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

"There was a tiny life left on the boat, but he couldn't speak and was barely alive. After sprinkling some water on him, I took him off the boat..."

"Oh, you saw them off..." I didn't react for a moment. "Wait, what did you just say?! You can see people off?!"

The stone statue responded coldly: "Don't be agitated, stranger. I've given water to the weak and he survived, but I've watered these tin-skinned fellows, and not a single one sprouts. So even if I can send him away, I can't help you on your journey..."

What kind of logic is this? Is it some kind of "Marking the Boat to Find the Sword" HD Remastered Enhanced Strategy Edition?

Give me a sip of water, and believe me, I can run and jump high, and I'll show you a path you've never imagined!

I was about to explode, but I couldn't help glancing at the "tin men" who were dead beyond any doubt, and patiently continued to ask, "This is neither a city nor a treasure trove, and I doubt anyone will ever come back. There's clearly nothing left. What are you guarding?"

This time, the stone statue finally showed joy, "They will come back, they definitely will..."

It had no smile, yet a gentle breeze swept through the valley, carrying sweet scents that brought countless wild and colorful dreams. In the bay, some pale yellow light and slightly unusual ripples appeared, like an irresistible underwater current, revealing some strange sights that did not exist in this world.

"My waiting is to ensure everything remains 'nothing.' If you really want to leave, then come over..."

The stone statue, with its head bowed, finally rose completely from the hidden stone cave.

At its feet appeared a pool of clear spring water, its purity surpassing even the radiance of the full moon.

At first glance, I was completely captivated, not caring whether what I was experiencing was a delusional illusion, a dream, magic, or a mistaken entry into a fairy tale; but I was determined to gaze upon the magnificent radiance and splendor of the spring at all costs.

"This is the treasure I've been guarding... stranger... the door is inside..."

The stone statue roared with emotion, and a bagpipe-like melody echoed throughout the valley, lingering over the collapsed, moss-covered stone ruins.

But this wasn't spring water—I realized that as I stretched out my finger and touched the hard, cold surface of a polished mirror.

The rippling spring water shattered the shadows and sunlight, reflecting a few scattered clouds across the sky, but it did not reflect my face. Only a pool of pale mist shimmered like a ghost, exuding a repulsive odor, the smell of corpses piled up from the remains of generations of dead Ptolemaic legions.

The stone statue's poem rose leisurely, resounding through the sky.

The unparalleled beauty of my homeland is deeply etched in my heart.

Like an ancient boat drifting on the River Delos,

Flying gracefully across the sea, where incense is everywhere.

A wanderer awaiting the return of weary travelers from afar.

But the rudder has already veered towards the vast distance.

I saw billions of universes roaring.

The void planets rolled aimlessly within them.

Spinning wildly amidst dimensional distortions,

"Wear away those names that no one knows and will eventually forget..."

The water surface rippled gently, and the mist dissipated as the chanting began, gradually revealing a scene.

The scene itself was as simple as the horror it brought, because it was nothing more than that—I did not see the claustrophobic sight one would expect to see in a black spring.

The sight I witnessed at that moment was more terrifying than anything I had ever experienced before. The bizarre meaning contained within the underwater scene fully revealed my thoughts.

It was a star field darker than darkness, more ancient than antiquity, where I finally glimpsed the hidden ultimate gate. Following the tail of a ship resembling a comet, my spirit wandered through the primordial universe before its separation. A well-equipped stellar-class fleet stood arrayed before the black hole, its energy cannons—laden with laser beams, particle beams, microwave beams, plasma beams, and sound wave beams—emitting dangerously bright charging light…

But as the black hole gradually unfolded, everything tangible and intangible, ragged and fuzzy, dazzling and obscure, and all sorts of blasphemous deities began to dance in space anew, emitting dazzling high-energy particle beams that drew the solar prominences through recklessly, and bubble-like radiance bloomed before their eyes from within the gate…

Chapter 654 Young people should read more books

"New recruit! Get back to your positions!"

In a daze, I saw a mid-level officer in powered armor shouting sternly. His arm armor was painted with a sharp wolf head silhouette, and his leg armor also had a wolf claw on it.

I replied hastily, "Yes, sir! But where are our enemies? I don't seem to see them..."

The officer's voice, laced with rage, came from beneath his mech: "Damn it, the legion commander will tear me apart if he finds out! The enemy? You actually ask where the enemy is?!"

His heavily armored hand grabbed my collar, easily lifting me up and pressing me close to the cold porthole glass. "Where you can't see! Every inch of this space exudes naked malice! Every crease in the space flows with corrupting venom! In every crevice of the creases, countless demons are grinding their teeth and sucking blood! Watch closely!"

As if to verify his words, the warship closest to us in the vast universe suddenly stopped accelerating with its energy jet engines. The ship's dazzling lights vanished abruptly, and its energy shields, defensive fire control systems, and unmanned reconnaissance swarms all ceased functioning.

Then, before us, this majestic warship, comparable to a mountain, seemed to be held back by an invisible hand, slowly and deliberately torn into small pieces like a delicious biscuit, disappearing into the gaping maw of the abyss. Even the mechanical wreckage that managed to drift away was nowhere to be seen, leaving only a swarm of unmanned bees on the outer perimeter that had lost control.

"That dangerous?!"

My scalp tingled, and I quickly forced a solemn expression, asking the officer, "Sir, how many of our men are in the war?"

Faced with an invisible enemy, a chilling howl emanated from the mid-ranking officer's mech, sending shivers down my spine, before he stared at me with bloodshot eyes.

"The new recruits only have one ship left. The cosmic crater of the BRI 1335-0417 system will release miniature black holes that will traverse space and devour energy and matter. It must have just appeared in their ship's central core and then tore the warship apart."

I said with a hint of relief, "Luckily, there's still one left. We shouldn't need to attack before their entire squadron is wiped out, right?"

The officer looked at me coldly: "We are the last one."

...Damn it, no wonder he called me a new recruit the moment he opened his mouth.

"Sir! Such an attack is completely pointless! Even if I were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an early video of a wild black hole taming a human, I would be dead beyond any doubt!" To make him take it seriously, I deliberately started gesturing wildly.

But the officer's tone did not soften in the slightest.

"You new recruits are here to explore the spatial structure near the Cosmic Wound, paving the way for the advance and firing of stellar-class fortress cannons. The Legion will destroy all enemies! What do you think?"

Aren't they just a bunch of people who stepped on landmines?

"I think for hemorrhoids, you should use a cosmic brand of Ma Yinglong ointment to treat the symptoms..."

I was rambling on and on when I noticed the other man was already reaching for his pistol to enforce military discipline, so I quickly changed my tune, saying, "Sir! I think that given the current situation, even if I'm just a new recruit, I should do my part and offer some advice!"

Surprisingly, the officer did not object.

But when I thought about it later, I realized that he probably just felt it was pointless to stop a dying person.

"You said."

I declared magnanimously, “I believe we should halt the spaceship now and send a telegram to headquarters declaring that there may be a black hole escaping from our side, and that we should not act rashly.”

"You want me to give false intelligence? What if the black hole isn't here, but appears on another route?"

“Then we’ll send a second one, explaining that there might be black holes along that route, but we’re too far away to do anything about it.”

"Damn it! If the stellar-class fortress cannon is destroyed on the way, can you withstand the wrath of the legion commander?!"

I immediately replied, "It's alright, we'll send a third telegram then, reflecting on what we might have been able to do back then, but it's too late now..."

The officer's power armor emitted a buzzing alarm, as if the power reactor was operating at its maximum and was ready to punch my head off at any moment.

But after a long while, he slowly put me down and said in a cold tone, "If you had command, you might actually have survived."

"You flatter me, I just have a slight talent for commanding..."

But his tone immediately hardened: "You bastard, listen to me! We were born to fight! The Sixth Legion will never retreat! An unexplained cosmic wound is spreading across the entire star system, and Terra is facing annihilation! Is this your resolve, this courage you're so proud of?!"

I scratched my head. "But I'm not actually a new recruit, and I don't even know what I'm doing here."

This is a matter of communication.

It's like a train is coming, with three children on one side of the forked track and five children on the other—and I'm just an ordinary person passing by with a plunger.

The officer's eyes, hidden behind his mask, were filled with suspicion and uncertainty. "A spy?! No, the gene seed doesn't lie... You're really not one of the newly recruited guards?"

Seeing me slowly shake my head, but the officer had already lost interest, he said, "Then you're just a self-deceiving coward! If this makes you feel better before you die, then so be it. Even Terra loaded a bullet and aimed it at his own head..."

His tone grew increasingly somber. "The higher-ups' pursuit of esoteric knowledge has gone too far, to a dangerous degree. If we win this battle, we might survive; if we lose, our existence will be completely wiped out. The ammunition in the fortress cannons… the moment of choice is approaching, and we have no other option…"

His aloof figure gradually merged with the image of Mr. Rhodes under the gloomy sky in my memory. The same despair, the same tone, the same words.

The choice they made seemed to be a very heavy word.

A question arose in my mind.

"Sir, what do you mean by 'choice'? Please tell me!"

But at that moment, a violent cracking and explosion suddenly rang out in the distance from where I was on the spaceship. The intense vibrations traveled along the structure and turned into a cataclysmic disaster.

"New recruit, hold your post! Any decisions you make are none of your business!"

His mech rapidly deployed, gripping the floor tightly, and his other hand grabbed me as I lost my balance. But the flames arrived faster than expected. "We shouldn't have made contact... contact with a curse more dangerous than psionic energy... The exiled being, hidden in irrational numbers, has spread to every corner of truth..."

I turned around and felt the oxygen being sucked out. The vacuum zone was rapidly tearing at the spaceship's hull. The miniature black hole had probably already destroyed the warship, leaving only the residue that looked like an orange being squeezed dry.

"What is that thing?! Tell me!"

The thin air makes sounds seem even more distant.

"Mathematical concepts that exhaust the mysteries of the universe... the curse of banishment... return to Terra..."

The roaring cannons, fueled by extremely noisy fluctuations, and the leaping arcs of electricity, were activated ahead of time, rapidly jumping among the space debris, turning everything in their path into dust.

"That string of decimal numbers... the end of pi..."

A colossal fortress, unlike anything we'd ever seen before, was closing in on us, rolling over our warship as it slowly deployed its massive frontal shield and released its pale blue mesh energy shield, aiming at the center of the distorted universe, the center of which drifted with unidentified matter. Everything seemed to be turning for the better.

As the helmet shattered, his face quickly turned bruised and ashen, only his bloodshot eyes remained unchanged, gazing in the opposite direction at the end of the universe.

But the officer's words lingered like a ghost. His gaze remained fixed, as if he were staring intently at the constellations and galaxies composed of countless radiant stars, awaiting the world beyond the infinite boundaries, wary of the demons that might emerge from the hidden depths of the stars…

…………

I struggled to my feet from the deep spring, as if suffocating and drowning, wiping the water streaming down my face, trying not to recall the smell of the corpse that had been soaking there for who knows how many years.

"You're awake..."

The stone statue still wore a contemptuous and mocking face, and every greeting it uttered was designed to provoke hatred.

"Cough cough... How did I get transported again? I can transport myself without touching an electric shock?! And to a sci-fi world at that?!"

It was still that tranquil river valley bay, where the warm rays of the setting sun bathed the mountains and the sea, soothing the chill in my body.

"You passed through that door, but couldn't find your way back. What a pity..." the stone statue hummed.

"What kind of door is this? Why am I seeing these things?"

The colossal stone statue, its hands supporting its head, said, "The door left by the Creator connects to the door of reality. This is the last unpolluted place; what you see inside is the true dream. It was here that the Creator also learned the origin of everything..."

"Okay, I'm completely confused."

This feeling is what I often experience when doing English and math problems – the will of the great sovereign Azathoth – which is blind folly.

The stone figure, deep in thought, suddenly slapped its head, scattering dust across the ground. "All knowledge is engraved on the stone pillar; you, having experienced the Fountain of Truth, are qualified to know..."

The stone man raised his head, the light emanating from his eyes scanning the distant stone pillar repeatedly, his voice growing wooden.