Chapter 232: Fetus

As he walked forward, Yu Sheng suddenly felt a strange sensation for no reason—as if the entire world had shrunk to just this corridor before him and the dim red light at its end.

The Black Forest, the orphanage, Border City... everything had receded, even seeming to become something from another world, while this "world" before him had long since collapsed completely.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, and the cry of an infant came from ahead; Yu Sheng gradually no longer found the crying noisy, as if he had already grown accustomed to its presence.

Hu Li followed beside him, holding Erin in her arms, while Erin held the squirrel; they passed through the dim red light at the corridor's end and entered the final door deep within the Ankaela.

"Umbilical Cord" Connection Chamber.

A special and bizarre "chamber" appeared before Yu Sheng's eyes—rather than a "chamber," this place seemed more like a maintenance structure in the middle section of a large vertical shaft; just as the "Hunter" had described, the floor here was a ring-shaped platform, its top so high it was lost in darkness, shrouded in gloom, while a thick, silver-white structure composed of two main pipelines and numerous auxiliary cables and conduit bundles hung down from that dim height, passing straight through the hollow center of the ring-shaped floor and extending downward.

Yu Sheng walked forward cautiously, reaching the edge of the hollow at the center of the ring-shaped floor, gazing at the "umbilical cord" before him.

"This thing looks like a pipeline for transporting materials? And there are so many cables..." Erin stretched her neck from Hu Li's arms, looking at the thing before her with great curiosity, "Is this thing the 'umbilical cord' of the Dark Angel?"

Yu Sheng did not speak; he merely held the railing at the edge of the opening and carefully looked down.

That "umbilical cord" extended endlessly downward; the area below the opening seemed extremely deep, making it impossible to clearly see what structure lay beneath, with only a faint, blurry patch of light visible from the depths of the darkness, where a translucent dome seemed to exist, with a faint glow inside it.

Yu Sheng's gaze fell upon a certain section of the umbilical cord as it extended downward, and his eyes suddenly narrowed.

A portion in the middle of that "connection bundle" was clearly damaged, yet it was impossible to tell what force had destroyed it—one of the two main pipelines was simply missing a segment, and the surrounding cables bore extremely smooth and abrupt "cuts," giving the impression... as if some formless "void" had directly swallowed that segment.

Hu Li had sharp eyes; she quickly noticed the situation on the umbilical cord and immediately reached out to tug Yu Sheng's sleeve: "Benefactor! Over there, the pipeline is broken—Ankaela has been searching for its own 'umbilical cord'; could it be because of this?"

"It should be." Yu Sheng said with a frown, and the moment his words fell, that slight dizziness struck his heart once more.

His vision flickered, and he saw the ring-shaped floor beneath his feet suddenly transform into a "bony layer" covered in dark red viscous substance, while the chamber walls around him simultaneously turned into fleshy structures resembling the inner lining of some organ; that "connection bundle" piercing through the chamber became thick blood vessels and nerves, broken in the middle, twitching slightly in the air as if feeling pain, and in the direction of its break, at the edge of the hollow in the center of the ring-shaped floor, a hand—or rather, some strange structure evoking the idea of a "hand"—suddenly reached out!

Yu Sheng's breath hitched, yet the scene before his eyes immediately returned to normal.

Erin and the squirrel beside him simultaneously cried out in shock, while the tail behind Hu Li "bang" opened its fan once more.

"Holy crap..." the small doll's face looked very bad, "That just scared me!"

Yu Sheng frowned tightly; the moment that "illusion" reappeared, he felt as though he had heard some sound, a voice whispering to him, telling him something... Was it Ankaela? Or was it the "child" currently gestating in the darkness below the umbilical cord?

He hesitated for a moment, leaned forward, and reached his hand toward that silver-white "connection bundle."

"Benefactor, be careful!" Hu Li beside him hurriedly warned upon seeing this.

"It's fine, I can feel that this thing poses no threat to me," Yu Sheng said while placing his hand on the surface of the "umbilical cord," "The ones truly afraid are not us, but rather..."

He did not finish his sentence.

Because a powerful sensation of weightlessness instantly cut off all the words he wanted to say—the ring-shaped platform in the center of the room collapsed.

Yu Sheng had time only to utter a "holy crap" before he fell along with the collapsing floor and broken railing; he heard Erin and Hu Li's cries of shock coming from above simultaneously, heard the wind howling in his ears, and the last thing he caught in his peripheral vision was that the squirrel had also jumped down.

Yu Sheng fell endlessly in the darkness, his mind somewhat dazed.

The squirrel shouldn't be in trouble, right? She jumped down too; that was truly reckless...

She should be fine; Hu Li can fly...

The next second, he felt himself collide with something—it was that "umbilical cord."

He touched that "umbilical cord" once more, touching the place where it was broken.

"... Long, long ago, we fled our homeland... My memory begins when the Creators ignited the engines."

A calm, low, seemingly emotionless voice abruptly entered Yu Sheng's mind, cutting off all his chaotic thoughts.

All colors around him suddenly receded.

A world of black, white, and gray descended; Yu Sheng widened his eyes in shock within this faded world, seeing himself as if floating inside a grayish pipeline, with no top above and no bottom below, while in the deep gray mist surrounding him, some faded images appeared in his eyes as if surfacing from memory.

A massive Ark ignited its engines, departing from some space megastructure of astonishing scale, almost like an artificial star, and slowly accelerated.

That megastructure floated in endless cosmic space, with stars violently burning and shaking in the background; a terrifying rift seemed to cleave the entire universe, piercing through the whole starry sky from the depths of darkness.

All the images were colorless, like the world seen when the dead converse, everything composed of monotonous black, white, and gray, yet for some reason, Yu Sheng saw a glaring red streak within that terrifying rift—as if that single streak of red could transcend time and space, transcend the interval between life and death, and directly reflect itself into the very essence of information.

And the next second, he saw that Ark departing from the space megastructure become a single point of light among the stars, continuously accelerating amidst the stars gradually disintegrating.

Not just one point of light.

There were thousands upon thousands of points of light identical to it, continuously accelerating under the same starry sky, fleeing in all directions.

"We are 'Ankaela'; the Creators gave us this name, but in your language, this pronunciation can be directly translated as 'Ark'."

That low voice seemed to sound directly from within his mind, continuing to speak calmly.

"There were thirteen thousand five hundred 'Ankaela' vessels that set sail simultaneously.

"We carried the 'seeds' from the Mother Star, seeking a place where we could sow.

"This was the task the Creators gave us."

No errors, one sentence, one release, one content, one view!

Yu Sheng widened his eyes, watching those points of light accelerating among the stars one after another enter a jump state—yet even surpassing the speed of light, they could not surpass the rift that cleaved the universe.

Points of light extinguished in waves; tens of thousands of Arks became mere residual heat after all things had perished in just a few breaths.

What happened after that had already exceeded his understanding.

He saw those remaining points of light appear to collide with an invisible barrier, saw them suddenly disintegrate mid-voyage, though they had suffered no attack, instantly turning into scattered afterglow.

He saw some points of light strangely "return" to the moment of departure, then remain motionless in the starry sky until silently swallowed by that rift sweeping across the universe.

He saw one point of light—perhaps the last one—continuously jumping amidst a series of chaotic and frantic lights and shadows, like a small bird caught in a storm, tossed by towering waves to an extremely distant place, then falling into a void.

He saw it begin to fall, begin to change from within outward; at one moment it grew flesh and blood, yet the next moment it became a mass of formless shadow; suddenly it was torn by invisible forces into countless fragments, each fragment a complete, miniature "Ankaela," yet in the blink of an eye, countless fragments merged back together, becoming a mass of cold light.

It underwent countless transformations of form, and in this process completely became some incomprehensible existence, like... garbled code within a system.

At one moment, it learned to think, chaotically, disorderedly.

Yu Sheng conversed with it.

He faced its thoughts directly.

New scenes suddenly surfaced within those faded mists around him; Yu Sheng felt himself drifting downward, and then he walked forward.

The mist faded away, and he saw the thing deep within that mist.

A mass... a "clump" difficult to distinguish or describe, quietly curled up on a pale fetal bed, seemingly composed of many strange limbs, claws, wings, and tails mixed together, along with countless other bizarre features, its form as if forcibly blending all creatures of the entire ecosystem into a single body, then forging such a product at the boundary between imagination and reason.

And above this "Angel's Fetus" floated a broken umbilical cord — it stretched out from the surface of that "fetus," drifting upward through the grey-white mist.

"…This is my child, ta is really cute, isn't it?"

That calm, low, slow voice said softly.

Yu Sheng, however, did not answer, merely standing quietly as before before that enormous mass of flesh.

How could he answer? How should he answer?

It was already dead.

Perhaps from the very moment of its initial conception, it had already been dead.

(End of chapter)