Chapter 1146: Chapter 1146: This Isn’t a Traffic Accident Scene... Well, Actually, It Is

Miss’s voice is filled with resentment, I can imagine how dark her expression must be right now.

According to Sandora’s guess, since the Fifth Fleet bypassed the rules of the Void, jumping over directly as "smugglers," and there was an error in the final step of the jump, during this process, the original communication protocols and such have become invalid due to the massive misalignment of information. Therefore, our communication devices are essentially wiped clean and need to be reset for use, which might take several days, and Miss will definitely not want to wait that long. So she can only use the Taville Honor-produced connection device again, treating herself as a search antenna—it’s unclear if the miniaturized interface Bubbles created is underpowered or something, but Lin Xue seems unable to use it this time.

"Well, anyway, as long as you’re okay," Lin Xue muttered resentfully for a while before finally sighing, "It almost threw everything into chaos over here. Even the emergency incident expert team in Shadow City got involved. Fortunately, you were just missing for such a short while."

Miss’s words reminded me that from arriving in this strange world with Sandora to finally restoring contact with Lin Xue via the Spiritual Connection, nearly an hour has passed. During this hour, who knows what kind of chaos has ensued on the other side—imagine, two people charging into the deep Void never ventured by anyone before, to aid a fleet that’s extremely alert and even partially hostile towards the Empire, with the need to evade another possibly traitorous and powerful fleet’s pursuit. Right at the critical moment, all contacts suddenly cut off, with no news for an entire hour. I reckon, knowing my people back home, they’ve probably imagined all sorts of scenarios in the past hour. Lin Xue likely found some flimsy excuse to sneak away from home, and Shadow City’s expert team was quickly organized in the blink of an eye... our one-hour disconnection indeed caused quite a stir. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

I comforted Miss a bit and described our situation in as much detail as possible. The response was that now we can only wait until the communication system works before discussing the next steps. In the meantime, the Spiritual Connection between Miss and me must remain open at all times, communicating immediately in case of emergencies.

"That’s the situation, tracking our location through the Spiritual Connection isn’t feasible," leaning on the seat, I turned my head to Sandora, "How are the communication devices and locators doing?"

"All cleaned out, communication protocol failed, coordinates scrambled. I’m resetting the system; it’s truly a bad situation. It seems our estimate of the potential phenomena triggered by such ultra-long-distance jumps was still inadequate," Sandora rubbed her forehead, displeasingly pushing away the control console in front of her, using the counter force to glide back a distance, standing up to engage the shuttle’s autonomous control mode, "Let’s leave the rest to the system, let it slowly search. The shuttle’s inherent positioning database was originally designed for use within the Empire. Now we’re outside, so the locator is definitely useless. Cocogina, report your fleet’s status."

Cocogina stayed on the communication channel; he also knows the fleet might be in an unknown place, but he doesn’t seem too anxious about it—perhaps in his long exile, this ancient Allen Spirit Clan has grown accustomed to more thrilling adventures. Upon hearing Sandora’s inquiry, he responded, "The fleet is in good condition—just like when we departed. As long as there’s no attack, we can maintain for a long time. However, the general populace’s mood is slightly unstable, so I hope to provide a clearer answer regarding our current status, for me to give account to my people."

"Just tell them this is an unplanned temporary stop," casually waved Sandora, indifferent to the matter, "We’ve already shaken off the Melowa Battleship’s pursuit, the fleet will be ready to set sail again in a few days. As for what fleet leaders need to know... well, it’s like this: there was an incident during the jump from unknown causes, the fleet seems to be docked at a world not far from the Empire’s territory. The communication device is temporarily frozen after ultra-long-range jump—I’m aware roughly of the reasons, but the technical details require further study. Our equipment needs time to recalibrate the antennas. Meanwhile, we can still maintain basic calls with the Imperial Mainland through the Spiritual Connection, so the situation isn’t too bad, understood."

"I understand, this way the fleet’s internal situation should stabilize," Cocogina responded with a low voice, then temporarily suspended the communication: he still has plenty to do.

Then Sandora glanced at the holographic display showing the evident life-harboring terrestrial planet, revealing a curious expression: "Ah Jun, want to go down there and take a look? Just like a tour."

"Rather than that... the radar seems to have detected something."

My peripheral vision suddenly caught the conventional radar screen, seeing more than a dozen small white dots rapidly approaching the Fifth Fleet positioned in higher orbit. The scanner indicated these are "living individuals," but due to lower alert levels, the system didn’t trigger an alarm when these white dots first appeared. Now that these white dots have shown a clear tendency to approach in this direction, the radar has escalated the alert level for these unidentified flying objects. These white dots are moving incredibly fast, even reaching shuttle cruising speed used close to Earth, and upon reviewing the system log, I found they’re launched from the planet below.

"Oh, it looks like we’ve found a primitive civilization that developed space technology, which is really rare. Is this why the navigation system auto-guided the fleet here after the jump error?" Sandora muttered to herself, shifting the shuttle’s surveillance focus to one of the white dots. After zooming in the image, we saw what it was.

An old man with a white beard.

...An old man with a white beard!

I nearly choked on my own spit, and Sandora looked equally stunned, then we zoomed out the image and noticed that the picture isn’t just a simple white-bearded old man alone. In fact, it’s an elderly man standing in some kind of small flying device, stepping on a silver disc with roughly a four to five-meter radius. The disc’s bottom has an inverted cone shape, and the upper part features a semi-transparent shield (we hadn’t seen this flying device earlier due to the camera being zoomed too close). Within this simple yet clearly high-tech space flying device stands an elderly man wearing a purple robe, with white hair and beard, holding tightly a curvy silver-white alloy scepter, and on his purple robe, I saw patterns of stars, sun, and some plant.

If this old man didn’t appear in outer space, he could only be at Hogwarts...

"...A magic power-driven orbital shuttle," Sandora’s lips curved up slightly; after all, she has seen many things, not as surprised as I am, just finding it somewhat amusing, "It seems we’ve truly arrived at an interesting place."

The small white dots rapidly approaching us are part of a group, and the white-bearded old man is just one of the members; the other white dots are similar small space flying devices, all controlled by solo operators, each wearing identical purple robes holding alloy scepters. It appears these are the uniform for them. Moreover, aside from the first sighted old man, the others look young, roughly in their twenties or thirties. These peculiar flying device-riding visitors, suspected to be "mages," quickly approached the Fifth Fleet’s near-defense zone, but Sandora motioned Cocogina not to mind them and temporarily ceased his starship array operations.

The small group of strangers in individual flying devices thus approached the fleet with our tacit approval, stopping at what they consider a considerable distance, then seemingly at a loss, hovering around with all holding shocked expressions. They looked at the Fifth Fleet with amazement as if I did when I first saw the Empire’s warship, initially appearing on the monitor the white-bearded old man seemed to be their leader since everyone’s flying devices hovered around him—those flying devices were really agile, moving freely like a person’s hands and feet. Sensor equipment near the flying devices detected twisted gravity fields, indicating they at least mastered anti-gravity technology... Well, it’s not a big deal; as far as I know, the Mysterious Side seems to find anti-gravity realization easier than the Technology Side.

"And then? We’re just going to sit here watching?" I glanced at Sandora, noting that Her Majesty the Queen is now full of interest, can’t help but remind her, "We might stop here for several days."

"Let’s wait first and see what they intend to do; anyway, the early-warning system judged them to be non-threatening targets," Sandora seemed to already have a plan, not just playing around, "Based on the operability of their flying devices and the energy dissipation rate, this civilization should not yet have the ability to leave the Constant Star System, but they clearly have enthusiasm and curiosity for space exploration. The sudden emergence of unfamiliar man-made objects over their home planet, the reactions they produced can generally be considered an unguarded ’true emotion’ of this civilization. It’s a small method occasionally used to observe unfamiliar natives, just as we’ve done before, randomly throwing something impressive at the existential boundary a native civilization can reach, and then observe their reactions, based on which to determine the target civilization’s potential, whether there’s direct contact value, etc..."

I feel like my expression must be a bit twisted right now: what are the seven deadly sins of aliens again?

At this time, an indigenous resident piloting a flying saucer was cautiously approaching the fleet under the instructions of the team leader, but there was still a distance of several kilometers between them. It seemed far, but considering the massive scale of the Fifth Fleet, even in this "compressed" state, the Fifth Fleet was still far larger than a dozen Earths! In other words, to this group of explorers, the Fifth Fleet appeared more than ten times the size of their home planet; it’s more like their planet is now just a pebble beside the Fifth Fleet rather than us docked in their planet’s orbit.

For a fleet cluster of this magnitude, a distance of several kilometers is practically akin to disembarking. Though the explorer has yet to contact any starship, he is already in the docking area for small warships. From his perspective, he likely cannot see any full profile of these giant ships; I surmise what he views is just an unending expanse of steel ground—and numerous equally gigantic man-made structures floating around this iron landscape.

"Alright, the communication has been decrypted," Sandora pressed a few buttons on the console in front of her, evidently having been busy with this task earlier, "let’s hear what they’re saying."

I nodded, and almost simultaneously, the sounds monitored in the cockpit started playing. Based on the system’s indicator, the closest explorer to the fleet was reporting to the team leader, "...Master, there’s no gravity here either. I still feel like I’m in a zero-gravity zone; these enormous ships don’t generate gravity..."

"Ensure safety, don’t go any further forward, drop two Detection Balls... a report has already been sent to the association, they’re dispatching more people here," this was the team leader’s voice, sounding rather composed, "Even at such close proximity, there’s been no activation response from them, could these be... ghost ships?"

I nudged Sandora’s arm, "Look, if we don’t speak up, we’ll be mistaken for a disaster site."

"Master, the Detection Ball has fallen! Once it got within a kilometer of these giant ships, it suddenly sensed gravity, it’s very chaotic... the Detection Ball is malfunctioning, and the environment inside this ship array is extremely dangerous; it seems the Ball got destroyed by something..."

"As per your order, no one fired, but that little ball happened to fall into the cooling grid of the Gremma No.4 Ship, the engineers are figuring out how to extract it, but it probably won’t be usable even if they do," Cocogina quickly explained.

"Pull back!" the team leader, referred to as Master, immediately ordered, and so the brave but unfortunate explorer who lost a Master Ball quickly retreated to a safe zone—which they believed was a sufficient distance, though to the fleet’s Near Defense Guns, it was almost as if they were right up close. I noticed that when their flying device accelerated swiftly, the passengers inside seemed to feel no inertia, clearly another testament to their advanced space technology developed through magic.

"Are these giant ships completely within a gravitational isolation protection field?" the team leader’s voice spoke up, "this is unimaginable technology... and their mode of propulsion is unheard of... don’t get any closer; we still can’t be sure whether there are any living beings inside these ships, even if there aren’t, their automated systems might still be functional..."

Watching with Sandora, it seemed this group of explorers didn’t have any further plans to advance, and it looked like they still intended to deploy more personnel from the planet surface to inspect this fleet that had dwarfed their planet. I could already envisage the scenario of me and my squad being canopied by waves of Otherworld natives in the near future, perhaps even with an elementary school teacher leading a bunch of naughty kids to take souvenir photos outside the shuttle, trailed by two expert professors blabbering in front of a camera: "this is the most incredible discovery in human history, fully proving my theory’s correctness in logic and foresight..." Then, Otherworld’s Hollywood would make two hundred identical blockbusters based on our mysterious flying objects floating in orbit, sparking a fifty-year unstoppable passion for outer space exploration... As this thought surfaced, I couldn’t remain silent any longer, so I decisively connected to the internal channel of those explorers, "Ahem, may I have a word?"

"Nuoha, is that you speaking?" the team leader’s face showed surprise, although he mentioned one of his team members’ names, evidently, no one had spoken up—it immediately put him on alert, ordering everyone to further distance themselves from the unknown fleet group, "Check the Communication Stone!"

"Uh, don’t get excited, I just wanted to say, we are not at a traffic accident site... well, alright, it is a traffic accident site, but we haven’t met any disaster... You watching like this is putting me under a lot of pressure."

Sandora decisively slumped over the console, unable to witness my diplomatic rhetoric.

"Master, it seems... these ships are talking?"

"To be precise, the people inside the ships are talking," I wanted to dismantle their guard as soon as possible, "No need to be tense, we’re just passing by—an accident happened on the road, forcing us to dock on your planet. Rest assured, the fleet is in a state of gravitational isolation, it won’t negatively affect your star system—by the way, you probably haven’t encountered such an incident before, have you?"

The explorer team was collectively taken aback, the team leader seemed to finally react, hurriedly fumbling something from his pocket, pulling out a metal plate, and after pressing it clumsily for some time, he finally spoke slowly, "Welcome to Azure Star, we extend kindness to visitors from outer space, and hope to maintain mutual understanding in forthcoming communications. We wish for more dialogue, ensuring comprehension of each party’s thought process to avoid misunderstandings. If possible, we hope for your response to ensure these statements have been correctly interpreted..."

I turned to Sandora, "...What does this old man mean?"

Our moment of silence might have been misunderstood by the other party, prompting a female team member among the explorers to say to the team leader, "Master, I still insist that there’s a logical issue with the basic handbook for communication with Outer Space Visitors you compiled; it uses too many virtual and transference modules..."

The leader stared at the massive fleet with the gallant demeanor of a scientist (frankly, this explorer team is truly bold, only now do I fully appreciate the courage: how did just a dozen people muster the spirit to approach such a grand array of alien ships for communication?), speaking rapidly, "!@@#￥%￥#%...%￥#@&*&...&!"

I: "..."

(pending continuation. If you enjoy this work, you’re welcome to visit Qidian (qidian.com) to cast a vote of recommendation or monthly ticket, your support is my greatest motivation.)