Chapter 256: Ele Is Very Worried About You

In Xu Xi's room.

An hourglass was placed there.

Symmetrical glass containers connected by a slender neck in the middle, fixed within an external wooden frame.

The falling grains of sand spoke of the slow passage of time.

Carrying a person's past, they turned into a fleeting eternity.

Amidst that gentle sliding sound, Xu Xi opened his eyes; the first thing he saw was a familiar pair of silver-blue mechanical eyes.

Ele sat on the edge of the bed, quietly waiting for Xu Xi to wake up, holding a bowl of warm, golden tonic soup in her hands.

“Master, please drink the soup.”

As Xu Xi awoke.

The silver-blue light in her eyes brightened slightly.

Xu Xi wanted to take the bowl and drink the soup himself, but he was firmly refused by the Mech-Servant; she pressed him back into place and fed him mouthful by mouthful.

“Then… I'll trouble you, Ele.”

Meeting the girl's eyes, Xu Xi couldn't say anything to refuse.

And so.

With Ele's help, this bowl of golden tonic soup was fed into Xu Xi's mouth in a gentle and delicate manner.

The soup was mild, not hot.

A faint warmth spread as he finished drinking it.

This was useless; Xu Xi's riddled body and increasingly indifferent mind could not be resolved by a single bowl of soup.

But Xu Xi still smiled, controlling his facial muscles to force the corners of his mouth into a stiff arc.

“It's very effective, Ele.”

“Thanks to your tonic soup, I'm in quite good shape now.”

Regarding the experiments on the Warp Drive, many key points were still missing; Xu Xi was anxious to return to the laboratory to continue resonating with the machine spirit to gain inspiration.

However, he was held back by Ele's hand.

“Master…”

“I am very… worried about you…”

Her voice echoed in the air, indescribably hollow, with an endless tremor.

When Xu Xi looked back, he saw such a scene.

The cold Automaton Girl, dressed in a black-and-white maid outfit, her hair falling from her ears, one hand lightly covering her chest, and the other holding onto Xu Xi.

That scene was fragmented.

Like a smooth mirror shattered by a hammer named “emotion.”

Crackling and shattering.

Falling to the ground without stopping.

With every shard that crumbled, the hand holding Xu Xi gripped even tighter.

“Please… don't continue anymore…”

Ele's palm was very warm; powered by her engine furnace, her mechanical body maintained a constant temperature around the clock.

She clumsily gripped Xu Xi, wanting to pass this warmth to him.

Such a posture evoked a sense of pity and affection.

“…”

Xu Xi was somewhat silent.

“Sorry, Ele, for making you worry.”

No longer a one-sided grip, Xu Xi also held that hand, gently and carefully leading Ele, who felt afraid and lost about the future.

“Actually, you don't need to worry about me.”

“I'm in good condition; no matter what happens, I'll be fine. Trust me, okay?”

The man's voice was very soft, so soft it was like a candle flickering in the wind.

But inexplicably.

The flickering candlelight turned into a beacon in the night, illuminating the timid and fearful machine spirit, guiding it toward a bright path ahead.

In the room, the rustling sound of the hourglass continued to flow.

Grain by grain, drop by drop.

At a visible speed, it was about to exhaust its final remains.

…

[Simulation Year 500, you are 519 years old, Ele has been with you for 497 years]

[Your time is squeezed to the limit]

[machine spirit, Mechanical Force, then machine spirit, then Mechanical Force]

[You force yourself 24 hours a day to perceive the inspiration provided by the machine spirits, and use Mechanical Force to shape and engrave, handing it over to Ele to calculate deeper theories]

[Ele is worried about your health and wants to share your burden as much as possible]

[Ele begins to frequently use special abilities]

[Ele begins to observe the Universe]

[Ele begins to observe particles]

[Ele has run out of power; she collapses into your arms to recharge]

[“Master, energy replenishment in progress. Master is forbidden from moving.”]

[She holds onto you tightly, preventing you from conducting experiments; you suspect the Mech-Servant is using this method to force you to rest, but you have no evidence]

…

[Simulation Year 564, you are 583 years old, Ele has been with you for 561 years]

[You have experienced your eighth death]

[This time, thanks to progress in gravity technology, Ele captured the gravitational waves of the Neutron War Star at a faster speed]

[The Mech-Servant attempts to challenge the “God”]

[Before the starship cluster was destroyed, she controlled all friendly fire and pre-aimed a volley of shots]

[The Neutron War Star was unscathed; it didn't use advanced technology, but calmly destroyed everything using only its own mass and density]

[After you were resurrected, Ele controlled a spare body to come and find you]

[This time, Ele didn't crawl around to check your body; instead, she dove into your arms, saying she wanted some peace and quiet]

…

[Simulation Year 584, you are 603 years old, Ele has been with you for 581 years]

[With Ele's help and that special observational perspective, you finally saw through the mysteries of space, using gravity technology as a lever to pry at the invisible spacetime]

[The prototype of the Warp Drive thus appeared]

[Although it was just a prototype, there was no doubt that you had taken the true first step]

[You began in-depth research into the Antimatter Engine and the elemental decay engine]

[Faster-than-light travel has extremely high energy requirements for starships, far beyond what fusion power can provide; therefore, you have been researching antimatter and elemental decay]

[Hoping to use these two types of energy to power the operation of the Warp Drive]

[Simulation Year 588, you research technology, live off Ele, and blow up Zerg heads]

[Simulation Year 600, you research technology, live off Ele, and continue blowing up Zerg heads]

[The number of Zerg is a bit too much; you are helpless]

…

Time passed year by year.

In the Early Stage, Xu Xi's humanity remained, and he still had feelings of sentimentality.

Now, with the deep erosion of the machine spirit, Xu Xi no longer paid much attention to the passage of time.

Only the timing of the Neutron War Star's strike.

Would receive his special attention.

The ninth death was approaching, but before that, in simulation year 616, Xu Xi's fleet stopped advancing.

Not due to a malfunction, nor an error.

But because they could no longer move forward.

The endless fleet of Intelligent Machines was so numerous that it spread out to obscure the light of the stars.

Unknowingly, even the vast civilization graveyard had been traversed to its end by the fleet, allowing Xu Xi to see the existence of the “Wall.”

“Is it because my speed is too fast?”

“No, it should be that the location of the Federation Planet was already at the edge of the cage.”

“It was only by Opportunity that I reached the end ahead of time.”

Xu Xi stood in the starship's main control room.

The probe ships that had set out earlier brought him images from further away; it was an absolute void, a nihilistic “High Wall” that severed the Universe and buried hope.

It appeared to be in the same Universe, yet it completely isolated the starry sky inside and outside the wall.

“space blockade?”

“As expected, it's just as hopeless… In the face of such isolation, conventional methods of navigation have lost their meaning.”

“Coupled with the gatekeeping Neutron War Star, what kind of Hell difficulty is this?”