101: Chapter 101 Unlocks the Return Voyage, the Ark Appears for the First Time

When the Tulips and Irises of Terra met on the platform of Swan Castle, another meeting was brewing under the starry sky of Vulcan.

Elena disconnected from the machine spirit link with the Indomitable Truth.

She opened her eyes; the lights in the transport ship's cabin were steady and soft, and the Watch Moon outside the window was slowly rotating.

The faint light from the blue solar arrays filtered through the porthole, casting interlaced shadows onto the silver-blue patterns on her fingertips.

A notification in her mind told her that the gene lock in her body had been released.

She could perceive it.

Before, her senses were like looking at the world through a layer of water; but now, every ray of light, every vibration, every angle at which air molecules struck her skin, poured clearly into her consciousness, as if a membrane between her body and the world had been removed.

The gene lock was not a shackle, but a safety valve.

It was a fail-safe mechanism set by the civilization when creating those of Genetic Ascension.

Because before a newly ascended being's will was strong enough to command that power, it would automatically limit the body's output to prevent her from hurting herself or her loved ones before her brain had time to process the information.

And when the will was strong enough to dominate the body, the lock would naturally release.

She flexed her fingers.

It was a very slight movement, but the airflow created by her fingertips formed an invisible ripple in the cabin.

Her quantum cognition captured it, reconstructing a miniature scene of the air density distribution within her consciousness.

So this was what the world truly looked like.

The transport ship glided smoothly through the void.

Elena looked out the window, her quantum-level thinking automatically analyzing every detail of the Watch Moon: the layout angle of the solar arrays, the efficiency curve of energy transmission, real-time data on the shipyard's throughput capacity—this information flowed naturally into her consciousness like a stream; she didn't need to "read" it intentionally, it was just there.

A data packet intruded into her sensory field without warning.

It had no encryption markers, no sender signature, and none of those long-winded authentication runes of the Adeptus Mechanicus; there was only a simple translated text that appeared in her consciousness in Standard Gothic:

[Route Re-planned]

Origin: Watch Moon Dock 1.

New Destination: L1 Lagrange Point.

Reason: There are some things you need to know first.

Estimated time deviation: +14 minutes.

Remark: Acceptance recommended.

No signature.

But Elena knew who had sent it.

In this star system, there was only one entity capable of sending data packets in this format—the paranoid who had built this transport ship, terraformed those three moons, won an Apocalypse-level Ork war, yet was still complaining about "insufficient production capacity."

"...Change course."

The transport ship's engines emitted a low roar, and the course was slightly adjusted.

At the L1 Lagrange point of the Vulcan system, the zero point of gravitational equilibrium between the star and the planet, a fortress was waiting in the void for its master.

When Elena saw it through the porthole, her quantum cognition completed a preliminary scan of the structure within seconds.

Two Gothic castles were joined at the base, like a pair of giants standing back-to-back.

A ring wall encircled the joint, with countless Gauss Machine Gun Towers standing upon it like battlements.

A large number of missile launchers were embedded within their nano-frameworks, normally perfectly concealed by heavy steel armor, but when the order was given, the armor plates would flip within milliseconds, raining missiles down like a storm upon any fool who dared to approach.

On the towering spires of the castles, fusion cannons and magnetized plasma cannons stood silently, waiting to explain their own truth.

Four shield generators were evenly distributed at the four corners of the Ark, and the milky-white energy shields they generated at this moment wrapped the entire Ark like a tough eggshell.

A name appeared before her eyes: Mechanical Ark.

The transport ship smoothly penetrated the shield and docked at Berth 3.

The metallic clanging sound of the airlock docking came through the hull, steady, solid, and heavy.

The airlock opened, and a narrow corridor appeared before her.

The lighting was a soft, warm white.

On the walls, there were none of the complex runes, prayers, or candelabras of the Adeptus Mechanicus, only minimalist symbols, arrows, numbers, and a floor plan of the current area.

It was so clean here that it made her feel an instinctive sense of unease.

The air was filled with the scent of ozone from metal welding, as well as the smell of freshly applied industrial sealant.

She tightened her grip on the multi-barrel melta cannon on her back.

She knew that after the gene lock was released, this weapon was more of a keepsake than a necessity for her.

But it and the machine spirit hidden within it were still her companions.

During her most difficult years, it had been the one to accompany her through it all.

And such a clean, tidy environment... usually reminded her of a temple.

The Emperor's temple. Or the realm of the Chaos Gods.

Only in those places would it be so spotless.

And this kind of cleanliness usually meant—the next second, either golden light would fill her vision, or reality would begin to twist and distort.

However, she walked for nearly a hundred meters, and nothing happened.

The corridor suddenly opened up.

This was a hemispherical bridge.

In the center was a captain's chair, simple and sleek in style, without any of the complex decorations of the Imperial style.

Then the entire cabin went dark.

A deeper kind of darkness, as if space itself had been stripped away.

She stood in the void, with the pale blue planet Vulcan in front of her, carrying its three moons as it slowly orbited a blue giant star.

Floating next to each planet were labeled data boxes.

On the left was the Forge Moon—the electromagnetic blue glow of smelting meandered across the surface of the moon like a river.

On the right was the Truth Moon—the silvery-white particle glow traced elegant arcs across the scattered small particle accelerators.

Directly ahead was the Watch Moon—a sea of deep blue solar arrays covering about 73% of its surface.

A figure walked out from the shadows on the side.

It wore the red robes of an Adeptus Mechanicus Magos, with a hood covering its entire head in shadow, making its face impossible to see.

Eight Servo-skull-like flight units hovered behind it, their red optical lenses dragging faint trails in the dim projected light.

But its body was bulkier than any Tech-Magos Elena had ever seen: two main manipulator arms and twelve auxiliary sub-arms were retracted on the sides of its body, and one of the sub-arms was still holding a welding torch that retained residual heat.

"...The difference between you and what I saw in the machine spirit memory of the Indomitable Truth is truly vast." Elena spoke first.

Icarus did not answer immediately.

It placed the welding torch back into the tool slot, and the optical sensors beneath its hood slowly swept over Elena's body, as countless data points gradually returned to Icarus's data analysis document.