33: Planetary cemetery

Thousands of silver drop pods, like dice thrown by the gods, pierced through Laika-3's thick and dead clouds, screaming as they slammed into the scarred land.

At an altitude of only a few hundred meters above the surface, the bottoms of the drop pods suddenly ejected powerful retro-thrust flames, causing their descent speed to slow abruptly.

Finally, amidst a series of dull thuds, they stood steadily upon the vast wasteland at the edge of the Great Rift.

The hatches slid upward in a display filled with mechanical aesthetic.

Silver-white figures, their forms exuding both power and grace, walked out from within.

The Arbitrators combat robots.

They had an average height of 10 meters, their bodies constructed entirely of a smooth, special alloy, their forms achieving a perfect balance between humanoid and beast-like.

Their heads featured a simple, streamlined design, with only a single, massive ruby-like sensor eye rotating silently, scanning everything in the vicinity.

Their limbs could walk upright like a human or sprint on all fours like a lion.

Their bodies were equipped with various interchangeable modular devices—geological drills, high-precision sensor arrays, and plasma machine guns and particle cutting blades hidden beneath their armor.

This legion of intelligent robots, composed of thousands of The Arbitrators, was activated the moment they set foot on this land.

Their processors were tightly connected via a local area network based on high-dimensional signals, sharing a single, massive neural network.

No commands, no noise.

Only absolute silence and efficiency.

Following preset protocols, they did not immediately enter the Great Rift that emitted dangerous energy fluctuations.

Their first mission was to explore the surface, collect data, and figure out exactly what had happened to this planet.

Thus, a large-scale "archaeological" operation began.

The Arbitrators legion fanned out across the planet in a grid formation.

With steady, silent strides, they walked through ruins eroded by millennia of wind and frost.

This place must have once been a collection of bustling cities.

Now, only weathered, unrecognizable broken walls remained, casting lonely shadows under the star's pale, white light.

Skyscrapers that once touched the clouds had long since collapsed, leaving only the massive foundations buried deep underground to recount their former glory.

Wide streets had long been buried by wind and sand, and one could only imagine the bustling scenes of the past from the faintly discernible traces of their layout.

The Arbitrators excavated countless metal objects from the ruins that had long since rusted beyond recognition.

There were wrecks of uniquely shaped aircraft, complex energy conduits, and some artistic metal sculptures whose purposes could not be identified.

Every one of these relics served as proof that a highly advanced intelligent civilization had once existed here.

But now, everything here was dead.

Beyond the ruins, the planet was dominated by various extreme and harsh natural environments.

In a massive basin that was once an ocean, The Arbitrators beheld a boundless white desert formed from high-concentration salt crystals.

The seawater had evaporated thousands of years ago, leaving only this saline wasteland that resembled a scar on the planet.

In the equatorial region, once a tropical rainforest, now only vast stretches of forest skeletons remained, carbonized into black, ghostly shapes.

Those towering trees, which should have been vibrant with life, had been dead for millennia; their corpses had not rotted in the dry, oxygen-deprived environment, but had instead turned into silent, black sculptures.

And amidst this dead and silent world, the most shocking sight was the animal corpses visible everywhere.

They looked as if they had been frozen in the very moment of death by time itself.

On a vast plain, The Arbitrators' sensors discovered a large herd of carcasses belonging to herbivorous creatures resembling Earth's wildebeests.

They remained in a running posture, as if they were in the midst of a grand migration.

But their lives had come to an abrupt end at the exact same moment.

Their bodies had not rotted but were rapidly desiccated in the planet's dry and cold environment, turning into dust-covered mummies.

In a massive valley, the bones of tens of thousands of flying creatures resembling pterosaurs were piled high like a mountain.

They seemed to have fallen from the sky at the same time, forming a bone-chilling mountain of skeletons.

Even in the ruins of those cities, The Arbitrators excavated a large number of remains belonging to intelligent beings.

They were found in various postures—some sitting in cockpits of vehicle-like machines, some collapsed in what used to be their homes, and others even maintaining poses of embracing one another.

Their bones had long since turned to sand, crumbling at the slightest touch.

Animals, plants, intelligent beings...

All life had been stripped of the right to exist at the exact same moment, in an extremely abrupt manner.

This planet... was a massive, planetary-scale graveyard.

Yet, in this seemingly absolutely dead world, life still continued to carry its spark in the most tenacious and humble way.

A geological probe from one of The Arbitrators collected a rock sample from deep underground near a volcanic crater.

When it placed the sample into its onboard analyzer for testing, an unexpected result appeared.

"Unknown microbial signal detected."

"Conducting genetic sequence analysis... This microbe belongs to anaerobic bacteria, capable of surviving in high-temperature environments exceeding 300 degrees Celsius and strong acid conditions."

"They feed on sulfides in the underground rocks, carrying out extremely slow metabolism."

"They are the only survivors discovered on this planet so far."

This discovery filled even Zeral, far away on the Falem Homeworld, with sincere awe.

Destruction was so thorough, yet life was so resilient.

Perhaps, in another few hundred million years, after the planet's wounds are slowly smoothed over by time, these anaerobic bacteria—tenaciously surviving on the edge of hell—will climb back to the pinnacle of intelligence along a completely different evolutionary path, establishing a brand-new civilization.

The universe is never lacking in time.

...

The Arbitrators legion's exploration of the dead planet's surface lasted for three full Earth months.

Thousands of The Arbitrators, like the most efficient worker ants, systematically scanned every inch of the planet.

They collected tens of thousands of samples of rock, atmosphere, and biological remains.

They mapped out ultra-high-precision geological and magnetic field distribution charts covering the entire globe.

They even excavated storage crystals from the ruins of the abandoned cities that recorded information about an unknown civilization.

All data and specimen information were continuously uploaded to the Falem Homeworld, located several light-years away, via a temporary high-dimensional quantum communication channel.

There, the massive research center of the Faleim Scientific Conglomerate was efficiently analyzing and processing this information from the alien planet.

Thousands of scientists and AI-assisted systems were dedicated to this intergalactic archaeological study.

After countless cross-comparisons, data modeling, and theoretical deductions, a chilling conclusion was presented to Consul Price.

"...Based on carbon-14 and other isotope decay measurements performed on all biological remains samples, we can confirm with 100% certainty," the chief paleontologist in charge of the project reported during the holographic meeting, his voice carrying a hint of disbelief, "that the time of death for all macroscopic organisms on this planet points to the same moment—approximately 5,730 Falem standard years ago."

"The margin of error does not exceed plus or minus three standard days."

As soon as this conclusion was stated, the entire conference room fell into a deathly silence.

A margin of error of no more than three days?

What did this mean?

"This means the entire planetary biosphere was wiped out instantly within an extremely short time window." The chief physicist took over, his expression incredibly grave.

"They didn't even have any time to react. We analyzed over ten thousand remains of intelligent beings and did not find a single mark on any of them caused by struggling or mutual attacks, nor did we find any signs of attempts to enter underground bunkers for shelter."

"They were like a colony of ants living their normal lives, suddenly crushed instantly, along with their entire anthill, by an invisible foot."

What kind of power could achieve this?

"We also discovered another key clue." The head of the geology team pulled up a global seismic wave propagation simulation.

"According to the analysis of global rock layer fracture traces and geological stress distribution, we discovered that almost at the same time all life perished, this planet experienced a massive, global-scale earthquake that we cannot explain using existing geological models."

"The epicenter of this earthquake did not originate from a single point in the crust, but... simultaneously from the entire planet's mantle layer, or rather, from a place approaching the planet's metallic core, as if an incomprehensible force had stirred the entire planet's 'guts' at the same time."

"This planetary-scale super-earthquake caused violent and catastrophic changes to the entire planet's tectonic plates."

"And that super Great Rift that spans half the equator was likely torn open forcibly during this earthquake."

This conclusion tied all the clues together.

The instant extinction of the entire biosphere.

Followed by a super-earthquake of unknown origin, powerful enough to tear the planet apart.

This could no longer be explained by natural disasters.

Was it a weapon created by this civilization?

But according to the analysis of the remaining ruins, although the civilization level of Laika-3 was not low, it only belonged to a civilization that had not set foot outside its home planet; it was almost impossible for them to possess such planet-killing weapons.

If it wasn't the native civilization of Laika-3...

"That weapon..." Talon's holographic projection appeared in the meeting room, his voice cold and sharp, "Could its target be the morse crystal mine hidden deep within the Great Rift?"

This question left everyone deep in thought.

To destroy all life on a planet, and even inflict "severe wounds" upon the planet itself, just to compete for a strategic resource.

How cold-blooded... No, for a high-level civilization, this seems to be normal behavior.

"It is too early to draw conclusions now." Consul Price finally spoke, his voice pulling everyone back from their various imaginings.

"But one thing is certain—the planet's disaster likely originated from deep underground, possibly at the bottom of that Great Rift."

He turned his gaze toward Talon.

"Talon, the surface exploration is complete. I now authorize you to order The Arbitrators legion to enter that Great Rift."

"I need to know what is hidden down there."

"And... for us, the massive reserves of the morse crystal mine must be secured, and for that, we will spare no means."