Chapter 1 Freezing Cold

The temperature was frigid, surrounded by jagged rocks and a barren, gray landscape dotted with craters. A spaceship in outer space served as a navigational marker. Han Xiao led the two others toward it. Although the planet's gravity was high, it had little effect on Grade B superhumans. After a short trek, the wreckage of a spaceship came into view.

This was a Gedoran science vessel, its pale gold hull covered in black dust. The ship was twisted from the impact, and a trench several hundred meters long stretched out behind it, littered with various spaceship parts, indicating that it had skidded for some distance after crashing.

"Hmm... deathly silent, no thermal signatures. I think we should take a look," said Melos, glancing at his tactical screen.

"Oh, thank you for suggesting something no one else thought of," Han Xiao retorted, rolling his eyes.

Melos shrugged. "You're getting more and more gentle. I feel like you're picking on me."

"I'm only polite to strangers."

"I'm truly flattered." Melos sighed and changed the subject. "Your mecha has a lot of features."

"What, the armor your brother left you doesn't have these capabilities?"

"Ha, my brother knew me too well. He knew I didn't like those fancy features. The armor he custom-made for me maximizes combat performance. How strong is the enemy? You just need to hack at them once to find out. What's there to analyze?" Melos said, "Speaking of which, those people at home took my armor to study for a year, and I even gave them my brother's notebook. They should have some results. How about we go back and get the armor sometime?"

Han Xiao said in surprise, "You can actually make a reliable suggestion. I'm impressed."

Melos: "..."

I really want to draw my blade, but I have to keep smiling.

Casually chatting, the three arrived next to the wreckage. It was a small to medium-sized science vessel, divided into several decks, over ten meters high. More details were revealed. A large hole was torn in the side of the ship, but the airlock door was still closed. Han Xiao peered into the ship, which was pitch black. There was no light. It seemed the systems had mostly failed.

"Go in and see if there are any survivors or bodies," Han Xiao said. Although he remembered the details of the mission, the timeline was different now, and he wasn't sure if there would be any subtle changes.

They walked around the ship. It was empty. Han Xiao switched to the tracking interface and found some messy footprints. He extracted the latest traces and found that the people's activity was confined to the ship. There were also signs of bodies being dragged on the floors of some rooms.

"Well, obviously, the shields didn't completely protect them. Some people fainted, and the footprints of everyone never left the ship. It seems that everyone disappeared into thin air. The airlock door is closed, which means the hole was caused by something else. This planet seems to have some special lifeforms, which must be the reason for the crew's disappearance."

Han Xiao spoke smoothly. He walked through the scene, made a simple investigation, and found that it was not much different from the mission in his previous life. He immediately felt relieved. Since his Intelligence attribute had become higher and higher, he found that his memory had also increased. Some memories that were originally blurred had become clear.

The mission evaluation depended on the investigation results, so although Han Xiao knew the location of the Boss, he was not in a hurry to go. He came to the ship's main computer room and found the intelligent system mainframe and manually restarted the ship's system.

Buzz——

The ship shook violently, and all the rooms inside lit up.

"Restart complete, self-test in progress... Damage rate 72%, most equipment paralyzed, fuel leak, remaining energy 3%, executing advanced energy-saving mode..."

Han Xiao pressed a few buttons. "Activate the ship's recording system."

"Insufficient energy, request rejected."

"Switch to manual mode."

"Please authenticate investigator ID number."

Han Xiao thought for a while, opened the communicator and searched the memo for a while, and entered Kerlodd's ID number.

"Connecting to the headquarters database... connection failed, signal subject to unknown interference. Connecting to the local database... connection successful, authenticating... authentication failed, this ID is not on the ship's crew list."

"The Gedoran operating system is trash."

Han Xiao twitched the corner of his mouth, simply dismantled the mainframe shell, and directly took out the intelligent chip. Taking the chip back to the space station would achieve the same effect.

He removed the various core components of the ship. Taking these back would improve the evaluation. Then the three walked out of the ship. There were no valuable clues inside.

Melos hesitated and said, "If the crew was captured by some kind of life form, but there are no traces of creatures walking outside, then that unknown creature can fly. How can we find it?"

Han Xiao touched the edge of the hole. A layer of ice crystals had formed here. "The other parts of the ship aren't iced over. Only here is there a trace of freezing. The moisture was brought by that creature. The temperature here is so low. If there is a water source, it should be a geothermal hot spring, probably underground. It's likely that creature uses it as a nest..."

Melos's eyes lit up. "Those investigators might still be alive?"

"I don't know." Han Xiao said perfunctorily, "There's another spaceship wreck nearby. Let's go take a look."

They quickly found the wreckage of the second science vessel. It was also empty. But the traces this time were a little different. There were messy footprints outside the ship, and even traces of fighting. This was the second batch of investigators. They were stronger, so they had the strength to resist after the crash, but the result was obvious. They were all defeated.

"There are more traces of ice on the ground, but no frozen blood. No one should be dead. There are very few traces of battle. Obviously, this group of investigators was helpless."

After reading the clues, Han Xiao skillfully removed all the core components of the ship, and then said, "Let's go. I roughly know where that creature is."

Following the route in his memory, Han Xiao led the two quickly forward, without stopping. The normal way was to collect more traces nearby to find the Boss's nest, or it might not be found. In that case, the mission evaluation would not be high. In his previous timeline, there were more spaceship wrecks, representing more clues. Now the number of clues was several times less, which was disadvantageous, but he didn't need to be so troublesome and went directly to the location in his memory.

Soon, they found a hidden cave at the bottom of an inner ring of a crater. There were traces of digging. The entrance was four or five meters wide, not too narrow. The passage sloped downward. The three slid down the passage for a while, and finally touched the ground.

The surroundings were a dark underground space. The temperature here was much higher than on the surface. There was only one passage ahead, and behind them was a dead end.

They turned on night vision, walked forward for a while, and came to a fork in the road. Han Xiao walked to the left without hesitation. The temperature ahead became higher and higher. Melos tentatively took off his helmet and felt it. "This temperature is quite comfortable."

"We're almost there, prepare for battle," Han Xiao said.

The three walked to the end of the passage. It was an underground lake, the water boiling and bubbling, thick water vapor filling the lake. The lake was like a hot spring, and there should be a geothermal area below to form this hot spring.

Just then, a cry of surprise rang out from the hot spring.

"Who are you?"

A naked Gedoran popped out of the hot spring, looking surprised. The water slid down her curvaceous body. It was a woman.

Melos's eyes first went down, then up, several times, and suddenly he realized, "Are you Leny?"

"You know me?" The Gedoran woman was surprised. She was Nirega's wife.

"We are mercenaries. We accepted your husband's commission to rescue you. Where are the others?" Melos asked.

"That's great, someone finally came to save us. The others are..."

Leny's face showed joy, but suddenly her face changed, and she said urgently, "Don't stand there, it's coming out!"

As soon as she finished speaking, a small whirlpool formed in the center of the hot spring lake, and something big was floating to the surface. The small lake set off a tsunami-like wave, and water splashed on everyone.

Bang!

The water overturned, and a strange creature jumped out of the lake, floating in mid-air, turning to face the three people on the shore.

"What... is that thing?" Melos's eyes widened.

"Star Wanderer, a cosmic creature born among the stars, can fly in the universe with its body. It uses the gravity of planets to increase its speed to the standard of spaceships. Although it cannot jump in space, it often flies alone for thousands of years, but the lifespan of the Star Wanderer is almost infinite. They can continue to molt and update their cells. They are very rare, and magicians can summon Star Wanderers through an ancient ritual spell to perform directional teleportation that ignores physical distance, but they summon Star Wanderers more to hunt them because the body of a Star Wanderer is a very rare material."

Han Xiao explained quickly.

The Star Wanderer in front of him had a strange shape, a long blue-purple body, dozens of meters long, without any carapace or hair, smooth, and the skin had a translucent texture, with a hazy light under the skin. There were no limbs, narrow at the front and back and wide in the middle, and the sides extended like fins. The head had no facial features such as a mouth, eyes, or nose, only a long tentacle, and the top of the tentacle was a crystalline crystal. The appearance was somewhat similar to aquatic organisms.

The Star Wanderer rotated in mid-air, like a fish swimming flexibly in the water. The tentacle shook, and Han Xiao suddenly felt an invisible force trying to pull him to the Star Wanderer, and his body floated uncontrollably.

"Drink!" (Exclamation of effort)

Melos took the lead and slashed out a blade of light with his ship-splitting sword, hitting the Star Wanderer's body, but it immediately exploded into light debris, and the Star Wanderer was unharmed and was not even repelled.

"It's an interstellar creature that can travel through the universe with its body. Don't expect to hurt it easily." Han Xiao took out an electromagnetic kinetic energy gun and fired. The bullets bounced off the Star Wanderer, escaping a minimum damage of "1".

The panel immediately showed the attributes of the Star Wanderer.

————

Star Wanderer

Level:?

Class: [Cosmic Creature - Star Wanderer] (Endurance and health conversion ratio 1:500)

Attributes: Strength? , Agility? , Endurance 500, Intelligence? , Mystery? , Charm 153, Luck?

Energy: 0

Energy Level:?

Health Value: 249986

Status: Normal

Specialty: Unknown

Skills: Unknown

————

Han Xiao nodded secretly. He already knew the attributes of the Star Wanderer. As a cosmic creature, its health was extremely heaven-defying, a proper Boss template, and its physical and magical resistance were very high. Hitting its body caused almost no damage. The players in his previous life were wiped out here once, and they found the method the second time.

The Star Wanderer's weakness was the tentacle crystal, which had almost no resistance and was as fragile as a man's vitals. Almost every hit could cause true damage.

Each time the accumulated damage reached 50,000, the Star Wanderer's resistance would be reduced by 20%, and normal damage output could begin. The Star Wanderer's attack method was a telekinetic ability similar to telekinesis, good at control, and could deflect the trajectory of attacks on key points. The benefit was that its attack power was insufficient. The only way to fight it was to slowly grind it down.

And for Han Xiao, as long as the enemy's attack power was limited, there was basically no threat.