Chapter 555 (2/2)

Vivian summoned a gust of wind, but the wind could only bring the fog near the hills away temporarily but not the strong heated air draft rising up from the crater. So it seemed the dust and fog might be here to stay for some time.

Hao Ren tilted his head skyward, the sky was clear, but the plume from the deep pit of the basin was slowly spreading out. Perhaps plume would engulf the whole area for a few days. “This reminds me of my hometown.” He lamented.

Y’lisabet was sitting on the shoulder of her dad, waving her fist and shouted, “I also miss my hometown!”

Listening on, Opra was surprised. “You have such smoke in your hometown every day?”

Hao Ren shrugged. “It depends. When the weather is good, you can see the stars. When the weather is bad, you would gasp for air. The situation in Y’zaks’ hometown is even worse. When the weather is bad, they all run towards the mouth of the volcanoes gasping for fresh air.”

Opra said, “… No wonder you guys possess are so strong. So essentially you guys are living in a place where warriors are trained and tested.”

Hao Ren felt that the marshal had misunderstood, but it seemed that he was also unable to clear the misunderstanding.

An hour later, the first space signal came from Holletta’s synchronous orbit: “Team B logistics has arrived pre-set orbit. ‘Cargo’ is stable. ‘Lullaby’ device is working properly!”

After a few minutes, the news that Team A was in orbit was heard too.

What remained to be done was transport the two living First Borns to Tannagot’s orbit. However, the Aerymian elven spacecraft were not capable of doing this. So the responsibility fell on the Petrachelys.

Of course, the space expansion installation of Petrachelys had its limit, and at least the storage window was limited. To stuff the First Born with a width of nearly two hundred kilometres into the cargo space would be out of the question, so the Petrachelys would have to use spatial bubble transfer method to send the two living samples onto the orbit of Tannagost.

After sending the First Born together with the Giant Tree of Life into the predetermined orbit, the Aerymian engineering fleet left as schedule. The Petrachelys appeared near to the two samples piloted by the auto pilot computer. The host computer of the spacecraft launched its warp function and increased the coverage into nearby space.

Starlight from afar appeared distorted within the space of several hundred kilometres around the spacecraft, as if there was an unprecedentedly large gravitational force that was interfering with the optical phenomena. The starlight was twisted into a circular arc and forming rapidly into a ring. The space was closed up becoming a spatial bubble before the Petrachelys and the two living First Borns vanished in it.

The next moment, starlight returned to normal, and the spacecraft and the two strange entangled tentacles were gone.

Hao Ren and the others returned to the capital of Holletta through the portal before the two engineering teams arrived later. Hilda and Big Beardy, who was accompanying the king and the Pope to the Volcano of Dusk, had also arrived through the portal.

As everyone was back, the first thing Hao Ren had to do was put away those scarily massive engineering equipment, so as to prevent the old guys of the Royal Masters Association getting heart attack (and by the way, to prevent the screwdriver frenzy of Y’lisabet from getting aroused). Hao Ren checked the time: they arrived on the planet earlier in the morning, and now the sun was still hanging on the west side of the horizon; it had been a massive operation but it was accomplished faster than expected.

Hilda had found Hao Ren, she was all smile. “The operation was finished successfully. I hope we have been of help.”

“Yeah, sure you were,” Hao Ren quickly nodded. “Is your diplomacy going smoothly?”

“What can I say?” Hilda grinned and spread out her hand. “We are two worlds apart. Only through your portal we can communicate. So we were just exchanging culture and history and things like that. I might be out of my personal curiosity…nothing too serious.”

Meanwhile, Opra came up and interrupted their conversation. “I hate to interrupt you guys but the King invites all the foreign guests to his banquet. I guess you’d have time to join this time?”

Hao Ren smiled and looked at Lily whose eyes were glowing in eagerness. He waved his hand and said, “It would be impolite to decline the invitation especially when there’s so much food to eat. Why not? Think of it as a compensation for our hard work!”