Chapter 29 Robots

"What is that?"

Lin Yuan's heart skipped a beat, and a chill shot up his spine.

He immediately reported this discovery to the Command Center: "Report! A biological signature has been detected at the end of the corridor! A green light point is moving toward me!"

"A biological signature?!"

The atmosphere in the Command Center, which had just been filled with ecstasy over the "Gene Temple," instantly froze.

The smile on Academician Wang's face froze. He pushed aside the biologists who were still excitedly discussing, crowded up to the main screen, and stared intently at the thermal map shared back by Lin Yuan.

On the map, that faint green light point did indeed exist.

It was like a firefly in the pitch-black night; though faint, it could not be ignored.

Moreover, it was floating at a constant, steady speed along the center line of the corridor, heading straight toward the position of the drone representing "scavenger no. 2."

"Is… is it a survivor?" a young researcher asked subconsciously.

"Impossible!" The head of the Security Department immediately rejected this idea, his face turning incredibly grim in an instant. "How could there be any living people on a spaceship that has been wrecked for who knows how many tens of thousands of years? And look at its movement! It's too stable! It's so stable that it's like… a program!"

His words made everyone think of a much more terrifying possibility.

It wasn't a living person.

It was something else.

"Lin Yuan! Retreat immediately! Get away from that thing! Observe first!" Chen Weiguo's calm but unquestionable order came through the earpiece immediately.

"Received!"

Without a word, Lin Yuan immediately maneuvered the drone to retreat silently, preparing to hide in the room next to it labeled "Nutrient Distribution Center."

Dammit, there really is something wrong with this ship!

He cursed inwardly.

That aura of life from earlier, which had been so comfortable it made one want to sleep, now felt in retrospect like incense lit in a graveyard to summon souls—comfortable to smell, but actually a deadly trap.

And that cold, decaying aura mixed in was, without a doubt, brought by this approaching green light point.

"Its energy signature is very weak. Why didn't the previous wide-area scans detect it?" The head of the Technical Support Department frowned, raising a key question.

"Perhaps… it was in a dormant state before?" Academician Wang speculated. "The energy fluctuations generated when we tried to crack the 'Gene Temple' gate not only disturbed the 'Void Devourer' outside, but also… awakened it from its slumber?"

This speculation made the faces of the experts from the Technology Department responsible for the cracking turn pale.

After all that, not only had they almost invited the big boss from outside in, but they had also summoned the ghost lurking in their own home?

"Stop worrying about that for now!" Chen Weiguo interrupted their discussion. "Lin Yuan, what's the situation? Can you see what that thing is?"

"I still can't see it clearly, Chief." Lin Yuan had already hidden the drone behind the door of the "Nutrient Distribution Center," exposing only a tiny detector lens, peeking at the corridor outside like a paparazzi. "It's still behind the corner, but… it's about to come out."

In the entire Command Center, everyone held their breath.

Time, at this moment, became incredibly long.

One second, two seconds…

That green light point on the thermal map finally, slowly and without a trace of agitation, floated out from the corner of the corridor.

Lin Yuan also carefully aimed the drone's optical lens in that direction.

The next second, the high-definition footage transmitted back through the drone's lens made Lin Yuan and everyone in the Command Center widen their eyes instantly, and an indescribable chill rose from the depths of their hearts.

It was not any creature they had imagined.

It was not a ferocious monster, nor was it a bizarre alien.

It was a… a sphere floating in mid-air, constructed entirely of milky-white material, with an extremely simple design.

Its diameter was about one meter, and its surface was as smooth as a giant pearl. On its body, there were no visible thrusters or nozzles; it simply floated in the air silently, defying the laws of physics, moving forward slowly.

If that were all, it would at most be considered a strangely shaped robot.

But what truly made one's hair stand on end was its "way of working."

Directly beneath it, on the pristine white floor, was a small, dark brown stain the size of a fingernail. It looked like the trace of some liquid that had dried a long time ago.

When this white sphere floated directly above that stain, it stopped.

Then, from its bottom, several extremely slender, spiderweb-like white tentacles extended.

These tentacles gently and tenderly covered the stain.

No sound, no light effects.

That stubborn stain, which had existed for who knows how many tens of thousands of years, began to fade and decompose under everyone's gaze at a speed visible to the naked eye, and finally… completely disappeared.

As if it had never existed.

After finishing all this, the white sphere retracted its tentacles and began to float slowly forward again along the center line of the corridor.

The whole process was smooth and fluid, and terrifyingly quiet.

"What the hell…" It took Lin Yuan a long time to squeeze these words out of his throat.

He finally understood why this ship was so clean.

And he finally understood where the crew of this ship had gone.

This wasn't any survivor; this was simply a cleaner that was paranoid to the extreme! A mobile incinerator that would thoroughly "clean up" everything, including people and corpses!

"Analysis… the analysis is out!" In the Command Center, an expert responsible for biological signal analysis reported with a trembling voice, "Its green biological signature is not because it is a 'living thing' itself! It's because of the stain it just decomposed! That stain was a polymer containing organic matter, which translates to… dried blood!"

"Its scanning system judged that bloodstain as a 'pollutant'! Therefore, it executed a 'cleaning' program!"

"And as for the thing itself…" the expert swallowed, saying with difficulty, "It is a pure mechanical creation, a… a swarm of nanorobots whose operating principles we cannot understand!"