"Who would've thought this mess would get sorted out just like that?"
Inside the browsing room of Shelter 404, Dawn City.
Sitting on the sofa, Chu Guang scrolled through posts on the official website, his expression half pleasantly surprised, half relieved.
After all, just a few hours ago, he had read on the forums that the Burning Corps had been wiped out by a neutron torpedo.
Yet only a few hours later, when he reopened the forums, the threads had completely flipped to: *Brother Ye Shi is an absolute badass.*
Credit where credit was due—the kid really was a badass.
Not only had he saved humanity, but he had also snatched the *Orion* missile cruiser right out of the Celestials' hands.
Even though the starship had jumped five light-years away and its remaining fuel probably wasn't enough for a return trip, Chu Guang believed there would always be a way.
Wasn't the *Gemini* still out there?
Worst-case scenario, they could just pilot that one back!
The decisive battle between the wasteland survivor factions and the coalition of the Celestials and the Enlightenment Society was still in its preparatory stage.
Chu Guang was in no rush at all; the ones sweating right now were on the other side.
A new order had already been established, while the old order was destined to be buried in the dirt with the passage of time.
For the Alliance, the longer time dragged on and the more survivor forces they integrated, the greater their odds of victory would become.
That was the source of his pleasant surprise.
As for his relief...
It was naturally that the kid Ye Shi had finally gotten a clue.
It hadn't been easy.
Looking at the flood of well-wishes across the threads, Chu Guang couldn't help letting a faint smile touch the corner of his lips.
As the "Father" who was cordially greeted every single day by the players, he naturally wished the boy well in his heart too.
She was a good girl.
He better cherish her.
Xiao Qi, perched inside the pen holder, cupped its chin in its little hands and swung its dangling legs, wearing an expression of wistful relief.
"To think the one who worried everyone the most has actually matured. Is this what it feels like to be a parent? Congratulations, congratulations!"
Watching the little guy shaking its head and swaying, Chu Guang couldn't resist teasing with a chuckle.
"You've only known him for a few years. What are you jumping in on the fun for?"
Hearing that, Xiao Qi immediately puffed up and shouted in protest.
"What do you mean, jumping in on the fun? Xiao Qi watched the players grow up too, okay!"
"Haha, yes, yes, of course."
Chu Guang smiled and patted the little fellow's head, declining to argue.
In truth, there was nothing wrong with putting it that way. In daily life, Xiao Qi had indeed been helping him keep an eye on his little players. It was thanks to Xiao Qi acting as customer service and GM that friction between the players and wastelanders had been kept to a minimum.
"You've worked hard all this time."
Hearing Chu Guang's praise, Xiao Qi's sulking mouth instantly curled back up into a smug grin.
After enjoying the head pats for a moment, it suddenly seemed to remember something and piped up.
"Right, Master, now that the trouble with the *Orion* missile cruiser is resolved, are we still going ahead with the near-orbit defense platforms?"
Chu Guang smiled.
"Of course we are. The two aren't mutually exclusive."
Xiao Qi tilted its head.
"But I heard those defense platforms don't really have any offensive capability, right?"
Chu Guang continued, "That's true, but the worst taboo in strategic decision-making is issuing orders in the morning and changing them by evening. Besides, we didn't deploy them solely to counter the threat of the *Orion* in the first place."
The greatest significance of the near-orbit defense platforms was serving as a replacement for the orbital debris in outer space.
The survivors on the wasteland couldn't live under the protective umbrella of space junk forever. Furthermore, that garbage could hardly be called protection; by any metric, it was far more of a nuisance.
Once the gravity well was activated, the Alliance would systematically use the near-orbit defense platforms to secure low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. While countering threats from outer space, they could simultaneously act as mobile weapon stations to monitor terrestrial threats.
This was something they could only get away with while facing the Celestial Crisis.
At any other time, not even the Alliance's staunchest allies would have supported them doing such a thing.
On the other hand, the near-orbit defense platforms would also stimulate the Alliance's aerospace industry.
For an industry to go from inception to scale and maturity was a prolonged process; it wouldn't magically appear with the click of a mouse.
Since its current momentum was promising, Chu Guang was naturally inclined to let it continue developing.
Even if this defense network ultimately went unused, the system itself would spur related industrial chains across the Alliance to accumulate experience, all while restarting the vertical foundry wells that had lain dormant for over a century.
This wasn't just planning for the immediate horizon, but laying solid groundwork for the future.
After listening to Chu Guang's reasoning, Xiao Qi nodded half-comprehendingly.
"Alright, if that's what Master has decided, Xiao Qi won't say anything more... Oh, what about that starship stranded five light-years away? Your player seems to be stuck out there."
Chu Guang laughed heartily.
"There's no need for us to worry about that. I believe he can work it out on his own!"
A distance of five light-years was simply too vast, far beyond his sphere of influence.
If Ye Shi could pilot the starship back, Chu Guang could find a way to have the Academy dispatch a research vessel to pick the two of them up.
If they couldn't fly it back, there really wasn't much he could do.
A warp drive wasn't something that could be built merely because one had the technical specs.
With the Alliance's current manufacturing capacity, replicating even the most rudimentary anti-gravity device already took every ounce of strength they could muster...
***
While Chu Guang was planning ahead for the Alliance's future, Ye Shi, having slipped his helmet back on, rushed back online.
When he opened his eyes, all he saw was bright light.
He was still lying in that gym, but Jiang Xuezhou was nowhere to be seen.
Panic seized him instantly. He opened the wide-area comm channel and shouted,
"Xuezhou! Where are you?!"
As he scrambled to climb up from the deck, a stammering synthesized voice came from behind him.
"You are awake?"
Ye Shi whipped around with a start, only to see a round-bodied robot standing behind him.
"Who are you?"
"Me?"
The robot pointed to itself, speaking in a none-too-clever voice. "I am Little Koala. My new master instructed me to wait for you here."
Hearing that name, Ye Shi went completely dumbfounded.
"Koala? You... you're still alive?!"
He couldn't be more familiar with that name!
That engineer from the Fourth Department, the chatterbox who never shut his mouth. Though he always looked like he hated trouble, he was actually someone who couldn't stop fretting over others!
The round robot tilted its optical sensor, answering with a clattering, metallic cadence.
"It is my honor that my memory storage and primary circuit boards remain intact. That replicant only damaged my drive components, and my new master replaced them with new ones without much effort... Hmm, though my affective sensor module indicates that you may have mistaken me for an acquaintance in your memory."
Pressing his index finger to his temple, Ye Shi drew a deep breath, trying to sort out his thoughts.
"I think I get it... Your master was named Koala, right? He designed you, and then left you here to wait for us."
Little Koala said thoughtfully, "Koala? He did not have time to tell me his name, nor did he tell me whom I was supposed to wait for. However, upon seeing you two, I understood. You are the ones I was waiting for... Therefore, I believe you are not mistaken."
Pausing, it continued, "Was his name also Koala? So what exactly is a koala? I suspect the term possesses an alternate meaning."
*It really was that guy.*
Looking at this round-bellied robot, Ye Shi felt a swell of nostalgia and grief, relief and sorrow, as if a whole rack of spice bottles had overturned in his chest, leaving a flavor he couldn't describe.
He wanted to cry, but tears wouldn't come.
Ever since he was a kid, his parents had told him that real men don't cry easily, and he had always lived that way, bottling everything up inside.
"You appear somewhat sad." Little Koala looked at him, extending a hand to pat his head. "Does this feel better?"
"...Thanks. Much better."
Seeing that Ye Shi seemed slightly recovered, Little Koala gave a polite nod with its camera lens, then pointed to the side.
"You are welcome. I learned this from my new master."
Following the direction it was pointing, Ye Shi looked toward the doorway, only to see a bulbous helmet planted there at some unknown point.
Even though the jet-black visor concealed the face beneath, Ye Shi recognized her immediately just from her posture and presence. He blurted out in surprise,
"Why did you change your suit?"
Her previous EVA exoskeleton had been swapped for a thick, bulky spacesuit.
A round helmet, a black anti-UV visor, and a gas storage backpack—it looked somewhat reminiscent of early twenty-first-century gear.
"The previous one..."
Jiang Xuezhou bit her lip, hesitating for a long moment before murmuring in embarrassment,
"...Anyway, you're not allowed to look at me until I'm healed."
Everyone had pride.
Especially in front of the person they liked.
It had nothing to do with low self-esteem; she simply wanted to preserve her best self in his eyes, not this battered, wounded state.
Looking at Little Jiang, who was still thinking about him even while injured, Ye Shi's eyes filled with warmth.
"It's fine, I don't care—"
He was about to say the words when, recalling what had happened earlier, he choked them back down.
Perhaps because she was in high spirits, Jiang Xuezhou didn't make a fuss this time, only murmuring,
"While you were 'offline' reporting that we're safe to the others, I fixed Little Koala. Then I went back to our research vessel to take a look. The situation isn't great, but the provisions are still there... For the two of us, it's enough to last nearly half a year.
"Besides, there are plenty of food stores aboard this cruiser as well... especially fresh water, compressed biscuits, freeze-dried rations, and canned goods. They're long past their expiration dates, but they're still edible. Anything inedible can be fed into the organic recycling unit to make nutrient paste."
Ye Shi breathed a sigh of relief and joked, "At least we don't have to worry about starving or dying of thirst."
Jiang Xuezhou nodded and continued, "Aside from supplies, I also checked the workshop in the engineering and maintenance department on the lower deck. The hull structure over there is relatively intact, and there's a sealed bulkhead separating it from the main compartments... In a bit, I'll see if I can use the tools there to assemble a rudimentary airlock chamber. That way, we can solve the air pressure and atmosphere issues."
Repairing an entire starship with just two people was unrealistic, but putting together a temporary orbital shelter using materials at hand was well within reason.
This was standard required coursework for Academy researchers.
Back then, she had genuinely felt the course was completely superfluous, but now she could only thank the heavens she hadn't slacked off and had paid attention in every single class.
"I'll help too." Hearing Jiang Xuezhou's plan, Ye Shi raised his hand eagerly.
Though saying it now was a bit inappropriate, he couldn't help thinking this sounded strangely fun.
Just like playing *Oxygen Not Included*.
Jiang Xuezhou had no idea what weird game was running through his head, and merely gave a gentle nod.
"Mm! I'll definitely need your help when the time comes; I can't handle that kind of physical labor alone. I'll finish the blueprints and send them over to you in a bit. But for now, let's eat first... I'm a little hungry."
To be precise, her stomach had been rumbling for a while.
Before boarding the vicinity of the *Orion* wreckage, she had only swallowed some liquid food, and after the research vessel's crash landing, a storm of events had unfolded back to back.
Ye Shi hopped up from the deck and, alongside Little Koala, followed Jiang Xuezhou into the brightly lit corridor.
It was clear that Jiang Xuezhou was genuinely afraid of the dark; he felt the lights were burning even brighter than they had two hundred and fifteen years ago.
It was worth mentioning that although the two were facing a severe energy shortage, compared to the energy devoured by a single hyperspace jump, the power used for basic lighting was a mere drop in the bucket. Whether they could make it back or not, this tiny bit of electricity wouldn't make the slightest difference.
So even Ye Shi didn't bother arguing about shutting off the reactor to save juice.
The energy saved might not even cover the power cost of shutting down and rebooting the reactor once.
Carrying a silver tray holding a few compressed biscuits and two pouches of liquid food, Jiang Xuezhou set it down and said sheepishly,
"I just threw together whatever was around. Don't be picky."
"How could I?"
Grabbing a compressed biscuit and tearing open the packaging, Ye Shi stuffed it into his mouth and chewed away.
"As long as it fills the belly, I'm not picky at all."
Even though he had just eaten offline, his belly on this side was still entirely empty.
Watching Ye Shi wolf down the food, Jiang Xuezhou couldn't help letting the corners of her mouth curl upward.
Even the way this guy ate was like a little pig.
With that warm thought in mind, a sudden urge sprouted in her chest to learn some cooking.
Imagining him scarfing down delicious food she had prepared, Jiang Xuezhou nibbled at her biscuit in tiny bites.
Those bland emergency rations suddenly tasted quite appetizing, all thanks to his ravenous appetite acting as a side dish.
Finishing off the meal in a few bites, Ye Shi cleaned up the wrappers and bundled them away.
Taking advantage of their break, Jiang Xuezhou drafted the blueprints for the temporary buffer chamber based on the photos she had taken earlier in the workshop.
However, the two did not begin work immediately. Instead, they first headed up to the bridge on the upper deck.
The star chart coordinates for the new ship were located there.
They first needed to figure out their precise location in Alpha Centauri, as well as the position of the *Gemini* missile cruiser, before they could start plotting a way home.
Walking along the passage toward the bridge, Ye Shi suddenly remembered something and spoke up.
"Right, speaking of which, where's that clone named Luo Yi? I didn't see him when I woke up."
Jiang Xuezhou said in a quiet voice, "I stripped its parts for salvage. As for the data on its motherboard... it deleted itself."
"...Deleted itself?" Ye Shi froze, saying hesitantly, "Could that be a trick?"
"Basically impossible. I already checked. It wiped every trace of its existence, disappearing completely from this world as if it had never arrived..."
Looking at Ye Shi's stunned expression, Jiang Xuezhou continued with mixed emotions,
"The Celestials created it using data from server backups, giving it the identity of 'Luo Yi,' yet they never gave it any of Luo Yi's memories.
"It lived all this time believing it was 'Sergeant Luo Yi,' only to suddenly discover one day that it was a fake.
"And not just itself—even its ideals and objectives... It realized that every piece of evidence proving its existence, and even its existence itself, ran completely counter to everything it originally believed in."
"Self-contradiction, huh," Ye Shi muttered, trying to wrap his head around it, shaking his head. "Honestly, I don't get why the Celestials would build something so complicated. Wouldn't a plain robot have been fine?"
"A simple robot lacks autonomous decision-making capability. Unless constant real-time communication is maintained, it's very difficult for one to handle complex situations or tasks requiring subjective judgment independently. Furthermore..."
Jiang Xuezhou paused for a moment before continuing,
"Perhaps they didn't entirely trust automated programming either, nor did they fully accept their own new identity. Maybe they just viewed becoming 'Celestials' as a roundabout way to save their civilization."
Ye Shi blinked.
"How... is that a roundabout way to save anything?"
Jiang Xuezhou said in a conversational tone,
"Become Celestials, reboot civilization, and then turn back into humans... That's how I understand it. Their ultimate goal was to turn back, unlike the lunatics in the Church of the Torch who want to become a different existence entirely. Therefore, to them, you shelter residents are indispensable—though correspondingly, we wastelanders are considered redundant.
"Of course, this is only my speculation based on limited clues. It's also possible they never designed the final step of that plan at all. That is to say, they didn't care whether they could become human again; they just wanted future generations to live according to their designs forever... while they served as guardians over all humanity.
"Regardless of which case it is, a sapience plugin was mandatory. Otherwise, all they would leave behind would be inanimate objects, which might not be what they wished for."
Ye Shi couldn't resist griping,
"Isn't that still inanimate? Swapping dead machinery for dead ideology? Two hundred years have passed—how could people keep living the exact same way as before?"
Even the usurpers in the State of Brahma weren't set in stone; they adapted with the times.
For instance, changing "ordained by heaven" to "ordained by the patriarch," or changing "Heavenly King" to "Family Head."
Jiang Xuezhou made a helpless face and gave a slight shrug.
"You're right, but victory never just drops from the sky on its own. I'm sure they had their own set of justifications to convince themselves, just like the lunatics in the Church of the Torch... Anyway, we should focus on resolving the problem right in front of us first."
At least for the two of them right now, piloting this starship back was the top priority.
One hundred thousand neutron torpedoes.
If they could fly this ship back, even if the space station at the Lagrange point was crawling with digital ghosts, it would be more than enough to blast them, along with the station itself, into utter dust.
Taking the elevator up to the bridge, rows of dust-covered floor-to-ceiling viewports greeted their eyes.
Through the dusty, transparent wall, Ye Shi saw a brilliant ball of fire hanging solitary in the boundless curtain of night.
That dazzling radiance seemed to originate from the very end of the universe, casting a polychromatic halo across the grimy glass.
At this moment, the bridge was pointed directly toward the star.
"Why is there only one star?" Utterly captivated by the magnificent, otherworldly sight, Ye Shi's eyes were glued to the viewport.
Beside him, Jiang Xuezhou was likewise drawn to the beautiful view, though she wasn't as loudly astounded as Ye Shi. After a couple of glances, she walked over to a terminal on the side, brought up the holographic display, and began operating it.
"...Because those two stars are too close together. From our current vantage point, they look like a single sun. If you used a proper telescope, you'd be able to see them clearly."
"Wait, isn't this supposed to be a trinary star system? Where's the other star?" Ye Shi couldn't help asking.
Jiang Xuezhou sighed, explaining patiently,
"What you're looking at right now are Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. As for Proxima Centauri, it's far too distant from us; I can't point it out to you right now."
It wasn't just distant on an astronomical scale.
It was also a red dwarf with very low luminosity; under such intense ambient light, it was practically invisible.
Ye Shi nodded blankly, his eyes locked onto the void outside, unable to pull away.
Truth be told.
Though it was somewhat different from what he had pictured of Alpha Centauri, this dazzling sea of stars genuinely took his breath away.
This was a sight one could never see from Earth.
For an instant, a bizarre thought even welled up in his mind—
Could the real Alpha Centauri look like this too?
If that was really the case, this game might genuinely have been made by aliens.
"Found it! Thank goodness, our navigation equipment can still boot up normally. Our current position is the third planet orbiting the AB main-sequence stars..."
Speaking to this point, Jiang Xuezhou's face suddenly turned paper-white.
Noticing the sharp shift in her tone, Ye Shi, who had been engrossed in the scenery a second before, instantly tore his gaze away from the glass and walked over to her side.
"Is something wrong?"
Jiang Xuezhou's face remained pale, her lips trembling as they parted.
"It's Gaia..."
The moment he heard that word, Ye Shi froze on the spot.
"Gaia? You mean... that colony world from the Human Alliance era?"
Jiang Xuezhou nodded faintly, her face still bloodless.
"Mm..."
Ye Shi held his breath, his expression torn between astonishment and sheer delight. In his mind, he only thought it was downright awesome—there wasn't a speck of fear.
*Holy crap.*
*This new map is insane!*
To be honest, he had no idea what she was afraid of.
No matter how terrifying this Gaia planet was, its hands couldn't possibly reach all the way into geostationary orbit, right?
Placing a hand on her shoulder, he spoke in a gentle, reassuring tone.
"Don't worry, it's far away from us."
Her shoulder trembled slightly, seeming to calm down a fraction under his touch.
Yet it was only a fraction.
After a long silence, a voice laced with despair drifted through the comm channel.
"I know, but the wreckage of the *Gemini* isn't anywhere near us. I swept the area with radar and couldn't find a trace of it...
"There's only one explanation. Either it fell down on its own, or something pulled it down.
"We... might have to go down there..."
***
Chapter 1002