Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"Then why not...?"

"Hmph~" Old Wei shook his head. He was joking. How could someone who withdrew from the struggle for the throne so quickly not have any sense of propriety?

"If you were a Kazdelite, would you be willing to relinquish power to someone else? In my opinion, that Ark ticket is nothing but a trap. Even if it's truly a promise kept, it's just being marginalized and raised. With Hui Jie's personality, how could she possibly tolerate that?" Whether she causes trouble on her own or others think this guy is uncontrollable, she's doomed in either case.

"The ark may not need nobles, scholars, or even lower-class peasants, but it certainly lacks personnel to assist in its rule."

"What do you think of us..."

"It's alright. The world has reached a point where it's beyond human control. Besides..." Both nieces have run away, so there's nothing to regret. Most of the people from Longmen have also run away because they were close to the source.

In Kazimierz, at the residence of the Nearl family, an old man sat in the hall, surrounded by steam. He looked up at the ancestral portrait, its color faded by the heat and steam. The red wine he had retrieved from the flooded basement was still warm. He raised his glass, swirled it, toasted the ancestral portrait, and then drank it all in one gulp.

The Linguang family couldn't bring themselves to compete with ordinary people for shelter spots. Besides, with the younger generation of the family gone, there was no need for the remaining old folks to waste their limited resources in this world; it was better to leave them to the younger generation.

The wine glass slipped and fell to the ground, instantly soaking the old carpet. Meanwhile, on the Ark, in the hibernation array of Sector A2, the Nearl sisters and Manna were placed together. Manna and Nearl had been sent to return to Kazimierz to participate in disaster relief efforts, but the Doctor tricked them into entering the hibernation pod under the pretext of disinfection.

The Lightbringer family, an anomaly among noble knights, is a valuable talent. Although they are not suitable to be managers, they are perfectly capable of serving as grassroots leaders who pave the way for the colonies in their early stages. In other words, this is how the original noble knights came to be; they simply degenerated later.

As for Talulah, she did not enter hibernation. She has her own independent hibernation pod on the Ark. Her job is to assist the Doctor in completing necessary manual work on the Ark. This is because her Originium Arts are sufficient to cut through the Ark's structure. Using fluid tools developed by Rhine Lab that can remotely transmit Originium Arts, she can perform necessary maintenance work on the Ark.

Loneliness was a feeling she had long been accustomed to. Walking through the empty Ark passageway, with rows of hibernation pods crammed in on both sides, filled with familiar Reunion Movement operators, she didn't seem so lonely after all.

I'm just keeping watch over this long night for everyone by myself. When the new dawn rises from the front of the Ark Hall, my friends will eventually awaken one by one.

Night watch was not unfamiliar to her, having once wandered in Ursus. However, this night was exceptionally long. Occasionally, during the Ark's cooldown period after it exited warp mode, she would sit in her seat in the duty hall, looking at the brilliant starlight streaming through the skylight, and think of those who had boarded another ship.

"Achoo!" Yelena sneezed loudly. "I think someone's talking about me!"

"You set the air conditioning too low." The little tiger rolled her eyes and pulled the air vent on her seat to the side.

"Even idiots catch colds?" Xia Qiu asked, leaning against the back of the chair, before Yelena grabbed her face and started rubbing it. "I'm your older sister, do you want to die?!"

On the other side of the aisle, the five members of the Rainbow Team crossed their legs and flipped through a travel brochure, trying to gain more knowledge about this unfamiliar country. As for Levi, he was rubbing his hands like a giant fly, seemingly unable to wait to get off the plane and disappear into a library or archive.

"Ding-dong~" "Flight T-2547 is about to arrive. Please take your carry-on luggage and disembark in an orderly manner."

The spaceship, comparable in size to an aircraft carrier, slowly docked at the port. If Terra's orbital station was already a large space station that pure Earthlings like the Rainbow Squad could not even imagine, and the Ark was a space city of alien ruins, then what they saw outside their windows could almost be described as an island floating in outer space.

The structure resembles a spinning top. In addition to the central main structure, there are densely packed floating structures on the outside, like a blizzard surrounding the main structure. As the spaceship gradually approaches, some of the floating structures reveal their full appearance, which are holographic billboards.

On both sides of the main structure, rings several kilometers wide encircle the entire blue ocean planet. Even Levy curiously peered out the porthole to observe this veritable industrial marvel.

"Stop looking, 99% of the area is uninhabited," Old Xia said, not particularly interested. "The orbital ring contains agricultural and production areas. Only ocean planets, which are unsuitable for terrestrial production, would have such structures."

"That's not a space city, it's just a port for both passengers and cargo. It looks big, but it's actually quite small inside." Most of the area is occupied by factories and places for receiving and shipping boxes and minerals, with almost no residential areas.

"The living areas are located below, mainly because the living comfort of space rings and space cities is not very good." For civilizations that do not have the ability to terraform planets, discomfort is better than having nowhere to live, and discomfort is better than suffering on an alien surface. However, for a civilization like the Covenant that has the ability to highly terraform every planet it inhabits, living on the surface is actually a better option.

Not to mention that a significant portion of the work can be done remotely without requiring in-person attendance, even normal commuting time is acceptable. After all, they normally only work six hours a day, four days a week, so spending two hours commuting back and forth isn't unacceptable.

"Is such a large space factory necessary?" Blitz asked curiously. Was the scale of this industry a bit too large? Before Lao Xia could answer, he saw a spaceship with a distinct orange-yellow industrial paint job departing from the port. Through manuals and other means, they had also learned to roughly determine the purpose of Star Alliance spaceships by looking at these things.

"That is..."

Old Xia glanced at the "satellite mining transport ship." "That certainly requires such a large industrial scale." Judging from this spaceship, which is not much smaller than this space city, you can tell how much mineral it can carry. So, what they said before about large ships not being able to squeeze through is probably true?

"How much hibernation pod could it pull out?"

"Ten million is the most we can go," Old Xia shrugged. "We need 100 ships of this caliber, so even if we could squeeze them in, it wouldn't be enough time."

"The flight has arrived at the port. Passengers, please prepare to depart."

"Alright, let's go." Old Xia's luggage was quite large, so he chose to check it in, and he didn't have many personal belongings. The hatch opened, and passengers disembarked from the spaceship one after another, walking along the transparent walkway into the hall.

The hemispherical hall is actually quite lively, because people going to work at the mining station and the space engineering ring need to transfer to the station's transportation system and take the boat here. Due to the large flow of people, there are also quite a few unmanned shops and vending machines.

"By the way, have the five of you found jobs yet?"

"Uh..." Clearly, he hadn't found a job and was just hanging around with Old Xia, an acquaintance, eating and drinking for free. "And you, Levi? Did you pass the career test?"

"Not bad," the old man said, shaking the card in his hand. It was printed out earlier. "I got a D+, and they recommended me as a primary school teacher. But whether I'll actually pass the exam is still uncertain."

"Yelena?"

"You didn't pass. The system suggests you go back to school for another two years and don't rush into the workforce," Yelena said, covering her face, especially since Xia Qiu had passed.

"Fine, I'll have to support six burdens." Old Xia rolled his eyes and walked towards the orbital elevator in the center of the hall. The starlight shone through the circular panoramic window into the orbital station hall, but no one looked up. Some had faint light patterns in their eyes, while others were pointing at the holographic screen. No one paid any attention to this group of people.

After all, they'd seen far more bizarre alien creatures than these. Old Xia and his group weren't even dressed in strange clothes, so nobody paid any attention to them, except... the customs officers.

[PS]

I've noticed that many people don't have a concept of the order of magnitude of an object's volume.

I calculated the Ark's transport module based on a 4-kilometer-long corncob, and it could only fit less than 100 million people, even with a sardine-like cramming method.

Then someone asked why, why couldn't they send that spaceship capable of repairing 20 tons to perform a mechanical deus ex machina?

The answer, of course, is: a séance? More like a bystander.

At 20 tons, it's only slightly larger than a Ford-class aircraft carrier. Compared to the Ark's transport module, it's just a tiny, invisible dot, making it impossible for it to directly assist in transportation.

As for helping to repair the ship, there's no time to do so. The biggest problem with Ark is that there isn't enough time to repair it from scratch, and the upper limit for repairing it halfway through is limited.

A side note as we approach the end

Does that new generation of Mr. Shiro Cinan in the book review section keep his word?

That's the guy with the empty head.

You've placed such a large bet, you're not planning to renege on your debt and run away after losing, are you?

Electric drills are a bit cruel, so let's just stick to the second-rate method. We agreed on a live stream, so we mustn't be hostile, bro.

I've been writing books for so long and I've never seen anything like this before. Let me see something new!

Laugh~

Chapter 104 New Life

Chapter 104

Customs officers were quite familiar with this group of people, as they had seen many families moving together. The Covenant population was very mobile, and it was common to see families moving together, but this group was really strange.

The family of four leading the group is obviously not a big problem. Although the wife and her adopted daughter are beast-eared girls, there is nothing strange about it. Although the Star Alliance's laws are very strict about human modification at the genetic level, they are relatively lenient about human modification at the physical level. Therefore, it is not surprising that such beast-eared girls appear.

However, things got a little strange after that. There were two old men with beast ears. Are old people this fashionable these days? Moreover, their registered identity documents were from outside the outer ring, with the note "naturalized citizen." Usually, this only appears on the descendants of adventurers who have been active outside the Star Alliance territory for a long time.

That's one thing, but what's with the other five people? They're registered as naturalized citizens, but their place of birth is listed as Earth. That's really strange. How can someone born on Earth be a naturalized citizen?

"You guys come with me." Blitzcrank and Ash exchanged a glance. The real show was about to begin. They were used to this kind of interrogation, and to be honest, their identities were indeed quite suspicious.

However, the four elite Rainbow Squad operators had no intention of resisting, because after realizing something was wrong, the ship's internal and indoor bomb disposal robot in the corner stood up.

Faced with a two-and-a-half-meter-tall, fully armored four-legged tank, it's safe to say that no normal person would want to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Therefore, the group could only obediently enter the interrogation room next door.

There's nothing wrong with Lao Xia's identity. Although he's been missing for a long time, judging from his identity as an outer ring pioneer and his resume, apart from the headache of a lot of procedures for his original company and the workers' compensation, the other issues aren't too serious.

Then Xia Qiu was fine too. The daughter born to the missing pioneer in the outer ring while disconnected from the Star Alliance had a slight genetic disorder, but it wasn't a big problem. After the DNA signature verification passed, she was temporarily placed among the unquestionable population.

As for the problems with the Tiger family and Yelena, they are a bit bigger, for example, with a relatively serious genetic disorder, which clearly indicates that they have undergone illegal genetic modification. However, judging from the extent and stability of the modification, it should not be Star Alliance technology.

However, the customs still dutifully sent a document to the relevant judicial and prosecutorial departments to determine whether it was Lao Xia who did it. If so, he would be imprisoned for life!

If we can still reasonably assume that Lao Xia encountered human survivors who had undergone illegal genetic modification experiments by the Gaia in some lost human colony in the outer ring, then married them, had children, and brought them back after re-establishing contact...

So the Rainbow Team of four and Levi are just too damn abnormal. All five of them insist that they were born on Earth, and even make such a claim with absolute certainty. In particular, one of them insists that he studied in England, but damn it, England messed itself up in the three World Wars before the Covenant was even established.

Although the call for the restoration of Great Britain is indeed quite strong now, it would only mean adding a new autonomous colony or autonomous state within the European Community, which is hardly big news.

“I suggest you confess and you will be treated leniently.” The examiner’s expression turned serious. But Blitzkrieg could only insist that they were born on Earth. What else could they do? They didn’t even know the size of the Covenant’s territory, or which planets and colonies it included, let alone fabricate a living experience there.

Furthermore, they didn't believe that the Covenant's internal intelligence network couldn't detect that they were making up lies. This was different from the Little Tigers. They only needed to confidently say that they were born in a certain country on Terra. The Originium, neurological abnormalities, and DNA abnormalities on their bodies were enough to prove it. Even during interrogation, their information about Terra was very detailed and logically consistent.

However, this problem could not be concealed when it came to the Rainbow Team, who were neither familiar with Terra nor with the Covenant.

"Alright," Levy had originally wanted to see them make a fool of themselves, but jokes aside, it wouldn't be a good thing if he and his men actually ended up in jail. Moreover, with such a tough regime, their fate probably wouldn't be much better than being exiled to Siberia to dig potatoes.

"Let me explain. We are indeed Earthlings, or more precisely, Earthlings from the early 21st century. I was a physicist from the former Soviet Union who was transported to this era due to some research errors or accidents. It's that simple. As for the cause, I don't know. If you are interested, I can give you the design drawings and parameters of the device I invented. Perhaps you can try to recreate this phenomenon. To be honest, I am also very interested in this."

"Huh?" Several question marks appeared above the examiners' heads. These people would be more believable if they said they were old popsicles frozen in time during the One Star Wars.

"Okay, I'll contact the relevant experts and appraisers. I hope you're telling the truth. We have plenty of ways to expose those liars who are full of lies." So, under the arrangement of the relevant departments, Lao Xia and his team had no choice but to stay at a nearby hotel and wait for the professionals to verify and examine them.

The Ark, "Beep~" "Beep~" Talulah walked in the corridor, with rhythmic sounds on both sides. At this distance, the sun of Terra had merged with the stars, and only dim stars were visible outside the porthole, with no light penetrating into them.

"Beep—The hinges close." The armor hinges slowly closed. At this moment, there was no need to look at the scenery; it would only intensify one's loneliness.

Talulah walked to the end of the connecting corridor. Through the porthole on the other side, she saw the internal structure of the Ark: interlocking supports, a dark building without a single window, and a desolate world.

Talulah opened the airtight door to the "Duty Team Standby Room," stepped inside, and went to a corner of the circular cabin. She placed her hand on the command panel outside the hibernation pod. "Beep, initiating awakening procedure."

"Cough cough!" The girl with chestnut curly hair coughed and spat out the green gel-like substance in her mouth. This gel, which had penetrated deep into her lungs, was responsible for supplying oxygen to her body during hibernation and keeping her alveolar cells from shrinking. Otherwise, it would be too ridiculous to die of suffocation the moment she woke up.

"Is it... my turn?" Eyjafjalla, holding onto the edge of the hibernation pod, took a while to readjust her cold and numb limbs before taking out her Ark uniform from the locker next to her and changing into it.

"Okay, it's your turn. Next shift is Kal'tsit, don't forget." The Ark's duty team consists of five people per shift. It's not that Talulah is the only one in charge of such a large spaceship; that would be exhausting.

The team is divided into three shifts. Talulah's shift is responsible for inspecting the Ark's hardware and hull condition. They mainly rely on her Originium Arts and Fluid Engineering to maintain and inspect the Ark's exterior. They are also the Ark's first shift team.

The reason for this arrangement is that when the Ark leaves the Terra system, there are a large number of asteroids and debris in the region closest to the system, which could damage the Ark's external modules. Therefore, Talulah and her group are the first to arrive.

Little Sheep was in the second shift. When she was activated, the Ark had already rested several times. Her main job was to check and maintain the Ark's power component system and energy system to ensure that these systems did not collapse and that the load was normal.

The third shift is Kal'tsit's shift, mainly composed of medical operators. Their job is to maintain the hibernation array, check the life support system, and also check the condition of biological embryos, seeds, and other items in the vaults.

Each shift lasts for one year. Therefore, Little Lamb and Talulah will take turns twice, while Kal'tsit and the others will only take turns once. However, this is while the Ark is on its way. When they arrive at their destination, it will be Kal'tsit and the others' turn to be activated again to begin waking up the administrators, deploying the colony, and ensuring that the hibernation decompression is completed.

Overall, the Ark's voyage was quite reasonable and carefully considered, and the plan itself was quite meticulous. It's just that no one was sure if the old guy could hold on until then.

Is the situation bad?

“It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s extremely bad.” Talulah didn’t hide anything from the new duty team. “The outer shell is okay, but the main power and thermal systems have almost completely collapsed. Now, apart from the hibernation matrix, navigation matrix, and warp engine, the entire system is overloaded, and several reactors have been shut down.”

"Then why didn't you wake me up earlier?" Little Lamb asked, puzzled. "Because the external damage was also severe. It took us a whole year to repair the cooling system that exploded during the first overheating and overload. Now all the heat sinks are back online, but the reactor response rate has still dropped by 17%. Your work is going to be extremely busy from now on."

Just like Talulah, she had no time to wallow in self-pity. She didn't even have time to visit Alina all year. She was busy 007 every day dealing with a bunch of strange and unusual problems, arranging repairs, reviews, tests, and more repairs. If they couldn't be fixed, she would patch them or block them.

These are relatively simple external and hardware damages. When it came to Xiao Yang's group, she doubted whether they could wake up the next group as planned a year later. She estimated they would have to continue working overtime.

The loneliness and solitude at the start of the voyage were dispelled by work in less than half a month. This was not a perfect ark at all, but a leaky ship with water coming out from all sides. We had to do our best to keep draining water and plug every leak as much as possible in order to barely move forward.

"At least it's still moving forward," Little Sheep was much more optimistic. He watched Talulah enter the hibernation pod, and then contacted his team members through the terminal to begin reviewing the Ark's data and situation.