Chapter 178 - Ancient Remains (XII)
Editors: Humu & Kitty
“Of course, I’m Noen. What’s the matter?”
“No, of course you’re not Noen. Even your aura has changed.” Luo Jian said, “And the system is now offline, so the NPCs will recover their true appearances and memories at any time. The fighting prowess of you Polarisians is remarkable. I believe that your recovery ability is not inferior.”
Noen shook his head. He thought for a moment and replied, “You’re right. I’m Noen, but I’m not Noen…… so, who am I?”
Noen kept his back straight. The look in his eyes was sharp, and it was nailed onto Luo Jian. “Yes, I remember.”
“I’m a traitor.”
Noen’s memory could be traced back to hundreds of years ago. At that time, he was just an ordinary citizen of Polaris. Although he had extraordinary fighting prowess, he was just a drop in the ocean among the huge population, so he was not worth mentioning.
In Polaris that prized collective interests, every resident must take responsibility and sacrifice for the collectivity. The same goes for Noen. In his years of ideological education, the concept instilled into him by adults was just a simple sentence—The interests of the collective were supreme!
But one day, the people of Earth came as attackers; they wanted to occupy a place on Polaris, and they were naturally defeated in the war and were driven out. But in the war, some of the enemies Noen had contact with left a deep impression in his heart.
He began to doubt his ideas.
Of course, he didn’t think that the concept that the interests of the collectives were supreme was incorrect, but he felt that…… maybe I can change my way of life?
People on Earth were very strange. Most of the time they were selfish, but sometimes they were so selfless. They could give everything to certain people but treat other people cruelly. Wasn’t this such a strange thing? At least on Polaris, Noen’s race was not like this at all.
Noen’s people would contribute selflessly to collective interests, and each clan regarded self-sacrifice as an honor. However, this race was also a race that highly advocated force. Weak people would be bullied and pushed out to become victims.
Children would be protected because they were the future; women would also be protected because they were tools of reproduction; but when necessary, women could be pushed out and so could children. All Polarisians thought it was natural. They had no concept of family, no self-awareness, and they would only do everything that was right for the collective, although it might be very cruel.
Noen should have been used to it, but he also questioned it.
There was nothing wrong with serving the collective. Indeed, doing this would serve to make Polarisian’s future brighter and themselves stronger. They would undoubtedly become one of the powerful races in the universe. However, Noen also deeply felt conflicted after he learned that in this world, there were certain feelings, certain feelings of love, that had the power to shake his soul.
Noen betrayed his race.
He was the first to begin taking such a step to betray his race, but he did not know if he was the last. He wanted to pursue more things, and such things were impossible to have on Polaris.
“Then, I left Polaris, and I joined a team of Earthlings and partic.i.p.ated in one of their pilot projects.”
Noen stood there and gave a brief account of his background. He looked at Luo Jian thoughtfully and said, “I think you know the plan—the plan of building the transmigration system.”
Luo Jian widened his eyes and stared at the alien in front of him in surprise. An unprecedented guess quickly formed in his mind. Instead of waiting for the next word to be said, he directly interrupted him. He said, “You…… Could you be…… the creator of the secret chamber!?”
Noen did not answer immediately. He came to Luo Jian’s side. Following the frozen sculptures, layers of frozen ice, he saw Xing Yan still maintaining that posture, ready to launch an attack. However, there was an obvious protuberance in the pocket of Xing Yan’s clothes, and a corner of the cube was exposed outside.
“You see, that is the core power source of the secret chamber. I call it ‘cuboid.’ You can simply call it ‘cube.’ This cube is the essence of the reincarnation system. Once destroyed, thousands of secret chambers built by the system will be destroyed in an instant. Its powerful energy will affect the order of time and s.p.a.ce, and the consequences will be so horrifying that I doubt you would like to witness them.”
Noen squatted in front of Xing Yan, touched the ice on his body with his claw, pointed to the magic cube in his pocket, and said to Luo Jian: “It has incredible power, and to a certain extent, it is combined with the biotechnology of the Polaris, so it can also be called a living creature, a living creature with a consciousness.”
I’m one of the developers of the cube. I provided biotechnology to the people of Earth and helped them build the transmigration system. But it was a huge mistake. In my long life, I didn’t know whether what I was doing was right or wrong.”
Although what Noen said was shocking, Luo Jian had already known a little about it from Ying. But now, he still had some problems that he didn’t understand. Taking this opportunity, he began to ask Noen: “But the transmigration system is from the future, developed 100 million years after the present Earth today. How can you appear here? Are you brought together by the secret chamber?”
“No, I’m just a projection, a projection from the future.” Noen stood up and lowered his head to look at Luo Jian.
Luo Jian opened his eyes in surprise: “The projection of the future?”
“Yes, I was accidentally connected to its signal…… To put it simply, it’s amazing; it’s as if you dialed the wrong number accidentally on your phone to your future self more than ten years later. This is the case now. I am still in the future in a hundred million years, but by some means, I am unconsciously linked to the ‘me’ in this secret chamber, so right now, I can have a face-to-face conversation with you.”
Now, the power of the secret chamber has no way to support itself to leap the distance of 100 million years, so it can’t go back to the future. That is why it will act recklessly in the ‘present’ on Earth.”
Luo Jian never thought that he could coincidentally meet the alien in the future from a hundred million years later!
This was a terrifying opportunity that could never be missed. Taking advantage of the offline system and the opportunity now that the secret chamber’s will was not be able to control many aspects. He could get some important information from Noen’s mouth, such as how to destroy the secret chamber!
“The most direct method is to destroy the cube. However, with the current technology of you Earthlings, this is impossible. Even if it can be done, it will have terrible consequences.”
“What terrible consequences?”
“To put it bluntly, just imagine this cube as a super bomb that can destroy the solar system with a single blast.”
Noen’s words stunned Luo Jian. He stood there for a long time, unable to speak. He shivered and said, “That is to say, if I can’t handle it well, can this thing drag everyone on Earth to bury together with it?”
“Yes, I’ve calculated its energy units, and with its power, it can definitely do that.”
This was something that Ying had never said. However, Luo Jian did not blame Ying. How could Ying control the futuristic technology’s brains? Naturally one couldn’t imagine that the core of the secret chamber had such huge power reserves. Now, Luo Jian, who heard what Noen said, had to overturn his previous idea and begin to think about other ways to destroy the secret chamber.
“Is there no other way?”
“Of course there is.” Noen continued pointing to the cube in his pocket and said, “Did you notice this? The cube lacks a corner, and that corner is the security mechanism, similarly meaning that you would give a lock to the cube. Now, this lock is missing, so the cube will rampage, build one independent s.p.a.ce after another, and trap players here to experience life and death. You just need to find the missing corner, that is, find the lock, put it back on the cube, and lock its power.”
“That’s it!? I mean…… Is that lock absolutely indestructible?” Luo Jian could not help but frown. This was quite different from what Ying said. According to what Ying meant, he told Luo Jian to destroy the ‘lock’ and also told Luo Jian that as long as the lock was gone, the secret chamber would naturally disintegrate.
“Destroy?” Noen frowned and looked at Luo Jian inexplicably and said, “Of course not! With the current technology levels on Earth, you would not be able to craft a second lock. But you also cannot directly destroy the cube…… The power it holds could destroy an entire galaxy! If the lock is destroyed, how do you control the secret chamber?”
Again, Luo Jian was stunned. He stared at Xing Yan in front of him. His eyes were placed on the cube in his pocket. He could hardly move his sight away. There was only one thought left in his mind—
Was Ying lying to him!?
No! Why lie to him? Would he gain any advantages by doing so?
Wait, there was another fatal issue……
Luo Jian raised his head and looked at Noen. He asked, “Since the lock is the security mechanism of the secret chamber, why does the secret chamber hide it instead of destroying it by itself?”
This question made Noen slow to react for quite a while. He sighed: “In fact, if you destroy this lock, you can destroy the secret chamber as well because the lock is the remote control of a remote-controlled bomb. As long as the lock is destroyed, the cube will explode—in our time, if we want to destroy a cube with such high energy, we will throw the cube into a galaxy void of life and destroy it by using another remote control.”
“I see. Because the bomb is too dangerous to handle, you would just drop it where there is no one and detonate it automatically.” Luo Jian suddenly understood something. He realized that Ying had not deceived him.
“That’s it, but do you really have the ability now to drop bombs far away from the solar system?” Noen touched his chin and seriously discussed with Luo Jian, “First, you must have at least one s.p.a.ceship that can get out of the solar system; second, the secret chamber wouldn’t simply allow you to send it out of the solar system; third, you have to find the lock hidden by the secret chamber.”
“With this, it’s very difficult to implement this method.” The success rate was terrifyingly low, and it took a lot of time to do this.
“There’s a third way.” Noen burst into laughter, though his smile could not be seen clearly under his mask. “As I said before, just put the lock back on, put it on the cube, and let it recognize you as its master.”
Luo Jian, who was listening to what he said was instantly shocked. He turned back to glance inexplicably at Noen, “Eh?”
T/N: Thank you ChrysAmans for the kofis!
Because we have 10 bonus chapters now, I’ll temporarily stop offering bonus kofi chapters for EIC until my team and I are done with publishing the 10 bonus chapters. Sorry about that! Over the next two to three weeks, my team and I will be publishing the bonus chapters thank y’all for understanding and supporting the series.