194: Chapter 194 The alien loli suddenly spoke: They're coming!

Moon Base, Core Living Area.

The air circulation system here simulated a breeze from Earth, with the temperature kept at a constant, comfortable 24 degrees Celsius.

Jiang Chen had just returned from "harvesting leeks" on Mars, and he was in such a good mood that he even wanted to hum a little tune. He held a freshly printed financial report in his hand, and looking at the dizzyingly long string of numbers on it, he felt he had reached the pinnacle of his life.

"We struck it rich, we really struck it rich this time."

He threw the report onto the table and turned to look at the silver-haired little loli sitting on the carpet in the corner.

Xier was wearing a pink bunny pajama set today, and she was holding a spare titanium alloy drive shaft dismantled from the luan niao starship engine. That thing had extremely high hardness, making it difficult even for standard cutters, but in her mouth, it was like a slightly hard baguette.

"Crunch, crunch."

The crisp chewing sound was rhythmic.

"Daughter, eat slowly, no one is going to snatch it from you."

Jiang Chen walked over with a fatherly smile and casually pulled a shiny piece of high-purity rare earth ore from his pocket, "Here, try this, dessert after the meal."

Xier raised her head.

Her amethyst-like eyes were originally filled with a desire for food. She reached out her small hand, just about to take the ore.

Suddenly.

Her movements stopped.

Like a robot that had been pressed on the pause button, her hand, suspended in mid-air, was as stiff as a stone sculpture.

"Clang—"

The unfinished titanium alloy drive shaft in her other hand slipped without warning, slamming heavily onto the metal floor and emitting a harsh, crisp sound.

Jiang Chen was stunned for a moment.

"What's wrong? Toothache?"

He leaned in jokingly, wanting to see if the little one had eaten something that upset her stomach.

However, when he saw Xier's expression, the smile on his face instantly froze.

Fear.

An extreme fear, one that seeped into the bone marrow and even transcended biological instinct, was spreading rapidly across her delicate little face.

Xier's pupils were contracting violently.

In the depths of her deep purple eyes, the intricate golden gears that were originally rotating slowly were now overclocking like crazy, emitting an extremely faint but teeth-grating "zzzt" sound.

Her body began to tremble.

At first it was just her fingertips, then her shoulders, and finally she curled up into a ball, as if she felt a bone-chilling cold.

"Xier?"

Jiang Chen realized something was wrong; he dropped the ore in his hand and grabbed Xier's cold little hand, "What's wrong? Speak! Did your system malfunction?"

Xier did not respond.

She was not looking at Jiang Chen, nor was she looking at the food on the floor.

Her gaze passed over Jiang Chen's shoulder, over the thick outer wall of the base, and stared fixedly and unblinkingly outside that huge floor-to-ceiling window.

There, it was the pitch-black, deep, and eternal cosmic space.

"S...scent..."

Xier's lips trembled, and she finally squeezed out a few broken syllables. Her voice was no longer the usual soft and sweet tone, but carried a kind of shrillness and despair that seemed to come from an ancient battlefield:

"So fragrant... such a fragrant scent..."

"Scent?"

Jiang Chen frowned, subconsciously sniffing the air, "What scent? I didn't release any poison gas, did I? Is the braised pork burnt?"

"No... not that."

Xier suddenly grabbed Jiang Chen's hem in reverse.

Her strength was astonishingly great; her nails even embedded into Jiang Chen's special combat suit, causing him sharp pain.

She raised her head, and her originally clear eyes were now filled with red bloodshot veins, like a terrified little beast, issuing a final warning to her only reliance:

"Daddy..."

"They smelled it."

"We... we are too bright."

"It's like... lighting a torch in the middle of the night."

Xier's voice became more and more rapid, carrying a hysterical crying tone:

"They... they followed the scent here!"

"They are coming!"

Boom—!

In Jiang Chen's mind, it was as if a thunderbolt had exploded.

Too bright?

Torch?

As a modern person well-versed in science fiction novels, these keywords instantly combined in his mind into a hair-raising concept—

Dark Forest.

Over the past few months, Earth had experienced a technological explosion, energy leaps, and even developed anti-gravity and photon communication. These high-energy reactions might be insignificant on the scale of the universe.

But on the detection radars of certain advanced civilizations, it was like someone suddenly turning on a searchlight in a dead silent wasteland and shouting through a megaphone: "I'm here! I have meat!"

"You mean..."

Jiang Chen crouched down, staring fixedly into Xier's eyes, his voice becoming unprecedentedly serious:

"Those... things that destroyed your civilization?"

"The... culprit that turned this base into ruins and locked you in the hibernation pod?"

Xier did not speak.

She just nodded desperately, tears falling in large drops, her body shaking like a leaf in the wind. She let go of Jiang Chen, hugged her head with both hands, curled herself up even tighter, and kept muttering:

"Hide... quickly hide... we will be eaten... everyone will be eaten..."

That kind of fear was carved into her genes, a shadow that could not be erased even after tens of thousands of years.

Jiang Chen slowly stood up.

He turned his head to look at the seemingly calm starry sky outside the window.

The starlight was still bright, and the Milky Way was still splendid.

But beneath that beautiful appearance, in the depths of that endless darkness, it seemed that pairs of greedy and cold eyes were silently opening.

The hunter has entered the arena.

"Old Zhao!"

Jiang Chen pressed the communicator by his ear, his voice as cold as a blade, without a hint of trembling:

"Immediately cut off all external civilian communications for the base!"

"Sound the level-one combat alert!"

"Tell Academician Chen Shuyin to turn all deep space detection radar power to the maximum! Keep a close watch on the direction of the Kuiper Belt for me!"

"Boss? What happened? Is it a meteorite?" Zhao Gang's voice sounded a bit dazed.

"If it were a meteorite, that would be fine."

Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes, looking at that abyss, a bloodthirsty cold smile curling at the corner of his mouth:

"It is that guests are coming."

"And... the kind of uninvited guests who want to wipe out the host's entire household—malicious guests."

Before the words had even faded.

"Beep—! Beep—! Beep—!"

In the originally quiet command hall, a deafening alarm suddenly erupted.

That was the highest level red alert!

The lights of the entire base instantly turned red, countless red light beams rotated in the corridors, and the atmosphere instantly became tense to the extreme.

"Report, Boss!"

Academician Chen Shuyin's panicked voice exploded in the channel, her usual calmness completely gone:

"Deep space radar... has captured an abnormal signal!"

"It's not a natural celestial body! It's not an electromagnetic pulse!"

"It is a set of... regular, rapidly approaching, and does not belong to any known Earth civilization—"

"High-energy frequency band!"