Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Most of the civilizations that successfully escaped the apocalyptic disaster of the Guardians were aided by the Denizens of the Stars. This ancient race that came from somewhere far, far away in the universe, was shrouded in mystery. Hao Ren had never found any reliable archeological evidence related to them in the Plane of Dreams. He knew nothing about their origins, or their societal structure and civilization. He did not know even know anything about their language and literature. Only one was for sure – they had very advanced tech in their hands and were very familiar with the Goddess of Creation. That was why they were able to hold themselves against the mad Guardians after the fall of the Goddess of Creation.
“They brought you the Gilded Disc?” Hao Ren stroked his chin as he arrived at yet another mystery related to the Denizens of the Stars. “Where did they find this Divine Artifact … Before the Star of Creation exploded, all the Gilded Discs should have been kept there.”
“Muru once mentioned about a special race called the Ancients. It was said they had existed in this universe long before the Goddess of Creation began to create life.” Vivian recalled the details. “We never thought to ask further about them, but could the Ancients actually be the Denizens of the Stars?”
Hao Ren considered her words. He turned to the old man and asked “What happened after? When you began your journey, were the Denizens of the Stars still with you?”
“I heard that in the first few centuries, they stayed with us. Those shining people lived in the navigation room.” The old man continued shakily. “Later, once they were sure that the Divine Artifact was working, they left, probably in search of other survivors. Our fleet continued the journey in an attempt to find a safe place to settle down, but the entire universe was affected … Every inhabitable planet we found was plagued with natural disasters. The native ecological system was ruined. We found the huge tentacles and poisonous blood pools everywhere we looked. The Divine Artifact protected our fleet, btu it could not cleanse an entire planet. After losing a few ships, we decided not to attempt any landing again. We will continue travelling until we found a planet untouched by the disaster …”
Vivian frowned. “What’s the story about the disease on your ark?”
The old man breathed heavily and spoke with a low voice. “No one knew what happened. It started without warning, and there was no effective treatment against it. We could not find the cause of the disease with our level of medical knowledge, but we knew that it affected only adults, and not children. Younger people were less affected by the disease. Adults who were infected would almost certainly die …”
“Almost certainly.” Nangong Bayue looked at the old man. “Are you the exception?”
The old man lifted his arm and studied the creases in his skin. He replied hoarsely, “Yes, I am the only survivor. I was young back then, very young. Perhaps that’s why the disease lost its hold on me. However, many people who were the same age as I was were not so lucky.”
Vivian raised her brows slightly. “How old were you when you first went into hibernation?”
“I … I don’t remember. 20, or maybe 23?” The old man’s eyes lost focus for awhile. “I remember being locked inside a white coloured room, studying and practicing every single day, trying to take in all the knowledge … When the disease spread, we knew that there was no way we could fight it. Like the ecological disaster on our home planet, this was also a catastrophe that would ruin us all. Hence, we began to make preparations. We spent a few years modifying the arks to build the Ultimate Vault. In that time, we lost half the adult population. Work on the Vault nearly came to a halt because of the lack of manpower … We sent our still healthy children into the hibernation facility, and tried our best to equip the older children with the necessary knowledge to survive in future. But these were not enough, far from enough … The oldest were 13, and the 13-year-olds made up less than one percent of the children.”
“That’s where you came in.” Hao Ren continued for the old man, trying to help him remember. “You were supposed to be the parent and teacher for the children. When the disease on the ark is eradicated one day, you were to lead them to rebuild your society?”
The old man’s head quivered like he was nodding in response. “Oh, that’s right, I’m supposed to guide them … When the children went to sleep, the adults waited for their deaths. The sanctuary will be sealed for a hundred years until the life support system finished performing a complete cleansing cycle. When everything was ready, the children would be awakened, and they would be guided by ‘parents’ to start over. There was more than one ‘parent’ at first. We were chosen by our mental fortitude and learning and leadership capabilities. Most importantly, we have to be immune to the disease. However, the candidates died one by one. The disease did not act strongly on their bodies, but they were not entirely immune to it. By the time I emerged from the training facility as the sole survivor, the children were already lining up to enter the hibernation pods. The last few dozens of survivors, already near their deaths, sent me of with a small farewell ceremony. I have been here ever since then.
Lily asked curiously, “Why were you placed here alone?”
“For my safety.” The old man explained slowly. “Because until the day the Ultimate Vault was completed, none of our medical experts could be certain that I was not infected, or a carrier or the disease. If even the last healthy adult was infected, we would rather give up on the rebuilding of our society. Hence, I was kept here in isolation, awakened every 10 years for a medical checkup … I remember now, I’ve used those before ..”
The old man pointed with a trembling finger at a corner in the room. Hao Ren saw an old device sitting there that looked like some apparatus for medical treatment.
“Every 10 years, I woke up. I would perform a blood test, and check the conditions of my skull.” The old man lowered his head and continued slowly. “Through a small window in the room, I could see the 150 thousand little cradles of life, knowing that our bloodline was held in stasis, waiting for the right time. That gave me the courage to continue on. Every time I woke up from hibernation, I would make a note on the number of times I’ve done so. I told myself, when I pass the 10th time, we’ll be able to start over … Until the day I woke up and marked 11 times in my notebook, and found the Vault’s mainframe to be unusually quiet.”
The room went quiet.
“Systems failure.” Hao Ren sighed. “The fusion reactor had a radiation leak. It spread to the entire bridge. The Vault’s mainframe awakened al the children in the hibernation pods. Perhaps it thought that the children would be better off inside the sanctuary than sleeping forever in the hibernation pods. But the mainframe missed yours.”
The old man’s wrinkled face settled in a complicated expression. He was not exactly smiling, or being sad, but it was also not an expression of surprise. Like Hao Ren, he sighed quietly. “I knew that it was a systems failure, but now I finally knew the details.”
Lily found all of this hard to accept. “It should never have happened. The Vault’s mainframe algorithm was at fault. The Vault’s location was also less than ideal. It’s separated from the sanctuary by the fusion reactor. If only you had more time to study the problem … Sigh, forget it.”
Lily could not continue on, because she knew that the people on the ark had done their best – They were dying, and they had limited options on the location to build the vault. No one knew how long they hold on to their lives before the disease took over. No one knew if they would live to see the day the vault was completed. When the Ultimate Vault was in operation, only a scant dozens of adults were still alive. They could not thoroughly test the entire system, and they had no time to plan for contingencies.
It was all a gamble, in the hopes that their plan would work.
However, no one was immune from the hands of fate.
“How did you carry on after that?” Vivian stared at the old man’s face. It was deeply wrinkled, dry, and thin. That face was only about 20 years old when it first entered this room, a face of youth. There was no sign of that youth now. “How … How long were you awake?”
“A long time, I tried to stay awake. At first, I forced myself to wake up every 1 years, and continued with my health checkup, praying that the next time I woke up, the children would already be greeting there by my door to greet me. As time passed, I eventually gave up and began to live without care, eating and drinking as I liked … I was lucky that they left enough food for me. Since I was the only on the ship left who needed to eat, they put all the leftover food supplies in this room, since they wouldn’t be needing them very soon.” The old man looked he was about to break down crying. “Really, I wasted a lot of time, but later I found this way of life to be even more difficult than just dying, so I went back to sleeping, and switched to waking up every 30 years. This continued for a long time until I found my hair turning white, and the wrinkles started appearing on my skin. I became afraid, and then I realized that not only was I wasting my own time, I was also wasting the time of the children outside. So, before I started my final round of hibernation, I did something very important … Oh, right, that’s right, I remember now, it’s important, very important!”
The old man was suddenly agitated. He pointed towards another corner of the room. The smile on his face seemed to bring back the youth he once had back to him. Hao Ren ran there and saw a long desk, with a lot of manuscripts arranged neatly on top.
When piled up together, the manuscripts would probably reach about half a meter tall.
As if these manuscripts were not impressive enough, the walls around the desk made Hao Ren stare in stupefaction – the walls, floor, furniture, and any visible surface around him were covered with writings and diagrams. He followed those writings away from the desk, and soon realized that they covered almost half the entire room – the interior lighting was dim, and the walls and floor were blocked by so many other miscellaneous things that he never noticed the writings before.
Behind Hao Ren, the old man stood up with effort and spread his arms out slowly. His eyes were glowing with pride. “Our … History.”
