Deep Space Wandering Fleet
Chapter 572 - 569: Man-Eating Beast

Returning like that, humans certainly weren’t satisfied, bringing along so many soldiers was a precaution against various unknown situations.

In the Underground City on another planet, all the citizens watching the live broadcast grew anxious. Zhang Yuan stuffed a handful of nuts into his mouth, while Lin Xuanyuan leaned closer to him.

Everyone was worried about whether these soldiers might encounter danger, and some were even strategizing, suggesting that more robots be sent in...

However, no matter what they discussed, the front-line soldiers couldn’t possibly hear them.

The signals people saw were completely delayed, and the reporter quickly shifted the camera to another direction, losing sight of the soldiers, which made everyone incredibly anxious...

...

The industrial elevator slowly descended, and soon, with a soft "shh" sound, it seemed to have reached the interior of the Underground City.

Upon opening the air pressure gate, many gases poured in.

Outside, in the square, there were scattered, awaiting-repair excavators; there was a small amount of air present, about 0.5 standard atmospheres.

Following testing, the air’s components were found to contain oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and traces of pollutants.

"Report, no unknown gases or microbes detected!"

This test wasn’t necessarily accurate, as the most advanced equipment hadn’t been brought along.

A group of robots were released to scout around. The tracked vehicle slowly moved forward.

Looking around, the industrial area of this Underground City was filled with machines waiting for repair, with only some cleaning robots still automatically tidying up the streets.

These cleaning robots didn’t pay any attention to the moving tracked engineering vehicle; instead, they quickly maneuvered around each other.

"The structure of this Underground City is almost the same as our old ones... Look, the military passage is ahead, and on the right is the emergency escape route."

"Yes, it’s basically a replica of the original, but it’s the most hassle-free way."

"... All these automatic excavators are broken. Due to no one being here to repair them, they lined up in the repair queue and ended up broken outside."

Finally, the military robots detected a large door at the edge of the industrial area and halted their advance.

From the structural perspective of the Underground City, behind the door was likely a long tunnel leading to the residential, commercial, and other areas.

Commander Guo Hao took a deep breath. For some reason, he always felt a profound sadness, as if about to witness a tragic moment of the era.

Where had everyone gone?

Why was there no response?

The answer was hidden behind this door.

After a long time, he licked his dry lips and spoke, "Everyone, prepare to record everything we see with video. Let’s go!"

"Yes!" The car’s camera wasn’t enough; all the team members started their Power Armor’s video recording equipment.

The structure of these doors, with their technologies, hadn’t changed much from the past, featuring automatic and manual backup devices. Even the manual mechanical codes were identical.

After manually operating the controls, the team members easily opened this large air pressure gate, and the tracked vehicle drove into the tunnel, heading towards the unknown...

Along the way, they passed several platforms where track trains sat on the tracks, empty and covered in dust, clearly unused for a long time.

Where had the people gone?

Everyone couldn’t help but feel saddened, a great gloom enveloping their hearts, noticeably quickening their heartbeats.

It was oppressive, truly oppressive.

Some younger team members even wanted to wipe the sweat from their foreheads but realized their heads were blocked by the glass covers of the Power Armor.

They were too tense.

"Don’t panic. There shouldn’t be any danger," Commander Guo Hao said, "It’s probably not the Aliens messing around."

The living quarters were right up ahead.

From inside the engineering vehicle, military robots were redeployed for external reconnaissance.

In one particular room, the warriors spotted the first human, a real human! She was lying inside a hibernation chamber.

"Let’s go check it out!"

People hurriedly ran down from the vehicle and entered the room.

It was a young woman with golden hair and snow-white skin, looking quite beautiful. She lay there in the hibernation chamber, a blissful smile on her face.

Above the hibernation chamber, the indicator light showed that she was still alive—at least physiologically.

"Captain..."

"Don’t touch her yet."

They were not professional doctors and dared not disturb these hibernating women.

Moving forward, they pushed open another room’s door, revealing two more hibernation chambers.

A man and a woman lay inside them, both also displaying blissful smiles.

Everyone involuntarily swallowed their saliva and exchanged glances, their bodies breaking out in goosebumps from the eeriness!

Continuing onward, they came to a large hibernation room with rows upon rows of hibernation chambers, totaling hundreds of thousands, each occupant wearing a very blissful smile!

Only some robot nurses were still diligently at their posts, bustling about and checking on the physiological states of those in hibernation.

Typically, as long as there was a power supply, nothing troublesome would occur.

This group of soldiers was utterly stunned; they had never seen such a bizarre scene before...

No living people, only busy robots.

It was terrifying, as if the chill from inside the hibernation chambers pierced into their cells and froze their bone marrow!

"Captain, what’s happening with them? Why did they all suddenly go into hibernation!"

"Maybe, they were eaten..." the commander murmured, his heart racing, his voice very low.

"Eaten?"

The soldier seemed to think of something, his face turning ashen.

The captain didn’t respond but simply checked the hibernation records in the machine. The oldest group had been in hibernation for 52 years, and the youngest batch, for 33 years.

Ahead were still hibernation chambers, endless hibernation chambers, all the population had encased themselves in ice!

It was unbelievable that even pets like cats and dogs had their own hibernation chambers, hibernating inside.

The group finally found a complete map of the Underground City and began to drive towards the central control area of the entire city.

A clone version of the Pangu Brain was located here.

However, since this was a critical protection area, there were also some military defense systems to tackle, and the warriors put in great effort to gradually unlock various security measures.

The door opened.

This supercomputer was indeed operational, displaying a complex virtual world control panel on the screen.

The control content inside was extremely sophisticated, requiring high-level expertise and various keys. It wasn’t just a matter of clicking on the screen to destroy a virtual world or modify some rules within it...

Such actions were not allowed at the rule level.

To modify anything inside, one needed highly complex keys and some special physical keys. Random clicks by an ordinary person on the screen were basically useless.

One sharp-eyed warrior suddenly noticed a folder on the screen that seemed different from the regular control panel.

"Look at this! There’s a file!"