311: Chapter 311 Crossing Deep Space

The The Ark hovered over the moon for an entire day.

It wasn't that they didn't want to land; it was just unnecessary.

Qin Lin lowered the The Ark's altitude to just five hundred meters above the lunar surface. Through the bridge's holographic screen, every crack and every bit of gravel on the moon's surface was clearly visible.

The grayish-white soil covered the entire field of vision like a thick layer of flour. Impact craters of all sizes stretched from the foreground into the distance, their edges sharp as if they had been smashed out just yesterday.

"System, scan the lunar surface and look for meteorites." Qin Lin clicked a few options on the control console.

[Scanning...]

[Special meteorite fragments detected: 137 locations]

[Estimated total mass: approx. 50 tons]

[Enable automatic suction?]

Fifty tons.

Qin Lin glanced at the required amount of starry sky meteorites: one thousand units.

He didn't know how much one unit was, but fifty tons sounded like a lot.

He clicked confirm.

Several slender mechanical arms extended from the bottom of the The Ark. The suction cups at the ends glowed with a faint blue light, like hands reaching toward the lunar surface.

Meteorite fragments were captured by the energy field from all corners of the moon's surface, flying upward along the light beams and being sucked into the cargo hold at the bottom of the The Ark one by one.

Su Yuling lay on the transparent dome of the Observation Tower and looked down, her face pressed against the glass.

"Those stones are flying up on their own."

There was wonder in her voice.

"They're not flying on their own; the The Ark is sucking them up," Qin Lin said.

The results of the probe on the Far side of the moon disappointed everyone.

There was no alien base, no black monolith, and none of the mysterious buildings that appeared in science fiction movies.

There were only more impact craters, thicker lunar soil, and a massive basin over two hundred kilometers in diameter.

The bottom of the basin was very flat, so flat that it didn't seem naturally formed.

Qin Lin had the The Ark circle over the basin three times. The System scanned every inch of land, and the results were the same: no abnormalities.

"So there's really nothing on the Far side of the moon?"

Han Yurou stood at the bridge entrance, holding Qin Yue, her tone full of resentment.

All those urban legends about the Far side of the moon she had heard before: alien bases, World War II planes, three-eyed female corpses.

She had believed them all.

Qin Lin thought for a moment and said, "Maybe there were once, but they moved away later."

Han Yurou was silent for a while, then asked, "Where did they move to?"

Qin Lin did not answer.

The The Ark stayed in lunar orbit for four days.

Aside from meteorites, there was nothing of value.

No crystal stones, no special minerals, and no discoveries beyond expectations.

Qin Lin stood on the Observation Tower, looking at the moon's surface outside the window.

The grayish-white soil shimmered with a cold light under the sun, and those pitted impact craters looked like a giant, expressionless face.

He watched for a while, then turned and walked back to the bridge.

"Set new coordinates; leave lunar orbit."

He entered a string of numbers on the control console.

"Where are we going?" Su Yuling asked.

Qin Lin pulled up the detection results from the Deep Space Scanning Array on the holographic screen.

The interstellar landscape within ten light-years slowly unfolded before the three of them.

Three Meteorite Belts, two Unnamed Star Systems, a planet suspected of having liquid water, and countless tiny, unclassified spatial anomalies.

"Collect all the Materials and upgrade the The Ark to Lv9 first."

Su Yuling didn't ask him where they would go after Lv9, because she knew the answer lay deep in the starry sky, not in anyone's words.

The The Ark left lunar orbit and flew toward the first Meteorite Belt.

In deep space, there is no up, down, left, or right; the view outside the window is always the same.

A black background and white stars, motionless, like a giant mural.

At first, the children found it very novel, leaning against the window to watch the stars for hours at a time.

Qin An pointed out the window and shouted "Ah, ah." Su Yuran didn't know what he was shouting about, but she would follow his finger every time, look over, and say, "Yes, stars."

Qin An was satisfied and continued to shout at the next one.

Qin Yuan didn't look at the stars; she looked at the darkness outside the window.

Lin Wanwan sometimes worried if she was scared, but Wang Xiulan said, "No, if she were scared, she would have cried long ago."

Qin Yue laughed at everything.

Laughter at the stars, laughter at the darkness, and even laughter when her younger siblings cried.

Han Yurou said her talent, "Warmth," might not just be about warming others, but that she herself was inherently happy.

Han Qing said, "What does an eight-month-old baby know about happiness?"

Han Yurou was unconvinced: "She doesn't understand happiness, but she can laugh, and laughing is happiness."

Han Qing did not argue.

Qin Xu didn't look at the stars or the darkness; he looked at the The Ark's bulkhead.

Li Ying said he wasn't dazing off, but studying the The Ark's structure.

When Qin Lin passed by and heard this, he stood at the doorway and watched for a few seconds. Qin Xu was indeed staring at the energy patterns on the bulkhead, his gaze as focused as an engineer's.

The The Ark sailed through the starry sky for a long time before finally reaching the first Meteorite Belt.

[Ahead: Meteorite Belt]

[Range: approx. 5 million kilometers]

[Number of meteorites: approx. 100,000]

[starry sky meteorite content: approx. 2,000 units]

Qin Lin looked at the number and thought that this trip had not been in vain.

The The Ark enabled automatic suction mode and slowly navigated through the Meteorite Belt.

Meteorites were sucked into the cargo hold one by one, and the numbers for the cargo hold ticked up bit by bit.

Qin Lin sat in the command chair watching the numbers, feeling like a fisherman hauling in his nets.

Su Yuling sat beside him with a book on her lap, but she wasn't reading it.

She watched the meteorites drifting past the The Ark outside the window; some were as big as houses, while others were only the size of a fist, varying in shape and color.

Some were black, some were gray, and some had a metallic luster.

"Brother Qin Lin, where do you think these meteorites come from?"

"Some are leftovers from when planets formed, some are fragments from planets that were smashed apart, and some drifted here from even further away."

Su Yuling thought for a moment and said something that left Qin Lin silent for a long time: "Then how long have they been drifting? Hundreds of millions of years? Billions of years? Flying forever, without a destination, until they were sucked in by the The Ark."

Qin Lin didn't answer, because he felt Su Yuling wasn't asking him; she was speaking for the meteorites.

And besides, he didn't actually know.

After the Meteorite Belt, the The Ark flew toward the planet suspected of having liquid water.

The distance wasn't too great, but at conventional speeds, it would take a long time to sail there.

Qin Lin initiated a Sub-space Jump. The The Ark's protective shield turned from pale purple to deep blue, a blinding white light flashed outside the window, and then everything returned to calm.

[Jump complete]

[Current location: Unnamed Star System, third planet's orbit]

[Planet parameters: Diameter approx. 1.2 times that of Earth, surface temperature -10°C to 30°C, atmospheric oxygen content 21%, liquid water exists on the surface]

[Signs of life: Yes (microorganisms and simple plants)]

Qin Lin looked at the word "Yes," and his heart skipped a beat.

This was the first time since leaving Earth that he had detected life on another planet.

It wasn't intelligent life or animals, just microorganisms and simple plants, but it was still life.

The The Ark passed through the atmosphere and landed on the surface of the planet.