Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 878 [Morning Star - Eärendil]

"It seems that you have already made your choice."

As this whisper was transmitted by the last monitor, the transmission core behind it suddenly heated up, and a weak electric arc blasted out a spark along the wiring interface.

In the backstage command channel, all personnel responsible for accessing the peripheral system of the Agor Star Port - whether they were engineers, security monitors, or communication switchboard officers, all felt their bodies tense, as if their throats were strangled by an invisible thread at the same time.

No one dared to speak out to confirm.

But everyone knows it in their hearts.

This word "choice" is not a question.

is the conclusion.

Just like the final stroke on a trial document, once it is written, no further explanation is needed.

The entire edge of the star port fell into an eerie silence.

until……

Click——click——click——

The sound of orderly and steady footsteps was heard in the distance.

The metal boots stepped on the alloy floor, bringing out a crisp rhythm.

A tall woman wearing the uniform of the Valraven Star Army appeared first. She stood straight, moved in standard movements, and wore a black military cap on her head.

Alex Reiss.

She didn't say any more nonsense, but just brought six fully armed elite mercenaries and stopped five steps away from Xia Xiu.

Then he raised his right hand and saluted in a standard military salute.

"Welcome, Your Majesty Abraham."

"This is the military starport of the Valraven Company - the Agor Hub."

"I am here on the orders of the Round Table Conference to await your inspection."

Xia Xiu didn't respond immediately.

He just lowered his head slightly and slowly scanned the team in front of him.

Speechless.

He doesn't need to speak.

Just those golden eyes sliding across them made the soldiers freeze as if struck by electricity.

Everyone seemed to be under ice and frost, and even their breathing slowed down automatically.

The beads of sweat under the neck quietly slid into the armor, and no one dared to move.

Some people even had their fingers trembling slightly, but they forced themselves not to clench their fists.

Alex still maintained the military salute posture.

His face was expressionless, his muscles tense, but his eyes did not escape.

She was waiting for Xia Xiu to speak.

Finally, Xia Xiu spoke.

The voice was light, but it revealed a sense of leisure:

"Inspecting what?"

After he said this, he raised his hand and pressed the top hat on his head, and suddenly a smile appeared on his lips - an extremely gentle smile.

It's warm, but it makes people's scalp tingle.

Alex's voice was steady, without any emotion:
"Inspecting the new ether general-purpose machine led by Valraven—"

"The development progress of [Morning Star Earendil]."

Xia Xiu said “Oh”.

It was as if he were merely listening to an answer he already knew being repeated.

The next second, he nodded, his smile faded, and he left a very simple sentence:

"…Round Table Council."

“I made the right choice.”

"Let's go, let me see how successful your secret pseudo-fourth-generation aircraft project is."

[Valraven] The abnormal representative said nothing, but led the way silently.

*********
Agor Star Port·Deep Test Port.

The fourth experimental warehouse.

The heavy hatch slowly opened.

The passage behind the door is like an underground main vein that is a hundred meters deep, and there are still traces of unpolished cutting on the steel structure wall.

Cold air rushed out, as if some dormant behemoth was slowly waking up.

Alex walked in front, with steady steps and a calm face. He turned sideways and gave Xia Xiu a brief introduction:
"This test port was originally a deep track mine earthquake protection layer, and was later converted by us into a settlement area for body experiments."

"[Morning Star Earendil] was born here."

Xia Xiu didn't say anything, just nodded slightly and continued walking forward.

At the end of the metal corridor, a beam of light slowly spread out.

That is the ceiling lighting system of the fuselage's standing platform.

The lights are lit up step by step from top to bottom.

The light swept across the hook, load-bearing frame, lifting rail, and docking groove, like some kind of heavy hibernation ritual slowly beginning.

Rows of cold lights shone along the track, passing over the brackets, lintels, warehouse walls, and hook locks——

Finally, it fell on the towering giant figure.

He looked up and saw it.

——[Morning Star Eärendil].

It is not just a single machine.

But it is a walking war fortress of Saint Goth.

It is 57 meters high and stands on a multi-level load-bearing platform. The entire space seems to have to make room for it.

It is painted in black and gold, with black as the main base color, matte and quiet; the gold is like carved lines, extending from important structures such as joints, spine, and shoulder armor.

The entire outer armor presents an unknown metal surface with a crystal-like texture. It does not reflect light, but it is like the static pressure of a rock surface, making people instinctively feel its unshakable heaviness.

Its body is not smooth.

Between those rough and heavy limbs, there is an asymmetrical yet orderly stacked structure.

On the back, there are "non-tactical components":
A broken statue nailed to a heavy magnetic lock ring, its mechanical lower body standing upright on the platform, and its upper body sealed.

An old-fashioned altar structure, engraved with ancient Norse slogans and with neural access rings embedded around the periphery.

On both sides stand two Judgment Pillars of the Broken God, supporting the sacrificial tower, and the surrounding area is connected by a psychic shielding link.

A heavy flag launcher is mounted high up, and three battle flag devices can be raised simultaneously when the machine is marching.

It's like an organism.

It is like a Gothic war castle rising from the ground and hanging above the battlefield.

The black and gold main body shell is its skeleton, but what really constitutes its soul is the entire war building complex installed on its back.

It extends from the waist spine to the shoulder armor and then climbs upward, with layer upon layer of interlaced structures stacked up.

The towers, domes, cantilever beams and buttresses are arranged in an orderly manner.

Under the cold light, its shell made of unknown metal swallowed up all the light, leaving only deep golden lines in the edges and cracks, like old inscriptions or marks left by battle.

That's not a livery.

Those are burn scars.

Six main electromagnetic cannons are erected in the central structure of its spine, arranged vertically and folded in a "mountain" shape. The rear is connected to a superconducting energy conversion array and is in a partially dormant state under normal circumstances.

This existence seems to have stripped the meaning of a building of faith away from religion, leaving only authority, oppression, and destruction.

It is not a symbol.

It's a tool.

It is an instrument of judgment that is to walk into blood and fire and drive the "Morning Star" into the enemy's chest.

But Xia Xiu stood beneath it.

He could hear it—it was "breathing."

It was not the regular module sound of a machine's self-inspection, but a kind of "pressure accumulation" as if the inside of a heavy object was still slowly wriggling and gathering strength.

Like something that was not allowed to open its eyes, it was waiting for "someone to wake it up".

And the moment it wakes up, the entire star port will tremble.

Xia Xiu raised his eyes and stared for a moment, then took a step forward.

The footsteps couldn't be any lighter, but in this empty experimental port, they were still as clear as a hammer falling.

Alex didn't say anything.

She knew that no one could stop him from approaching the machine at this moment.

Xia Xiu walked up the metal observation steps and slowly moved forward until he came to the core structure carried on the back of the giant structure. ——Altar.

It stands on the top of the spine, surrounded by heavy shield components, and its base is supported by a whole piece of angled cast iron, like a "sacred bone" inserted obliquely into the body skeleton.

What is engraved on the surface is not human language, but a multi-segment modular text derived from the "Remnants of the Broken God's Doctrine". It sounds like a prayer, but also like a data transmission protocol.

In the center was embedded a fist-sized pan-crystal core, which was extremely light in color, almost transparent, but inside it was slowly rotating like a whirlpool.

There is no external energy input port, nor any explicit connection interface.

But Xia Xiu knew clearly that this pan-crystal was the heart of the entire "temple structure".

The heart of a war altar.

It is neither an engine nor an ammunition magazine.

It was like some kind of subdued will.

A speechless remnant of a god, with his head and mouth cut off, leaving only a heart embedded in the body.

"Is this the main control core?"

Xia Xiu spoke softly, his voice sounding like a question, but not quite.

Alex stood a few steps below and spoke in a steady tone:
"Yes and no."

“It is neither an engine in the traditional sense nor a think tank neural module.”

"It is... the remains of a thought."

"We dug out the remains of the Broken God of the Cult of the Ruins—a structure that was never completely extinguished."

Xia Xiu did not move, but leaned over and gently tapped his fingers on the outer wall of the altar core.

"hiss--"

At the moment of contact, an extremely fine pulse of light appeared in the core, spreading outward from his fingertips and then quickly returned to calm.

But at that moment, Alex saw it.

A whirlpool seemed to appear in the depths of Xia Xiu's golden pupils.

He felt something.

Not a signal.

Not knowledge.

Rather, it is a kind of "restlessness in silence" that comes from deep within the mechanical structure.

"It's still conscious."

Xia Xiu withdrew his hand, his tone calm.

“It’s just waiting.”

Xia Xiu's fingers slowly left the core of the altar.

A slight resonant aftermath dissipated along the metal shell and disappeared into the steel-nerve-like interlocking gaps.

He didn't speak immediately, but just stood there, his eyes turned to something further away -

Towards a direction that he has not yet reached, but which has already been projected in his mind.

After a while, he spoke calmly:
"This machine."

"And the fourth-generation machine in the Soul Sucker Empire that you leaked information about before, they were excavated from the same ruins, right?"

He did not raise his voice or emphasize his tone.

But at that moment, Alex, who was standing behind him, finally had a slight fluctuation in expression.

She was silent for a second.

Then he slowly raised his head, without any evasive tone, and answered in a low voice:

"Yes."

"We call that place the incompletely numbered ruins of the old world's central core."

"It exists in an abandoned star field at the edge of the Soul Sucker Empire, surrounded by severely distorted ether space channels."

"In that area, language will self-disintegrate, the sense of time will be out of control, and ordinary consciousness will not be able to maintain perception for more than three minutes."

"We observed the ruins long before the Ivy League War, and it took us eight years to build a stable landing platform."

"And this machine is one of the 'remaining structures' we found there."

"While we were cutting and hauling it, the Soul Sucker Empire noticed something was wrong and immediately mobilized the outer colonies to attack us."

She paused and added in a low voice:

"That battle was the only time we had direct contact with the Soul Sucker Empire."

Xia Xiu did not turn his head, still looking at the tall tower-like ridge of the Morning Star.

"The results of it?"

"...We lost an entire fleet."

“But brought it back.”

"After that, the company has been hoping to repair it and further develop it into a fourth-generation aircraft. We need a good time."

"And after the outbreak of the Ivy War, when the Courtyard intended to go to war with the Mind Drainer Empire, the company felt that the time was ripe for Valraven to begin its own fourth-generation aircraft construction plan."

Xia Xiu then slowly turned around and looked at Alex.

Her golden hair fell down and her golden eyes narrowed slightly.

There was no questioning, no surprise, and no obvious emotion in his eyes.

But Alex knew.

The fourth sword-bearer in Heaven already knew too much, and there was no point in hiding it.

She didn't hide it anymore and said directly:
"We have no intention of hiding the origin of this machine from you."

"But it is precisely because of this operation that the Soul Sucker Empire began to actively record Valraven's tactical numbers."

"We know that they are also restarting the deep structure of that ruin..."

She looked up at the fortress statue composed of the altar, flagpole and broken statue, and said softly:

"And we just got ahead of them and woke one of them up."

The silence stretched slightly between the two.

Alex stood there, looking up slightly, waiting for him to continue asking questions.

Xia Xiu didn't let her wait too long.

His voice was very soft, but his tone was like a knife piercing through the cracks in his bones:

"That ruins——"

“Now, who is in control?”

He didn't say another word.

But as soon as the question was uttered, it was like an invisible curtain was lifted.

Alex was silent for two seconds.

His eyes lingered on the giant machine for a moment, and then he answered in a low voice:

"The Soul Sucker Empire."

"After we seized this machine, the outer space of the ruins was blocked. They inserted a large number of modified 'assimilation nodes' into the border colony hierarchy."

"Now, it has become a quasi-colony-level closed research area, which we call [T-12 Closed Braincase]."

"And deep inside the ruins, there are at least... one-third of the structural remains, core data crystals, and inscriptions in undeciphered languages ​​that we were unable to bring out."

Xia Xiu then asked back:
"Besides the fourth-generation aircraft, how many other aircraft like this are there in the ruins?"

"Similar machines, including the Morning Star Eärendil, are called 3.5 generation machines by us. There are three 3.5 generation machines in the ruins, and we seized one of them."

Xia Xiu did not say anything more, but just lowered his head slightly and glanced at the pan-crystal altar, as if he was re-evaluating the chips in his hand.

"You grabbed a knife."

He said.

"But the scabbard, the sword manual, and the furnace for forging the sword are all still on the other side."

Alex said in a deep voice: "Yes."

"And they also know that we have this knife in our hands."

"We estimate that the Soul Sucker Empire will send the observation colonies under its Mastermind Council to reverse-edit the ruins in the next few years."

After listening to this, Xia Xiu was silent for a moment.

Then he raised his hand and rubbed his eyebrows.

The movement was gentle, but with obvious helplessness.

It was as if he had finally put some fragments that had been accumulating in the back of his mind into place; the whole picture was no longer blurry, but rather particularly eye-catching.

"This is extremely bad information."

His tone did not fluctuate, but because it was too calm, it brought out a more oppressive feeling.

"The Soul Sucker Empire has seized a large relic of a Broken God..."

"Does the Cogwork Orthodox Church know about this?"