Chapter 678: Approaching Home

In warp state, the Exotic Hotel streaked past the stars at superluminal speed. When all starlight could no longer catch up with the ship, the distorted projections of celestial bodies on the outer walls of warped space finally disappeared, leaving only an endless and profound darkness outside the ship.

Huli was monitoring the warp engine status, while Eline, after enthusiastically fiddling with her "control panel" for a long time, finally started to feel a bit bored.

"When will we get there?" The little puppet (blonde hair) lay sprawled on the seat, staring at the ceiling of the main control hall. "Usually, going anywhere is just opening a door, so suddenly having to fly slowly is really uncomfortable..."

"Slow? This is warp!" Yüsheng glanced helplessly at the little puppet. "Don't treat my 'portal' as normal travel speed. Besides, I've never been to the place we're looking for this time. How else can we fly?"

"We don't have the authorization code for the target star gate," Huli also looked up. "So we have to rely on the ship's own warp to get there—if we had the star gate code, we could find the nearest star gate near Shuji and 'jump' directly. It still takes some time, but it's many times faster than warp."

Eline rolled over and sat up, staring wide-eyed at the great fox: "Hey, Huli, when did you learn all these impressive things..."

"Recently," Huli's ears twitched. "I finished reading Benefactor's flight manuals and also borrowed a lot of materials from Baili Qing and Luo."

"Really..."

"Really," Huli said seriously, and even urged Eline, "You should also read more books. There's a saying: 'In books there are beauties like jade'..."

Eline blinked: "What does that mean?"

Huli: "Literally, it means there are pretty girls in books, but you can't take it literally..."

Eline perked up: "Wow—do you mean the kind with pictures? Wouldn't that be a bit unhealthy..."

Huli slapped the chair armrest with her tail: "I said you can't take it literally! This saying tells you that reading can..."

Eline curled back and continued playing with her immersive dummy control panel.

Yüsheng ignored the chaotic exchange between Eline and Huli. After watching the commotion for a while, he got up from his seat, kept the necessary attention on monitoring the ship's status, and leisurely left the control hall.

In a corridor near the hall, he found Luna, who was spacing out.

This "artificial saint" stood quietly in front of an observation window—a huge porthole that occupied almost an entire wall of the corridor. Outside, part of the Exotic Hotel's hull structure was visible. A subsystem module connected to the "main tower" floated not far away, the connecting bridge between them glowing with flowing light. Beyond that, there was only endless darkness and nothingness in the warped space.

Occasionally, phantom images from the real universe seemed to appear in the depths of that darkness, emerging on the boundary of warped space, but when one focused, it seemed to be just an illusion—nothing in the darkness.

Yüsheng remembered Luo mentioning this phenomenon. She said it was the "existence" of the real universe directly impressing upon the observer's consciousness, not an optically visible phenomenon—because in warp state, light from the real universe could no longer catch up with the ship, but the "existence" of the universe itself was still at work. Information from the material world would continue to connect with the observer's mind in a way beyond the understanding of intelligent beings. Mortals could not see the whole picture and could only see a few phantoms.

Yüsheng could often see more from those phantoms—things like comments with double slashes.

So what about Luna? What was she looking at here?

"What are you thinking about?" Yüsheng came to the window and asked casually.

Luna hesitated for a moment, then slightly lowered her head: "I, don't know."

"Don't know what you're thinking about?" Yüsheng tilted his head. "Or thinking too much, not knowing how to say it?"

Luna turned her head. The corridor light spilled down from above, landing on her nun's veil like a diffused phantom glow.

"Thinking, too much," she said softly. After another long silence, she slowly spoke: "If we find the star gate, does that mean, we find, my home?"

"Not exactly," Yüsheng shook his head. "Finding the star gate only finds the entrance to the Hermitic Order's nest. After crossing the border, we'll face an unfamiliar starry sky—a mysterious and closed 'domain of the order.' According to the Task Force's speculation, they control at least double-digit colonial planets... Your hometown is just one of them, and it might be hidden very well."

"But as long as we can, find the 'Sanctuary,' we can find, the map." Luna said haltingly, her voice firm.

Yüsheng didn't speak for a moment, just quietly looked at Luna.

He knew that this "artificial saint" made of black technology was essentially still the country girl who had just left her hometown. She didn't know much about the "outside world," and even less about knowledge of the stars. She probably didn't understand what a star gate meant, nor could she imagine how long a journey it would take to go from one planet to another. All her understanding of her hometown was still that golden wheat field, without involving the vast starry sky above.

But she was already trying to understand what was happening in her own way.

"Yes, find that planet called 'Sanctuary,' take it, and we'll definitely find your hometown," Yüsheng nodded. "The Council's fleet will sweep the entire star sector, and Flying Feather Star Domain is preparing too. If those priests refuse to talk, I'll make their souls confess."

Luna slowly nodded: "Mm, okay."

"...But what about after that? Have you thought about it?" Yüsheng hesitated but still spoke. "If we really find and liberate your hometown, will you want to go back and see it?"

Luna was silent for a few seconds, then lowered her head, looking at her hands made of starship armor alloy.

"I, don't know."

"Yun Qingzi is researching a method to reshape the body, but he says the technology used for artificial saints is too sinister—the way of blending a human soul with a machine spirit is too wild. He hasn't found a safe way to transfer your consciousness. Luo is considering the Black Spot Group's cloning technology... but she faces the same problem as Yun Qingzi, and she doesn't have your genetic sample yet," Yüsheng spoke slowly in thought. "The Task Force—they're trying to find a way out using android technology, relying on a spirit fox darksteel skeleton to achieve biological adaptability to the 'machine spirit,' but progress isn't good.

"Also, Thousand Peaks Spirit Mountain is working on it. They contacted the Ten Courts' Mechanism Workshop, though I don't think it's reliable, but it's a backup idea. And then there's Eline... She posted a thread on the Garden Network asking if the nano-printing pool for living puppets can be used on living humans. Don't tell her I told you about this last one—just pretend you don't know."

Luna's head snapped up when Yüsheng was halfway through. The face made of living metal, usually wearing a fixed smile, displayed such a complex and vivid expression for the first time. She stared at him in shock, and after a long time finally stammered: "E-everyone..."

"Everyone is trying—though not necessarily reliable methods," Yüsheng nodded. "And this isn't just for you—it's also for the other 'saints' and 'knights' who can still be saved. The Hermitic Order's crimes are too numerous to record. Those priests deserve to die, but the souls trapped in machine shells are different."

He paused for two seconds and slowly added: "If such a large faction is to be dismantled, the cleanup... is a huge project."

Luna didn't speak, just stood there fixedly.

"No rush, we still have a lot of time—and a lot to do," Yüsheng smiled, turned to look at the dark deep space outside the window. "Take your time thinking. Even when that day comes, you can still think slowly. Many things are like this—you ponder endlessly before it happens, but when the day actually comes, everything might just fall into place."

Luna blinked. After a while, she slowly turned around and looked outside together with him.

"Mm, right."

Every long warp has an end.

After who knows how long, the navigation system issued a prompt. The Exotic Hotel's superluminal engines began to reduce power. A low rumble echoed through the ship—distant starlight shone through the cracks in the darkness back onto the portholes. The warped space receded, and the ship returned to the material universe.

Yüsheng had already returned to the control hall by then. Watching the starlight reappear outside the huge curved observation window, his attention almost immediately fell on a dim "star" nearby.

It was the only large celestial body within line of sight—a brown dwarf that had failed to ignite into a star due to its mass being below the critical threshold.

The intense thermonuclear reaction ended before it could begin. On the surface of this failed "sun," only some dark red hot spots floated on the "cold" hydrogen ocean (cold relative to a normal star), like a celestial tomb isolated in the universe.

Immediately after, the ship's early warning system issued a series of dense alarms. Radar detected a large number of artificial signals in the local star system.

Yüsheng's first reaction was to confirm that the Exotic Hotel's stealth system was functioning properly. Only after confirming the barrier was still up did he relax a little.

Then Huli, somewhat unskillfully, began operating the ship's radar array to pinpoint the specific locations of those signals and try to distinguish which one was the Hermitic Order's illegal star gate.

Yüsheng, meanwhile, controlled the ship to ignite the conventional engines under stealth, moving slowly away from this place in low-speed cruise mode, heading in the direction Huli indicated.

"There's a 'big thing' on the side of this brown dwarf," Huli looked up at Yüsheng, her tail swaying. "I suspect it's that 'star gate'—there are many signal reactions around it, possibly the star gate's defensive forces."

"Slowly sneak over, find a suitable position, and then contact Baili Qing..."

(End of chapter)