Chapter 328: The Orb?
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Hao Ren followed Lulu all the way to the central tower of Kuiper Station. The station master had specially prepared a temporary conference room for the meeting. The room was simple; aside from the obligatory table and chairs as well as a few fixed data terminals, there was only an aquarium and a few pots of plant at the end of the rectangular room. Due to the limited resources in the space station, there was no tea, coffee or cookies served like normal conferences on Earth.
When Hao Ren stepped into the room, more than a handful of little green men were already seated on both sides of the table. Just like the dead little green men at the bottom of the Blood Lake, these people were no taller than a human kid. But, their heads were disproportionately large with strange-looking facial features and they had green skin as well as slender limbs. They all wore the same yellow-green clothes, which looked like they were made from a rubberish fabric. They also wore different badges that indicated which commonwealth they were from. The scene reminded him of popular, yesteryear sci-fi movies, where Earth people met little green people...
It appeared that the little green men had been waiting for a while. As Hao Ren stepped in, they all got to their feet and greeted him by bringing their hands to their chests—a standard gesture that the Xi Ling Empire set for all races when meeting each other. It signified friendliness. A little green man, whose skin was visibly more yellowish seemed to be the representative of the delegate. He spoke in a standard diplomatic tone as if reading straight out from a script. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Inspector. I am greeting you on behalf of the Kabala Commonwealth of the Kerbal Civilisation Sphere. We will—"
Hao Ren interrupted him politely. "Please make yourself at home. I'm not used to formal etiquette like this..."
The little green man quickly nodded and proceeded to speak like a machine gun, "Let's get down to business then. How is the spacecraft?"
Hao Ren was stumped for a while. Like a country bumpkin, he thought he was just trying to be polite. Little did he expect that the little green men were so forthright...
But, he liked it. He laughed as he sat down and pushed a stack of data disks towards the middle of the table. He then motioned for them to circulate the disks, after which he introduced himself. "We're here for business, so save the formalities. My name is Hao Ren, you can just call me by my name..."
Lulu was at the side, moonlighting as their server at this moment. Meanwhile, the leader of the little green men was fiddling with the disks as he nodded. "Nice to meet you too. My name is Kabala, President of the Kabala Commonwealth. I want to thank you for finding my spacecraft. The spacecraft was performing an important deep space experiment, and it has several new flight paths stored in it. The information is very important to us..."
Hao Ren acknowledged with, "Okay," before getting to know each of their names. He was still a rookie and he knew little about the major civilisation spheres. He did not know the little green man, Kabala was a well-known figure in the universe. Although he was just the leader of a small commonwealth, he was almost a superstar. As a Kerbalian, he was the most outstanding space explorer. He had been on an exploratory expedition to a remote region outside the Kerbal Civilisation Sphere, flying for 37 years without once going home—well, he could have gotten home a few years sooner if he had not gotten lost in space. During his run, he found dozens of habitable planets and three space flight paths were named after him. He had even lost count of the number of colonies he founded. Like a spacecraft engine missing its shutdown button, he did not know when to stop; he was also like a whirlwind, blowing through space as he never stayed on any colonial planet for more than two years. His famous quote was, "The mission of an explorer is to discover new worlds; building them is the job of those who are to come."
Because of this explorer's weird character, he founded numerous colonial planets, but never really stopped and took the time to develop any of them. He took pleasure in discovery, but as soon as he stepped foot on a new world, he would lose interest instantly. He would move on until he found the next one. All the colonial planets were not developed by him, but by people who came after him. His style had earned him the epithet, "Kabala the Vagrant".
It was two years ago when his wife threatened to kill herself. And so, from then on, he was forced to stay at home and he became the President of the Kabala Commonwealth. His life as a legendary explorer was over; but his crew, wife, and insurer of his spacecraft were the most happy people when this happened.
Kabala and his delegates were watching the holograms projected out from the disks. The images of the half-buried spacecraft, which looked distorted under the blood-red water had the little green men nodding their heads like pigeons. "It's the one, it's the one."
One little green man rubbed the back of his head, lamenting. "Those on the Arcturus 4 were really lucky in a way. They flew a very great distance before they died..."
Hao Ren's worldview was completely shattered when he heard this.
"The spacecraft is still lying at the bottom of the lake in The Plane of Dreams," Hao Ren spoke, getting the little green men's attention back to him after they finished watching the images. "You may have learned about the situation in The Plane of Dreams."
Kabala nodded. "Yes, it is a mysterious dimension. Unfortunately, development is not allowed there. I've always wanted to bring my fleet into The Plane of Dreams and look for some places of interest. I once applied for development rights, but I was kicked out."
Hao Ren almost choked upon hearing that. He had now seen the little green men's strong spirit of exploration for himself. Their devil-may-care attitude was no less defiant than that of Lil Pea! Fortunately, Raven 12345 was around in the universe to take control of things, or else the world would have been turned upside down by more races just like the little green people.
"Great." Hao Ren did not grumble; he just nodded calmly and said, "Because of the instability of the place and the recent small problem with the Wall of Reality, we have devised a safer method to bring out the salvaged wreckage without affecting the stability of the universe and alerting the natives."
Hao Ren began to explain his plan in detail before confirming anything with Kabala. Though one of the data disks contained the plan, it just scratched the surface. The little green people nodded as they listened. Kabala gave himself a fist bump and said, "Okay, very good. In fact, we have brought our salvage equipment with us today. We will place them in your custody afterwards. But before that, I would still like to ask again... Can I go around and see what's in The Plane of Dreams?"
Before Hao Ren could said anything, the MDT jumped in. "There's already a conflict brewing between The Plane of Dreams and the real world. Getting you in to salvage the wreckage is risky enough. Standing out in the Dream Plane is just looking for trouble."
Dejected, the little green people had no choice but to budge. Kabala said, "Excuse me for a second. Let me talk with my chief minister about the details."
Two little green men then spoke with Kabala quietly. Hao Ren noticed that the little green people were very similar to him personality-wise: they were unpretentious, no-nonsense, non-bureaucratic, dependable men of action. Kabala for instance was a man who was not afraid of standing up on the table to make his presence felt. Anyway, this was a group of interstellar explorers who had gained the respect of many. Perhaps, it was such personality traits that made Kerbalians the youngest race in the history of space exploration to become a major civilisation sphere.
While Kabala was in the midst of his discussion, the other little green men were chatting among themselves. Sitting nearby, Hao Ren was able to hear their conversations, which revolved around some trivial topics. He heard one talk about the trouble in their commonwealth. "...I was terrified at that time. An explosion out of nowhere left a huge crater behind..."
Another one said, "Have you found any information on the four men in the crater? Where did they come from?"
"They didn't speak our language, so communication was impossible. When we finally understood what they said, they told us they didn't even know how they got there. They weren't particularly friendly, they looked at us like we were monsters..."
"I heard they almost got into a fight with you guys two days ago."
"Yup, but that was just a misunderstanding. They thought we were after their ball. They said the ball was a holy orb or something, they wouldn't let us touch it..."
While it was just out of curiosity initially, the more Hao Ren listened the more he felt like they were talking about something familiar. He gave it some thought for a long while, and the penny dropped. "Wait a second! Did you just say 'holy orb'? Were there four people? Four ascetics?"