
The flying eaves on the four corners curved up beautifully, and there were also four guardian dragon beasts, just like in old-fashioned traditional Chinese buildings.
Xia Fan had been born in Ashen Moon, so he had never seen buildings of this style before, leaving him confused. He only vaguely sensed that this building style was related to the Skywing Clan’s legacy.
The largest words on the memorial stele read, ‘Xia Chen of the Skywing eternally slumbers here.’
Xia Fan’s heart thumped. The person eternally slumbering here had the same surname as him, Xia, so he had probably been Xia Fan’s senior!
He was in a very complicated emotional state, excited that he had found traces of his family, but sad because a relative had died in battle.
Next were smaller words below. Like the words on his blanket, they were squarish characters with an ordered pattern and bold strokes. There was an indescribable beauty to them.
The people of Ashen Moon didn’t install language chips in their brains. Rather, they relied on spectacles or bone implant systems to differentiate words and sounds. Thus, reading Chinese characters wasn’t a problem for Xia Fan.
The contents were like this:
The Skywings had always revered the Cosmic Gate, for they knew that beyond the Cosmic Gate was the unfathomable Great Chiliocosm.
But a certain incident had changed the minds of the Skywings.
The youngest son of Patriarch Xia Fan went missing when he was one month old. The Skywings had thus searched the world that they lived in.
The universe that the Skywings lived in was much bigger than Ashen Moon, and there were many universal planes. But there was no trace of Xia Fan in any of these universes.
Evidence indicated that some enemy of the Skywings had kidnapped Xia Fan and fled through a Cosmic Gate.
The Skywings never gave up, nor did they abandon their family members. Thus, they gathered their forces at the Cosmic Gate. In addition to the Skywings, their allies had also come to help.
They finally found a way to open the Cosmic Gate, so after leaving behind a defensive force, the rest of them headed into the Cosmic Gate, led by Patriarch Xia Fei.
As they had expected, the Cosmic Gate was a path to the Great Chiliocosm, but what the Skywings had not expected was that the Cosmic Gate could also distort time!
The Skywings became lost in the Great Chiliocosm. They couldn’t find Xia Fan, nor could they find their way home.
Although the Skywings were powerful, conquering every universe they came across, they were never able to figure out the rules behind the Cosmic Gate and were stuck in the cycle of worlds.
Their burial traditions required Xia Chen to be sent home for burial after his death in battle. Alas, the Skywings couldn’t find the way back, so they had buried him here in Ashen Moon.
As for why Xia Chen had died, it was because of a plot by Ashen Dragon and Hidden Moon.
A negotiation site had been chosen in the Char Star Region, but Ashen Dragon and Hidden Moon had instead gathered a great fleet and suddenly attacked, leading to Xia Chen’s death.
Thus, following Skywing tradition, they had destroyed the fleet and killed all the crew members in revenge for Xia Chen’s death.
After Xia Chen’s burial, in order to avoid his corpse from being desecrated, the Skywings had set up the cosmic storm to keep out intruders!
As for Ashen Dragon and Hidden Moon, the Skywings had originally hoped to work with the overlords of Ashen Moon, but the ambush and Xia Chen’s death had breached their bottom line.
The moment Xia Chen died, Ashen Dragon and Hidden Moon were fated to be wiped out, for the Skywings had pronounced a death penalty on them. Anyone who dared to offend the Skywings would face their ceaseless retribution.
The stele lastly left the inscription of the Skywing and a strange date: Earth Calendar 2937 CE.
After reading the contents of the stele, Xia Fan almost stopped breathing.
All because of a baby with the same name as him, the Skywings had killed their way through the Great Chiliocosm!
All because of Xia Chen’s death, the Skywings had obliterated Ashen Dragon and Hidden Moon!
What dedication and boldness!
His family was searching for a baby called Xia Fan?
Could that baby be him?
He had been abandoned under the Skydome when he was only a few months old and had been wrapped up in a blanket with the Skywing insignia. Xia Fan felt that it was possible.
In other words, his father was called Xia Fei, and he was the current Skywing patriarch?
Xia Fan also wondered that if his enemy had brought him to Ashen Moon and abandoned him here, could his enemy still be living in Ashen Moon?
Since it was his enemy, why hadn’t they killed him while he was still a baby?
Xia Fan found it impossible to understand these things, and his heart ached. To search for him, his family had fallen into the Great Chiliocosm and was stuck in an endless cycle. This was not what he had wanted to discover
Xia Fan clenched his fists and muttered, “Why were they so stubborn? It would have been fine if they had just forgotten me!”
If they hadn’t been looking for him, his family wouldn’t have had such a tough time and wouldn’t have taken such a big risk.
Xia Fan, who had never lived in a real family, didn’t understand that to not give up and never abandon anyone wasn’t just the Skywing slogan, but their conviction, and convictions were not something time and space could change.
If the Skywings had given up, they would no longer be Skywings!
As for their ceaseless revenge, that was the tradition of the Demon Sealing Blade. Those who killed their people would have their entire clan exterminated! This belief was also written in the genetic code of the Skywings.
Xia Fan sat down on the ground slowly, crossing his legs and staring at the alloy memorial stele.
If he had the ability, Xia Fan really would have charged into the Cosmic Gate to look for his family. Alas, his reason told him that that was impossible.
The powerful Skywings had needed a long time before they finally found a method to enter the Cosmic Gate. As for him, he was far from the needed rank to pass through the Cosmic Gate, and he had no clue about the method.
Thus, he could only remain in Ashen Moon. Even though he didn’t want that, there was nothing he could do.
Xia Fan suddenly stood up. He had been so focused on the memorial stele that he had forgotten about the sleeping capsule. His family member should have been there in eternal slumber, so where was Xia Chen’s body?
He carefully inspected the open sleeping capsule.
Xia Fan saw signs that it had been pried open. It was clear that someone had come here after Xia Chen had been put to rest and then forced open the lock to steal the body!
Stealing the body? The only suspect Xia Fan could think of was Murder Shrine!
These special ability users who had betrayed the three Federations often stole corpses. They didn’t care about ordinary corpses, only the corpses of famous individuals of Ashen Moon.
Xia Chen came from the Skywings, so if Murder Shrine’s people had come here, it would make sense if they had taken Xia Chen’s corpse.
For some reason, the Murder Shrine wanted the bodies of high-ranked special ability users. They probably would have been ecstatic after getting Xia Chen’s body, right?
“These accursed scoundrels!” Xia Fan roared in anger.
Since it was the conviction of the Skywings to never give up and never abandon anyone, and as he was probably the only living Skywing in Ashen Moon, Xia Fan was responsible for getting back Xia Chen’s corpse.
Xia Fan didn’t dare imagine what the Murder Shrine would have done to Xia Chen’s corpse after taking it. The mere thought made him feel like his heart was getting stabbed.
The question of why the Char Star Region had items with the Skywing symbol marked on them had now been solved!
But Xia Fan did not feel relieved because of this. On the contrary, he faced an even more confusing problem.
Where was his family now? Had they wandered off to another world through the Cosmic Gate?
Where was Xia Chen’s body? Why had Murder Shrine truly stolen Xia Chen’s body?
In the face of all these lingering questions, Xia Fan could only smile bitterly.
He was too young and he was still far too low of a rank to bear the wings and fly across the universe. There was no doubt that it would be difficult to find the answers to all these questions.
Regardless, Xia Fan felt like he had to survive first, and only then would he have a chance to take each riddle one by one. That was the only way he could approach things.
Suddenly, a bright white light streaked across space and through Xia Fan’s field of vision.
Xia Fan looked out the window and saw that a signal flare was burning fiercely in space.
“It’s Traveling Buddha!” Xia Fan realized with a start.
