The Great Patriarch has a lot to tell us, but the premise is to confirm the identity of Sandora, Green Star originally had the function of identifying the Apostle of Xiling, but unfortunately several accidents during the long years and exile destroyed these ancient equipment, and now the facilities that can still be used on the Green Star are only its own structural support devices, energy furnaces, and some defense and alarm devices, and the control of these devices is not in the hands of the Great Patriarch, in the era of the old empire, the tree elf race was the last family to have contact with the old empire, The technical support they received from the Empire was so small that they didn't have time to digest it, and eighty percent of what was hastily handed over to them was automatic.

Thankfully, even if we can't get confirmation from the planetary system, we have a way of convincing the Grand Patriarch of his identity: the Legion of Shadow City patrols the skies above the Green Star, and even though the old Dryad Elder hasn't learned how to sense ghostly energy, she still remembers the megaships.

After confirming our identities, the Tread Patriarch recounted the history of the Murmur as she knew it.

Dryads used to be an indisputable but technologically advanced civilization.

It's a bit of a surprise, because in many cases, elves are supposed to be creatures associated with magic and the Middle Ages, and it's hard to imagine how out of place it would be for an elf with a laser gun and infrared night vision to stand in front of you (let's forget the blood elves in Shadow City on anti-gravity motorcycles, drag racing and heavy metal rock music are not original elven culture) but in the void where anything is possible. Let's let go of the common sense that is fixed in books: the Dryads have a civilizational component similar to magic. But what really supports their continuous development is actually the power of science and technology, for the tree elves, magic is more like an individual talent handed down from the ancestors, which can accompany them for a lifetime and can be studied and developed, but just as human beings did not rely on the power of the earth to the top of the pyramid in the end, the tree elves did not rely on their limited life talent to get out of the home planet in the end, in the judgment criteria of the empire, they are a scientific and technological civilization, before the old empire discovered these peaceful creatures. Having developed sophisticated space technology and life support systems beyond their civilization level (the latter thanks to the dryads' talent for understanding the nature of life), these pointy-eared protagonists of the fantasy world wander their star systems with ease in their own spaceships, and have successfully built space teleporters to explore the galaxy. They are curious and eager to travel, a family of Dryads will never stay in a fixed place for more than three years, that will make them uncomfortable, and the most interesting thing for Dryads in the world is to go to places they have never been to and see things they have never seen before, even if it takes years to travel for them. In the past, they explored their entire planet, and in the space age, they began to take steps towards the treacherous vacuum and radiation environment. With the seeds from the home planet, I hope that more suitable planets will grow lush forests. However, as fate would have it, the catastrophe that almost caused the genocide of the Dryads came after one of the largest hikes.

It was their first attempt to send an exploration team to the center of the galaxy, and it was the most daring voyage the Dryads had ever made since they mastered space technology, and that voyage impressed the Grand Patriarch. Using hyperspace equipment, some of them observed a series of incredible space wonders at the center of the Milky Way, with a large number of celestial bodies inexplicably disappearing from the observer's field of vision, and some of the dying stars suddenly bursting with youthful vitality, wildly releasing torrents of energy and matter of incredible intensity, and the star-making speed in the star-making nest increased to an unprecedented level. Bewildered, the Dryad scientists send their most advanced deep-space ships and the bravest astronauts to the Galactic Center to find out—hoping that these intrepid adventurers will bring back new knowledge, or an unheard-of model of cosmic energy.

Until then, the Dryads had never touched the Abyss, let alone imagined that the madness that took place at the center of the galaxy was not a cosmic spectacle at all. Rather, it is a harbinger of the imminent total collapse of the Milky Way under the pollution of the abyss.

The first expedition team quickly lost contact, sending back only a few jumbled and crazy phrases. They seem to be partying in the center of the galaxy, and those crazy recordings show a kind of hysteria, if the dryads choose to flee their homes immediately when they receive this information, they may be able to avoid the next disaster: the abyssal force appears in the center of the galaxy, and only a little leakage, it will take a long time for them to break through the extreme environment there with weak strength, and their spread speed is less than the speed of light at the beginning, and then it will continue to accelerate to faster than the speed of light as the infection expands, and the dryads instantly- Fleeing could delay disaster for at least a few hundred years.

But they made the wrong decision: send a second exploration force to see what had happened to the group ahead.

After experiencing the same communication outage as the first team, the second team miraculously made its way back home, and that was the beginning of the disaster. Scientists and medical experts who went to meet them found that the spaceship, which was as dilapidated as if it had escaped death, was empty, that all the crew members had disappeared, and that the ship had flown back on its own thanks to the autopilot system. During the ensuing inspection, one anomaly after another of the returning ship was exposed: inexplicable shell damage, traces of fierce fights and bloodstains in the personnel area, equipment smashed by the crew, and frantic graffiti in the captain's room, pushing things farther and farther in a horrific direction, and finally the last anomaly they found was a video clip of several minutes.

"I still remember that scene vividly, when I was a scientist on Tandani, I experienced that scene firsthand," the Grand Patriarch crossed his hands tightly, she still trembled a little at the mention of the history, "The surveillance recorded the scene at the gate, the captain and the commander of the deep-space spaceship pushed the corpses into the airlock compartment, and then placed the bombs in the spaceship, they set up a message to send to Tandani, and finally they were pulled out of the airlock along with all the corpses. They committed suicide. ”

"Strong-willed individuals occasionally regain their sanity in the initial stages of infection." Sandora said quietly. "It seems that the captain and the commander have guessed that there is something in the ship that no mortal can deal with, so they want to destroy the ship, they are afraid that they will lose their minds again before the bomb explodes, and to prevent the ship from destroying itself, so they chose to commit suicide first."

The elder sister sighed: "It's a pity that they didn't expect that the invisible force would destroy even the detonating device of the bomb: the abyss was destroyed indiscriminately, and the bomb was destroyed before it exploded, along with the ship's signaling device."

"Yes, then we found the message that couldn't be sent, only one sentence: Don't come, run!"

Infections in the Abyss are difficult to detect in the first place. Especially when they are still weak. Those dull two-dimensional planes were hidden in the darkness, and no one could have imagined the harm that a piece of bewitching pattern could do until they began to destroy everything, and at first people only noticed that there were a lot of strange "graffiti" in some places in the expedition ship that had just returned home. Later, Starport's lighting system and power furnace frequently failed, and within a few days, the dryads in the base began to be infected by an inexplicable depression, and the violence increased day by day, and the army gradually lost control...... When the capital finally realized that something was wrong, their orders could no longer reach the border, and then, like many of the world's realms infected by the abyss, the first infected people suddenly began to attack others, and then spread outward from the infected area, and various creatures mutated one after another. Behemoths began to slaughter civilians, space cities built by the Dryads over thousands of years began to fall apart without being attacked, and the earth cracked and lava splattered on the colonized planet.

The Dryads fought against this unexplained "plague" for fifteen years, which was quite a good record for a civilization that knew nothing about the Abyss (and they didn't have a God-given treasure like Ortetsu, nor a lost goddess of life who could turn the tide), but in the end they were still on the verge of extinction, and the colony was left with only one fortress left. The Space Force was almost completely wiped out - it was at this time that the Helling Army appeared.

It was impossible to find out which emperor's army was now, and they found the severely infected Dryad Kingdom at the last moment, and fortunately, the Imperial General who was on a purification mission at that time was an attentive soldier, and he did not directly drop extermination weapons on the entire galaxy. Instead, he slowly pushed the battle line and discovered the Dryad civilization that was still stubbornly resisting.

Extrapolated from the schedule. At that time, it must have been less than two years since the catastrophe of the Empire's demise (which is the result of the historical extrapolation mentioned by the Great Patriarch), and it is likely that the Dryad civilization was the last vassal race of the Old Empire.

"After getting acquainted with the Empire, we were first allowed to rebuild society, and at the same time, the Empire transformed our planet into a mobile fortress." The Great Patriarch took a sip of water and continued, I said in my heart Isn't this just being directly requisitioned!

The old empire was really ...... Well, what they did was a good thing, but after they were done, they requisitioned people's home planets as space fortresses without saying a word (it should only be regarded as a space fortress, in the old imperial era, this kind of starship made by hollowing out planets is not qualified to be called a star battleship), this behavior is really domineering, and fortunately, the tree elves have just escaped from the catastrophe of genocide, so they don't have time to care about these, or maybe they don't care much about it, anyway, this matter has developed like this.

"With the help of the Empire, it took us two years to cover the surface of our planet with charged armor, and when the planet transformation was about to be completed, the Imperial General suddenly visited, he was very urgent, I think something big had happened, he brought a batch of equipment, it was a huge machine that drove the planet to sail across the world, these things were strictly forbidden to our race before, he ordered the engineers to bury the new equipment in the mantle, and personally carried out several later transformation projects, And give us something. Eventually, he asked all the dryads to hide underground and started the starship's engines. ”

"And then you're just doing your job so honestly?" Lin Xue felt a little incredible, "Aren't you curious about why the other party is doing this?" Doesn't it feel strange to suddenly leave your own universe? ”

"It's nothing to leave your own universe, the Dryad doesn't care about that," the Grand Patriarch shook his head, "The General told us that the end of the world is coming, and all the universes are no longer safe. Some of the other vassal races are already on their way. Some of them have died out, and the tree elves have no ability to stay and fight, so they have to perform other tasks, which is to escape with those vital materials, and escape as far away as possible, until the emperor ** chases us back, and the journey is over. But the general also reminds us to be careful about chasing and killing, there will be corrupted Imperial warships chasing and killing starships and tearing apart the mantle. Destroy the information inside. ”

I remembered the legends of the Dryads, and shook my head, feeling that there were still many secrets unsolved: "Oasis, this is the little planet we are staying on now. What the hell is going on? This is the important information that the old empire let you transport away? ”

"No, the data is in the system, and this small planet in the center of the earth is only a part of the carrier of the system, it was originally our moon."

Everyone: "...... Yes? ”

"The Oasis was originally our moon, the home planet of the Dryads had two huge moons, the larger one was destroyed in the war, we blew it up into a ring with a mass weapon to slow down the bombs dropped by the Polluters, and the smaller one, called the Oasis, survived the war. Before deciding on a starship, the Dryad elders felt that they should at least bring something from their homeland. So the general agreed, and he transformed the center of the earth on the home planet and put our moon in it. ”

What a messy way to makeover!

After some introductions by the Great Patriarch, we finally understood the ins and outs of the history of the Green Star, and how the oasis appeared, but we didn't expect it to be such a long and tortuous story, and then I thought of another thing, which seemed to be more puzzling than anything else: "So now do the tree elves sleep in those dormant pods in the mantle or live on the oasis?" What's going on with those quality projections out there? And last night's exchange of villagers......"

"This is a disposition taken when the journey is too long," said the Grand Patriarch helplessly, "the home planet—after." We soon lost contact with the Empire (it is estimated that the situation in the old Empire was out of control by this time), and we had not yet fully learned how to use the complex operating systems of the planet fortress, so we had no chance to learn again, so we had to sail with the autopilot system, initially. We would have lived on the surface for a few short years on our home planet, but we soon discovered that the world had already taken on a cataclysm, just as the general had warned. The external environment has become extremely sinister, full of war and abyssal breath, and after several consecutive universes encountering dangers, the dryads have finally completely abandoned the surface and moved to live underground. Later, as time passed, the elders realized that if the end of the journey was far away, it would be a catastrophic event to stay awake all the time, and it would drive people crazy, with consequences no less than the pollution of the abyss. Dryads have a long lifespan, and if they have been trapped in the dark underground for such a long time, then sooner or later they will have a collective mental breakdown, so we go into hibernation in batches - at first, they go into hibernation one by one, and then the situation gets more and more serious, and there are fewer and fewer dryads who can stay awake and maintain the system, and in the end, almost everything is handed over to the automatic facility, and only one percent of the dryads are still awake, and the awake dryad scientists have found a bad phenomenon: due to the super long continuous dormancy, The spiritual power of the clan is dissipating: even if the ** can be kept in the dormancy pod, the soul cannot live forever. The mission looked like it was about to fail: it was something more terrible than death for the dryads, and our racial imprint wouldn't allow us to give up on our promises, so the last scientists, including me, came up with a plan to delay the situation.

Activate the oasis in the center of the earth and let it form a world world composed of mass projections, simulating the most primitive environment of the home star, and let the clansmen enter this projection world in batches to dream......"

"Dreaming?" My sister suddenly interrupted the other party.

"Yes, dreaming," the Grand Patriarch nodded, "using the Soul Extraction Device to transfer the entire spirit of a Dryad into a mass projection, then selectively seal most of the memories, and finally put them on the Oasis, in such a dream, the soul wounds caused by the long journey and continuous dormancy will slowly heal." Most of the memories are sealed so that the dreamer forgets about the journey, so that when they leave the dream, they can leave the dream with a perfect sweet dream that is enough to heal the wound. Soon we found that this method was effective, and the dissipation of souls that pervaded the people had completely stopped, so we simply extracted all the souls and stored them in a huge database in the mantle of the home planet, from which it was easier and safer to transfer souls to dreams than to temporarily extract them from the body, and it saved energy. As a result, the shells in the upper mantle hibernation chambers can be converted to low-power preservation. After all, no one knows how long the journey will last, and when the first energy furnace fails, we have such a sense of crisis. ”

I sighed silently: Fortunately, now the energy furnace of Green Star is still in good condition, but they are really right to take precautions.

"It's basically right," the elder sister folded her hands on her chin and looked at the patriarch, "then you ...... like this"

"I'm one of the navigators," the old dryad laughed, "and someone has to look at the navigator while the starship crew sleeps. The Navigator is the nominal pilot of the starship, but our mission is to observe the operation of the system, and the work was suspended after a malfunction thousands of years ago, and we have not been able to fix it until now. We're just primitive people who have been accidentally thrown onto a spaceship and the trainers have left suddenly, and everything is so rushed that we don't even have time to learn how to brake our home planet......"

The Navigators, who need to maintain their full memory and awake mental state when the other Dryads enter the Sleep and Dream Realm, they are not many in number, and they have to work in many shifts, in order to observe for a long time whether the starship's aging systems are still intact, they are under tremendous pressure, and only one Navigator appears in the Oasis Dream Realm at a time: in the name of the Ancestors and the Great Patriarch, this is the only time they have to rest, and even such a break they have to stay awake, after all, Someone else is responsible for keeping this dream intact.

So I was in awe of the great patriarch in front of me.