Chapter 78: Real origin
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
The vehicle carrying Heinrich and Lin Xu on their return journey flew directly to the scientific ship, the Cologne, under the command of Zhou Pingbo. When Arnold left for battlefield command, he was concerned that Cassandra and Ryan, who did not have heavy weapons at hand, would be in unknown danger, and sent them back to the Victoria in the lander first.
The Cologne docked within the Antarctic Circle, where global warming had increased the melting of the Antarctic glaciers over the past three millennia, and the research ship docked at the edge of the ice cap, already very close to the pole.
This behemoth from the interstellar era did not float directly in the sea – its designers clearly did not expect that one day the Cologne would descend to the surface of the Earth. To conserve energy, the Cologne also wouldn’t always be on float mode; there were four struts sticking out from beneath the ship, smashing into the sea bed and firmly supporting the Cologne.
Its exterior was painted blue, shining in the polar daylight of Antarctica. It is unknown who was in charge of the mission’s propaganda work and came up with the idea of painting the research ship all blue and green to express nostalgia for its blue-green home planet.
Zhou Pingbo said the reason for parking the spacecraft near the Antarctic was to minimize the impact on the Earth’s ecosystem.
In the cold climate of the Antarctic Circle biomass was nearly nonexistent. The researchers drilled the Antarctic ice cap hundreds of meters deep to collect the ice column up. After testing it was discovered that Earth experienced an era of extreme cold 3,000 years ago, the Antarctic Circle biological mass died, and it was difficult to revive as temperate and tropical areas after the temperature recovered.
In addition to the large amount of nuclear radiation traces left on Earth, it could be inferred that there was a powerful nuclear explosion and a long nuclear winter 3,000 years ago. This information was internal to Zhou Pingbo’s team and will not be submitted to Imperial, nor will it be made public, nor will it be given to scholars of social history.
Zhou Pingbo could only guess, based on his own experience, that the nuclear explosion originated from the last devastating nuclear war of mankind. It was not difficult to obtain the data and make speculations, and as Earth was recovered, the truth would emerge. That’s why Imperial wants to keep the secrets silent by controlling the fields and directions of its researchers. This restriction was very gentle, but also very powerful and difficult to suspect. Except for the assassinations.
After the craft landed, Lin Xu immediately said he wanted to see the mermaid’s bones that Zhou Pingbo had retrieved, and Zhou Pingbo, seeing that they had just been rescued but were not in too bad of spirits, agreed to push them into the rest room first and let Lin Xu and Heinrich clean up and change their clothes, then go for a medical checkup to get a clear bill of health before seeing the mermaid’s bones.
The lung penetration wound caused by the ice pick to Heinrich had already healed under the effect of the crystal core energy, and the dragon tail and dragon wings that emerged in the ice cave earlier were also the work of the crystal core.
The two of them had no major injuries, and Zhou Pingbo couldn’t help but be amazed at their physical qualities. Normal people that fell into the avalanche with bare hands basically couldn’t be saved, so he was shocked when he received Arnold’s news, almost ready to write an obituary for Heinrich. That was until he received the signal from Heinrich, he finally put down the snacks, and started search and rescue operations.
However, the intelligent medical robot detected scratches and bite marks on Heinrich’s shoulders and back, issued a wildlife attack warning and prepared to force him to give a rabies vaccine.
The syringe raised by the robot arm was snatched away by Lin Xu, and Zhou Pingbo raised his eyebrows, thinking of going up to the robot and suggesting bitterly that it would be better to give him a shot, since who knows if the virus on Earth has evolved.
But then he suddenly remembered that Heinrich and Lin Xu had changed their clothes when they returned and understood what was going on. He smiled kindly, handed the two men another nutritional supplement, and led them to the lab.
Zhou Pingbo once again cleared the assistants out, and the assistants who were buried in experiments and calculations dared not speak up in the face of the BOSS’s unreasonable behavior, and ran out with their data records. Only the three of them were left in the lab.
The mermaid bones were placed in a separate room at the back of the lab. Before entering, Zhou Pingbo handed the two men color-revealing night vision goggles and told them to put them on, explaining, “There are three sets of bones, two here and one on the other ship. We found them at a depth of 3,000 meters under the sea, in order not to destroy the original state of the bones after the transfer, the room has done temperature and light control treatment, the water tank is pressurized to the deep sea state, come in with me.”
Stepping into the dark room, Zhou Pingbo flew to close the door to avoid outside interference. The temperature in the room was much lower than the normal 23℃ comfortable average temperature inside the ship, he rubbed his arms, “I forgot to add clothes, let’s finish looking and get out quickly.”
Color rendering night vision goggles could present the original color of the object, Lin Xu close to the two tanks placed side by side in the center of the room, slightly greenish in situ seawater, there were two sets of white mermaid bones lying, no half muscle or skin tissue was left, even a few sections of bone from their chest cavity and fish tail scattered down, sinking in the water.
Lin Xu had never seen a mermaid corpse, he had only seen his own full-body X-ray skeletal pictures, and the structure was very similar to these two mermaids.
“In Earth’s seawater environment, corpses decay quickly, and fortunately these two corpses fell in the deep sea so that not even the bones were decomposed.” Zhou Pingbo said, “We measured carbon 14 and the bones came from 3,000 years ago. But we didn’t find any more bodies in the vicinity, nor any signs of civilized artifacts. It is not certain that these mermaids are intelligent beings.
“I’ve compared specimens of corpse bones from the Thales interstellar mermaid and there is a high degree of structural overlap. Those historians and mythologists believe that the emergence of mermaid bones will make the Imperial people’s perception of Earth mythology greatly transformed, there are dragons in the universe, there are mermaids, maybe the phoenixes that appeared in Earth mythology also exist, and all sorts of gods with supernatural powers may not be fictional either.”
“A specimen of a mermaid?” Lin Xu asked, never having searched StarNet for details on the interstellar mermaid.
“Humans can’t break through Thales’ divine descent boundaries, but the mermaid can come out on its own.” Heinrich told him, “This rarely happens, because the mermaid race does not have interstellar navigational capabilities. The mermaid somehow got out of Thales and was rescued by a human merchant ship before suffocating in the vacuum. The mermaid didn’t speak the same language as the humans, and the merchant ship followed the Universal Intelligent Life Protection Act and wanted to take him to a hospital for radiation injuries.
“But on the border planet where they landed, the rebels, Star Pirates, and the Sixth Legion were in the middle of a melee, and the merchant ship was accidentally shot down, with Star Pirates capturing the mermaid and the captain. The mermaid was taxidermied by Star Pirates, and the captain was killed, and it wasn’t until three years later that the captain’s rather powerful parents were able to recover the bodies of the two.”
Zhou Pingbo added, “The interstellar mermaid specimen zero is now stored at the Imperial Institute. It was a catastrophe after all, and out of respect for the character of intelligent beings, the Institute refuses to allow visitors or pictures of the bodies to circulate on StarNet.
“But the two mermaids in front of me just look similar to Specimen Zero, and I cannot arbitrarily say that they are biologically related. I have sent a message to Einstein Galaxy asking them to send me Zero’s genetic profile, and it will take some time for the information to travel back and forth. Dr. Lin, in the meantime can I have a little of your sample for genetic comparison?”
“No problem.”
Lin Xu’s voice sounded calm until Heinrich asked what he was really thinking, “Could it be them?”
“What them?” The pronoun that popped up baffled Zhou Pingbo.
“… It’s a long story.” Lin Xu replied, “Professor Zhou, let’s go out first, standing here too long, the low temperature will frostbite you.”
Zhou Pingbo agreed and pushed the door back into the bright, warm lab, relieved for a moment. The intelligent robot brought the three of them a steaming drink, but Lin Xu found it too bitter and only took a sip.
“Professor Zhou, I never said where I really came from.”
Zhou Pingbo nodded, looked at the unperturbed Heinrich, and replied, “We know that your identity from the border area is a forgery. But what planet are you really from? Is it really not Thales?”
Zhou Pingbo recalled that when Heinrich was telling the history of Specimen Zero, Lin Xu listened calmly, without a trace of sorrow or grief. He probably guessed wrong, but where else would there be a mermaid? Earth? Zhou Pingbo was amused by his own powers of association.
Then he heard Lin Xu say, word for word, “I am from Earth.”
If that one sentence wasn’t powerful enough, Lin Xu’s additional statement was enough to make Zhou Pingbo choke himself to death with water.
“Earth from three thousand years ago.”
“Cough cough cough!” Zhou Pingbo had a mouthful of drink stuck in his windpipe. Seeing the situation, the intelligent robot immediately stepped forward and extended its mechanical arm to slam a fist into Zhou Pingbo’s abdomen, implementing the Heimlich maneuver to make him spit out the water.
“Cough… Cough…” He struggled to calm his breathing and grabbed a few tissues handed by the robotic arm to wipe away the water stains, “Let me confirm again, you just spoke Imperial, right? Did I hear you right?”
Heinrich glanced at him, “No.”
“You are, how did you… You lived 3,000 years?”
“I fell through the black hole of time and space to the border area.” Lin Xu said, “None of that matters. What I want to say is that I was originally a purebred human who received a genetic modification from a deep-sea mutant creature and had a fish tail. After I left, humans continued this experiment.”
“Do you mean that these mermaids may be artificial products?”
“Yes. The documentation we found showed that the transformation experiment was suspended because it was compromised, which could mean that a transformation product escaped.”
“What’s the documentation again?” Zhou Pingbo looked at the two men in front of him with a headache and confusion.
Heinrich said, “We found a human base in the snowy mountains, there are some written documents there, which can confirm the construction of the base is also three thousand years ago.”
“A base…” Zhou Pingbo murmured, “Actually, I’ve always wondered why Imperial’s assignments to those sociologists and historians didn’t include finding the origin of the Ark project, the starting point of the human voyage to the universe would be a great gimmick to boast of courage.
“It’s also true that the expedition didn’t find any possible signs at first. Until those four big meteorites fell to Earth and we found the remains of the giant military fortress in the ruins, but unfortunately it was so thoroughly destroyed that very few clues were left.”
Heinrich stared, “Meteorites?”
“Oh, you were investigating in the snowy mountains at the time, and the four meteorites fell at basically the same point in time as the avalanche.”
“What we encountered was not an ordinary avalanche.” Lin Xu’s eyebrows were deeply urged up, “It was the base’s explosive self-destruct program that was turned on.”
How could there be such a coincidence in the world?
The first foot four meteorites smashed the military fortress left on Earth, and the second foot the base in the mountain self-destructed and exploded.
