The Divine Star has gradually sunk below the horizon. It seems it will orbit this planet for a week before leaving. Anu Lili let out an obvious sigh of relief after the Divine Star completely disappeared from the sky. Although protected by Lilina’s power, she wouldn’t be affected by the Divine Star temporarily, the golden radiant glow still made her instinctively hide in the shadows. Now, she was chatting with Qianqian - to be precise, Qianqian was pulling her into a conversation. Anu Lili had no defensive capability against Qianqian’s strong action and fast thinking and was thoroughly confused. My advice to her was to just keep smiling from start to end, as Qianqian would likely only focus on her answer for all of two seconds. Thanks to Qianqian’s rambling, Anu Lili couldn’t even inquire about Lilina’s strange abilities before being distracted and forgot about it. At that ti, due to severe nerve pain and spasms, she was sowhat delirious and likely didn’t rember Lilina’s actions.
Pandora had no interest in this place and the extrely bored 1.2-ter figure was idly leaning by the door, while her sister remained ever-curious, now crouching on the ground studying the wood of this world. In my pocket, Dingdang had already fallen asleep. If I held my breath, I could hear the very, very faint breathing from my chest. The little guy occasionally turned over in my pocket, mumbling in her sleep: truly a charming mont that’s hard for others to empathize with. Sandora opened the window, watching the villagers outside gradually disperse, her eyes flickering unsure of what she was contemplating. Miss Lin, on the other hand, surveyed the room, which was sowhat dim but surprisingly spacious and simple.
The furnishings in the room were rough and simplicity was paramount. Wooden furniture, wooden utensils, and walls woven from wood and grass leaves. This all gave an impression of primitiveness, simplicity, yet a natural harmony. This was Anu Lili’s room, but we didn’t see much of the atmosphere expected of a young girl’s boudoir - speaking from an Earthling perspective. Against the wall was a mirror made from so shiny silvery tal, reminiscent of ancient bronze mirrors; it was Anu Lili’s dressing table. It seed in a world where thoughts were highly controlled, personal grooming was of little concern, and Anu Lili, cut off from control, daren’t express her uniqueness too openly. As a result, her room appeared average. Yet, upon examination, I found sothing of interest: propped against the opposite wall, there was a wooden board painted with bright colors.
"What’s this?" It wasn’t very polite to ddle around in soone else’s room like this, but I couldn’t resist picking up the foot-square board. It turned out to be a painting: on a vast field, there was a house, with nobody in sight, a strangely shaped ’car’ beside the small gray house. And above the scene, in the sky, there was...
"Just sothing I doodled when bored," Anu Lili hastily snatched the board from my hands. "Things from imagination, no one else understands this... By the way, your rooms are across the hall, just two vacant rooms, sorry it might be a bit cramped, but since you’re family, you shouldn’t mind, right?"
I could see the clear intention to get rid of guests, so I offered thanks and led everyone out of the room. Qianqian happily tugged on my arm: "Then I’ll room with Ah Jun?"
Sandora shrugged: " too, you two have been stuck together enough these past days, I need to assert my presence."
I glanced at Miss Lin, as expected, her face turned beet red, and she quickly grabbed Pandora, who was emitting a beep beep sound, and Visca, who was studying the wood grain on the wall: "Don’t even think about it, I’m rooming with Pandora and them. You pervy wood!"
I: "..." Speaking of which, Miss Lin, you’re overthinking it right? I just really wanted to get so sleep...
Lilina peered from one group to the other, then naturally walked over to hug my arm: "I’m with the boss in a..."
Miss Lin imdiately tugged this girl away: "Stop causing trouble!"
This was just our family’s usual playful bickering before getting down to business. Sandora nudged my arm: "Ah Jun, did you see that painting clearly just now, the things in the..."
"The ones in the sky are so kind of flying device," I nodded, vividly rembering the content of the picture. Anu Lili might think us ’ordinary people’ couldn’t comprehend the high-tech items, but I was a hundred percent sure that the object in the sky in the picture was an extrely advanced spaceship, "and it doesn’t seem like lowa’s style. There’s also a car on the ground, with a chanical feel, also not lowa’s style. This Anu Lili... knows a lot, now I suspect, the lowa people have hidden many things on this planet, and these seemingly uncivilized natives might not be as simple as they seem."
"It’s still unclear, we’ll see tomorrow," Sandora shook her head, "I didn’t eat enough for dinner, I’m hungry, give sothing to eat~~"
I: "..."
The night passed without incident, and thankfully there was no indecent sleeping arrangent - really, Miss Lin had so pretty wild assumptions, but would a righteous person indulge in such unrestrained behavior? Regrettably, I also didn’t witness any romantic scene between Sandora and Qianqian, as they resolutely refused... What am I even thinking about so early in the morning?
Our original plan was to leave this village imdiately after a short stay and look for larger towns on this planet, but the intelligence gathered the previous day made everyone abandon this idea. It turned out that even in such a small village, we could access things sufficient to analyze many situations. Moreover, based on the data returned from the probes Sandora released, there were almost no so-called large cities on this planet; seeking larger settlents was pointless.
Early in the morning, Sandora gathered us all together to show us the data collected from the probes. First up was the phenonon of civilization suppression and abnormal population distribution on this world.
"Everywhere on the planet where humans gather, civilization levels are at a unified stage," Sandora sealed off the surrounding space to prevent anyone from intruding and then activated the projection device of the data terminal. Displayed were countless images captured by the probes: various landscapes from around the planet, and one small settlent after another. Despite coming from different places, these human-inhabited settlents appeared almost indistinguishable, differing only in scale. Looking at their level of civilization, they were all the sa, "No complex or automatic machinery, using tal slting techniques; if compared to Earth’s tiline, it’d be the early feudal society. The entire globe remains at this stage, while under normal circumstances, a planet at a primitive civilization stage shouldn’t have such uniform progress. This should be due to lowa’s control. Here’s the population distribution." Saying this, Sandora opened a panoramic view of the planet, marked with colors indicating population distribution, a gloomy grey: "Unusually uniform, with equal population density wherever local native humans can live. This too is lowa’s control. Disturbingly, achieving such precise balance can’t rely on controlling birth rates alone, so lowa must be controlling death rates in these areas as well... You understand my aning."
"Anu Lili ntioned several tis that ’they’ take so people away," Qianqian nodded, "They say they’re taken to the Divine Country to enjoy eternal life or sothing, those taken aren’t distinguished by age or gender, and the locals see it as a great honor. The ones taken are called Chosen Ones or sothing like that... Could it be that lowa takes away excess population to kill them?"
"If that’s true, then lowa is simply beyond reason, completely contrary to their intelligence as an advanced civilization," Sandora scoffed, "Conducting precise killings just to control the native population? And in such a aningless context? Even a madman wouldn’t do such a thing."
"What’s this chart?" Miss Lin looked at the projected image and found a statistical table, "Saint?"
"The lowa people appearing before the local natives as ’Gods manifested’. They erge under certain conditions: taking chosen ones, ’gifting’ nerve poison and fuel, as well as when anomalies occur locally. These were gathered by other agents who have already contacted other native residents on the planet... Uh, Ah Jun, don’t give that look, Imperial Agents are not that foolish, they can integrate with local residents... uh, albeit not as smoothly as us."
I knowingly nodded, thinking that’s the pace we should keep...
"Anything discovered on other worlds?" Miss Lin fiddled with Sandora’s data terminal, "Geez, does it have to be this flashy, using this wooden idiot’s look as the system the?"
I: "... Stay focused - but Sandora, when did you take these photos?"
Sandora displayed no embarrassnt, pointing to her eyes: "I just directly transform what I see into image information for storage; as long as you’re in my line of sight, I’ll record it and put it in the database."
Everyone: "..." Lin Xue: "... You two, enough already!"
Sandora shrugged indifferently: "Here is the intelligence from other worlds. Take a look, these are real-ti images."
She pulled up a series of pictures and short clips, and we imdiately leaned in. Qianqian muttered, "Eh? This doesn’t seem like much? Much more normal, tropolis, spaceships, holographic billboards... looks pretty advanced."
"That’s how it is. Most of the colonial worlds of the lowa people have a normal level of technology, fitting their nature as colonies of an advanced civilization. Planets like this ’dieval Planet’ we’re on now are only three, and they’re all located within the sa star system."
"Two other planets just like this?!" I was quite surprised.
Sandora smiled aningfully: "Not only are the conditions the sa, but the natives on those two planets... are of the sa race as the natives on this planet."
Everyone looked at each other in astonishnt.
"Given their current level of civilization, they certainly couldn’t reach other planets, so there are only two possibilities: either the lowa people took them there, like animals being moved to another pasture for rearing, with these natives raised as livestock by the lowa, or... a long ti ago, these natives had the capability to reach other planets!"
Sandora’s words left everyone silent. I believed she had enough reason to make such a judgnt, and as she voiced this possibility, several details from yesterday surfaced in my mind:
Anu Lili occasionally uttered words far beyond her "apparent" understanding level, left doodles of unidentified flying objects, and consciously reduced her intake of nerve poison—an act itself beyond the cognitive level of an ignorant civilized native.
"Anu Lili believes we’re as uninford as the ordinary people around us, so when she talks to us, she lets slip a lot of words she shouldn’t," Sandora closed her data terminal, noticing that Miss Lin had started playing Tetris on it. "I think we can use this opportunity to gain her trust, approach her as natives of this planet, and perhaps obtain unexpected intelligence."
"Yes, I agree," Lin Xue nodded, "Approaching her as an unidentified alien race could ruin things and lead to unnecessary sacrifices later. Also, there are so things I’ve seen that are incomplete, which need to be filled in after contacting Anu Lili."
"Speaking of which, how’s the task execution going on the fleet’s end?" I looked at Sandora, thinking that it’s been a day and a night since we parted ways with the main force. Given the Xyrin Starship’s travel speed and equipnt efficiency, they should have reached the lowa territory by now.
"The blockade operation is 25% complete," Sandora answered. "The lowa have set up high-sensitivity void detection devices at the border, so the fleet had to implent the blockade in zones where information drift exceeded 10%, making the workload a bit heavier than expected. Speaking of which, the sentries discovered sothing interesting: the void detection devices set up by the lowa at the border have been operational for over seventy thousand years, aning these things were set up after they betrayed the Empire and fled to this place as a warning asure against their old masters, which is quite normal. But these detection devices haven’t been replaced in seventy thousand years... Even though the lowa have the technology to manufacture such detectors, they are fully capable of updating them. Ah Jun, what do you think this implies?"
"They know the Xyrin Empire has completely extinguished its lights, so they feel at ease?"
"The servant armies of the Old Empire actually know very little about the void. They generally only received superficial technical support from their masters, without gaining any higher knowledge... not even the common knowledge of the void was taught to them. The lowa probably believed the Empire was the strongest and only threat, so they never considered that there could be other things in the void. As traitors, the more openly they betray, the more anxious they’ll beco internally, likely amplifying the Empire’s shadow infinitely in their minds, completely obscuring their view of other realms in the void."
Sandora sighed with such sentint, and Miss Lin couldn’t help but complain, "In the end, wasn’t it your policies that were problematic back then..."
Sandora: "...We won’t discuss this issue."
Sunlight stread through the window grating into the room; it was already bright outside. Nights on this planet are about two hours longer than on Earth, so out of habit, we woke up very early, yet we had been talking until the villagers started coming out to work. It’s probably the first ti in my life I’ve woken up before the sun fully rose—of course, Dingdang was still asleep in my pocket. This Little Dong has always had an odd schedule, sleeping and waking on a whim, impervious to disturbances in her sleep, living freely and casually—except for occasionally giving trouble. I gently tucked Dingdang’s small outstretched wing back into my pocket and covered it a bit, then noticed that several pairs of eyes were watching from across the room. "Uh, what’s up?"
Miss Lin pointed at my chest, "Were you just tucking in the Little Thing with a blanket?"
Lilina pouted, "Truly a self-aware mattress."
I: "..."
"Look outside, the villagers are starting their work." Sandora turned to look out the window and pushed open the grass-paneled window. I leaned out to see groups of young and strong villagers carrying various oddly-shaped farm tools heading out of the village. No chatting, no looking around, not even the customary morning greetings were exchanged. Once work hours began, their minds were filled with nothing but work; conversation and looking around were unnecessary, making them seem like a marching group of machines. Elsewhere in the village, wrapped in ragged clothes, the children were squatting in front of their hos, playing with stones, digging in the dirt, and pulling grass stems—it did look like play. Yet, there were no smiles on these children’s faces. Even in groups of two or three kids, there was hardly any talking, just a silent completion of "play" tasks as if rely functioning in line with their "child" label. This way, routinely working, routinely eating, routinely playing, even routinely breathing and walking, the village began its orderly yet aningless day, ticulously ticking like clockwork.
The lowa people have accomplished sothing truly remarkable.
"Guests, aren’t you up yet?"
Just as I was marveling, Anuza’s cheerful voice rang out from outside the door. The young man’s lighthearted tone starkly contrasted with the bewildered crowd outside. My first thought was: amazing how Anu Lili managed to keep her brother hidden so long. Then I agreed, "Oh, we’re coming down."
"Hey, why is this door not budging at all, like it’s been fixed... Oh, got it. Breakfast is ready, and according to village rules, the Village Chief must personally accompany the guests for breakfast. My sister and I will be waiting for you downstairs."
"Let’s head down first," I looked at everyone, "then figure out how to get close to Anuza’s sister." (To be continued. If you like this work, please visit Qidian (qidian) to vote for recomndations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
Reviews
All reviews (0)