Chapter 328 (1/2)
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.