Muru"s encounter had Hao Ren come to grips with the unusualness of the incident. The Umbral Realm he had been searching for all this time finally surfaced.
Muru received the distress signal from other guardians in meditation. However, this signal came from a place where it had theoretically fallen into the Umbral Realm with the Star of Creation. If the message was not forged, there was only one answer: the Umbral Realm and the main universe was connected again.
"I"m sure the signal is genuine," said Muru, dismissing Hao Ren"s last bit of doubt. "Guardians have a special telepathic ability, designed by our mother. Unless another G.o.d was faking it, otherwise I was unlikely to have received a false signal."
Hao Ren looked serious. "Can you determine the coordinates of the source of the signal? Is the Gate of Solenne still in its place?"
"The position has changed, in a place that is unknown to me," Muru said as he took out a black metal device. "Maybe the big bang moved the Gate of Solenne to another part of the universe. It may also be that the galaxy is moving on its mysterious trajectory. The source of the signal is very unusual. I only recognized the keyword "Solenne" from a ciphertext that only the guardian could read. It is the information I have recorded down, but I don"t know if your device can convert it into a navigation signal."
"There"s nothing that my equipment cannot decode. It"s just a matter of time." Hao Ren nodded, motioning Lily to take over the recording device from Muru.
It was a device the giants used, just the size of the palm of Muru, but it was almost the size of a human. Lily took the recorder and held it on her head; it looked as if a coffin had grown a pair of legs when viewing from a distance.
This husky was obedient though.
Hao Ren and Lily sent the recorder to the CARS, connected it to the mainframe of the s.p.a.ce station and started a.n.a.lyzing the data. He found that the coordinates contained in the recorder were very vague and had a peculiar mathematical structure. It was because there was an error in converting mental signals into machine-readable numerical coordinates. On the other hand, these giants used unique encoding method. The s.p.a.ce station mainframe was capable of processing the data, but it took a bit of time.
When the mainframe began to process the data, Hao Ren returned to Muru. They stood on a hill on the west side of Alamanda and overlooked at the rolling land. Lily moved like an agile little monkey up Muru"s stick and gazed into the distance. "Whoa! It"s all built up. I remember the mountain over there was still a wasteland the last time I came."
Hao Ren didn"t pay attention to what Lily was saying. He was instead wondering if cats would lose their advantage since dogs could climb a tree like a monkey now.
Afraid of the height after staying up on the stick for a while, Lily came back down. She then pulled Hao Ren"s sleeve. "Mr. Landlord! I saw a city on the other side of the lake! The architectural style doesn"t look like that of Tannagost!"
"That is a Zormian settlement. It is still not a city yet, but it is developing fast." The voice of Muru rumbling from above. "There are many such new towns around Alamanda, and people are recovering from the blood pool of the town every day. Do you want to take a look?"
Before Hao Ren could say anything, Y"lisabet jumped to her feet and said, "Yeah, let"s go and take a look. Uncle Ren, shall we?"
"That"s a good idea." Hao Ren nodded and smiled. "Maybe we would meet someone we know."
Muru brought them to the newly emerging town near the "spring of life" and stayed outside the town because of his size while Hao Ren and the others ventured into the town by themselves. There were simple houses well-arranged on an open s.p.a.ce. Some of these houses were built using the materials taken from the surrounding environment, and some were like industrially produced houses. As the settlement was still expanding, there were no walls and clear boundaries, but there was a watchtower-like operated platform at a regular interval along the edge of the town.
All the roads and grounds in the city were just flat muddy land; few places were paved with plastic-like synthetic materials. There were no advanced urban facilities. Road signs were painted wooden boards, and street lamps used wooden stakes with oil pots. Water supply came from drilled wells and open-air ditches. Everything seemed primitive and straightforward, but the system design was carried out with modern ideas in mind. It was the odd fusion of advanced and primitive civilizations, and the mixture of modern bungalows and stone cottages made this oddity even more profound. Hao Ren felt as if he had walked into a time-warped stage drama, but he thought that probably this was the scene of the recovery of civilization under certain circ.u.mstances.
A highly civilized race equipped with advanced technology had to rebuild everything from a primitive society.
The people of Zorm were lucky though. At least, they had the initial supplies of simple industrial products. Hao Ren recognized some of these things, which the factory that he left on the planet had produced. Many other things might be salvaged from the nearby ruins of Tannagost. For example, the pale gold synthetic cover on the outer wall of a dwelling, which was unique to the ruins of the Tannagost.
Residents in the town soon discovered the visiting guests. There were several men in rags walking towards Hao Ren. Seeing them from a distance, Hao Ren suddenly sighed. "To tell the truth, this is the first time I saw Zorm people in real life."
He then took the MDT out of his pocket and transferred Nolan"s holographic image from the s.p.a.cecraft before him. Nolan"s figure appeared above the MDT, only one and a half size larger than Lil Pea. She was clueless as they why Hao Ren had summoned her here. "Hao Ren? Is there something? I am doing maintenance for my engines."
"Nolan, come and see your compatriots. It is the new town of Zorm. The people have entered the real world en ma.s.se."
Nolan looked around the town through the eyes of the MDT. After a long while, she said in an indifferent tone of voice, "I don"t have feelings towards them; I"m just an AI. I have never lived in the real world. Am I their compatriot?"
The MDT scoffed, "You care?"
At this time, a few men in worker suits came before Hao Ren. They first were awed by the height of Y"zaks and the projection device beside Hao Ren, and then speculated on the ident.i.ty of the visitors. "You are the lord?"
The planet of Tannagost-Zorm had become one of the bases of Hao Ren while the Zorm people who rebuilt their homes on this planet were naturally his people. In the old days when the social order collapsed utterly, and humans broke up and reorganized, those who woke up early had decided that they should accept the authority of the planet"s master, and it was not just the decision of a few but also the will of the Zormian First Born.
The will of Zormian First Born carried weight as it had a significant influence on this civilization.
The Zorm people who had awakened from the virtual world already knew what happened to their home planet. Deep inside, they still could not understand and accept that the disaster had occurred. As painful as the reality was, they did not complain but chose the pragmatic way of rebuilding their society. Most people recognized hao Ren"s authority on the planet although he did not seem to have very involved in the reconstruction effort. The AI of CARS, MDT and the two guardians here were more than capable of handling everything here.
Hao Ren realized that he needed to at least say something. Hurriedly, he nodded and tried not to look stupid. "Yes, I am. I"m here to check out the situation."
As he spoke, he wondered what more he should say to these Zorm people. Apart from issuing a few remote commands to the AIs here, He was not personally involved in the reconstruction of the planet Tannagost, much lesser than he had in the planet Aerym.
Probably he was the planet lord who had the least sense of presence in the world. If he were the boss of a company, no one would have known him wherever he went; his company security personnel would probably bounce him out before he could enter the office.
The embarra.s.sment did not last long though as there was a voice came from a side. "Hao Ren?"
"Nolan?" the voice called out again.