louisehourcade Chapter 490 Relay Station!
Chapter 490 Relay Station!
The whole process lasted about four minutes.
When the entire icosahedron lit up, the optical detection screen in the cockpit was almost completely covered in gold.
Then, a batch of data packets came in.
It did not carry any offensive code, and the data flow was smooth and orderly, completely different from the violent probing attributes of the previous Dead Ship black box.
This set of data is quiet and orderly, like an archive waiting to be read page by page.
"Downloading."
Guan Xing controlled the volume, his fingertips rapidly swiping across the screen. "It's a chart, a safe navigation route map."
Zhang Yan remained silent and waited for her to finish reading.
"All known patrol areas of the White Light Patrol have been marked, along with their time patterns."
Observing the stars, he paused for a moment, "The active cycle of each region, the interval, and the phase of the current cycle."
Zhang Yan brought up the star map and compared it with the image.
The patrol maps downloaded by the relay station were overlaid on their existing flight paths.
The large area that was originally marked as a red danger zone immediately took on a structured appearance, showing no random distribution but rather a regular patrol route.
The active and dormant periods alternate, and the patterns vary from region to region, but all of them are recorded clearly.
"The White Light Patrol will remain active for another 91 hours in the section we're taking. At our current speed, we don't need to go around it at all; we can just go straight through the middle without any problems."
Guan Xing pointed at the screen.
She looked up.
"There are three alternative routes to Guixu."
The stargazer's voice trembled, "One of them is marked as 'Maintainer Only'."
Zhang Yan looked at that line.
It bypassed all the patrol zones of the white light patrollers, bypassed all the high-dimensional storms marked in red, and pointed straight to the coordinates of the Ruins of Return.
It is nearly 40% shorter than the current route.
If the data recorded by the relay station is accurate, they can not only avoid encountering the White Light Patrol throughout the entire journey, but also arrive almost two days earlier.
"Cut into this line."
Zhang Yan said.
"I'll calculate the entrance angle."
The calculation took less than two minutes.
The stargazer sent the parameters to the flight control system, and the Chaos Mech slowly adjusted its attitude, aligning its nose with the coordinates of the entrance to the maintainer's exclusive passage.
Zhang Yan was about to push the control lever.
The main communication panel is lit up.
The source is not a quantum entanglement channel, but rather the relay station's own communication module actively broadcasting the message, with the frequency band and gate network underlying protocol being completely consistent.
The signal was intercepted by the mech's receiver, automatically translated into text, and displayed in the center of the screen.
[Relay station has responded. Maintainers are returning. Notify the entire city.]
The entire message consisted of only these sixteen characters.
Signal source direction: Ruins coordinates.
There was a three-second silence in the cockpit.
"They knew we were coming."
According to the Star Gazing Theory.
"understood."
Zhang Yan pushed the control lever, and the Chaos Mech entered the entrance of the Maintainer's Exclusive Passage.
The moment Zhang Yan entered the maintainer's passage, he clearly sensed something was different.
The channel walls are no longer pitch black.
The wall surface has an extremely fine, evenly distributed golden light mesh, which is a guide rail embedded in the spatial structure itself.
The Chaos Mech glided along the light network with almost zero resistance, and its thrusters could maintain a speed of 120 times the speed of light without any additional output.
The high level of vigilance that had lasted for two whole days gradually eased after entering this passage.
There wasn't even a trace of spatial turbulence.
"Automatic solution".
Observing the stars, he glanced at the external data and said, "The walls of the passage have an active equilibrium field that has been operating for 30,000 years."
Zhang Yan released his hand from the control lever and leaned back in his chair.
This is the first time since we started that I haven't put my hands on the control stick.
Before setting off, Nie Qingcheng stuffed two pieces of compressed food into the storage compartment of the cockpit, saying that he was afraid he would forget to eat in space.
Zhang Yan opened one of the pieces, chewed it, and found the taste strange, but it was packed with calories.
The entire stargazing process involved analyzing the data packets downloaded from the relay station.
She made no unnecessary movements throughout, her fingertips moving steadily across the keyboard, occasionally dropping a few characters onto the memo screen.
Six hours later, the communication packet arrived on Earth.
A six-hour delay is the limit of the quantum entanglement channel over this distance.
Qin Xiao's voice carried his usual tone, deliberately relaxed yet tense.
"Brother Yan, there's a new situation on the outer edge of the solar system."
"Three signals were detected at the edge of the Kuiper Belt. Their frequency characteristics overlap with those of the community's advance team by about 70%, but they are more dispersed and quieter, clearly probing and testing the waters, with no intention of launching an attack. I've sent you the coordinates."
Zhang Yan brought up the coordinates and marked the location on the star chart.
The three sets of signals are distributed in different directions along the edge of the Kuiper Belt, with uniform spacing and no natural drift characteristics, indicating that the formation was intentionally arranged.
Reconnaissance body.
The community leader sends its eyes over before getting close.
Qin Xiao continued, "My sister-in-law asked me to pass on a message. She told me to tell you that she has put this area on level two alert, but will not launch an attack."
Zhang Yan thought for a moment and replied with a message indicating a delay.
"Have her use the passive shielding of the gate network to weaken Earth's energy signature, preventing those reconnaissance bodies from obtaining useful data. Don't attack them proactively; if you do, they'll report their location back to the mother body in real time. Wait for my message."
After sending the message, he turned off the communication and told the stargazer.
Guan Xing wasn't too excited; he simply said, "The mother body moved earlier than we expected."
"Um."
"Fortunately, there are safe flight paths now."
Guan Xing turned back to the screen, "If everything goes smoothly, we'll arrive at Guixu two days ahead of schedule and return two days early. The infiltration speed of those reconnaissance entities should still be within the passive shielding range of the gate network, and they won't be able to catch up."
"So don't linger in Guixu."
"right."
Zhang Yan slept for four hours. When he woke up, Guan Xing was leaning against the back of the passenger seat, reading a well-worn notebook.
She noticed Zhang Yan move and closed the notebook.
"We're almost there."
She said, "The detector ahead detected the unusual structure two hours ago."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell you when you wake up."
Zhang Yan sat up straight and retrieved the image cache from the front detector.
On the screen, in the void at the end of the channel, a large number of structures floated densely.
That is not a natural celestial body.
It is a group of buildings.
The towers and cabins, with their distinct geometric structures, are interconnected and form a massive city floating in space. Without a planet to rely on, it maintains its overall stability through its own magnetic field and gravity.
The light emanates from inside certain structures, warm and soft, suggesting that someone has lived there.
The volume of the entire structural group was difficult to estimate intuitively. Zhang Yan went through the numerical conversions in his mind, tried to come up with a number, and then gave up.
"arrive."
For the first time, the sound of stargazing contained something they had never heard before on this journey.
There was no tension, no guardedness, just a sense of relief, like something that had been suppressed for a long time and had finally come to fruition.
"Return to the Ruins".
She said softly.
Zhang Yan did not reply. He steadied his fingers on the control stick and slowly reduced the speed of the Chaos Mech.
The floating city is becoming increasingly clear in our view.
The communication channel suddenly lit up.
This time, the signal source is neither on Earth nor at a relay station.
It came from the top of the tallest tower in the very center of that building complex, sent using an encryption protocol they had never seen before, but the Heavenly Craftsmanship automatically decoded it, and the entire communication was pushed directly to the main screen.
Only one sentence.
[Maintainers, welcome home.]