There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

But Bertholdt sneered, “Back then, I admired him just like you, thinking he was a hero who could change the world… But if you, like me, witnessed him back down when he had the power to change the world, giving up because he was afraid of the infamy, would you still admire him? Do you know! The tribe’s hardships and tribulations over the past few decades are all his fault!”

Firefist's expression changed drastically, but I quickly stopped him. Bertholdt looked like he was about to die; that old geezer was cunning, and I couldn't let him try to extort me.

"Change the world? What's with this feeling of father worship shattered and love turning into hate? What kind of immature old man are you?"

Fire Fist is too weak; for sarcasm and witty remarks, you still have to look to me.

After I relentlessly attacked him, Bertholdt's internal injuries worsened. After shouting excitedly, he could only stand there panting, weakly saying, "It's normal that you don't believe me... If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it either... Buried in this sacred mountain is something powerful enough to change the world. Whoever possesses it will become a being comparable to a god..."

He stretched out a finger with difficulty, pointing towards the grassland below the mountain. "Do you know? The outsiders down there are all thieves who have broken into our homes, slandering us as barbarians... We are the rightful owners of this planet... We are the descendants of the gods, the offspring of our ancestors, the promised ones shrouded in savagery..."

I couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Bertholdt glared at me angrily, and I quickly waved my hand, "It's okay, go ahead... I'm listening... *chuckle*"

The old man grew increasingly furious, weakly saying, "Hmph! Do you think the radioactive fallout that nearly destroyed our planet's civilization decades ago simply disappeared naturally? Nobody believed it, and I didn't bother explaining it to them. But I witnessed firsthand how that calamity was silently controlled by that man..."

Seeing his serious expression, I couldn't help but wonder if my imagination was not rich enough, or if his delusions were too severe.

But how can I believe that a tribal civilization that had just entered the Iron Age and was now almost starving to death could have solved the global radioactive dust problem a few decades ago?

In other words, after so many years of technological advancement, you're telling me now that saving the world requires magic?

Seeing our skeptical expressions, Bertholdt didn't offer much explanation, but said with difficulty, "Sakam will prove it... Didn't you ask me where everyone went...?"

A mysterious expression suddenly appeared on the old man's face. Contrary to his previous listless demeanor, he said calmly, "Sakam and the others should have reached the sanctuary on Mount Astra by now... We originally lured in enemies from the entire surrounding grassland to demonstrate our divine power..."

The mountain suddenly trembled slightly, knocking off several white stones from the graves. Bertholdt struggled to reach them, but his hand slipped limply, and his voice grew weaker and weaker, "Do you know... that a person actually experiences death three times before reaching the true end..."

Before the words were finished, another strange sound rang out. At that moment, the earth trembled violently, and the usually calm lake rippled with waves. The three of us swayed unsteadily, while Bertholdt, with his gray hair, collapsed onto the grave and fell into a coma.

Holy crap, could it be that the tribe really has a continental shelf oscillator or a hadron collider hidden on this mountain?

It seems quite common for such ancient, advanced weapons to be regarded as miracles!

You're right, Fan Xian!

"Teacher, we feel... something's not right..."

Firefist and Coyote suddenly spoke up after the earthquake. When I turned around, I found that they were both kneeling on the ground.

"...Rise, my subjects. Are you two children? What are you doing?"

"Teacher, I suddenly feel weak all over, and my head is a little dizzy... It feels like I have a fever, my head is spinning..." the hyena struggled to explain.

Just as I was about to issue a nucleic acid test warning, I suddenly felt unwell myself, and at the same time, a notification from the colonist system arrived unexpectedly.

"System notification: The colonist has contracted myofibril nanomachine infection (mutation) and sensory nanomachine infection (mutation), currently at 1% infection level. Without effective treatment, please have the colonist rest in bed to slow the progression of the disease."

"System prompt: Attention! Unlike common nanomechanical infections, this type of nanomechanical infection has extremely strong rejection and will cause the foreign organs to deteriorate and die in a short period of time. The disease can only be slowed down by the body's own immunity. Please remove the source of nanomechanical infection in time."

What?! Nanomechanics?! Why would such a thing exist?!

Unlike them, my golden attribute seemed to have worked its magic again. Although the system didn't give me any notification, I only felt slightly dizzy and short of breath, without the intense discomfort that Fire Fist and Coyote experienced.

But the source of this disease was undoubtedly the anomaly on that mountain, and Bertholdt, who knew the inside story, suddenly convulsed...

These guys have really blown things up beyond my wildest imagination. No matter how they got their hands on these nanomechanical clusters, I can't let these dangerous things be used by this bunch of guys who mostly didn't finish elementary school and can barely read the instructions.

"You two keep an eye on this old man. Although he's not far from death, kill him immediately if you find anything wrong. I'm going to that mountain to settle accounts with them!"

…………

The snow-capped peak of Astra, east of the Holy Mountain, is covered with a series of vivid footprints, indicating that many people have walked here not long ago.

As I continued forward, I discovered a huge cavern opened up in the middle of the snow-capped mountain.

This enormous cavity, like the gaping maw of an abyss, opened up the mountainside, with the ground collapsing into a wide ramp that stretched inwards. Warm, gentle air emanated from it, forming a column of steam in the air.

"This look is kind of familiar..."

As I walked in, the rock layers on the ground gradually receded, and the temperature became closer and closer to the constant 28 degrees Celsius. Suddenly, a layer of gleaming metal floor tiles appeared on the ground!

These floor tiles cover the ground without any gaps, and their beauty cannot be concealed even after the passage of time. This makes me even more convinced that this is a forgotten advanced technology base that happened to fall into the hands of the tribe.

After I walked through the rocky gate, a hatch suddenly burst open in front of me. Inside was a central control room filled with screens and consoles, brightly lit by electricity, clearly someone had just been operating it.

As I stepped into the cave, I found it filled with Scorpion Yakan people dressed in black. They lay weakly on the ground, barely breathing, scattered haphazardly throughout the room.

What is the most embarrassing thing in the world?

Some might say it's like waiting forever for a toilet stall only to find you've forgotten toilet paper, but I think it's like repeatedly rushing into the Boss level only to discover the Boss has a bug, causing the game to crash and your save file to be corrupted.

This feeling of getting a game for free after buying a bug makes me wonder if I'm living on Ubisoft's potato servers.

"Who is it...? Help me...uh..."

Sakam, dressed in black, was lying on the ground struggling. Due to a nerve infection, he seemed to be blind. He was convulsing on the control panel, seemingly mistaking me for his subordinate, and kept calling for help.

I kicked the guy away and leaned closer to the huge display screen. On it, I saw some strange characters flashing. And, being someone who had received higher education in the dazzling city, I happened to recognize the origin of these characters!

This is the common script of the Interstellar Alliance, a pictographic script that only represents meaning and not sound. It can express universal meanings through permutations and combinations for communication, and can also be easily transformed into the language of any civilization in any corner of the universe. Therefore, it is widely used in space diplomacy, trade, and scientific research within the Milky Way.

The Covenant's common language has undergone multiple updates and iterations, with its semantics constantly being enriched. The language I see now is clearly many generations behind the version I'm learning.

Most of the screens in the control room are currently off, with only three flashing. The largest of these displays a large message: "'Astra' Planetary Ecosystem V3.1.2, welcome to use! Currently running offline on September 12th, Planet 819. Please update your operating version in time!"

The life god "Astra" mentioned by the tribe is actually the name of the planet's ecosystem!

A square screen on the left displays: "Promethium main energy has been depleted, please replenish it in time; geothermal backup energy system is being activated."

A constantly flashing image on the screen in front of Sakam caught my attention: "Nanobots for ecological modification have been released and are expected to spread globally through the atmosphere within 3 days. After completing the biosphere cleansing, Standard Gene Bank Version 2.0 will be released to modify the ecosystem. Current progress: 10%..."

"Friendly reminder: The current stock of gene capsule organisms is zero. It is expected that the life reset cannot be completed, which may cause a planetary extinction catastrophe. Please replenish them as soon as possible or return to interstellar orbit."

I stared dumbfounded at the screen, feeling as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over me. Enraged, I grabbed the delirious Sakam and yelled, "What the hell did you do?! Are you trying to kill everyone?!"

Sakam seemed to sense the anger in my voice and mumbled, "...He said we are the chosen ones...immune to the curse of the Holy Mountain...Save me..."

I slapped him hard across the face. "Who is he! Tell me!"

Sakam's eyes lost their luster, and he mumbled a familiar name.

“Berthold...he said that the only ones who can survive are...us…”

Chapter 526 Sharon Shiraishi

Berthold again!

Wasn't that old man about to die from overdoing it?

Marcus took a deep breath...

Oh no, I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down and carefully consider every detail of the matter.

Sakam's performance didn't seem feigned. Due to his proximity to the origin of the virus, the nanomachine infection on his body had become severe, with his consciousness, manipulation, language, and visual abilities reduced to 10%, making him a complete sitting duck.

Using such a self-inflicted injury tactic is counterproductive. If it were me, I could simply close the gates of this place and buy time.

However, Bertholdt's injuries were genuine, so neither side had particularly strong evidence.

When the two sides' accounts contradict each other, the most important thing to examine is the cause and effect of the matter: did Bertholdt deceive Sakam, or did Sakam use Bertholdt and then abandon him?

Judging from the style of this matter, this kind of cunning approach of feigning one thing while secretly doing another, hiding strategic objectives under a thick fog, seems to be Berthold's usual tactic.

Sakam, on the other hand, has a simple and brutal style of "I say I'll rob you, and I will," with his evil intentions written all over his face. This is not the kind of upright behavior that a villain in the underworld would exhibit—this is not Lu Xun, but Lin Pingzhi's opinion.

Looking at the whole picture, the most likely explanation is that Bertholdt once again schemed against the Sakam and Scorpion Yakan tribes, making them think they had a great advantage and abandon Bertholdt, thus unwittingly helping him take the blame and allowing him to escape unscathed.

This kind of trickery is so hard to guard against that I've been fooled several times. I can only say that this person's mind and scheming are more complex than I've ever seen before. He doesn't seem like a dropout from the private primary school in the Brown Pond tribe at all!

What exactly did the former headmaster, Chief Wise King, teach him?

But he's practically dead. Even if he manages to escape, how does he plan to turn the tide? And how does he deal with the forces down the mountain?

I checked my character panel and found that the infection progress of the people on me had also started to cross the 10% threshold, adding another layer of resistance to my actions and thoughts.

...Never mind that, the most important thing now is to figure out how to stop this ecosystem transformation program and avoid a global ecological disaster!

I returned to the display screen and spent ten minutes thoroughly understanding the system. Then I carefully followed the usual procedures, but a warning message promptly popped up on the quantum display screen.

"Warning: Illegal operation! The operator's biometrics have not been verified. The ecosystem modification authorization cannot be directly revoked. Please reverse the authorization first before canceling the command."

"Permission Notice: The Dead Hand System will be fully activated after three unauthorized attempts. Please proceed with caution."

Before the words were even finished, the base's gate slammed shut, a rumbling sound echoed in the control room, and the entire room shook violently.

I felt a slight sense of weightlessness, like an elevator descending, and immediately guessed that the control room was probably hidden in a shaft inside the mountain. Now, thanks to the Dead Hand system, the entire control room was hidden back inside the mountain, ready to trap any potential intruders.

...What the hell is this "Dead Hand System"?! You're just a giant robot vacuum cleaner, is it really necessary to resort to such nuclear deterrence?!

I beat Sakam again in a fit of rage, rousing him from the brink of a deep unconsciousness, and then managed to get a string of numbers out of him.

Permissions is a string, which is consistent with the habits of the interstellar exploration era thousands of years ago.

During the great expansion of the space age, numerous instances of command and communication network disruptions and the disappearance of key personnel led to the annihilation of colonists. Learning from these lessons, all authority over the colony fleet was delegated to higher-level users. The fleet commander possessed the highest planetary-level authority, and other authorizations no longer required passwords; they were directly linked to personnel identities.

From then on, everyone had a high degree of autonomy, and could act as they pleased, or set temporary permissions, just like the one Sakam got. Unfortunately, he seemed to treat it as a magic spell.

But the problem is, this planet has been without internet for eight or nine hundred years, right?

If he doesn't have Star Alliance Network's identity verification, then who authorized him?

Could it be... that there's an old monster, nearly a thousand years old, still alive in this base?!

This idea startled me, and I felt a chill run down my spine as I quickly checked the user's access history!

The machine appeared to have connected to a quantum network, and after the data was scanned and reset, rows of specific identity information appeared.

Looking at the densely packed list of accounts, I found that there were at least seven or eight thousand people with access permissions, but most of them were inactive. They should belong to the personnel who directly participated in the voyage from the cryogenic chamber, and their biological signs showed that they were dead, so there was no chance for them to be reactivated.

The thirteen activated accounts all had access times from eight or nine hundred years ago, roughly coinciding with the time this base was abandoned, and all of them had names with black borders.

That's true. Given such a long period of time, if you can't wear black-rimmed glasses, then you can only wear black-rimmed names.

As I continued my search, I was surprised to find two recent usernames listed at the very bottom of the browsing history, and incongruously, there was no notification of their deaths!

Oh my god!

The ancient monster has really appeared!

Doesn't this sound a bit like an official appointment?

But upon closer inspection... I mean, upon closer inspection, I discovered that these two accounts were not the privileged users mentioned earlier, but rather very special local users who had not uploaded their identity information.

This difference is somewhat similar to that between online console gamers and offline console gamers; the former can update the game in real time, while the latter lacks some online features but has the advantage of being able to play immediately upon turning on the console. Since there is no identity information, biometric information cannot be collected…