Capítulo 1460: Chapter 1460: Major Discovery?
(End of the month, asking for votes—by the way, did I forget yesterday?)
Early this morning, I was woken up by a particularly loud noise.
This is what happened: these past few days, I’ve been busy dealing with the report from the Deep Dive project, and the amazing information the Ghost Ship revealed about Abyss Xyrin has kept Sandora and busy dredging up old matters we hadn’t noticed before and filtering them again. I’ve been going to bed late every night and naturally can’t wake up in the morning. I was hoping that today I could finally sleep in since there’s nothing to do, but while dreaming, I suddenly heard an earth-shattering noise from the rooftop: Caw—caw—
Once I got dressed and ca downstairs, I found Big Sister was indeed in the living room lecturing that silly bird: “How many tis have I told you, you’re a crow, not a duck, not a swan, and definitely not a dostic chicken? Normally I won’t say anything when you’re cawing everywhere, but how co today you’re on the rooftop crowing? Even if you think you’re a chicken, you sure can’t be a rooster, right?”
Then I finally figured out what the noise I heard early in the morning was.
Little Crow hung her head in silence while being lectured by Big Sister. However, when I walked past her from behind, I noticed the silly bird was secretly scratching the ground: clearly, the girl didn’t listen to a word and was busy daydreaming.
These days, only absent-mindedness can sowhat resist Sister’s Naughty Kid Deterrent Halo.
“How did she learn to crow again?” As I passed by, I casually patted Little Crow’s head, pinning her onto the sofa before she could flap her arms at . “With the ability to incubate eggs and crow, isn’t this feature a little mismatched?”
Little Crow made an ambiguous “caw,” not sure if she agreed or completely didn’t understand what I was saying. anwhile, Sister was rubbing her temples nearby, lanting helplessly: “Who knows what happened? This kid flew up to the roof early in the morning and started crowing. When I called her down and asked, she boldly claid she’s learning to crow to wake everyone up in the future… You should occasionally look after her, okay? She only listens to you and Anwina.”
Little Crow laughed gleefully, this carefree passerine bird from the corvid family showed no signs of reflection. Little Crow differs from other Naughty Kids; Little Baobao is clueless about everything, thus fearing nothing; Xiao Xue knows too much, you can’t control a kid at five who deceives customs into letting her travel to another world under the guise of “disguised tourism.” As for Little Crow… her worldview simply doesn’t align with yours. Normally, I find it difficult to impose human behavioral norms on a bird—let alone, even Big Sister hasn’t managed to completely change Little Crow’s habit of eating while perched on a stool or swallowing food without chewing. What can I do? If an average person learned to crow, you’d question their ntal state, but Little Crow, being a bird learning to crow…
I can only say she’s developed a wide range of hobbies,—even though she’s female. After all, in this era, even tomboys have beco standard.
“Speaking of which, where’s Anwina gone?” Seeing Little Crow reminded of her mom, Anwina should usually be floating around preparing breakfast at this ti, but now, the Ghost Maid is nowhere to be seen.
“She finished cooking and was dragged out by Bingdisi for a walk,” Sister glanced out the window, “should be back soon?”
: “…What’s that rascal up to now? Anwina isn’t the outgoing type, she knows that.”
“Heard there was a haunting happening two blocks over at that office building, Bingdisi took Anwina to say hello,” Sister’s expression was once again one of helplessness, “and talking about helping cross the ghost over if their personalities matched, and if not, enforcing justice and crossing over… if it was all just so street gossip with folks spreading ghost stories for fun, she’d tie Anwina up in that office building, letting her out at night to scare people—it’s considered doing good to stop rumors from spreading—she’ll make it a reality.”
I silently gazed at the ceiling, ultimately saying nothing: after all, it’s not the first ti the rascal goddess has had a ltdown and Anwina just happened to have bad luck being targeted. I’m curious about Sister Bing’s psychological frawork, how she daily manages to preach doing good deeds while swindling and writing things like “whoever’s stronger gets to be Pope” in the Bible under the guise of Holy Light…
Little Crow seized the chance when Sister was distracted and vanished, leaving behind a Split Lifeform in an eggshell floating in the air. It montarily exchanged baffled glances with Big Sister before chirping away. Big Sister shook her head resignedly and went back to tidying up the house while I turned my gaze outside: Fox Fairy Lord has finally learned to help with chores—she’s sweeping the yard.
With her tail…
Watching Fox Fairy Lord swirling her tail like a pinwheel, kicking up dust as she swept the yard, I realized sothing: no matter how many peculiar creatures congregate at ho, silly bird and silly fox are definitely the weirdest two among them. Those two magical girls have been acquiring increasingly more functions recently; it’d hardly surprise if one day they up and turned into robotic dogs on the spot.
Bingdisi’s figure finally appeared at the street corner, with Anwina in crow form squatting on her shoulder, head tucked in as if pretending to be invisible. These two were finally back, and it seed that Sister Bing still retained so decency: she didn’t actually tie Anwina up in the office building to scare people.
The two might have run into sothing frustrating when they were out; as soon as Sister Bing ca through the door, she angrily exclaid, “Bad luck! Today I’m seriously having the worst luck—my divine dignity challenged!”
It’s not the first ti I’ve seen Bingdisi getting all worked up, but I still casually asked, “What happened this ti?”
Anwina transford back into a human and carefully explained from the side, “We ran into a purse snatcher on the way back…”
My gaze, initially shifting towards the dining room, instantly froze, then snapped back to Bingdisi, gaping in amazent: “…Soone actually dared to rob you… and then?”
“What else do you expect when it’s bad luck,” Bingdisi shrugged, “the guy robbing was so poor, had nothing valuable on him.”
: “…”
Is sothing fundantally wrong with this topic!?
Bingdisi continued her furious complaints, “Really pathetic, the guy only had a broken cellphone on him, which got zapped by Divine Punishnt too. No money, yet dare to co out robbing, so inconsiderate of public welfare…”
I stood alongside her, listening without daring to join in: Sister Bing’s attitude toward justice is truly high-handed. Now I understand why under her lordship, world peace reigns—criminal activities are demographic minorities…
At this mont, Big Sister began calling everyone to the dining table. A bunch of boisterous problem children plus problematic adults imdiately dashed towards the dining room. Little Crow, who had vanished earlier, and Sister Bing, who was still gesturing at the heavens, obediently followed Big Sister’s orders to sit down at the dinner table: because only at al tis do they follow commands.
I heard a clumsy commotion of the front door and a quick bout of pattering before a dusty Demon Fox Girl dashed in. This silly fox may be inept at everything else, but her ears are exceptionally sharp when it cos to hearing the call for als, racing straight to the dining room like a husky. Just as she passed by, I grabbed her tail and dragged her towards the bathroom: “Hurry and wash up, wash up quickly, your tail’s almost done for! Use a broom to sweep the floor next ti, okay?”
The Demon Fox Girl struggled hard, almost sprawling on the ground, using her hands and feet to revert to the husky stance: “Let go, you let go! This is how I sweep the floor and it’s none of your business. Do you know how extrely durable the Fox Fairy Lord’s tail is…”
But no matter how much she struggled, it was useless; I threw her into the bathroom in the end: her nine fluffy golden tails had rubbed against the walls until they were the sa color. If she dared to sit by the dinner table, we’d probably have to eat through a haze.
After the sound of rushing water, the Fox Fairy Lord returned to everyone clean and tidy, but I noticed she didn’t dry her tails, and the fur was still damp and clumped together. Just as I was about to ask what was going on, she dashed in front of and began to vigorously shake her tails…
While wiping my face, I mused: the vengefulness of canine animals is no less than that of feline ones.
Our family doesn’t have many rules when it cos to alti; it’s basically a lively affair. Plus, we have a bunch of Three-inch Dings (Little Crow and the continuously arriving Wild Dingdang) running around the dinner table at any ti, so things can’t get serious. Everyone, as usual, ate and chatted in a lively atmosphere, but inevitably, the conversation returned to the ghost ship incident from the previous days.
Even when relaxing, we can’t help but talk about work; I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about this.
The respectable Starship Captain has been properly laid to rest; no matter what, he ultimately found peace on the Empire’s land. anwhile, his longti shipborne computer was sent to the repair center yesterday for a final round of testing. If all goes well, she’ll likely be installed on a certain civilian-converted spaceship: she wasn’t originally a warship’s computer, and after all, the Exile Ark was essentially a colonization ship with combat capabilities. Letting that shipborne computer stay away from war and smoke is probably a good thing.
“Warren Field’s small farm has been entirely moved to the Temple Garden,” Lilina reported on the ghost ship issue as we brought it up again. “That small farm is now part of the Temple Garden, cared for by the Holy Temple’s nuns. As long as the Goddess Sect endures, it will thrive forever, as a tribute to the old captain. Additionally, I plan to transplant so plants from the small vegetable garden. Then I’ll hand them over to the shipborne computer; she’d surely want to continue tending Warren’s vegetable garden on the new spaceship.”
I nodded and gave Lilina a glance: this girl, sinister inside and out, is not completely deranged. Apparently, even she was shaken by Warren Field’s more than eighty years of persistence. What she is doing now is neither to promote the Church nor to complete a task, but a spontaneous act to do sothing for a mortal. From this point of view, Lilina actually possesses a touch of kindness in her bones.
“I’ve been researching so old records that I hadn’t paid much attention to before,” Sandora then ntioned the Abyss Xyrin incident. “So records are from the Old Empire era, and I found signs of Abyss Xyrin activity within them. Back then, the Total Network experienced strange phenona like network nodes becoming unusually active, database processing speeds suddenly becoming unstable, and data response speeds related to X-Plan becoming abnormally slow. Nobody knew a ‘ghost’ individual had erged on the Total Network, so these anomalies were attributed to normal network fluctuations or conceptual interference caused by X-Plan. Now we have more records, and looking back, these anomalies were probably all related to the Abyss Xyrin. She already had self-awareness back then and was trying to warn people about the danger of X-Plan — sadly, she never succeeded until disaster struck.”
“I think it’s not necessarily a failure,” I thought of Xyrin (the one in Shadow City) who was able to create her own interface in reality through fragnted consciousness, and developed a different perspective. “It’s possible that after trying to warn a few tis, the Abyss Xyrin realized everyone was too fired up to listen, so she simply left everyone aside and started her plan.”
Sandora glanced at incredulously: “Just like that?”
“Don’t forget, I had direct contact with her,” I said as I deftly plucked Dingdang out of the bowl with chopsticks, and added a peanut for Little One to munch on. “We only t once and didn’t talk much, but I noticed she’s soone with very high self-movable actions. You could call it a step ahead in self-centrism; in any case, she likely would quietly execute a big plan like that.”
This judgnt isn’t baseless; I noticed this after my only face-to-face encounter with Abyss Xyrin. As a network cluster consciousness, this ‘ghost’ isn’t much affected by the reality’s burdens. If any external reason hampers her actions, she would simply tune out those reasons and begin her next steps within her network. That’s why she concluded the conversation nonchalantly — she and the Shadow City version of Xyrin share the biggest similarity: ignoring reality’s disturbances.
So when the Abyss Xyrin initiated the Isolation Plan and Ark Plan back then (though she hadn’t yet Abyssalized, but I’m used to calling her that), this was surely the case. Upon discovering a huge communication barrier with the Xyrin Apostle of the real world, she simply eliminated those obstacles and began her grand plan: that’s why we can’t find any records on safety isolation or the Ark Plan among the now-existing Old Empire records.
“If only we could deduce Abyss Xyrin’s action patterns from these clues,” Sandora said, rubbing her forehead, showing unusually heavy expressions even during alti, “The actions of that network ghost and real-world creatures are vastly different; she probably has little need for real-world things… During the Old Empire era, her goal was preserving the Fire Seed of Xyrin Civilization, but what does she want now?”
By this point, I had given up on shooing Dingdang out of the bowl and watched her lead the Wild Dingdang and Little Crow girls around my bowl and grab food. Instead, I simply set down my chopsticks and focused on reasoning: “Right now, her plan is The Great Endeavor. Based on her habitual actions during the Old Empire tis, it must be a series of intertwined steps, from collecting the Heart of the World to seizing Old Empire technology, and finally creating deep-diving ships…”
At this point, Qianqian couldn’t take it anymore and poked my arm with chopsticks: “Eat, eat! Don’t discuss such heavy matters during alti, alright!”
Sandora and I looked around in surprise, finding everyone engrossed in eating while only the two of us were discussing national affairs. Feeling awkward, I montarily considered myself a good example of worrying about the country and the people, almost generating a sense of pride.
After smugly savoring the feeling for a few seconds, I lowered my head, earnestly resuming my task of shooing the Wild Dingdang and Little Crow girls from my bowl’s rim: they’d almost finished everything inside…
While I carefully wiped those Little Ones’ faces and hair with a napkin, an urgent communication suddenly intruded abruptly: “This is the Deep Dive Project Team, major discovery!”
Aside from a few naughty kids and so Divine Race tenants who weren’t connected to the Total Network, everyone received the urgent ssage from the research center. Bingdisi stood up facing astonished: “Why did I receive this ssage too… Oh right, I’m already on the pirate ship.”
Sandora and I simultaneously shouted at her: “Can’t you stop forgetting this every ti!”
I quickly stuffed the remaining food in my bowl into my mouth and watched Sandora shove half the food left on the table into her mouth in seconds, then left Big Sister and Anwina at ho to watch the kids while everyone else hurried to the research center.
Of course, besides Bingdisi, the rest of Tiaozi Five stayed ho: they didn’t need to co along.
Everything looked normal around the research center, but the atmosphere in the Deep Dive Project Center was noticeably tenser than usual. As we reached the general dispatch office of the center, I was shocked to find Taville’s real body sitting there directly overseeing matters; clearly, they had witnessed sothing quite incredible.
Once I saw Taville, I anxiously bombarded him with questions: “What’s going on? Another accident at the Deep Dive Port? Did the control platform blow up again? Is there a problem with the deep-diving ship? Did the Ancestors have troubles with their subrgence?”
“None of that,” Taville shook his head, “We just completed a very successful subrgence trial, not a single accident occurred.”
My heart eased a bit, and I turned to look for a chair. However, Taville’s next words nearly knocked off my feet:
“A hundred tis more serious than any accident!” (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, feel free to visit Qidian (qidian) and cast your votes and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please read at m.qidian.)
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