Xyrin Empire

Moon landing, a high-tech term that seems particularly impressive to ordinary people, just another everyday term like 'going out to buy soy sauce' to the Xyrin Apostle, and equivalent to 'the TV show is starting!' to Qianqian. In short, it's a suddenly highly relevant term to many people.

Though I also don't know how the last sentence manages to summarize the first three.

Despite being accustomed to traveling across several worlds in an instant using Xyrin Technology, I was still surprised to learn that humans could launch the most advanced lunar rover with just a few days' urgent preparation. Surprised at how rapidly this world is progressing and at how many countries have secretly prepared probes and spacecraft ready to launch at any moment.

Many people questioned what the original purpose of those long-hidden large carrier rockets and precision-guided landing capsules was, but such voices were quickly suppressed by the momentum that countries worldwide built for this urgent joint moon exploration action. Ordinary people always see the bright side, like world peace and harmony, and all humanity racing against time for the civilization milestone of this planet, heading to investigate the mysterious dark side of the moon where the source of calamity that nearly destroyed modern human communication networks lies. In a way, that's not wrong, as long as we can ignore the military industrial shadows in those hastily assembled space vehicles.

Yes, it's 'those' vehicles, not 'that' vehicle. After discovering that the number of countries willing and able to participate in this action exceeded expectations, the emergency-formed United Nations 'Dark Side of the Moon' taskforce temporarily expanded the plan. While maintaining the original launch missions, they also allowed countries with extra capacity to deploy satellites or landing capsules to the moon. Such an extravagant and even hasty plan may be the first in human history and clearly demonstrates how aggressive humans can be when catching a glimpse of a possible key to breaking the current technological cage after technological development has hit a bottleneck. The three lunar impact incidents have shaken human society but also rekindled the daring spirit of space exploration from the '60s. Some say the era around 1960 was when humans began truly advancing the tech tree, and now, the lunar impact incident has evidently provided humanity with a new talent point to allocate.

Today is already a crucial moment for the moon exploration action, with at least a billion people worldwide sitting in front of their TVs, watching with bated breath as the largest group of space vehicles ever launched by humans gradually approaches the moon's synchronous orbit. This includes us too, though the First Family's equipment is more advanced, and the observation method is more high-end: we have a large holographic projection in the living room. One projection splits the screen to monitor every Earth spaceship, and another shows the lunar perspective, currently with only a few small bright spots swiftly crossing the sky.

"They've already started orbiting the moon. About half of their spacecraft have crashed, and many of the probes and spacecraft are experimental, lacking the performance to escape the gravity balance point. Those that made it over are out of control," Sandora sits on the couch, stuffing popcorn in her mouth, commenting as she watches the comprehensive holographic projection in front of her, "Ha, never thought humans who usually act so sluggish could have such moments of throwing caution to the wind. Had they made this decision a few days earlier, I could have given them a higher evaluation."

"Even so, any evaluation would just be that," I shrug indifferently, "We can't let them see the impact craters or the starship debris. Not only has Visca repaired the lunar surface, but she even folded the air defense positions in the shadow zone back into the armor. This amounts to humans undertaking the largest money-burning event in history."

I say this with some regret, because no matter how odd my race might have become now—fine, it's gotten to the odd point where you could pluck out a whole taxonomy from its biology, the Void Creatures, damn it, three people in the entire race, with one likely never to meet on the other end of the Void—and I'm completely kicked out of the human race. At least I was born and raised on Earth for twenty years, and my feelings towards this world are identical to those of Earthlings. Now, due to military secrecy laws and the "Conventional Civilization Evolution Speed Limitation Act," I have to watch humans futilely dash 380,000 kilometers to gawk at a bunch of craters, which is truly lamentable.

Sandora, of course, knows what I'm conflicted about. She can just look at my expression and show a knowing smile, our communication even simpler than Pandora and Visca's face-pinching exchanges. So Her Majesty the Queen puts down her popcorn, wagging her finger at me with a bit of mystery and mischief: "Ah Jun, I never said humans would return completely empty-handed."

"Uh?" I'm immediately taken aback, "You wouldn't want to catalyze human civilization, right? Let me tell you, if that's the case, I'd rather have Earthlings remain ignorant for another two hundred years. I've read those ancient civilization materials in the database. At this civilization level, forcing maturation can only lead to a dead end."

"Of course I know; I'm the one who let you read those materials," Sandora rolls her eyes at me. "I won't give Earthlings any technology that would lead them to explosive development. That's our agreement, but this time… I have to reward their efforts towards outer space and knowledge, so I let Visca place a little something in the shadow zone."

"A few stones," it seems Visca has learned the ways of mysticism, winking at me without elaborating, "Inside the stones, there's… "

"Ahem!" Sandora promptly coughs, and Visca falls silent: her mystic façade seems to have a shelf life of less than a second.

With Earth's current technology, human-launched moon exploration spacecraft are frustratingly slow. These past two days, we've watched Earth's moonships slowly trekking through outer space. Coupled with having nothing else interesting to do, it's incredibly dull. Lilina couldn't resist her impulse to rush into space and give them a push more than once, and I don't know who it was at first that thought about using a tree stick to poke all those spacecraft down, and even now, this girl I'm pinning on the sofa keeps shouting: "Orbit, my a**, orbit! How long is this orbiting going to take? You've already orbited for two hours, isn't it done yet? Hurry up and land for God's sake! I'm talking about you, the one with the NASA logo on your forehead, come down if you've got the guts!"

Dragged to spectate the moon mission by Lin Xue, Ding Ling looks horrified, watching Lilina, who's becoming uncontainable in her combat prowess as she's pinned on the couch. He never imagined that a legendary demigod creature, a spokesperson for God, could behave like this. Meanwhile, Lin Feng leisurely sighs, "You'd think his sister's reputation blocked so many bullets for him…"

Sitting on the sofa shelling beans, Bingdisi suddenly looks at Lin Feng with new eyes.

I can only cry and laugh as I randomly mess Lilina's hair, trying to explain: "Moon exploration isn't about throwing a stone straight at the moon from Earth, alright? The spaceship has to change orbit several times following a few elliptical paths to approach the moon, and this time, they didn't launch during the optimal window, so correcting the trajectory is quite a hassle—could you not compare them to the Empire's shuttle?"

With a pout, Lilina wriggles like a caterpillar on the sofa: "But I've wasted several days of my youth, and I'm not here to watch them circle around and act cute!"

Alright, the expressions on the faces of the humans present, especially those of purebred humans like Ding Ling and Lin Feng, were truly fascinating. They think that the space technology humans have developed over these years is the crystallization of civilization. The ability to send spacecraft to other planets, no matter how clumsy the means, is high-tech. But now, to hear it dismissed by a one-meter-nine little girl as circling around and acting cute—I reckon Lilina might be the only "Earthling" in the world who would appraise humanity's moon exploration plan like this.

Since her rebirth, Lilina no longer sees herself as human at all…

"No, I can't stand it anymore!"

Rolling around, Lilina suddenly shouts, "No more of this, it's boring. I'm going to play on another planet!"

And with that, Lilina disappears from the living room in a flash.

Ding Ling, Lin Feng, and Sally, who had been dragged along as a little tag-along and watched the holographic projection in bewilderment, all simultaneously turned their gazes here. I could only smile awkwardly: "Don't look at me, that's just her quirk."

At this point, Visca suddenly tugged on my arm, pointing at the holographic projection, "Brother, the first probe is descending."

Sure enough, upon looking, a spacecraft was changing orbit, and it was that same big iron lump that had 'NASA' written on it, harshly criticized by Lilina. After orbiting the moon twice, it finally entered the optimal trajectory for deploying the probe, a silver-white big metal canister separated from the payload spacecraft and, assisted by deceleration rockets, headed towards the dark side of the moon.

It's a pity, it's a bit far from the impact crater, scientists on Earth can't accurately determine the location of the impact point on the far side of the Moon. At the moment of energy eruption on the lunar surface, all space probes pointing to the Moon were burned out, and for obvious reasons, we haven't repaired these things until now. So humanity's exploration of the dark side of the Moon this time actually relied somewhat on luck: their spacecraft had to temporarily detect the situation below when flying over the Moon's dark side, and ground personnel intuitively judged which impact crater was new and which one had suspicious things, then dropped the landing capsule. In this way, the probe most likely would not land directly near the impact crater. NASA is a tragedy, they can only collect a bit of lunar soil and then call it a day. Theoretically speaking, even the most advanced lunar rover of the Americans should not have the ability to run 200 kilometers on the lunar surface, and the straight-line distance of Impact Crater No.1 is at least 210 kilometers away from it…

Meanwhile, probes from other countries have also entered proper orbits. Due to the limitations of technology levels, Earth spacecraft are essentially a bunch of inertia iron cans relying on predetermined orbits to operate, with precise mobility poor to the extreme. In outer space, they couldn't possibly move flexibly and occasionally drift like shuttles from interstellar civilizations, let alone make a sharp turn. So, to prevent orbit collision accidents during this operation (there have been such space traffic accidents in human space history, but those were collisions between satellites in orbit and space debris. As for collisions of spacecraft just launched on the orbit, absolutely unprecedented. If it were to happen today, it would definitely go down in the history books, and I really don't know how the two concerned countries would meet each other afterwards), all moon exploration spacecraft were spaced far apart, along orbits that absolutely wouldn't intersect. An unprecedented united action of so many countries worldwide, and everyone was extremely cautious.

This also ensured that those probes could land on places widely spread over the dark side of the Moon, at the very least increasing the chances of immediately discovering the impact craters.

"I don't feel anything."

After waiting a long time, until several probes landed smoothly on the lunar surface, Visca suddenly shook her head out of boredom, "They're too small, and one damaged its cable during landing. Totally useless. I bet a shiver from me would shake them all damaged."

"I think you guys are really dangerous, honestly." Ding Ling hugged her legs sitting next to Lin Xue, looking with horror at the cat-eyed Little Loli in a lunar incarnation, yet her hand discreetly reached towards the table, "What's this thing? It looks pretty, can you give it to me?"

"Always trying to take advantage," Lin Xue slapped Ding Ling's claw away, "It's a Dragon Ball, it can really summon the Divine Dragon, but it has already found its owner, which is Little Baobao's."

Ding Ling's eyes suddenly lit up: "Divine Dragon? That thing really exists? Can it fulfill my wish? A Divine Dragon is omnipotent, right?"

Lin peeked around cautiously and said timidly after confirming someone called her: "I can sweep the floor, do laundry, and cook, but I often break things. Don't ask me to help with anything valuable."

Monina immediately covered her face, unable to witness it, while Bingdisi and I teamed up with Lin Xue and burst into laughter.

At this time, the probes that safely landed on the lunar surface had already started slowly moving around, finally entering the substantial phase of humanity's most special space operation ever.

Six probes disassembled or lost contact upon passing through the gravitational balance point, two probes crashed uncontrollably while attempting to land on the Moon, and ultimately, only three landed safely on the lunar surface.

One of them is an American-made lunar rover, this little thing was manufactured two years ago. It was originally supposed to be used for a space plan in the latter half of this year, but now it's being showcased early. As mentioned before, every country with the capability to launch into space would have some hidden stuff, space missions, such things in the average civilian's mind might require plans spanning over half a year or even several years. But actually, when emergencies occur, at least four countries in the world can launch a probe to space or even the Moon within a few days, although the probe may not return, its success rate is at least 80%, among which are the Americans, who always like to secretly prepare a lot of good stuff, like the couple saving the world during the last 30 minutes of a movie.

China certainly participated in this joint action too, yet it's clear that China currently doesn't possess the capability to independently launch a probe to the Moon within a few days, it's a helpless fact. But at least China provided a set of carrier rockets, which is better than those Koreans claiming responsibility for the lunar impact event…

Right now, that lunar rover with American blood but a super unfortunate landing spot has already automatically activated, stumbling on the dust-covered rugged lunar surface. Its landing spot is at the bottom of a large crater on the far side of the Moon. Not sure if it's the carrier spacecraft's misjudgment, but before this exploration robot was released, the carrier definitely scanned Impact Crater No.1, yet ultimately it flew over over two hundred kilometers and dropped the probe in a godforsaken place to stray alone.

The other two probes landed on quite accurate spots, one of them is the multinational-launched "Dark Side of the Moon" lunar rover, from carrier rockets, to the spacecraft orbiting the Moon, and then the lunar rover itself, this sluggish little guy came to that desolate grey world at least through the resources or wishes of more than a dozen countries. As for the other one landing at the other end of the crater, it's the Russians' probe. Similar to the solitary launched American lunar rover, it's a rather tragic fellow. Although it landed successfully, unfortunately, it damaged the battery and a cable. Now the remaining energy should only be enough for its ground station at the back to hold a brief mourning ceremony. Visca is closing her eyes sensing its location, trying to tease this slow-moving little machine.

It turns out, the only probe able to complete its mission is the joint-launched lunar rover from various countries—although it has two-thirds of American blood, its trip to the Moon relied on transportation tools cobbled together by twelve countries in an emergency. It's also the only probe that landed precisely on the edge of the largest and most recognizable Impact Crater No.3's area. This is really overly coincidental.

Wait, it certainly is overly coincidental—I can't help but turn my head to glance at Sandora, who unsurprisingly gifted me a mysteriously knowing smile.

"It's just a little hint, any independently launched probe is impossible to successfully complete its mission, while this collective probe, even if the engine fails, would float safely to the lunar surface," Sandora squinted, "Maybe years from now someone will ponder over today's coincidence—a matter of what I intend."

I was quite surprised looking at Sandora, her doing this without my knowledge is really somewhat unlike her character. Though this is good, but… Sandora doesn't seem like a Queen who would make such "soft" gestures, she's more suited to grand gestures, either obliterate a civilization or use overwhelming support, not meticulously preparing these "gifts", it doesn't match her style!

Facing my confusion, Sandora merely smiled faintly, pinching my ear: "Because of you, ah, so oblivious."

I realized then, and was promptly jointly despised by Lin Xue and Ding Ling for half a minute…

Half an hour later, the jointly named lunar rover "Dark Side of the Moon" completed its short climbing journey, entering through a gap into Impact Crater No.3's boundary.

Viewing from outer space, this large crater obviously is a "fresh" scar on the lunar surface, plus the surroundings were swept flat by shock waves into a vast plain, very easy to identify. Visca already repaired the starship armor exposed underneath Impact Crater No.3, though still retained the circular mountain-like terrain around.

And at this moment, the lunar rover finished measuring the energy level of the circular mountain boundary, finally reactivated, heading towards a direction possibly altering the course of human history.

Sandora mentioned preparing a little gift for humanity up ahead, now I'm also beginning to anticipate—what exactly is it? (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, welcome to visit qidian.com to vote for recommendation or monthly tickets. Your support is that which drives me the most.)