A Sudden Realization

The scattering and absorption of the white light continued, clearly visible to the naked eye as threads of light seeped unceasingly through the iron armor... Shen Yixiu stood there, gazing down at herself. The scene was honestly somewhat eerie and unsettling—especially considering the white light belonged to the Great Spikes. Inside the iron armor, Shen Yixiu struggled to suppress her panic and fear... but she soon lost her composure anyway. Tilting her head, she called out timidly in a small voice, "Qingzi." Beneath that imposing iron armor, her voice carried the unmistakable plaintiveness of a little girl. At seventeen, Shen Yixiu did not fear combat, had no dread of pain or injury, and was not even particularly afraid of dying in battle one day. But she simply could not overcome her fear of this... What if, as this light kept shining on her, she turned into a Great Spike after a while?! Under these circumstances, if Qingzi hadn't told her to stand still, Rusty Sister would have run away long ago. "Yeah." Hearing her, Han Qingyu felt an ache of sympathy, yet he couldn't help wanting to laugh. It felt just like taking your little sister to the hospital for an injection: you were trusted, clung to as a lifeline, yet at the same time, you were the very person restraining her, forcing her to stay obediently and take the needle. "Don't be afraid. I'm right here," he consoled her insincerely. "Mm." The young girl obediently remained standing there. The seepage of the white light had lasted for over a minute, and its speed was beginning to slow. "Do you feel anything?" Han Qingyu asked expectantly. "On my body... a bit of tingling pain, an itch, it seems." Rusty Sister's words were somewhat incoherent and indistinct... Beneath the iron armor, her eyes had actually reddened. Because this was a sensation she had not experienced in a very long time. All along, Shen Yixiu had existed as a miraculous exception. In the research on sealing someone in dead iron and maintaining an internal cycle of source energy, every other experimental subject like her had ended up either dead or as living corpses. Only she maintained the semblance of a living person. Yet behind this stroke of fortune lay five or six years, day in and day out, of an ordeal akin to drowning alone beneath the water—trapped, unable to move, stripped of almost all senses and physical feeling. And now, it felt as though something had suddenly begun to change. "Mm." Han Qingyu also felt a stir of excitement and anticipation, roughly guessing whether it was like the itching sensation of cells and tissue regenerating after an injury scabs over. Why was it that whenever her iron armor was breached and the independent internal cycle of source energy was broken, Rusty Sister's vital signs would rapidly deteriorate? It was because some of her internal organs had already failed during that fatal attack years ago; their subsequent function was sustained entirely by source energy. It was a bizarre equilibrium. The moment it broke, disaster struck, while the organs themselves seemed never to have healed, or had developed a dependency. So, was this a sign of healing?! Impressive, Great Spikes. While Azure had spent decades merely beginning to establish a relatively unique medical system founded upon the source energy constitution, the medicine of the Great Spike civilization seemed to have been built upon source energy from the very start. When a civilization possessed a substance as extraordinary and potent as source energy, its entire technology tree seemed to be built entirely around it. This made them formidable, yet simultaneously gave rise to many limitations and deficiencies, resulting in a civilization that appeared strange and disjointed to human eyes. Furthermore, Rusty Sister herself undoubtedly possessed abundant vitalized source energy, but since she depended on it for survival, she could not independently lock or release it, and had no way nor permission to use it... "I don't think I'm absorbing it anymore, Qingzi," Rusty Sister spoke up again suddenly, her tone carrying a blend of relief and disappointment. After a little over two minutes, the iron armor—or perhaps Rusty Sister's body—stopped absorbing the white light. Feeling a slight pang of regret, Han Qingyu nodded and asked, "Mm. Can you feel any changes in your body?" Rusty Sister lowered her head, focusing her senses for a moment, then looked up at him... and shook her head. "It's all right. This is only the beginning. No rush." "Mm." Having hope was enough. Wu Xu and Han Qingyu walked over one after the other. When Wu Xu stood there, the white light continued to scatter, but showed no signs of being absorbed, and he felt nothing out of the ordinary. Yet when Han Qingyu stepped in front of it, an eerie sight unfolded: that piece of jade—or rather, bone—stopped functioning, and the white light retracted. Hierarchical suppression again?! Just what on earth did the Bone of Eternal Life come from?! Han Qingyu was bewildered, but also began to feel a hint of anticipation. This thing definitely had to be taken, but not right now. Han Qingyu worried that moving it directly might alert the Great Spikes. Using his column sword to bore into the next iron chest, he said, "Rusty Sister, remember to take it with you when we leave." "Mm." *Click.* The second chest popped open. It was empty. Energy fluctuations lingered inside; something might have been stored there originally, but it had already been depleted. Next, the third chest was opened. Inside was a spindle-shaped object resembling a coil. Unable to make heads or tails of it, Han Qingyu left it alone. The fourth was also empty. Inside the fifth chest appeared a metallic mesh-like object suspended in place. Han Qingyu took only a brief glance before immediately snapping it shut. The device looked like it sensed things through vibration—perhaps a radar-like device of the Great Spike civilization, only currently deactivated. These were things Han Qingyu wouldn't touch. He didn't understand them, and even if an opportunity arose to take them later, he would just hand them over for research once outside. In this manner, he pried open all dozen or so chests. Five of them turned out to be empty, and the rest contained bizarre objects exuding alien technology, none of which Han Qingyu touched. Then where was the big metal block?! The metal block had not shown up at all. Even though it clearly felt within arm's reach, he simply couldn't find it, and had lost track of its specific direction. Han Qingyu looked up, eyeing the stairs continuing upward not far away... At that exact moment—*clunk-clang!*—the mothership shuddered violently. All three panicked slightly. "...Could—could it suddenly fly away?!" Rusty Sister voiced a question that had been overlooked all along. Having asked this, the three exchanged blank stares. If it really flew away all of a sudden, Azure certainly wouldn't be able to stop it. Then what about the three of us? Rusty Sister: "Then we're going to space." Han Qingyu: "Yeah." Rusty Sister: "If we hide well, maybe we'll end up at the Great Spikes' home." Han Qingyu: "Yeah." Rusty Sister: "Are we going to live there from now on?" Han Qingyu: "...Maybe." Wu Xu thought about it. "What will we eat then?" A very practical question. Han Qingyu considered it seriously. "Rusty Sister will be fine; as long as she has source energy, she's set." Then he looked at Wu Xu. "As for the two of us... we'll probably have to eat Great Spikes." Wu Xu pondered. "Mm." He figured there would probably be enough Great Spikes to eat. Because at this moment, heavy footsteps abruptly sounded in dense succession from above. "Not good. Some of them are coming down," Han Qingyu said tensely, pressing against the iron wall to listen. "Ah? Then what do we..." The space on this deck was too large. It was already too late to run back to the bottom hold, and running would only make them easier to spot. Han Qingyu looked around anxiously and said, "Hide in the empty chests. Shut off your devices... Rusty Sister, switch to sustain mode." Of the five empty chests, each of the three picked one to slip into. Wu Xu took the largest one because the Binggu spear was too long. Han Qingyu left a slit open on his chest. Before long, roughly a dozen Great Spikes descended the stairs from above. Nearly all of them gleamed blue to the eye. And then, the small Great Spike leading them was... a Red Shoulder?! A petite Red Shoulder, carrying a blue-light column sword on its back, clad in clanking iron armor. So they really did have another Red Shoulder. Looking at this lineup, they were not to be provoked. Han Qingyu shrank back, preparing to shut the chest door completely. *Hum!* Blue and red source energy radiance flashed across the small Red Shoulder. The iron wall ahead, originally seamless and flat, suddenly lifted upward like a gate... and the group of Great Spikes strode inside. What was revealed within... Han Qingyu instinctively thought of as a "field." Inside a massive diamond-shaped space stood dozens of strangely structured metal pillars of varying heights. At the base of every single metal pillar sat a brick-like metal block—especially the metal block beneath the tallest and largest pillar in the center, which was practically the size of a giant millstone. In addition, a blue, translucent source energy field—so dense that it was visible to the naked eye—formed a hemisphere covering the top of this "field." *So the source energy field contracted to this spot. No wonder there hasn't been any collision.* *Then is this a giant traction field?! An army descending?!* *Wait, where's its dish?* Han Qingyu had previously seen a small traction field set up by a blue-sheened Great Spike and had personally destroyed it. That time, the blue-sheened Great Spike had transformed a shuttle craft into a dish-like apparatus. *Swish!* Before his eyes, the iron wall closed once more.