Hao Xuan stood in front of the vault door in the middle hallway.
'I hope they're still there.'
He closed his eyes and the information about the vault door slowly came up.
With his index finger outstretched, Hao Xuan started circulating his Qi. All the Qi slowly circulated towards the finger and it started to light up. The bone and veins in the finger could be seen with the naked eye as the tip started glowing.
*HMMMMM*
A humming sound came from the door when he touched one of the symbols on the upper right corner, lighting it up as well. Hao Xuan did this more than 64 times. Tapping gently on one symbol after another, by the time he was done, the symbols formed a web that looked like a giant face from afar.
*Clank*
With a light sound, the door was unlocked and pushed open on its own. It was more than seven meters thick, made from the same black metal all the way to the other side.
Poriverse had to mine an entire planet to get just this much metal. It was extremely sturdy and reacted to Qi. He believed it could gain sentience if certain conditions were satisfied and transform into a living being made of metal. But unfortunately, he had another use for it so he couldn't allow it to evolve.
As Hao Xuan walked in, he passed through an invisible film that acted as a secondary barrier in case the vault door malfunctioned. This film was a substance extracted from the body of a Gargantuan Galaxy worm.
Contrary to its name, the Galaxy worm was about half a foot long. The reason it was called a Galaxy worm was because of this film that it created throughout its lifetime.
Anything enclosed within the film would be cut off from the outside world and would not be affected by the passage of time. This did not mean that time did not pass in the film, but only that the deterioration that one would experience from the passage of time would not occur.
So it was the perfect material for the storage of more 'sensitive' materials.
As soon as he passed through the film, the space on the other side lit up like the inside of the sun. It was so bright that even closing his eyes achieved nothing.
"F*ck, Stop stop!" he shouted as the information regarding the inner working of the vault came up and he quickly yelled in the language of the Sagax.
"Initiate Protocol Gamma: Identification of Contemporary Possessor!"
*Beep*
A ray of black light fell on Hao Xuan's head and scanned through his entire body.
"Identification Confirmed," a robotic voice said before the light vanished and everything returned to normal.
"Goddamnit, I forgot about this," he cursed while rubbing his eyes. It took him about fifteen minutes to be able to see again. That light had burned off half his retina's due to the high intensity.
He looked around and could finally see where he was. It was a closed-off room, with four more glass doors in front of him. Each of them held important materials.
"What's the status of specimens 'G' and 'D'?" he asked in the language of the Sagax again while moving to the rightmost door.
"Status: Unstable." the robotic voice replied.
Hao Xuan frowned, "Explain!"
"Failed to remove specimens intrinsic nature. Four thousand years ago they detected each other's existence. The system could not halt their advance without causing irreprehensible damage."
"What? What did you do then?" Hao Xuan's heart skipped a beat. This was what he was looking for. Out of everything here, these specimens were the second most valuable thing.
"System redirected power from non-essential functions to the barriers of each containment unit. Result was successful, but non-essential systems were damaged beyond repair."
"Oh thank god!" Hao Xuan let out a sigh of relief.
"Open Containment Unit One!"
*Clink*
The rightmost glass door retracted into the wall. Hao Xuan extended his hand and as soon as it passed through the boundaries of the containment field, an intense feeling of bloodlust and dread entered his body. He could feel the killing intent and it was so strong that it almost overcame his senses.
He could barely even breathe.
Quickly retracting his hand, Hao Xuan wiped the cold sweat off his forehead.
"F*king hell, it got even more powerful!" he mumbled while rubbing his hand which had no feeling left in it whatsoever.
He then walked over to the other side of the room, in front of the leftmost door.
"Open Containment unit Four!"
*Clink*
The glass door retracted. This time, he didn't put his hand through the containment field and instead took out a silver sword. He slowly pushed the sword in. It started shaking as soon as it entered the field.
He quickly pulled it out, only to see that half of the blade was gone, while the other half had black burn marks in the shape of long streaks.
If that was his hand, well, he wouldn't have one anymore.
"Poriverse's hypothesis was correct," Hao Xuan muttered as he brushed his finger over the black marks. They were still burning hot.
"System! Use all remaining energy to create a portable suppression field over the specimens. Use the Galaxy worms film to separate the two. The others don't matter, just make sure these two are restrained properly!" he shouted the commands, and a couple of seconds later, the system replied.
"Order confirmed. Initiating suppression fields."
Hao Xuan smiled. "Good, how long will it take?"
"ETA: Forty-Five years."
"….excuse me?"
"ETA: Forty-Five years."
A vein bulged on his forehead as he shouted angrily.
"What the actual f*ck! B*tch, I don't have 45 god damn years! Why is it taking so long?!"
"Both specimens have detected each other's presence. Energy consumption for suppression fields will not last more than 3 years if they are not properly restrained first. If the process is accelerated, specimens could suffer severe damage."
"Oh…" Hao Xuan was stumped. He wanted these two things but it would take way too long like this.
"Wait," he remembered something, "How long will it take if all available resources are used to suppress just one specimen?"
"ETA: 5 hours for one specimen."
'I knew it. The difference is qualitative, not quantitative.'
"Alright, begin suppression of Specimen 'G'!"
"Affirmative."
The glass door to the leftmost compartment closed and a loud whirring sound started coming from the other side.
'Nice. Now, let's see about you,' he walked up to the rightmost containment unit. With a wave of his hand, a sleeping white kitten appeared in his palm.
"Oi, brat, wake up!" he pinched the snoring Zhurong's ear, startling him awake.
"Meow?!!" without even getting up, Zhurong looked at him in anger, with his eyes still half-closed.
"You lazy b*stard," Hao Xuan's right eye twitched when he saw the annoyed look on Zhurongs face.
But then he smiled kindly, "You think staying in my mind palace is free? Time to pay the rent motherf*cker. Suppress it and bring me the thing inside. Go fetch!" and threw Zhurong into the containment unit like a ball.
"MEO-?!" Zhurong screamed in shock as he hurled through the air and quickly vanished behind the containment fields.
