Xyrin Empire
Chapter 751: Fragment Falls into Place

Chapter 751: Chapter 751: Fragment Falls into Place

I don’t know if this should be considered a coincidence, but we discovered hundreds of Star Ring Fragments, yet they could only be used as research material for the Abyss. The Divine Race, however, happened upon a fragment that had the largest volume and most complete structure and, astonishingly, still maintained its basic operational abilities. It seems that the Divine Race is indeed a group of infuriating halo manufacturers, their ability to find hidden rewards on the map when exploring is EX-level.

After confirming that the Abyss reaction in the Star Ring Fragment had completely ceased, I agreed to let Visca explore inside the fragment first. She had personally designed this weapon ring and remembered it vividly, familiar with every inch of its structure. After a few hours of preliminary inspection, Visca confirmed that the facilities in this segment of the Star Ring Fragment were largely intact, and even some of its functions were still preserved.

This was abnormal.

The destruction of the Star Ring Fragment was due to a massive explosion from within, our guess was that a Fallen Apostle used some kind of resonance device that caused the energy pipelines in the Star Ring to go out of control, leading to its explosion. This type of destruction was clean and thorough; there’s no way any equipment should have remained intact, even if it looked flawless on the outside, they should have been a mess inside. But this fragment not only retained its basic combat capabilities, but during a meeting with the Divine Race Vanguard, it abruptly activated its weapon systems, leaving those Divine Race Warriors disheveled and dusty, and it even retained a certain system memory, successfully recognizing Visca’s control commands and responding to her operations.

"There are signs of it being repaired."

Visca, utterly puzzled, said, her blood-red cat pupils narrowing into a thin slit, "An auxiliary system maintenance device that isn’t on record, the energy pipelines have been refurbished, and a set of navigation equipment has been added to replace the Star Ring’s own beacon-locking mechanism. I found two sets of Void Calibration engines in the bottom Gnaku, they are ’younger’ than the other equipment, recently installed. The core system memory also shows signs of modification; it seems something had been written into it but was later deleted, we can only find the deleted logs, but not the deleted content—it’s a very thorough job, the person who did this must master Xyrin encryption technology extremely well."

Sandora and I looked at each other, both of us surprised.

We wouldn’t doubt Visca’s words, so this Star Ring Fragment is indeed mysterious.

"The Fallen Apostles wouldn’t do this," I immediately concluded the most basic judgment, "Treating the Star Ring Fragments as bombs, it would be nonsensical for them to take the effort to repair this unless they were absolutely stuffed."

Sandora was completely baffled, she subconsciously curved her index finger to her chin, pondering for half a minute, "Void Calibration engines, this could be the reason the Star Ring Fragment appeared in the Divine Race managed world... It didn’t drift in accidentally, someone set its coordinates, its initial destination was that world... Father God, is there anything special about the world the fragment impacted? Oh, if it’s confidential, never mind."

"No, it has nothing to do with secrets," Father God said blandly, "A very ordinary world, in a remote area, a small universe, low energy level, and quite young, currently only has three planets with intelligent civilizations, the most advanced civilization has just reached the stage of exploring the Constant Star System, the most primitive one is still a hunting society. The Star Ring Fragment impacted the first civilization’s space station but didn’t cause many casualties, afterward, that world’s Management God took action... Hmm, that world’s World Management System wasn’t threatened either, in short, an incident of a serious nature but unexpectedly mild in outcome."

"Low energy level, low civilization density, initial evolution and no strategic value," Sandora mused, frowning slightly, "More importantly, the fragment didn’t cause many casualties at the time? Didn’t Abyss Energy explode?"

"It did, but the Mortal outpost that got hit was unmanned," the previously silent Dark Goddess spoke, "Then the fragment used its own power to hover above the planet until the managers summoned the Vanguard there; the fragment didn’t crash into the ground, the only casualties in that world were a group of explorers: They took off from the ground, on their way to investigate the fragment hovering above in orbit, they were annihilated by the residual anti-air weapons of the fragment."

"What are you thinking?" Sandora turned towards me, looking into my eyes.

"The fragment didn’t ’want’ to destroy that world, it was warning others, it’s dangerous, keep away—I think someone wanted to convey a message through this fragment, but it’s a silent puzzle."

"A silent puzzle," Sandora nodded in agreement, "Visca mentioned that there were traces of deleted information in the system records, perhaps that’s the answer to the puzzle—Father God, it seems the situation is indeed more complex than we anticipated."

"It seems right to let you see it in person," Father God said with a nod, "We surely are a bit troubled by your technology. However, whether this fragment carries hostility or not, it’s something I’ve been wondering about from the start... well, what do you plan to do next?"

Sandora answered, "More information can only be analyzed back in Shadow City. We’ve set up special departments and facilities there specifically for analyzing these fragments. This is the most unique one and possibly the last fragment in the Inner Ring of the Visca Star Ring."

Including this fragment, about eighty percent of the fragments in the Inner Ring of the Visca Star Ring have been collected, with less than twenty percent still unaccounted for. The chances of finding them are very slim now, and we’ve been finding fewer large fragments lately. Many are just a collection of deformed mechanical structures or one or two heavily leaking isolation chambers—small stuff like that. This huge fragment here should be the last one we can find. Taville had once deduced what a Star Ring of comparable strength might look like after suffering a Ghost Energy implosion—the collection of Star Ring fragments could now come to a close.

"There are twenty percent of fragments that might have been assimilated by the Void due to their small size, since although they are parts of the Glory Starship, being add-ons from a later phase, their material can still be eroded by the Void gradually," Sandora explained further.

The direct passage from the Divine Realm to Xyrin had already been established and was proving very useful. A transport barge, refitted and put into service since the appearance of the first Star Ring fragment, had rushed from Shadow City to transport this piece of Imperial Heritage. The service life of such barges is only about two years. Their mission was to transport Star Ring fragments discovered in various worlds. Taville improved their spatial hooks and internal protection equipment. Now, several barges of the same model had successfully completed hundreds of transport missions. This should be the last transport.

We also connected with the others staying at Bingdisi’s home, leaving the Divine Realm together with the barge. Accompanying us, besides Bingdisi, were those four odd members of the Dingdang Team... I really wanted to ask them how they could neglect their duties in the Divine Realm and spend their days following a hooligan around living a life of dining, drinking, smashing, and burning with no issues.

siblings having no morals is one thing, but Lin, aren’t you all about integrity and professionalism? And Uncle Kenser, you are the Light God of that world, for heaven’s sake! Is it really okay to abandon your post and let your followers solve their lighting problems at night all by themselves?

I felt a great pressure inside, as the group of five from the Divine Clan seemed likely to remain a lingering scourge in Shadow City for quite some time, and I was full of complaints.

But when I tactfully raised these questions, Monina knocked me down with a hexagonal crystal plate.

"Remote Prayer Handling System, the latest solution for mobile office!"

The Dark Goddess, who aspired to be a cook but ended up becoming a civil servant and hence often neglected her duties, cheerfully showed everyone a wonderful gadget in the barge’s lounge, as mentioned above—a crystal-clear crystal plate the size of a regular dinner plate with bright floating runes. As she moved, 123, Lin, and Uncle Kenser each pulled out something that looked similar from their pockets.

Sandora, who had been daydreaming as she pondered the anomalies of this final Star Ring fragment, had her attention caught, not to mention the others who were slightly bored just after leaving the Divine Realm—suddenly, everyone gathered around.

Monina tapped the crystal surface in her hand and said cheerfully, "I found this thing in a novelty store—they often have these interesting gadgets. It’s a remote control world management system and updates believers’ prayers in real time, capable of transcending any conceptual distance for immediate mobile office work. It integrates a carefully designed prayer categorization function, useless prayer filter function, and commonly used world management parameters, supports multiple terminal information sharing and online gaming. With this, there’s no fear of performance slipping even while traveling on public expenses all day!"

I stared blankly at Monina holding the crystal plate in her hand, suddenly realizing that even away from the Divine Realm, a certain joy seemed to have followed us.

"And it also supports the automatic recording function," Yelsen brushed his finger over his crystal plate, and immediately the device emitted a gentle light, "Unaddressed prayers will be recorded, with full audio, ready for processing when there’s time, like this—"

Just as Yelsen finished his words, a recorded prayer started playing, starting with a man’s voice:

"O Flames roaming above the thirty-three heavens, sear my longsword! Offer the humblest of sacrifices to greet Your arrival! War God Yelsen, please grant me strength! Divine Descent Technique!"

"Sorry, the God you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later or leave a message after the beep."

This second sentence must be that legendary sophisticated automatic system response.

I immediately looked very seriously at Yelsen, who turned pale and crumbled into pieces in an instant.

"...Such situations are usually handled by Divine Servants... Ahaha, that response was just an automatic system behavior..."

Despite that, I suddenly felt pessimistic about Yelsen’s followers.

I suddenly remembered something I had heard somewhere—that the Dingdang Team was famously notorious throughout the Divine Realm. Yes, very famous: a renowned camp for troublemaking children of the Divine Race—four troublemakers and one nanny responsible for watching over them. That’s the real inside scoop of the Dingdang Team!

Then, I subconsciously glanced at Bingdisi making faces in the Magic Mirror next to me, thinking that here was another top-tier troublemaker from the previous generation... Wait a minute, with the Tiaozi Five plus Dingdang, five-sixths of them here were troublemakers that would give any Divine Race parent nightmares, and now they were all gathered under my watch—was fate ordaining me to become an unprecedented expert in adolescent behavior correction?

Just when I started to suspect that the Father God had some unspeakable motive for making me the guardian of these troublemakers, the ferry finally crossed the Divine Realm passage, which took much longer than the usual World Gates, and appeared above the World Tree in Shadow City.

The Leader and his family, who had been indulging in leisure at the Divine Realm for several days, had finally returned.

Besides Anwina and Sivis, Taville, who normally wouldn’t appear as a receptionist, was also there to greet us. She clearly couldn’t contain herself after hearing some news and had rushed over. Sure enough, as soon as we landed, a certain scientific bespectacled lady ran over excitedly, "Your Majesty, I hope your journey was smooth. The facility for studying the Star Ring Fragment is ready."

Though she spoke about something very significant and her tone was quite formal, the excitement of a child who had found a new toy sparkled beneath her decorative glasses. Scientists truly are a bunch who can’t hide their excitement.

The Star Ring Fragment had been inertized by the Dark Goddess herself; its Abyss activity had been halted, allowing for the deepest research possible. Taville was thrilled about this and, upon receiving the command, immediately took her research team to take over the massive pile of non-combustible trash and headed for the research center to start work. She would first disassemble the fragments there before transferring them to the Kuiper Belt Imperial Base. So far, the collected Star Ring Fragments, after completing Abyss stripping and structural analysis, were sent to the Kuiper Belt, where a series of giant bases hidden within the vast asteroid belt housed many production and R&D centers. The Star Ring Fragments were concentrated in a space system jokingly dubbed the "Trash Pool," along with some other bits and pieces of Abyssalized Imperial devices.

After waving goodbye to the overjoyed Taville, there wasn’t much to explain to Sivis. As the Commander of Shadow City during our absence, she had been in contact with us almost daily from far away in the Divine Realm, and we had to thank this diligent female officer for holding up the daily operations of the Imperial Capital all by herself, as it was not an easy task with all the higher-ups away.

"Actually, it’s nothing," Sivis smiled, "It feels like the usual workload."

I thought about it for a while and decided to not delve deeper into this topic.

Anwina had been quietly standing by, her hands crossed in front of her maid’s skirt, slightly bowing her head, waiting for her master to finish his official duties before stepping forward and greeting in the standard manner of Azeroth’s noble families, "Welcome home, Master, and to the number one, number two, and number three Mistresses..."

I quickly covered the Ghost Maid’s mouth, "Cough, cough, no need to count—how is everything at home?"

"Ensuring the house is perfect when the master is not home is the mission of a qualified maid," Anwina replied softly with a textbook-standard smile, but I couldn’t help feeling—was it just my imagination?—that there was a slight hint of resonance in the ghost maid’s ethereal voice that seemed a tad... unhappy?

"What happened?" I looked into Anwina’s eyes with concern and asked, "Also, where is Sayaka? Is she at home?"

"Sayaka has gone to the Imperial College to further her studies—as per the master’s suggestion, because she was bored at home."

Anwina added nonchalantly, hinting to me what was going on.

With everyone out of the house, even the little ones, didn’t that essentially leave Anwina and Du Dao alone at home?

The little ghost was feeling lonely—only she was bound by the so-called perfect maid’s doctrine and couldn’t complain directly to the master, only subtly showing a bit of grievance. This ghost, really, is a troublesome character.

Du Dao, bored at home, had taken my advice and gone to the Imperial College for further study, but Anwina wouldn’t do that. She’s a homebody who would rather stay in than go out. It’s no wonder she felt depressed after being left alone for nearly ten days.

"Shall I take you to the Divine Realm next time?"

Seeing Anwina’s face as if nothing had happened, I seriously made the suggestion, as if she just needed to nod, and we would be headed straight for the Divine Realm.

As expected, the suggestion startled Anwina, who almost jumped up, "Master... Master! Anwina is just a maid, it’s enough for her to take care of the house! A place like the Divine Realm... Anwina is a ghost..."

Oh, I had forgotten that...

"Sigh...then I should probably head home now."

After returning to the Outer World, Lin Xue bade us farewell. This guy, who could disappear from home for days on end, showed no shame at being out of touch for nearly ten days, only scratching his head with some annoyance, "It’s going to be a bunch of nonsense again when I get back... Despite having an agreement with grandpa, he isn’t helping to cover for me."

It’s a wonder you aren’t afraid of ending up like Bingdisi’s dad, forgetting you have a daughter after so many days out!

"Ha, it’s okay, they’ll say what they want and I already know all about it. I used to handle them the same way when I was out on missions facing troubles before; such a big family, missing one person isn’t noticeable. Well, I’m off then, Wood. I’ll keep an eye on the situation related to that fragment at home and I’ll let you know if there’s any new discovery."

After seeing off Lin Xue, the Divine Clan’s five didn’t need supervision and made themselves at home, finding their own rooms. I carried the box of the Mercury Lamp back to my room and threw myself onto the bed.

Home’s bed really is the most comfortable! (To be continued. If you like this work, welcome to join QiDian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendation tickets and monthly tickets, your support is my biggest motivation.)