Chapter 1,389 The Scene

After two hours of sailing at full speed, the shuttle arrived in the universe where the accident occurred. />

This is a small world located in a border area. The basic cosmological constants are quite different from those of the capital world. These differences lead to the fact that the density of matter in this universe is much lower than that of the capital world. Data show that this world has no dark matter at all, and there are almost no large galaxy clusters in space. Although it is still very young, the star-making movement in the universe has almost stopped, and the space appears extremely dim, cold, empty, and lifeless - this is not It is not a place suitable for the birth of advanced civilization or colonization. It is so barren that it is almost cruel, but it is an excellent place for deep-diving experiments. The low density of matter and the rare number of celestial bodies can prevent the rapid spread of pollution in the abyss. The environment that is not suitable for the birth of life allowed the engineering team to complete the evacuation without much effort when building the test port: it is said that only two star systems have appeared in this universe. life.

A barren land in the true sense of the word.

This is of course not the universe where the deep-diving experiments were first conducted, because both the abyss gate and the deep-diving port have a "shelf life". With the continuous testing, sampling, external stimulation, and throwing detectors into the abyss gate and other messy things, Every such information exchange will lead to a decrease in the stability of the gate. When the stability drops to a certain level, it will naturally increase the risk of the experiment. Therefore, the gate where the deep dive was originally conducted has been destroyed together with the entire universe. Now this is A new proving ground we found a few months ago. Of course, if this test site is abandoned, the deep-diving project can still continue. Things like abyss gates will never become extinct. There are still several abyss gates that meet the conditions in Tavel's material library that can be used - This is definitely the most dangerous "material" ever stored in the history of the empire. Anyway, a few years ago, I would never have dared to imagine that I would put a few of these things in my backyard for testing purposes...

After registration, the shuttle passed through the space barrier that was in a blocked state, and the current situation of the port was presented to us. Tavel pointed to the space outside the porthole, where there was a large space building made of modules: "In the middle is the control center, with the monitoring station and observation towers on it. There were originally four observation towers, but now two of them have been scrapped, leaving two One also stopped operating due to energy outage."

I nodded and carefully observed the situation outside. The distance is now close to the "radiation critical point" of the Gate of the Abyss. The shuttle is slowly circling at a low speed more than ten kilometers away from the completely stopped control center. I have the opportunity to confirm whether this place has suffered any other damage besides the control center. Loss. Many huge buildings can be seen floating independently in the surrounding space. These buildings have silver-white outer armor and fully enclosed structures. Most of them are obelisks or polygonal prisms. They are various ancillary facilities of the port, such as data centers, material transfer stations, automatic turrets or garrison stations. In addition to the iconic blue energy lines, all building surfaces also have a layer of light golden halo floating on them. This halo is actually holy light - a small team of Xiling Angels have also recently participated in the deep diving project. The power of holy light they are good at can be blessed on anything, which is equivalent to adding a layer of ghost elimination to the facilities here. With the extra protection beyond the shield, coupled with the Holy Light's extreme sensitivity to the abyss, these facilities blessed with the Holy Light can also serve as alarm devices. Now these buildings are in very good condition, and it seems that the inexplicable explosion did not spread to other facilities. This basically eliminates the possibility of the Abyss being at work: the Abyss is best at contamination and spread. If it can really destroy the most heavily protected control center, there's no reason why the surrounding facilities should be intact.

My eyes finally focused on the control center pointed out by Tavel: it was very conspicuous and very large, even though it was more than ten kilometers away. Even with my enhanced eyesight, I can see every detail of it. It is a huge square platform, with a side length of about several kilometers (the visual inspection is not accurate, I roughly judge the size of the platform based on a small warship parked above the platform), and the lower part is a double-layer structure - at least for now It became a double-layer structure. The empty space between the two floors looks like a rift across the valley. Deep in the rift valley, there are still huge energy jets suddenly bursting out. Giant "lightning" can jump several kilometers away in space. According to the damage of this double-layer structure, there should have been some armor plates or vertical bridges connecting the upper and lower layers, but now only torn metal stubble can be seen poking out from the row of fracture points. The broken crystallization lines and various pipes swayed slightly due to the impact of the energy jet.

The main building facilities are distributed on the upper part of this platform. A large hexagonal building is located in the center. On the ground around it is a large area of ​​extremely dim, spiderweb-like light flow, which is probably still in the energy network of the site. There is still a little bit of psionic energy left, and those crystallized networks still emit an extremely dim blue light, so they can be distinguished at a glance, and the hexagonal building is undoubtedly the central monitoring station: the heart of this control center. I thought that the monitoring station was still intact at least on the surface, but after closer inspection, I found that there was a crack in one corner. Calculating the distance, I judged that the "small hole" was probably quite huge - this is really bad, it seems The big explosion that occurred on the lower level of the control center even penetrated the monitoring station above. How big was the explosion? !

The upper platform is surrounded by four huge obelisks. Those silver-white giant towers are naturally observation towers used to monitor the Gate of the Abyss. I saw two of them completely scrapped towers at a glance: they are located diagonally, and the lower half is Parts of it exploded like a blown rubber ball, and the originally indestructible charged armor was easily torn into a miserable state due to damage from within. The huge metal beams in the lower part of the tower maintain the connection between the tower and the platform, just like the bones after the flesh has been shed. Fortunately, these metal beams are strong enough, so the observation tower was not completely blown away - although It seems there is no use for them to stay here.

The remaining two diagonal towers seemed to be intact, but due to the interruption of energy supply, they were also dark, with only very few lights flickering on the surface. There should be key equipment with independent energy sources there.

The entire control center was in tatters, as if it had been shot through by an enemy, its energy was completely paralyzed, and most places were dark and lifeless. Lin Xue watched this scene in silence. I couldn't help but gritted my teeth: "It looks so miserable..."

"First find a place to park, and gather together the person in charge of the security and those who were closest to the explosion point when the accident occurred," Sandora said solemnly. Her face looked quite ugly when she saw the state of the control center, " By the way, is the person closest to the explosion point resurrected?"

Tavel was silent for a moment, seeming to be communicating with the people at the resurrection center, and then shook his head: "The frontline personnel were seriously injured. Their souls need to recover before they can start resurrection, but you can communicate directly with their souls."

"Well, let's make arrangements," Sandora nodded, "and upload the structural diagram of the control center. And all the readings of the Abyss Gate before the accident."

The shuttle finally parked in the control center that had been basically destroyed. There was a small take-off and landing point and a temporary workstation in the corner of the upper platform. This workstation was established by the person in charge of the deep dive port after the accident (actually Tavel's One of the quality projections), it is roughly the size of a small office building when unfolded, which is enough to serve as an office location and command post for various working groups. The expert team we brought met here with the accident response team organized by the deep diving port itself, and then each of them got into busy work. I stood next to the shuttle and looked at this magnificent space complex - it had completely lost its luster after losing its energy supply. Those huge armor plates looked particularly desolate under the sparse light. In the distance was the central monitoring station. Here I saw the crack: it seemed to be several meters wide and more than ten meters long. It rolled outwards, and it should have been a violent impact from the inside that penetrated the roof of the building. Vast numbers of autonomous machines scurried about in sight, repairing burned wiring and welding broken support beams to prevent further structural collapse of the platform. Or install various sensors. There should have been a stable gravity field and an open air circle here, but now I feel that the gravity under my feet is less than one-third of the normal value. And the surrounding air circle is gone.

I jumped slightly and wiped my nose awkwardly because I couldn't breathe. This action was seen by Tavel.

"After the energy supply was interrupted, all irrelevant equipment was shut down, and the remaining energy was transferred to the database and core computer room." A mass projection of Tavel suddenly appeared next to me, "The database is saved, and the core computer room... now I can’t get in yet so I’m not sure what the conditions are like there. The gravity field and the open air circle are just things that provide comfort, they were the first ones to be closed.”

I waved my hand: "It's okay, I'm just not used to it... What the hell are you doing?!"

I looked at this quality projection Tavel with a horrified expression - her appearance is shocking! There is a large hole in the abdomen, and the legs are empty from the thighs down, so he can only float in mid-air and talk to people. This is exactly like being blown into two pieces on the battlefield! Of course, there was no blood on her body or the tragic sight of exposed muscles and bones. Firstly, the Xiling Apostle did not have blood or a body structure like a human being. Secondly, this was just a mass projection in front of me. The scars on her body looked scary but not True, but...still penetrating.

"Oh, even though I wasn't at the scene when the ground floor exploded, I was at the monitoring station, right over there -" Tavel Mass Projector, who was blown into a tragic appearance, said indifferently, and turned back to point at the monitoring station. That huge crack, "a jet of psionic energy penetrated the dome, and the sparks burst out and exploded on the body. Anyway, it was a mass projection, and it could still work, so I didn't carry out 'recycling'. I'll talk about it later when I was busy and forgot about it." Well, efficiency comes first.”

I am speechless. Even though she is a girl with glasses, the image of such a tough guy is really enough to make people tremble. I know there is no way to make Tavel quickly change this projection body using human thinking, and I can’t look at her. With such a miserable look, he had no choice but to take off his loose coat and tie it to her lower chest, covering more or less the broken belt on her belly and lower body: "That's it, I'll try my best to treat you like a coconut tree spirit, Otherwise it would be awkward for me if you were swinging around like this..."

Mass Projection Tavel: "...oh"

Saying goodbye to this very shocking mass projection - actually it doesn't count as saying goodbye, because Tavel's body is standing next to it, and all mass projections are directly controlled by Tavel, so it should be said that Tavel took her After the body was moved to another work site, Sandora and I came to the accident processing center, which was the temporary workstation next to it.

An assistant technician connects the control center's structural diagram to the holographic projection. Next to it is the image of the Gate of the Abyss. Another intact mass projection of Tavel introduces us to the place where the explosion occurred and the situation at that time: "Now it can be determined that the place where the explosion originally occurred is here, the a- in the lower area From section 13 to a-15, the hyperspace output of the power furnace is concentrated in this place. Whether the explosion destroyed the power furnace, or the power furnace exploded first and destroyed something else, the chain reaction starts here. Then all the energy in the control center The line was overloaded. Along the main power supply pipeline, the explosion rushed from the lower area to the upper area, blowing away all the connecting bridges and protective walls along the way. Finally, the No. 1 and 3 observation towers were destroyed. There was also a wave of impact in the first round. Arriving at the monitoring station three seconds after the explosion, the explosion did not completely destroy the monitoring station, but penetrated its dome, and then all equipment was offline. Fortunately, the automatic disaster security system was activated within those three seconds, and the monitoring station's The database survived. However, the computer room was buried deep under the armor plate of the platform. It was close to the place where the first round of explosions occurred. It had been shrouded in a super-strength psionic energy field and no one could enter for the time being. The chance of the computer room being completely destroyed was more than 100%. Eighty."

"What's special about the computer room?" Sandora raised her eyebrows slightly.

"Data, because all the information collected from the Gate of the Abyss must be filtered and tested before being sent to the database, so the computer room has a cache mechanism. The detailed detection data of the Gate of the Abyss when the explosion occurred was stored there, and it has not yet been uploaded. to the database..."

"That is to say. The rescued database is not helpful at all in tracing the cause of the accident, is it?" Sandora shook her head. "The things in the database are all old data from before the explosion...a buffer period."

"We have observation records from external sources." An assistant technician stood up, "About the Gate of the Abyss. We established an additional observation point for the Gate of the Abyss a few days ago under the prompts of Mistress Lin Xue. Although the function is insufficient, Some basic information is still available.”

I turned to look at the eldest lady next to me in surprise. This girl is shaking her head and head with an inscrutable look on her face, as if she has the world under her control - in fact, she has been shaking her head for more than ten minutes since just now, but I still don't know what's wrong with her, and I thought the girl took the wrong medicine. . At this time, noticing my gaze, the eldest lady showed an even more mysterious smile: "Carving the future is a delicate matter. There are some things that can be done but not said, and some things that can be said but not done... Wait, wait. Don’t turn around after I finish speaking..."

I have turned my head to watch Sandora analyze the monitoring data of the Abyss Gate. From the picture, the Gate of the Abyss will always look the same, a black two-dimensional round cake, with at most a slight edge scaling under the control of the surrounding suppression towers. However, the various charts recording its monitoring data are changing at extremely high speeds. Refreshed at a speed, the data above is simply dazzling. Although I can't understand it well... Well, although I can't understand it at all, Sandora nodded while reading. Finally, she frowned: "There is no problem with the data. There seems to be no movement at all at the Gate of the Abyss... except A very small-scale information overflow, but the amount of information overflow is probably no larger than a meteorite."

"Do you suspect that something came out of the Gate of the Abyss and hit the control center?" I asked.

"Look at the structure of the control center," Sandora pointed to the holographic analysis diagram, "This is the protection of the energy unit... Oh, it doesn't matter if you can't understand it. In short, the safety factor of this building complex is extremely high, except Due to external factors, the chance of it collapsing internally is infinitely close to zero. The initial explosion was the energy center in the lower area. Of course, this location is protected by four layers of armor and two independently operating shields. It looks indestructible, but it is different from the internal Compared with the probability of collapse, armor and shields at least have a chance of being breached."

One is a protection system with almost no loopholes, and the other is armor and shields that are strong but at least tangible and have upper limit of protection. It is true that the latter has a higher chance of being breached.

The expert team also made the same judgment as Sandora: the possibility of the control center being destroyed due to external factors is far greater than internal factors. Although there was an internal explosion that ultimately destroyed the entire site, this internal explosion was probably triggered by the outside world.

So I could only agree with Sandora's view, but I couldn't figure it out, so I turned to look at Tavel (the body) beside me: "Nothing was detected flying out of the abyss gate before the explosion. Bar?"

Tavel's body has always been in the Shadow City, but her mass projection has witnessed the scene here, so just ask her directly - the ability of the girl with glasses is really amazing when you think about it. I think no matter which research facility is in the corner of the empire, You can ask her about the situation, she can be considered a witness anytime and anywhere...

"There is no such report," Tavel nodded, but quickly changed the subject, "But we do not rule out the possibility that something rushed out of the gate of the abyss. What comes out of the gate may not necessarily be a target that can be observed. Due to the special nature of the abyss, Nature, anything overflowing from its interior may appear as disordered data, and will only transform back to its original form: matter or energy after crossing the radiation critical point. Therefore, it cannot be observed within the radiation critical point around the Gate of the Abyss. Whether it is ejecting matter (or energy), everything is disguised, and you can only judge whether it is leaking something based on the information overflowing from the gate. Of course, this is limited to more 'natural' things, if it is a deep-diving ship like this When something comes out of the gate, it will automatically eliminate the influence of the abyss."

This is why Sandora immediately checked the information overflow from the Gate of the Abyss.

At this moment, another vibration came from deep underground, and a rumbling resonance echoed in the workstation.