Alien Hotel.

Chapter 530: Crossing over
Far out in deep space, far from legal shipping lanes, above a barren, rocky planet, an orbital laboratory resembling a giant disc is operating in a high orbit.

Inside the Black Rock space station, the unsettling alarms gradually subsided, and the flashing red lights in the corridors returned to normal. With the order to lift the state of emergency, the technicians who had been waiting in the evacuation module began to return to their posts one after another.

As order was gradually restored throughout the large space station, a small team was cautiously and quickly making its way through a connecting corridor on the lower level of the space station toward the medical area.

A hovering stretcher floated beside the team, and the dark blue body bag on the stretcher vaguely revealed the outline of a human figure.

A faint, bloody scent seeped from the body bag, which should have been thick and sealed, and continued to dissipate into the air.

The Black Dot soldiers responsible for escorting the invaders' corpses seemed completely oblivious to the lingering scent of blood in the air, maintaining their cautious and serious demeanor as they advanced in silence.

The connecting corridor in the lower area was quiet, while the chaos in the upper laboratory seemed to belong to another world. A stagnant atmosphere lingered around, with only the low hum of certain machines running through the alloy walls on both sides, dispelling the strange and oppressive atmosphere that felt like a tomb.

One of the soldiers on the black dot felt a little uneasy and finally couldn't help but break the silence: "Something feels off... Is this area really that quiet?"

"Don't scare yourself," the squad leader's voice sounded muffled through the heavy power armor helmet. "That's because the upper zone was too chaotic just now."

The group fell silent again, but only for less than two minutes before another member muttered, "I've heard that strange things have been happening at Blackrock Station lately... It's happened so many times already. Some cabins have suddenly had strange foreign objects appear, some rooms have mysteriously disappeared, and I also heard that an extra room has appeared over the logistics channel, and someone saw a bunch of strange black figures over at the canteen."

“It might be caused by the rift generator,” another Black Dot soldier whispered. “I heard they switched to a higher frequency excitation crystal, but that thing isn’t very stable.”

“Maybe some modules are possessed,” the first soldier with the black dot shook his head. “What’s the saying again… the machine spirit is displeased. The entire space station is just one giant machine, and the stuff in the labs is somewhat tainted with dark psionic energy…”

"You'd better not let the people in the Science Assessment Department hear what you're saying," the squad leader interrupted the soldiers' conversation, somewhat annoyed. "The research projects above are things that the 'boss' needs to consider, and whether the space station is possessed by evil spirits is a headache for the scientists—less talk, more work."

The soldiers fell silent, except for one who was still muttering quietly, "That's right, my great-grandmother always said, don't talk about Sirens when you're at sea, don't mention fire demons when you're mining, and don't think about warp space in the space station..."

The squad leader, unable to bear it any longer, elbowed the muttering soldier, who finally shut up.

Then, they took the suspended stretcher and the shrunken body bag to the infirmary.

Behind the team, the lights in the connecting corridor were flickering faintly at a frequency barely visible to the naked eye.

……

A silver-gray high-speed shuttle silently entered the gate of the "Black Rock" space station. After undergoing strict security checks and identity verification, the shuttle drove directly into a docking station near the core experimental module.

The shuttle cabin door opened, and a tall figure stepped out—a female Algrid elf with flowing blonde hair, wearing an elegant silver-white robe, and deep, serene, star-like pupils.

She stepped off the connecting platform, her legs beneath her skirt gleaming with an alloy-like texture. Then, with a slight clicking sound, her legs quickly deformed and reassembled into a set of silver-white wheel-like segments. She glided nimbly across the docking platform's connecting section, without even stopping in front of the technical department heads who came to greet her.

“Skip these formalities and go straight to the lab,” the blonde elf said, her voice calm yet cold. “Compile a report on the lab attack within twelve hours and send it to my terminal. What’s the status of 'Zolda Blackrock'?”

“Understood, boss,” a lab supervisor hurriedly replied, quickly catching up with the blonde elf as he spoke. “The ‘Blackrock’ itself was unharmed; the shield in the core area blocked the attackers’ fire. The most damaged part was the Rift Generator—we had to destroy it to close the passage. Also, four of the ‘communication devices’ between the Rift Generator and the Blackrock were burned out.”

"What about the casualties?"

"Three soldiers were killed and six were wounded—all of them were clones, and the dead are already undergoing the regeneration process."

"Ah."

The blonde elf nodded, gave a brief reply, and then entered the core of the entire space station—the circular laboratory where the "Zolda Black Stone" was stored.

In fact, the entire space station was built for that seemingly unremarkable "rock." Everything here—from equipment to personnel—is for that "Zolda Black Stone."

Only when she saw the black fragment still floating in the confinement field did the low, oppressive aura that had been lingering around the golden-haired elf finally dissipate slightly. She visibly relaxed a bit (which also relieved her entourage), and then glided lightly to the side of the platform.

She tilted her head back, a gentle, even slightly intoxicated smile appearing on her face. Her star-like golden pupils stared intently at the ancient, complex, and mysterious patterns on the surface of the Zolda Black Stone, as if captured by gravity.

"Ah...you're still here..." she murmured softly, her tense emotions easing further.

The black stone trembled in her vision, emitting an inaudible whisper.

The golden-haired elf closed her eyes slightly, nodded gently, and wore a serene and gentle smile, as if she were receiving some kind of enlightenment—alglide astrologers often showed this kind of intoxicated look when listening to the whispers among the stars, a natural reaction when truth and knowledge nourish the heart and soul.

The busy technicians nearby noticed this scene and all slowed down their movements and tried to avoid making any noise, as if they were afraid of interrupting the communication between the "boss" and Blackstone.

But suddenly, the golden-haired elf, who was listening intently to the whispers of the black stone, frowned slightly.

Her eyes remained closed, but her brows furrowed in confusion as she muttered softly to herself, "I...I don't understand...what you're teaching this time..."

"What do you mean by 'recruiting parents online, the online debate will cost money'...?"
"Yes, yes, the mapping law of spacetime within the subspace channel is... What does it mean that this soldier's replenishment is like a ten-year-old cerebral thrombosis?"
"...Why do immediate family members need to rotate at a high speed of 6,000 revolutions per second during the ascent...? It exploded? What exploded?"
"...Who is the Sweeping Princess?"

An endless roar descended upon the illusory starry sky, and the enchanting starry illusions collapsed in the mind. The chaotic torrent of information deviated from its previous course, mercilessly expelling the fragile mortal mind from its connection. The golden-haired elf suddenly opened her eyes, and for a moment felt the earth shake. Her wheel-like limbs lurched backward and then forward uncontrollably, and she fell backward as well.

But at that very moment, the bionic covering on her back opened instantly, and the nanomachines hidden inside her body generated several mechanical limbs in the blink of an eye, supporting her body as she was about to fall.

The entourage rushed forward immediately to protect the blonde elf, and two guards stepped forward to help their boss up.

The golden-haired elf waved her hand, refusing the attendant's help. Instead, she raised her head and looked at the Zolda Black Stone within the confinement field with a bewildered gaze. After a moment's hesitation, she muttered softly, "...Too profound."

One of the attendants nearby, not having heard clearly, asked in confusion, "Boss?"

"What about that 'lurker' who came back to report earlier? Where is he now?" The blonde elf didn't explain what had just happened, but asked in a serious tone.

"Ah, he's still in the life support container—his physical deformities are extremely severe, and the contamination is difficult to remove. We're considering transferring his consciousness into a clone..."

“Take me to see him. I really need the knowledge he brings back.”

The blonde elf spoke quickly, the noise and disorientation caused by the flood of knowledge washing over her cognition still roaring and swirling in her mind, making it difficult for her to concentrate. In fact, she could hardly remember what she had just heard and seen, only vaguely remembering that... the enlightenment brought by the black stone this time was more powerful and intense than any before, and the amount of information and its form were completely different from the past.

These “completely different” lingering sensations made her heart pound.

The stars are supreme; that's too profound.

It felt like I was hanging from a tree while taking an advanced mathematics class.

……

The post-death daze lasted for a long time, even longer than usual. After an unknown period of time, Yu Sheng finally reconstructed his consciousness in this dazed state and made his thoughts flow smoothly.

"Was it because you died too far away this time? Or because you talked too much nonsense before you died and held your breath?"

He muttered to himself in the darkness, then breathed a slight sigh of relief and began to let his mind float in the darkness.

A familiar feeling, as if passing through some kind of void boundary, came from all directions. The symptoms of death subsided from him. He roughly judged his current location and then confirmed that there seemed to be no other life forms around the area where he was about to be resurrected.

It's safe now, you can open your eyes.

So he opened his eyes and stepped back into the world of the living.

A long corridor came into view.

The lights were dim, and there was a deathly silence. There was no one in sight, only crisscrossing black spider webs intertwining in the field of vision.

(End of this chapter)