Chapter 70: Rolly-Polly
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
Lin Xu went on to ask, “What is the situation on the Moon?”
Zhou Pingbo pondered for a moment and replied, “The one who organized the lunar expedition was another chief, and from what they said, no traces of life were found on the moon, so they had no contact with my biology group.”
“What about the corpses?”
“What corpses?” Zhou Pingbo was surprised by Lin Xu’s question.
Lin Xu frowned and sped up his speech, “There was a human space base on the moon, the Imperial historical records ark fleet took off from Earth and crashed into the corner of the moon because of yawing. Even if there are no bodies, there should be traces left by human technology.”
“When the Abyss Fleet first discovered ancient Earth, it had sent unmanned probes to land on the lunar surface for inspection.” Heinrich spoke up at this point, “No signs of human activity were found on the lunar surface, unless…”
“Unless the human space base was destroyed by a collision along with a corner of the moon.” Lin Xu’s voice grew colder.
“There is man-made space junk in the lunar rock ring belt.” Zhou Pingbo added, “There are teams collecting this junk, and according to them, it could be the debris left behind when some spaceship in the ark crashed into the moon.”
“They claim?” Lin Xu leaned back in his chair, wearing only his everyday uniform, his long hair falling loosely over his shoulders, but his words and demeanor revealed a cold pressure that he had never seen before.
Zhou Pingbo wiped his face, “the Earth-Moon mapping team members are all from the Imperial Academy of Sciences, my biological team is too. As far as I know, most of the mission’s external experts are in the humanities and social sciences, and the mission’s biggest funder is Imperial royalty, who gave some mission objectives before the Nature’s Evolution set sail, including examining the birth and evolution of ancient man, the history of early human civilization, mythology, art, that sort of thing.”
“The historians’ research missions were largely unrelated to the history of the Ark fleet?”
“That’s true…” Zhou Pingbo replied, “I heard they dug up a museum, and there’s enough stuff in there to study for a long time.”
Zhou Pingbo said some more about the excavation of the museum, but he had stayed up too long and couldn’t hold on, and squinted. Heinrich told him to go back to sleep.
Zhou Pingbo rubbed his eyes and responded. Before he finished his communication, he passed Lin Xu a copy of the museum’s materials that were being examined, and most of the mission’s materials were shared, at least in the humanities, so that the mission members could get an early look at the remaining ancient Earth artifacts.
The other groups’ materials were partially accessible, but most of them were full of data and proper nouns, with complex sentences and charts that made one’s head spin.
It would be hard to notice if a few data were tampered with intentionally, not to mention that the people involved in the expedition were all big names in the field, and at least the Imperial population, millions of light-years away, would not think of questioning the data they got in the distant Earth.
After briefly flipping through it, Lin Xu fell into deep thought. He propped up his chin, obviously not in an oppressive posture, but his body seemed to be covered with a sharp fog. Unreliable and unpredictable.
Lin Xu was still in the base as a senior administrative position, there was an office of his own, the base space resources were limited, but even he could not have much space. But this private space accommodated all his spiky thoughts and decisions after he unloaded his camouflaged moderation.
Later, when he was personally committed to the front lines of combat, he in turn did not have to take on the responsibility of making decisions for the lives of others, and when he arrived in the Empire, he was alone and had even less to worry about.
Heinrich, who had never seen Lin Xu in such a state before, opened his mouth and, after weighing his options back and forth, asked, “What do you have in mind?”
The contemplative look dissipated almost instantly, and Lin Xu blinked very lightly, subconsciously replacing his gaze with a gentle one.
He looked down and saw Heinrich’s golden eyes – Heinrich’s elbows were pressed into his knees, supporting his upper body, a lowering of his posture to look up at Lin Xu, but also allowing Lin Xu’s downcast gaze to fall unavoidably into Heinrich’s eyes.
The deep skeletal contours of the eyes would have made these golden eyes look colder, like the poisonous icy pools of water in a deep forest, but there was a sincerity and depth of feeling when he looked up at Lin Xu from below.
The mask-like gentleness of Lin Xu’s face gradually melted away, and at this moment, his expression finally returned to Heinrich’s common, somewhat indifferent, but also unmistakably real look.
“I remembered that at the Silver Airfield banquet, I met Li Qing – he was my classmate at Capital Star University and originally studied the history of early Imperial technology – who said that after talking with some people, his research had shifted to ancient Earth mythology, and that he had joined the expedition as a mythology researcher.” Lin Xu recalled.
“Studying the early technological history of Imperial necessarily touches on the history of the Ark Fleet, where both leapfrog and warp engine technologies critical to galactic navigation were invented during that time, but the only information that could be found in the past had been the official chronicles of the Ark Fleet. The discovery of ancient Earth could provide more valuable historical information for early technological history research, and with everything on the rise, it didn’t make sense for him to give up.”
“Who did he communicate with?” Heinrich caught the anomaly.
“I don’t know, he didn’t elaborate. Maybe I should go ask him.” Lin Xu began to plan what reason to approach Li Qing; they didn’t know each other well, or more accurately, the only person Lin Xu had known well during his college years was Marianna. Marianna…
Lin Xu hadn’t heard her mention any weirdoes coming to contact her, and the literature and poetry Marianna studied didn’t touch on the sensitive history of the Ark fleet like the history of technology. Why did those people get off so cleanly?
Li Qing came to him at the banquet to introduce Godric to him. Lin Xu and Godric had several book exchanges, and he could start here to re-engage with Li Qing. But Lin Xu’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden video communication, and Ryan’s energetic shout came out of the communication, directly disrupting the stagnant atmosphere between Lin Xu and Heinrich.
“Professor Lin! Look what I found!”
Lin Xu pressed his temples with a headache as Heinrich swept an eye blade at Ryan, yet the only one who received the threatening signal was poor Arnold.
Arnold coughed twice and held down Ryan who was dancing around. Finally, Lin Xu spoke helplessly, “What did you find out?”
The camera paned and a white blur appeared in the frame, with a few more clumps of black fluff inside.
Ryan and Arnold crossed the snow line all the way up from the mid-mountain where the lander was located, and at this moment the background of the communication video was the ice-cold drifting snow-capped white peaks.
Lin Xu took a look at the image and suddenly sat up straight, even leaning forward with both shoulders, “This is…”
“It’s a rolly-polly! Isn’t it, Professor Lin?” Ryan squatted on the snow and stretched out his finger to gently poke the small sesame dumplings exposed in the snow.
“It’s… It’s a rolly-polly.” Lin Xu replied.
Imperial’s atlas of lost creatures from the ancient Earth had somehow lost the scientific name of the giant panda, noting only a well-behaved and catchy superlative. That one looked about the same size as Blackie and Snowy, probably still in its infancy.
“Is it the only one here alone?”
“Mn, it’s still alive, but it’s almost frozen.” Ryan looked around the snow, there were no tracks left by any other large animals, “It looks lost and it can’t keep its eyes open.”
The isolation suit isolated the human scent and there was no need to worry about this little one being touched and abandoned by its mother, but now where to find its mother was a problem.
“You should carry it to a mild climate at the bottom of the mountain.” Lin Xu tentatively suggested so.
Ryan followed his advice and picked up the roly-polly, the little black and white thing was so soft in his hands that even Arnold couldn’t help but pet its head.
After getting closer, Ryan noticed that the corners of its eyes were dripping with pus. He gently broke up a bit of the eyelids, and its eyes showed signs of inflammation and redness, and the little thing gave an uncomfortable yelp.
“Oooooh, it sounds like rabbit-cat with that yelp,” Ryan said, flooded with compassion, “but it’s not easy for this poor little thing to have an inflamed eye.”
“Maybe it’s snow blindness.” Arnold followed with compassion. Heinrich closed his eyes, not wanting to comment on the lieutenant whose heart was full of the rolly-polly.
“Wait.” Lin Xu suddenly called them to a halt, leaning forward more than when he first saw Roll, and Ryan stopped for a moment to look at the camera.
“Back up.” Lin Xu said quickly.
“Huh?” Ryan hesitated for a moment, did Lin Xu want to dispose of the roly-polly cub in a different way? But it’s freezing…. Ryan reluctantly turned around, and was suddenly stopped by Lin Xu in front of a rock.
Lin Xu did not give an explanation, but only ordered, “Camera down, plow the snow on this piece.”
Ryan, holding the rolly polly, was unsure, but Arnold quickly stepped forward to carry out the order, extending the exoskeleton’s forelimbs out a section and plowing through the snow.
The cold, dark gray rock that was covered gradually revealed its full appearance. It revealed a surface so smooth that it was almost impossible to be a natural product. Arnold gradually realized what was going on, his expression became serious, and the mechanical movements of his hands became gentle. As the snow covering the rock was cleared away, Ryan realized that it was a man-made monolith!
There was a line on the part of the rock that was initially exposed outside the snow layer, and Ryan initially thought it was just a crack in the rock, but now that all the lines on the monument were connected, he realized that they together formed a geometric image.
There was a square in a long vertical rhombus, four vertices of the square against the four sides of the rhombus, and a circle falling within the square. Above the entire image, several square characters were inscribed.
Arnold could only see that these must be human symbols containing some kind of message, but did not know exactly what they were, and Ryan, who was holding the roly-poly aside, stared closely at the characters. “This is… Hmm… Chinese characters?”
Ryan knew that Lin Xu could read and write Chinese characters, but because there were very few Chinese character artifacts left over from the Marion Empire and very few researchers, and because it was just too difficult to understand, Ryan had been interning with Lin Xu for several years and had never learned Chinese characters.
“Yes.” Lin Xu’s answer at this moment sounded like this stone tablet, as if it had been through countless hours and revealed cold, hard memories in Blizzard. The stone tablet reads: New – East Region Base – would like to remember the last fire of humanity.
Lin Xu vividly remembered all the plans of the base, which did not include this stone monument. Moreover, the original name of the base was: Humanity East Region Main Base.
The East Region also included a dozen human survivor bases scattered about. The removal of the word “Main” and the addition of the words “The last fire” on this tablet made Lin Xu think that all the other bases in the East Region had been destroyed?
“What does the tablet say?” Heinrich’s hand covered the back of Lin Xu’s trembling hand outside the video screen, and the collection of graphics under the words of the tablet was the same pattern he had seen on the recording box.
Lin Xu repeated the entire original text to him, word by word, and when it was finished, Lin Xu tried to steady his breathing, “Colonel Arnold, please send me the coordinates, I’m coming over now.”
“So…” Ryan said weakly. Lin Xu had already gotten up and walked towards the equipment room, “You carry the rolly-polly down the hill, no need to wait for me.”
Heinrich didn’t hesitate and immediately followed Lin Xu.
—
The wind was howling, the sky was clear at high altitude, there were no thick clouds, so no new snow fell, but the strong wind blew the piled up snow like sand and dust, the snow particles hit the isolation film, stirring up a bright spot. A knife-like chill scraped through the film on his face.
Arnold stood by the monolith like a straight flagpole, and as he raised his hand to salute Heinrich. Lin Xu was already crouched beside it, checking it out.
The high altitude cold had reduced the corrosion, and even after three thousand years, the red dye residue in the monolith’s shaded lettering was still visible, in square Song font, and Lin Xu guessed that laser engraving had been used to carve the monument, that the base’s technology had not regressed to its primitive state because of the mutation.
There was a break at the bottom of the monument, and Lin Xu plowed down several layers of snow and found no base. The monolith had broken off somewhere else and appeared here.
He looked up to the true summit of Kun Ling, the extremely steep peak no longer attached by snow, and further down, the sharp axe-carved ridge seemed to pierce the green sky, the unobstructed sunlight making the edge ridge cast clear shadows on the other side, huge ice and fine stones piled up in the shadows.
The place where the monolith was found was an ice bucket, which was probably brought down from higher ground by ice erosion over the past three thousand years. In what bitterly cold place did later humans build their base? Heinrich stood behind him, “What does this pattern refer to?”
Lin Xu got up. When Cassandra sent a message that Ryan had returned to the lander, and that the lake excavation had yielded preliminary results, the computer had built a preliminary model of the foundations of the buildings beneath the lake based on the data sent back by the probing equipment.
The model shows a long vertical rhombus with circles and squares nested in it. Lin Xu glanced at the model and replied, “This is the logo of the apocalypse’s main base in the Eastern Region, based on the outline of the base.”
