228: Chapter 8: News of the Martial God 228: Chapter 8: News of the Martial God A spacecraft penetrated the sandstorm with a roar and landed on the rooftop of the iyii Building.
At this height, the sandstorm hardly posed any influence.
If soone were to stand at the edge of the rooftop and look down, they would surely think that a flowing dim yellow river lay beneath the building.
The craft steadily ca to a stop on the landing pad.
A ceremonial android remotely controlled by the Paladin Ashur awaited on the pad.
The door of the craft, adorned with a white crane emblem, opened, and a cybernetically enhanced person stepped out.
Like most Scientific Knights, this cybernetically enhanced person retained a formal head, his face that of a blind old man.
His Prosthetic Eye was mounted on his shoulder, and the white cloth on his body was draped in the classical Indian sari style.
He also wore a decorative brooch on his chest.
The newcor approached Ashur and introduced himself, “Hello, Ashur-Lei-Goodrian Paladin.
I am Bai ICA Changkong, Vice Captain of the Secluded Crane Knight Order.
I am here to extend greetings on behalf of the Evolutionary Language Knights Order.”
Ashur bowed slightly, “I am pleased to et you, Excellency Changkong.”
Bai ICA Changkong—or simply “Bai Changkong”—was the captain of the Secluded Crane Knight Order in the northern part of the New World, with a certain collaborative relationship with the Evolutionary Language Knights Order.
Their main focus was paleobiology.
The Order’s headquarters was located near the Burgess Shale in Secluded Crane City.
It was said that the private relationship between the two great Orders’ captains was quite good.
“The Evolutionary Language Knights Order had originally intended to send soone over, but as you know, Mars and Earth are currently not near the entrances of the ‘Lightspeed Highway’, so they couldn’t directly dispatch soone.”
Ashur nodded, “I understand.”
Although humanity was able to accelerate their spacecraft to seven percent of the speed of light using propellantless engines, material science wasn’t at a level to produce ships that could cruise at seven percent of the speed of light at will.
It wasn’t that the ships themselves couldn’t withstand the acceleration—the propellantless engines accelerated quite slowly.
The problem was that at seven percent of the speed of light, any size of cosmic floating object would deliver a fatal strike to the spacecraft.
To address this, humanity adopted several different strategies.
Firstly, a strong electromagnetic field was created over the surface of spacecraft, adjusting the trajectory of all charged tiny dust particles to collide with the craft.
Indeed, the force of action was mutual.
A charged object hitting a magnetic field would also apply a force to the field and the spacecraft as a whole.
But this was still much better than a direct collision with the external armor.
Then, there was the search for the “areas with very few interstellar materials.”
This was what is known as the “Lightspeed Highway”.
Sub-light speed travel could only occur within these highways.
A large portion of the Lightspeed Highway overlapped with planetary orbits.
This is because the definition of a “planet” includes the need to “clear the nearby region of its orbit, where no larger bodies can exist within its orbit.” A planet would capture the interstellar material abundant on its orbit through its gravitational pull, causing it to fall onto the planet’s surface over days and days of rotation.
Of course, if there were any advanced life forms casually shooting things into near-planet orbits, that would be another matter.
At least this area would be relatively clean.
Besides that, there are the complex “passageways” between the orbital rings.
Interstellar material isn’t uniformly distributed, so there will always be so regions with very little interstellar material.
These regions could support sub-light speed flight.
This was known as the “Lightspeed Highway”.
Like the other celestial bodies in the solar system, the Lightspeed Highway itself was in orbit, with its relative position to the planets changing all the ti.
The ti available for use was not as plentiful as one might imagine.
Although the availability of the Lightspeed Highway was not as convenient as people had thought, each was charted at a huge cost, explored bit by bit.
Additionally, the Protectors had invested substantial resources in maintaining the highway.
The maintenance institutions of the Lightspeed Highway had to ensure that no small-sized teors capable of penetrating the defense magnetic field were present on it.
And if a spacecraft were to crash on the Lightspeed Highway, it would an that the nearby sections would not be usable for years to co until the maintenance institutions confird the collection of all space debris.
If there were no Lightspeed Highway, interplanetary movent could only be accomplished through conventional navigation—which ant months of travel ti.
One could say that the Lightspeed Highway sustained the overall relationship between the Protectors within the Solar System.
Incidentally, no Lightspeed Highway can cross the Asteroid Belt.
Fleets capable of sub-light speed must switch to conventional navigation upon reaching the Asteroid Belt and navigate around it.
Many believe that the inability of the Protectors to quell the fire of chivalry beyond the Asteroid Belt is linked to this “natural barrier.”
Ashur actually welcod this situation.
After all, the main force of the Evolutionary Language Knights Order was on Mars.
Either they had to communicate with a delay of dozens of minutes, or they had to spend months traveling through conventional navigation to reach Earth.
That was too ti-consuming.
The Evolutionary Language Knights Order had no choice but to entrust others to conduct negotiations.
Ashur felt that Bai Changkong might not care about the interests of the Evolutionary Language as much as the mbers of the Order itself.
After a few words of polite conversation, Bai Changkong made a request, “Your Excellency Ashur, I would like to et with the Yangtze Knight, Daijiu Tai’a.
I hope to learn about so matters.
Could you prepare a relatively confidential environnt?”
Ashur nodded and smiled, “That’s not a problem.”
Soon, Bai Changkong was brought to a larger room.
The room was exquisitely decorated and even provided charging interfaces of different voltages and frequencies.
Daijiu Tai’a was sitting upright inside.
Despite the nice appearance of the room, Daijiu Tai’a was, in a sense, under a kind of house arrest.
Once everyone else had left, Bai Changkong sat down across from Daijiu Tai’a and said, “I am Bai ICA Changkong, Vice Captain of the Secluded Crane Knight Order, a Great Knight.
I have been entrusted by your Captain to negotiate with the Mona Knight Order.
I hope to understand the details of the incident from you.
What do you think?”
Daijiu Tai’a looked curiously at the Scientific Knight, “What ‘kind of’ inside information would you like to know?”
“It seems you still don’t trust .” He laughed, “I and a few of your Vice Captains are old friends.
We also occasionally discuss ancient linguistics material.”
The prosthetic eye on Daijiu Tai’a’s chest lit up, “Do you know which ancient poems His Excellency Lei Yong likes?”
“‘Ti cannot be turned back’?”
“Six Dragons Chariot,” Daijiu Tai’a said in response.
Using ancient poetry for secret communication was at least good in one aspect; even if soone was monitoring or you approached the wrong person by mistake, it could often be justified with “We were discussing ancient linguistics material”—especially as the Evolutionary Language Knights Order indeed studied this.
At least for now, the term “Six Dragons Sect” had not yet appeared in the Protector’s consciousness.
Moreover, the poem was not the only ans of communicating information in this particular exchange.
In fact, hidden information encoded in body language and context played a significant part in the exchange.
Bai Changkong’s reason for testing was to confirm that the individual before him was indeed Daijiu Tai’a.
After all, individual identities could no longer be discerned through prosthetic bodies alone.
These artificial creations could be copied without much difficulty.
It was not even necessary to “create” a copy.
Extracting one biological brain and replacing it with another could fool many authentication systems.
After conducting initial verification, Bai Changkong pulled off his lapel pin.
This decoration contained a data cable, allowing a direct connection between the two cybernetically enhanced people.
This thod was the most secretive by far.
Even if information was projected onto the other person’s prosthetic eye using a parallel light from another world, it could potentially be captured by a well-placed cara due to air refraction or reflection off the smooth surface of the prosthetic eye.
Electromagnetic signals carried even greater risks of interception and decryption.
Nothing was more confidential than a wired direct connection.
Soon, various internal authentication chanisms of the Six Dragons Sect began to operate within both individuals, performing layered verification of passwords.
Seconds later, they each confird the other’s identity.
[Pleased to et you, ‘Sword Envoy.’]
[Greetings, ‘White Hermit.’]
The two greeted each other again, according to their Six Dragons Sect identities.
[I heard the ‘Great Protector’s’ ssage and rushed over from Secluded Crane City.
I’ll ask directly, what exactly happened?]
[What do you know so far?]
[A hero assassinated the Vice Captain of the Mona Knight Order in Pine Eagle City, and it seems you got caught in the suspicions?
But from what I see, Ashur doesn’t truly suspect there’s an issue with you, but wants to use this as an opportunity to connect with the Evolutionary Language Knights Order?]
Bai Changkong was actually sowhat puzzled.
Although the Evolutionary Language Knights Order, with its significant Six Dragons Sect mbership, didn’t often collaborate with typical Scientific Knight Orders, it wasn’t completely devoid of cooperative projects.
None of this seed to be a big issue.
The worst scenario would be “Daijiu Tai’a revealing the Six Dragons Sect’s secrets.”
But if that were the case, Ashur would not have greeted him with ceremonial cannon fire upon his landing—he would probably have prepared real cannons to aim and fire.
So Bai Changkong was indeed quite curious.
Daijiu Tai’a shook his head, [Compared to this matter, the likes of the Mona Knight Order are trivialities.
Please consider this news calmly.]
[I understand.
Please, speak.]
[Martial God has been resurrected once more.]
“What…” the Great Knight exclaid, but he quickly realized and shouted, “He would do that to you?
That’s not fair!”
Although Ashur claid that the room was free from eavesdropping devices, that claim was about as reliable as a fart in the wind.
Bai Changkong deliberately exaggerated his voice, making it seem like a ritual expression of righteous indignation at Daijiu Tai’a’s plight.
At the sa ti, he inquired through the direct connection, [Is what you’re saying true?
Martial God’s resurrection?]
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