Great, we're doomed now!

The hatch opened, and a team of personnel dressed in standard research uniforms stepped out. They looked serious and carried various testing instruments, clearly there to conduct an environmental assessment.

Slightly behind the rest of the group were three people dressed somewhat differently. They were all wearing thick robes made of a special material with hoods, scarves covering their mouths and noses, and sunglasses, making it impossible to discern their features.

Their attire resembles that of desert dwellers from Mars or other remote regions, but frankly, these items are insufficient to withstand the frequent sandstorms and low temperatures on Titan's surface. Ultimately, local professional equipment is more suitable... First-time visitors often make this mistake.

Titan is currently the most remote frontier for humanity, which has attracted many strange people, even wanted villains. Various cultures have been ravaged by the harsh environment and have gone astray to an absurd degree. Slightly peculiar attire is not particularly conspicuous in such a diverse colony.

These three are naturally Ye Shou, Liu Li, and Lucy.

They discreetly blended into the inspection team, their gazes calmly sweeping over the colonial city dominated by heavy industry through their sunglasses.

Although it sounds unbelievable, Ye Shou did indeed bring them here for a "trip to relax".

The towering factories, the busy conveyor belts, the air thick with the smells of metal and machine oil, and the weariness and pragmatism on most pedestrians' faces all clearly outline the tone of life here.

The head of the expedition team is talking with the colonial representatives who have come to receive them:

“Our main purpose in coming here is to update Titan’s Population Survival Status Assessment Report, especially after the proposal of independence, the actual living standards of the grassroots people will become very strong evidence,” Eleanor said formally, while signaling to her team to begin setting up some equipment.

The colonial representative, a dark-skinned middle-aged man, nodded and said in a rather enthusiastic tone: "We welcome any investigation based on facts. You are all welcome to see for yourselves the situation in [Vulcan]."

Every piece of output here is soaked in the sweat of the workers, who deserve the same human rights as other citizens of the world.

"That's exactly why we're here."

Ye Shou's gaze passed over the two people talking and landed in the direction of the huge mine pit in the distance.

Even from a distance, one could faintly hear the dull thuds of heavy machinery at work.

"Barbatos disappeared in Saturn's orbit..."

He narrowed his eyes slightly, shook his head, and seemed somewhat sentimental.

As the founders of the Tower of Babel, the original pilots naturally enjoyed corresponding prestige and status. Some of their families gradually developed into powerful and wealthy classes, while others declined for various reasons.

The Gundam Barbatos remained in the hands of a certain family until half a century ago. However, during a Legion of Guards' attack on space pirates in the Jupiter-Saturn route, although they were victorious, the Barbatos and its pilot mysteriously disappeared and could not be found no matter how hard they searched.

Ye Shou's purpose in coming here was twofold: first, to see the true situation of Titan, which was embroiled in public opinion; and second, to accompany two respected ladies on a sightseeing trip. He wasn't actually there for Barbatos, but the thought of this unsolved case in the documents filled him with inexplicable emotions.

He had clearly changed the course of the story, but Barbatos was still buried in the dust of history. Now, it is unknown where it is buried, waiting for its pilot—is this the power of fate?

Speaking of which, he had also searched for the whereabouts of the "original protagonist group," but unfortunately there was no security company called "CGS" on Mars, and names like Mikazuki and Olga were very common. After searching the database, none of the people he found matched the image described by Ye Shou.

Either they were never born and disappeared due to a shift in the world line, or... they weren't registered in the citizen files!

dong... dong... dong...

The roar of construction machinery came from afar, and Ye Shou subconsciously looked over, when suddenly he had a sudden inspiration.

"Have you two ever visited a mine?"

-

On the outskirts of the city, deep within a massive open-pit mine.

The massive mineral layer was exposed, displaying dark stripes rich in rare minerals. Several old mobile engineers (industrial MS) were struggling with their engines, wielding huge drills and buckets, chiseling and excavating the hard rock and ice-soil mixture.

Inside the cockpit of one of the mobile engineering vehicles, a black-haired boy, shirtless from the heat, was intently manipulating the control lever.

His face was covered in a mixture of engine oil and sweat, his lips were tightly pressed together, his eyes were focused, and his expression showed a hint of fatigue. Every time the drill bit hit the rock, the violent vibrations would be transmitted into the cockpit through the rudimentary shock absorption device, and then flow throughout his body. Ordinary people would inevitably suffer from a lot of occupational diseases doing this kind of work.

But the black-haired boy had no choice. He was not a natural person and had no citizenship. This could be seen from the three ugly protruding prosthetics behind his neck, which were the old-fashioned Alaya consciousness system. He was a so-called "consumable".

Some are clones, some are bankrupt individuals, some are criminals... especially the latter. In order to increase profits, many prisons choose to sell the sentences of serious offenders to these companies, which are then responsible for "labor reform" of them.

These people, who have no civil rights, are not cared about even if they die in the mine. The price of a living person is even cheaper than the mobile engineering vehicle they drive, so they are not equipped with any protective clothing, and naturally, they cannot be equipped with a psycho-frame.

If it weren't for work efficiency, the boss wouldn't have been willing to install even outdated technology like the Alaya-vijnana (storehouse consciousness) for them.

This practice of using "consumables" to develop mining areas is almost unheard of on Earth. It occasionally occurs in the wilderness of Mars, but many dangerous operations in various spaceports and artificial satellites drifting in the vast universe rely on these people.

Titan is humanity's frontier, and things that happen there are the most unrestrained.

Even the people of the Tower of Babel were speechless when they saw these slave laborers.

Mikazuki is such a person. He is not a clone, but he has been alone since childhood. On this planet with its harsh environment, if he hadn't become a child laborer in the mines, he might have frozen or starved to death on the streets long ago.

"Olga, the hardness of this layer is too high. We need to slow down the advance." Mikazuki said through the internal communication channel, his voice hoarse from working for a long time.

Not far away, in another mobile engineering vehicle, the white-haired, dark-skinned youth—Orga Itsuka—responded, "By the way, Saito, how's the clearing of your transport route going? Don't let the excavated ore clog it."

"Processing, my 'big boss'." Another young man's voice came through the channel, accompanied by the screeching sound of metal scraping against metal. He was driving a mobile engineer and moving the giant ore basket aside.

They were a squad of workers who made a living driving these motorized combat engineers, which city dwellers considered "scrap metal." The work was extremely hard, but the pay was barely enough to cover basic survival and maintenance costs.

Every day is a struggle against the hard strata, the harsh environment, and the limits of the body—but everyone does it, so they don't feel it's particularly unfair.

Given the "street education" they received, the probability of them dying in the mining area was very high. If they wanted to get ahead, they had to step on others to rise to the top and use other people's lives to achieve their own success.

They are being exploited by their boss now, but they will have the chance to exploit their boss in the future, so they don't feel it's unfair (even though the chance is very slim).

"Tsk, the rocks in this damn place are fucking hard..." Olga cursed under his breath, wiped the sweat from his forehead, pushed the control lever to have the engineer adjust the angle, and slammed the drill bit into the rock wall again.

Deep inside the mine, Mikazuki's mobile engineering unit continued its work, the drill bit relentlessly pounding against the rock wall, producing a regular, muffled roar.

He was completely focused, his dark pupils fixed on what was ahead—

Suddenly, a cracking sound, completely different from before, came from the tip of the drill bit—a dull, hollow cracking sound!

Buzz~~~!

Immediately afterwards, the entire mine began to shake violently, with rubble and ice chips falling from the ceiling and slamming onto the armor of the motorized engineers.

"What's going on?!" Olga's surprised voice came through the communication channel. "An earthquake? Come out quickly, Mikazuki!"

"I don't know! They might have dug up something; there's a cavity there!"

Mikazuki frowned nervously, trying to stabilize the violently shaking machine.

But at that moment, a thick alloy chain fixed to the rock face made a teeth-grinding taut sound due to the sudden vibration, and one of the iron chains connecting to the rock face above him snapped violently!

Rumble...

A massive rock, about the size of a mobile suit, crashed down on Mikazuki's mobile engineers with destructive force!

A shadow instantly enveloped the cockpit, the oppressive feeling of death making Mikazuki almost stop breathing. He instinctively yanked the control stick, but the cumbersome engineer had no time to dodge and was about to be smashed into a pulp.

At this critical moment—

A figure appeared beside the fallen boulder at some unknown time, moving so fast that it almost left a blur.

The man was Ye Shou. He had somehow removed the robe that concealed his identity, and was now only wearing simple combat gear. Facing the whistling, falling boulder, he did not flinch. His right hand shot out with lightning speed, precisely grabbing the end of the broken chain!

"Hey--!"

With a deep exhale, Ye Shou's arm muscles and the interlocking chains instantly tensed up!

The alloy chain groaned under the strain in his hands, but the falling boulder was held back by his superhuman strength and stopped in mid-air, just a few meters away from Mikazuki's mobile engineer's head!

How could a person's weight possibly hold up a giant rock?

The answer may lie in the golden ripples spreading from Ye Shou's hands and feet.

The enormous shadow was just a hair's breadth away from crushing him into a pulp... The next second, this incredibly long period of time began to flow again, and the rock was pulled violently, falling in another direction, saving Mikazuki's life.

The black-haired boy's eyes widened suddenly as he stared in disbelief at this illogical scene, his vision filled only with the figure defying gravity with a mortal body.

Boom!

He forcefully altered the trajectory of the massive rock as it crashed heavily onto the open ground beside the mine, kicking up clouds of dust.

...The tremors in the mine gradually subsided.

However, with the collapse of that giant rock, a deep cave that had been hidden for who knows how long was revealed behind the rock wall where it had originally stood.

And in that darkness, a huge and majestic outline was vaguely revealed.

Ye Shou walked over calmly, raised his head and took in the historical relics. He couldn't help but take a deep breath, and when he looked back at the Asian slave laborers who were still in shock, a smile inexplicably appeared on his lips.

"Fate... Sure enough, I always encounter unexpected situations and strange guys."

Are you talking to me?

“Heh…” Ye Shou turned back and looked into the depths of the cave.

It was a humanoid machine covered in dark gray armor, with rough and powerful lines. The antennas on both sides of the head extended backward like horns. Although the surface of the machine was covered with the dust of time and the marks of impact, and there were even obvious defects in some places, its silent posture revealed a ferocity and majesty that had not been extinguished after the baptism of war.

It knelt on one knee, a giant steel fist supporting it on the ground, as if it had just fallen into a deep sleep and could wake up again at any moment.

"……haven't seen you for a long time."

A hint of reminiscence appeared on Ye Shou's face: "ASW-G-08... Barbatos!"

click!

Mikazuki pushed open the hatch, and a wave of scorching, dusty air rushed in, but he paid no attention, his gaze fixed on the machine.

It was completely different from the mobile engineer he usually drove; it was a real mobile suit, and it looked like it had been on the battlefield... For some reason, it attracted his attention at first glance.

"Are you curious? He's a hero who once saved the world."

Ye Shou muttered to himself, then looked at Mikazuki, who was still somewhat dazed, and a faint smile appeared on his lips.

"Looks like you've dug up something amazing."

Chapter 263: The Knights Covered in Dust (4.5K)

It seems this wasn't just a coincidence—the driver had a backup plan!

Sensing the faint mental fluctuations emanating from within Barbatos, Ye Shou frowned slightly.

"Hey, Mika! Are you alright?" Olga's mobile engineer also rushed over, calling out Mikazuki's nickname, but suddenly froze when he saw the Gundam frame.

"This...this...are you kidding me...a demon god? Why would it be in a place like this!"

Unlike the original work where information was blocked, the people of this world are fully aware of the Calamity War and the deeds of the Demon God. Some can even recite the code names of all the Gundam frames without missing a single one.

Olga was slightly more educated than Mikazuki, and perhaps it was her nature to yearn for the demon army that helped Mars gain independence. When she saw the battle-damaged Barbatos, she was so shocked that she could hardly speak.

Although it looks very different from the glamorous image in the video, this is undoubtedly a Gundam!

"What? Gundam? You're not seeing things, are you?!"