A brilliant star appeared in the corner of the view, and the sunlight was weakened and filtered to prevent it from stabbing the eyes of everyone on the bridge. Hao Ren asked the terminal to adjust the lens of the external monitor and saw the situation around the star.

The so-called "Planet Erim" is long gone, the planet that was gradually dismantled into pieces thousands of years ago, and now it is a continuous floating island of space orbiting the original planet, like a series of fragments of similarly sized cones floating in space. In order to extract the last bit of resources from the planet's underground, and to replenish the planet's depleting energy cycle as much as possible, those elves resolutely dismantled their entire planet, turning it into a fragmented state that could accept the sun's energy to the maximum and accommodate more people. It was only after the rock formations deep in the mantle were dismantled and reshaped into these floating islands that they were given valuable living space and, even more preciously, a testing ground.

The floating islands are the rocks of the planet itself, but huge man-made "hoops" can be seen around the floating islands, and the man-made structures that are already somewhat dull and have a material between rock and metal not only maintain the stability of the floating islands, but also produce a kind of energy shield to protect the land below, and the energy shield itself can be used to filter sunlight. The floating islands are flat on one side, and on the other side are huge and ugly rock foundations, and between the uneven and inverted mountains you can see the ancient and massive mechanical structures, which are the power units of the floating islands, the gravity generators, and the energy stations. and material recycling plants. Those mechanical structures are probably thousands of years old, and I don't know how much damage there is in them. But apparently their makers no longer have the energy and resources to repair them.

"That's our home," Hilda calmed down at the moment. She stood up and pointed to the holographic projection, "Some of the floating islands far from the main habitation area are testing grounds, where we used to test space-time cores and super-powered magic accelerators, and if we don't disassemble the planet like this, we won't even be able to find such a testing ground." The Magic Accelerator needs to be built on a solid and massive foundation, which cannot be carried by a conventional space station, and it may even tear half a planet apart if it explodes, so it cannot be placed on the home planet. There was a generation of scholars in history who built a huge space platform as much as they could to barely carry out this dangerous practice, but a fusion furnace explosion led to the crash of the platform. Having almost destroyed the entire Northern Hemisphere's ecology, these projects were suspended and not restarted until the planetary remodeling was completed - but that was also in the past, and now that the experiments of the space-time core and magic accelerator have been stopped, we really don't have the resources. ”

"The floating islands with the bright energy shield are ecological islands, and under the shield there are ecological domes, and we have preserved the planetary ecosystems as much as possible, transplanting them into a huge artificial circulation system that provides us with valuable complex organic matter. Meantime...... It is also the only remaining luxury of my people. Each Erem elf can rest in the vaults fifteen days a year, but no more, as those vaults have a limit to their carrying capacity and are aging with some critical systems. They're actually going down, too. If they shut down, I'm afraid we'll have to rely entirely on factory synthetics to survive, and that will kill a lot of people: the Elem are a slow-moving race. Healthy individuals have a thousand-year lifespan, and the environment is deteriorating much faster than we can adapt to. Whenever an ancient facility goes down, there is a large group of old elves...... Even the prime-age elf died. ”

"The floating islands that are connected by bright beams of light to each other are residential areas. Most of the elves inhabit those islands. They are specially designed to have the lowest energy consumption, the most robust circulation system, and a more rational building plan, in other words...... It can be dragged on longer, and most of the synthesis factories are on those floating islands, and even if other floating islands, such as the testing ground, are accidentally destroyed, these settlements can survive as much as possible. ”

The spacecraft gradually approached those space islands in low-speed cruise mode, and Hao Ren found that there was a special group of individuals in the floating islands: they were hovering at the edge of the island chain, the whole was dim, and the "hoops" on the borders of some islands had even been damaged and fallen off or even disappeared, and the remnants of man-made buildings could still be faintly seen on the floating islands, but the energy shield over the land had obviously been extinguished, and the earth without a trace of light seemed lifeless, like depleted space rocks.

"What's that?"

"Deathland," Hilda sighed, "we have shaped these seemingly magnificent spatial entities, but that doesn't mean we're highly skilled - these floating islands were built in a near-desperate way out of necessity, not technologically sophisticated, not even theoretically perfect, and many of the islands have different architectures, because the original designers themselves didn't know which ones would last longer. In addition, many floating islands are defective at the beginning of construction, and they cannot be repaired if they break down later, so there are constantly floating islands that are damaged, extinguished, and then become like that. ”

Now even Lily was quiet, she was even a little afraid of the strange sight in front of her, she clamped her tail, but her ears were straight up: "What about the people up there?" ”

"Most of the time it can be rescued and transferred to other islands," Hilda nodded, "This will increase the ecological pressure on other islands, so after each rescue transfer, a period of resource restriction laws will be implemented, mainly to limit newborns and reduce per capita supplies, and some old people will take the initiative to enter the 'Prayer World' and let the body accept euthanasia to make room for other young adults." It can't be helped, we have to keep the whole race alive as much as possible. ”

"This place ......" Hao Ren opened his mouth for a long time before he knew what to say, "it is stricter than I imagined." ”

As an earthling, a rookie censor who hadn't had time to experience too many events, Hao Ren couldn't imagine how many incredible things were happening in the vast void, and the disasters and dooms he saw from various stories could not be compared to the chain of space islands in front of him. Before he came here, he had thought about how he could help Hilda and her people - such as borrowing the Empire's Worldgate system and his contacts at Kuiper Station to see if he could send some supplies here, or buy some technology or ships from the vendors of the Fiali Void Consortium to give to these Erim elves, as an Inquisitor he had a certain amount of "Imperial Ration Points" every month, but he had not yet used these things, It was only when he heard that these ration points could be exchanged for unusually abundant supplies from the major civilizations of the macro world, so he came up with the above idea.

It's just that now it seems that one of his plans is going to be revised.

These Erim elves are far from being helped with a little bit of supplies or a little belated technology.

"Your creativity and resilience are indeed commendable," the number of terminals couldn't help but want to say something, "It's just that you haven't been able to discover the mystery of the faster-than-light engine - sometimes a fork in the tech tree can destroy a civilization, especially for a race like yours that is not congenitally well-off, as long as a technology is not developed in time, there is often no chance of turning over." You can see that you've worked hard, but it's just ...... In the end, it didn't work out. ”

Hilda sighed, "yes, the last spatial teleportation experiment also failed. ”

When the Giant Turtle Rock Platform approached those island chains, it obviously attracted the attention of the Elrim elves, Hao Ren noticed that the communicator suddenly reported a large number of unknown contact signals, and some bright points of light quickly circled out from the backsides of several habitable floating islands and quickly approached the spaceship, and only after the camera pulled over did Hao Ren see that those were some triangular flying machines with rough edges and a gray-white metallic luster, and the shell of each aircraft was flashing bright runes, which were obviously different from the general impression of spaceships. Those are supposed to be the ships made by the Elim elves, but unfortunately they can't cross the slow long distance of tens of millions of light years.

These gray-white triangular flying machines quickly came to the vicinity of the Giant Turtle Rock Platform, and Hao Ren slowed down the spacecraft to almost a standstill, so those "small spaceships" dozens of meters long stopped and did not make reckless moves such as rapid detour. The pilots inside them must have been in a state of great shock and nervousness, and the people on the bridge could even feel this feeling through the cold space and the layers of starship armor. (To be continued......)