Xyrin Empire
Chapter 332 - Chapter 332 Chapter 332 Our Moon

Chapter 332: Chapter 332 Our Moon Chapter 332: Chapter 332 Our Moon “The moon is hollow.”

Could there be anything more absurd?

I looked at Pandora incredulously, seeking a more definite answer, but she nodded affirmatively, “Brother, the inside of the moon is empty.”

“This is ridiculous,” I shrugged and turned to Sandora, “Did you guys have a habit of hollowing out moons to build bases in them back then?”

However, Sandora’s reaction was a bit strange. She ignored my question and furrowed her brow in thought.

“What’s wrong, Sandora?”

“Nothing much…” Sandora shook her head, her brow not quite relaxing, “Maybe I’m just overthinking it… If there was a gigantic base established inside the moon, then the events that happened in this star system seventy thousand years ago might be a bit complicated. Pandora, did you find the cutoff layer?”

“We discovered four suspected entrance points, the closest one is about a kilometer from our current location.”

Following the direction Pandora pointed out, we easily found the location referred to as “the fault.” On this planet with weak gravitational pull and loose geology, a kilometer was an extreme challenge for human astronauts exploring the moon, but for us, it was a momentary distance because… we had a vehicle…

You have no idea how tough it is to walk on the moon. That floating sensation is nothing like the immense leap I had imagined, where one might jump a hundred meters in one bound. The reality here was that, indeed, you leaped, but when you landed, it was just a vertical displacement. At first, I even tried to use the surrounding free energy for propulsion, to experience the thrill of high-speed flying in the vast starry sky. However, the result was that Visca had to pull me back from the moon’s synchronous orbit…

I was really not used to the weak gravity.

Pandora said that “the fault” was under a circular mountain. There’s something very interesting about the circular mountains on the moon. No matter their size or the intensity of the meteorite impacts that created them, their depths are always much shallower than any circular mountains observed on any planetary surface, often by several multiples. Seen from above, these circular mountains appeared like densely packed shallow dishes stuck onto the surface of the moon. The reason for this phenomenon was now clear: The thickness of the lunar shell was only about thirty kilometers, beneath which lay a superalloy inner shell tough enough to withstand a starburst.

We cautiously reached the bottom of the circular mountain. The environment here looked no different from the surroundings. The sunlight, unimpeded by any atmosphere, shone directly on the lunar surface, brutally bright where it hit and utterly dark in the shadows of rocks, creating a stark contrast of light and shadow. Due to the lack of atmospheric buffering, the temperature difference between the two areas was staggering–over a hundred degrees!

“There’s an opening here about half a kilometer in diameter in the interference layer,” Pandora’s eyes shimmered with ice-blue light, her similarly colored hair flowing freely with the movement of the energy, “Given its size, it could be a supply transport channel for the base within the moon.”

I looked at the dirty “ground” underfoot, trying hard to imagine what an alien base inside the moon would be like. But after much thought, I realized I only knew a few types of Xyrin architectures…

“Is there a way to open it?”

Pandora nodded and casually pulled out her trademark Ghost Energy Cannon, clicking off the safety mechanism.

This time, without my intervention, Sandora already landed a knuckle-rap on Little Loli’s head, who always acted without thinking: “You crazy girl! What if the base inside still has a functional defense system? Can you handle it all by yourself?”

At that moment, Visca suddenly broke the silence that had persisted throughout the journey. She gently tugged at the corner of my clothes, then gestured for us to move back.

“What’s the matter, Visca?”

After we had retreated to the edge of the Circular Mountain, I asked curiously.

“Brother…” Visca showed a hesitant expression, “Brother, you won’t hate me, will you?”

“What are you talking about!” I said, puzzled, as I rubbed her little head, “Do you know how to open this giant door?”

Qianqian seemed to want to say something, but I preemptively stopped her with a look, and then we both calmly stared at Visca.

“Dusda-EcosFeisa.”

Visca quietly recited the words and then hid behind me.

Just as I had expected, a slight tremor emanated from deep underground. The soil in front of us quickly developed a network of cracks due to the trembling, and then the bottom of the Circular Mountain collapsed right before our eyes, forming a massive hollow.

I reassuringly patted Visca on the head and then took the lead by leaping forward–jumping too forcefully and overshooting…

The two scouts that had been deployed arrived safely at the bottom of the hollow and sent back signals indicating that everything was normal. Then, the rest of us followed in single file. Pandora, with the quickest reaction speed and most powerful sweeping strike capability, naturally led the way. Sandora followed, and Qianqian and Big Sister each entered their superpower states behind Sandora, while I brought up the rear with a visibly anxious Visca.

The dark passage wasn’t vertical but tilted at an almost 45deg angle, which saved us a lot of trouble. However, as a consequence, we had to travel a much greater distance. According to Pandora’s scan, the disruptive layer beneath the moon’s shell consisted of high-strength Noke stone alloy. Noke stone has extremely high hardness and some energy shielding capabilities, but to shield the energy sensing system of a Leader-level Apostle, the usual fortress armor thickness was insufficient. Therefore, the thickness of this sturdy metal inner shell had to be at least five kilometers, plus the thirty kilometers of the moon’s shell beneath our feet, and considering the 45deg angle, we had to walk an incredibly long distance under this damned low gravity…

Luckily, we had a car…

When I realized that we would have to travel such a distance inside the moon shell, I decisively summoned a seventy-billion car from mid-air. The opening that appeared after the collapse of the Circular Mountain was quite wide, so our mini-private car had no problem flying around inside. The beginning of the journey was relatively easy except for a bit of darkness, but as we delved deeper, the walls of the cave gradually narrowed. After passing through the layer of the moon’s shell, we faced a narrow fissure that only allowed two people through at a time.

The large door made of silvery-white metal marked the boundary between the outer surface of the moon and the inner base. For some reason, it hadn’t closed completely, providing us with the opportunity to enter this ultimate fortress.

It seemed that the next stretch of the road could only be traversed on foot, but thankfully, although the 45deg slope was quite steep, the low gravity environment made it not too difficult for us to walk.

As we progressed, a faint light appeared in front of the corridor, confirming that we were reaching the end of the tunnel while also proving that this ancient Xyrin Base inside the moon indeed possessed a powerful energy endurance system…

“Speaking of which, it feels like I’ve forgotten something…”

Walking along, Sandora suddenly broke the silence, muttering to herself via the spiritual connection.

I kept walking and turned to ask, “What?”

“It always seems like a rather minor thing,” Sandora said, pointing at her lower lip with her index finger, her sea-blue eyes blinked twice, “But now it seems quite important…”

“Oh… Ah!”

I had just agreed when I felt a sudden heaviness in my step, and then a very familiar feeling acted upon my limbs. I only had time to let out a short cry of alarm before I fell forward and embarrassingly rolled down.

Following closely behind were Qianqian and Big Sister’s screams from far to near, as the two girls landed on top of me, one after the other.

Broken… I felt that at least half of my bones were about to break.

“Ah! I remember now!” Sandora landed gracefully next to me, compared to the three of us – me, Qianqian, Big Sister – sprawled ungainly on the ground, she was more than just a little more elegant, “It seems that inside this space-based fortress, artificial gravity is automatically generated!”

“You should have remembered that earlier!!!” I jumped up suddenly and then landed a knuckle-rap on the head of a certain queen who was using hindsight.

After reprimanding Sandora, who had almost gotten me killed by Qianqian and Big Sister, I had time to raise my head and examine our surroundings–you know, it’s really hard to see clearly around you when you’re dizzy and whirling so fast…

“This is just too… too much like a Storm Fortress…”

That was the only thing I could say after seeing our surroundings.

Our current location was on a straight skybridge, which from my estimate was at least twenty lanes wide, made entirely of a silver-white metal glowing faintly. This was a unique luminescence phenomenon only produced by the incredibly strong Noke Stone Alloy. Above this skybridge was a tubular shell made of pale blue crystal, meaning we were actually standing inside this tube. I had seen this type of crystal a few times before; it was said to be a bizarre thing that only grew near the cores of giant planets, outrageous in both hardness and energy resistance, capable of directly withstanding constant star level energy transmission. Due to its extremely demanding conditions of formation, this thing was astronomically expensive even by whole-universe standards, and only the Xyrin Apostles could afford the luxury of using this precious crystal for their fortress’s supply pipes–because they had mastered the technology to synthesize this crystal from stone…

In addition, let me mention, this crystal known as a-raw stone, because of its shiny characteristics, has become Little Baobao’s new target for collection, prompting frequent thefts from the a-raw stone warehouse in Shadow City…

Through this transparent outer wall, we could clearly see the scenery outside the tube.

If you ask me how to describe what I saw–majestic, spectacular, mysterious, bizarre, none of those words would be enough to describe one-tenth of what I saw. It was a tremendously huge space, where even just by virtue of its volume it could instill fear, beyond us, the alloy armor covering the entire Moon Base was spread infinitely in all directions like a suddenly vertical horizon, supporting a bizarre world within the planet. Numerous huge alloy skeletons, towers, and interlaced crystal clusters grew recklessly in the vast space, inter-distances were at least a kilometer apart; our location in this straight tube was just an inconspicuous branch in the forest. A very thin white mist spread out in the space outside the tube, making that distant “forest” appear as a blurred ghostly phantom. Occasionally, huge flashes of lightning silently streaked through the space, connecting two alloy skeletons that might be kilometers apart together, and then the skeletons and their surrounding towers would move, forming new arrays according to certain rules. Although I didn’t understand the significance of this change, I knew that this indicated that the Moon Base was still operating normally.

“Truly spectacular…”

Qianqian and Big Sister murmured simultaneously as they gazed at the magnificent scene before them.

Sandora seemed to have anticipated our reaction already, smiling lightly as she said, “This is the buffer zone of the Space-based Fortress. Strictly speaking, we have not yet entered the interior of the fortress, as the buffer zone still belongs to the armor layer. In the event of an attack, this place will serve as the last line of defense for the fortress itself. However, under normal circumstances, rarely can any external attack destroy this buffer area of the ultimate fortress.”

I agreed–after all, I couldn’t imagine what kind of firepower could penetrate a thirty-kilometer-thick Moon shell and a one-kilometer-thick alloy armor and still have the strength to damage a buffer zone supported by a super-strong framework that spans dozens of kilometers. Besides, the Moon has been bombarded by meteorites in space for so many years without exploding, right?

Pandora took out a small transport vessel from her personal space–finding someone in a fortress the size of a planet by walking would be utterly foolish, to say nothing of the transport tube beneath our feet, which was nearly thirty-five kilometers long in total. Without a vehicle, we would probably have died of exhaustion before finding Artemis…

Along the way, Qianqian and Big Sister continuously expressed their amazement at the spectacular and mysterious scenery around them. The area known as the buffer armor was not stationary but was constantly undergoing drastic changes. The interlacing alloy frameworks and crystal clusters were always moving, occasionally forming neatly organized matrix arrays, and sometimes completely dispersing into loosely structured formations. Each violent change elicited excited exclamations from Qianqian, and even the typically composed Big Sister was no exception. As for me, of course, I joined them in their exclamations, after all, I hadn’t seen such a scene before either.

Even though we had deliberately slowed down, we still passed through the buffer zone after half an hour, entered the main body of the Moon Base, and landed on a huge platform suspended in mid-air.

“This there should be a place for medium warships to dock and undergo maintenance,” Sandora said quietly, floating about a few dozen centimeters above the platform, her voice tinged with nostalgia, “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a scene.”

I was the last one to come down from the transport vessel, then, not feeling entirely reassured, I tugged on the sliding door of the vessel, “Should we lock it? There’s no one to steal it, right?”

Everyone looked at me with disdain.

What is the Moon Base like? It’s somewhat difficult to describe, but to put it simply, this place is a “three-dimensional” city.

As far as my eyes could see, in the boundless space, there were various enormous war factories or functional buildings floating around. What I could identify included the Tank Assembly Workshop, Warship Dock, Tactical Calculation Center, and Ghost Energy Recharge Tower–facilities normally established on land bases. Many other strange buildings were beyond my recognition, but I guessed they all had something to do with the research and manufacturing of war vehicles, given that…right in front of us, floated an electronic sign labeled in Xyrin Language, “Vehicle Production Area.”

However, these buildings were clearly in a dormant state, with not a single light on, like silent steel monsters spying on the ground. Among these buildings, various warships of different sizes also hung silently in the air, as if the entire Moon Base, apart from the overall lighting and maintenance systems, had fallen into paralysis.

“Alright, Visca, which way now?” Sandora looked around and then suddenly turned her head, tapping gently on Visca’s head, “Don’t space out, young lady.”

Visca’s face showed a hint of panic, then she cast a hesitant look at me.

By this time, we had more or less guessed some things, but how should I put it, personally, I didn’t think there was anything important. So, faced with my sister’s weak and helpless gaze, I decisively chose to surrender, “Sweetie, just tell us the way. Once we sort out this mess, I’ll take you and Pandora out for a few good days of fun.”

This response seemed to finally put Visca at ease. The young lady’s face rarely showed a hint of blush as she began to explain the structure of this immense base to us.

“First of all, the name of this fortress is Barrier Star 7535. You see, 7535 was my old name, but now Brother has given me a new name, so the current name here is–Visca Barrier Star!”

“To name it after your name!?” Before I even had the chance to speak, Sandora had already exclaimed in surprise, “Glory?”

Visca nodded proudly, “Yes! This is Glory! This is Visca’s own Glory Ship, a Visca Barrier Star Level Mother Ship!”

(To be continued, if you want to know what happens next, please visit www.NovelFire.net, where there are more chapters, supporting the author, supporting genuine reading!)