Jiang Ye looked out the window, seeing nothing but an endless expanse of garbage mountains. The north was already shrouded in the shadow of rain clouds.
"Where?"
"On the horizon," Cen Yemeng said uncertainly. "There seems to be a cluster of things suspended in the air. I can't see clearly either."
"You have really good eyesight. I can't see that far."
Jiang Ye tapped the screen, turning the ship to fly due north.
After flying for a while, he could finally see what Cen Yemeng was talking about: thick smoke!
A section of the garbage mountains was burning, and thick smoke billowed into the sky.
Jiang Ye frowned. How could there be a fire on a desolate planet?
He tapped the screen and raised the ship's altitude.
In case of any ground fire, he had to maintain a certain distance.
The ship cautiously approached.
Finally arriving above the burning point, the fire was ten times fiercer than it looked from afar. An entire garbage mountain was engulfed in flames, the fire flowing like lava among the ash piles, and the black smoke had the momentum of a tornado.
"There seems to be a… spaceship in the fire!" Cen Yemeng exclaimed.
Jiang Ye confirmed one thing: his wife's eyesight was better than his. No wonder her eyes were so beautiful; most people just had a pair of eyeballs.
Raindrops suddenly hit the window, leaving trails like earthworms.
Jiang Ye maneuvered the ship to circle in the air, waiting for the fire to be extinguished by the rain.
The rain started as lines, quickly becoming a net. The thunder grew louder, as if waking up all the sleeping garbage mountains.
Finally, the fire was extinguished, and the smoke had mostly dissipated.
A hole had collapsed in the garbage mountain, looking like a black cake that had been bitten.
In the center of the hole, a disintegrated spaceship was still emitting residual smoke, the raindrops hitting it with a sizzling sound.
"It looks like it just crashed," Machine Wang said. "In the ten-plus years I've been here, I've seen a total of three crashed spaceships. Two of them were seen in the last two days. What a coincidence."
"It's not a coincidence; there's a war going on outside," Jiang Ye tapped the screen, letting the ship descend slowly.
The burnt garbage would undoubtedly contain many harmful gases, so Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng both put on their spacesuits.
"Machine Wang, you go down first to take a look," Jiang Ye opened the hatch. "Be careful."
Machine Wang jumped down without hesitation, without complaint.
"Hot, hot, hot! The ground is still hot!" Dog barks could be heard from outside.
Machine Wang hopped a few times on the scorching ground. The temperature of the fire field was astonishing; the ground was like the inner wall of an oven. The rainwater that fell quickly bubbled and boiled.
Fortunately, the rain intensified, and the ground cooled down rapidly, turning the boiling puddles cold.
Machine Wang continued forward, approaching the spaceship.
The surface temperature of the spaceship was still over seventy degrees Celsius, slowly decreasing under the wash of the rain.
Machine Wang first circled the spaceship, scanning it meticulously.
"Scanning four severe impact points. The spaceship hit at least four times during landing. The exoskeleton is deformed, and a third of the hull has fallen off, like a rotten banana," Machine Wang's voice transmitted into its owner's spacesuit. "The engine exploded. From the residual structure, it looks like a very advanced space engine."
"Space engine? A warp drive?" Jiang Ye asked.
"No, those are two different things," Machine Wang said. "The principle of a space engine is like a cableway, turning space into a rope to pull itself forward. It doesn't reach faster-than-light speeds, but it can approach the speed of light. The key is low energy consumption, cheaper than a warp drive."
"Let's go into the spaceship," Jiang Ye picked up his long spear, pointing its muzzle at the hatch.
Machine Wang extended its front paws, forcefully lifting the deformed hatch, and jumped inside like a bug, wriggling its rear.
"Oh! There are many humans!" Machine Wang's voice was surprised. "They're all dead…"
"Confirm no survivors?" Jiang Ye asked.
"No, all dead, very obvious," Machine Wang said. "There are no explosives or hazardous sources either. Master, you can come over. There are some boxes here with the logo of the Planet Cultivation Plan printed on them. I scanned them and found organic matter inside. I can't tell what it is through the boxes."
Jiang Ye then opened the hatch, carrying his gun, and jumped down, stepping into the black puddles towards the spaceship.
Cen Yemeng followed carefully behind, her head down, trying to step on raised stones to avoid the water.
The spacesuit was waterproof, but girls were clean.
Walking to the entrance of the crashed spaceship, she glanced inside.
"Honey, don't come over," Jiang Ye immediately turned back and said.
"Why?" Cen Yemeng stopped a few meters away, stunned.
"You'll be scared. The scene isn't very pleasant. Don't upset your pregnancy. You go back and wait," Jiang Ye said.
Cen Yemeng hesitated, then nodded and returned to the spaceship.
Jiang Ye was relieved; his wife was quite obedient.
He boarded the wreckage of the spaceship.
Bodies lay scattered on the ground, a total of nine, both men and women, half Caucasian and half Asian. Two had broken necks, their heads smashed on the console. Two had their spines folded backward, blood splattered on their faces. The remaining bodies were curled up in corners, scorched black by the fire, and where not scorched, they were bloated by the hot water, their skin covered in large blisters.
A gruesome sight!
The console was still lit, displaying two red warnings:
[Reverse Thruster Failure!]
[Parachute Deployment Malfunction!]
A chill ran down Jiang Ye's spine. Just a few days ago, he and Cen Yemeng had almost suffered the same fate.
"Knock, knock, knock!" Machine Wang tapped the boxes with its front paws.
Dozens of metal boxes were neatly stacked in the spaceship's tail compartment. Despite such a severe crash, all the boxes were still intact.
Jiang Ye pulled a box down and opened its lid.
A stream of cold, white mist immediately emerged. Inside were shiny foil and vacuum-sealed bags, and in the bags were… artificial seeds!
The boxes were incredibly thick, with a 4-centimeter inner wall, resulting in a small capacity, holding only two small bags of artificial seeds.
Jiang Ye took out all the seeds and placed them aside. At the bottom of the box was an engraved instruction manual.
[Planet Cultivation Plan Biological Container]
[Item Name: Type 6 Sugar Orange Seeds]
[Growth Cycle: 3 Days]
"What does this Planet Cultivation Plan mean?" Jiang Ye asked.
"It's about establishing seed banks on some remote planets and conducting small-scale cultivation to preserve various genes. This way, it can prevent widespread species extinction after large-scale wars," Machine Wang said. "In other words, it's saving a biological archive."
Jiang Ye's expression turned grim.
They had actually activated this kind of doomsday plan.
It seemed the war outside was worse than he had imagined.
Perhaps, after the Mill people occupied the Nexus Star, they were still advancing!
It was even possible that Jiang Ye Star was in danger!
He didn't understand the nature of warfare in this era, but it seemed to come and go like the wind, winning quickly and losing quickly, or perhaps never winning or losing, with a level of attrition far beyond imagination.
However, encountering this crashed spaceship had its benefits.
First, perhaps someone would come to search and rescue in a couple of days.
Second, even if no one came to rescue them, these boxes of seeds could be used for farming to improve their lives.
He had cultivated many crops when he first started from Jiang Ye Star, and with his bloodline advantage, he was already a qualified farmer.
Jiang Ye sighed, wondering if farming was some kind of destiny.