The Legendary Mechanic (WN)

Be it the three Universal Civilizations or the World Tree Civilization, they were all empty shells.

Han Xiao took a deep breath, cleared his emotions, and buried them, not looking at the empty light sphere in front of him any longer.

“This isn’t a bad thing. At least it’s not an illusion of the past like the Celestial Star Alliance. Plus, judging from the Celestial Star Alliance’s time period, the Galaxy is far from the Great Reboot. I don’t even know if I’ll live till that day…

“Speaking of which, if I search for Planet Earth, will it have any results?”

This thought suddenly appeared in Han Xiao’s mind.

He looked down at the mark but realized it did not respond this time. He raised his brows.

“Hmm, no reaction, huh? My old home is still in another world then. It has nothing to do with our Iterations…”

Han Xiao shook his head.

He focused his mind and went back to business, putting the information he read into the storage device.

Although his devices lost internet connection, they still functioned. He wanted to see if he could go around the memory capacity limit of the Sanctums by storing information in his hardware.

Han Xiao quickly stored the technology he acquired into the storage device, then started to touch another light sphere to read its information. The new technology he acquired once again replaced some information in his mind.

Then, Han Xiao opened the storage device and saw that the same information disappeared in it too.

“Looks like this doesn’t work either… Be it the human brain, mechanical hardware, or anything else, as long as it’s an information transmission medium, the part of information will be wiped no matter what. It’s similar to how Destiny’s Child works, just in a more advanced way. It’s one of the principles of the High Dimensional Information Form…”

Han Xiao then tried a few more times using different methods, but nothing worked, so he had no choice but to let go of this thought.

He put the storage device away, stopped making meaningless tries, and looked around the Sanctum. He nodded.

The Sanctum revival was successful, what Jayz said was verified, he found out about part of the mechanisms of the Sanctums, and his memory capacity reached the limit. From how Han Xiao looked at it, his goal of entering the Sanctum was basically achieved. It was about time to leave through the gate he came from.

Just as he was about to move, he suddenly had a flash of insight and realized a problem.

“Wait a minute. I knew about the Sanctums’ origin, the contributions of the Savior Civilization and the Sanctum Civilization, and how they passed on the knowledge from Jayz… but how did Oathkeeper find out?

“If the information he has only came from reading the light spheres, with so many light spheres here and the memory capacity limit, it should most likely be incomplete…”

Han Xiao frowned.

The Sanctum did not just record the final civilization of an Iteration but all civilizations of every Iteration. As long as they once existed, they would be recorded whether they were weak or strong, unlike the information of individuals.

This meant that only an extremely few light spheres contained the information about the origin of the Sanctums and The Great Reboot.

According to Han Xiao’s experience of reading so many light spheres, if not because he found out about the full picture from Jayz, he would most likely not have been able to combine them into this much information just by reading the light spheres. The memory capacity limit was the main reason.

However, Oathkeeper’s authority level in the Third Sanctum was far lower than his; unless he got extremely lucky and touched one of the ‘final civilizations’, there was no way he would know so much. Therefore, Han Xiao started to have doubts about Oathkeeper’s source of information—he did not believe that b*stard would be so lucky, or he would not have taken so many years to collect all the Sanctum keys.

Han Xiao pondered. The moment he doubted why the Sanctums existed, a change suddenly occurred!

Buzz!

The Sanctum mark on his hand suddenly flickered and shot out streams of light like silk that formed a translucent light curtain hovering before him.

“Hmm? What’s this?”

Han Xiao looked at it closely.

Chains of symbols that he could not understand appeared on the curtain. The language seemed to have changed every few paragraphs. Han Xiao could read none of them.

However, the next second, all these symbols turned into the common Galaxy language.

“It can automatically change into a language the reader understands, another Information Form mechanism, I see…”

Han Xiao focused and read from top to bottom. He realized that the contents of the Sanctums and the Iterations were right at the top, clearly explaining the full story. It was basically completely the same with what Jayz said, only more detailed.

Reading further, gaps started to appear every now and then. The further down he read, the more gaps there were.

After reading it for a while, Han Xiao roughly understood what was going on.

“I see, what this light curtain records are the last words of the final civilization of every Iteration. This thing is probably a special message board that passes down the important experiences of final civilizations to the next generations.

“These messages should be arranged according to time. The earliest messages are at the top, basic and the most crucial information about the origins of the Sanctums and the Iteration. This is basically the source of the information Oathkeeper knows… The lower it gets, the closer the messages are to the current Iteration, and the more random gaps there are. This is probably also related to the level of authority. The gaps will only decrease with a high level of authority.”

Han Xiao suddenly understood the purpose of the message board—to record the order of the Iterations and let those that came after quickly understand the origins of the Sanctums and the Great Reboot. That way, they did not have to randomly touch light spheres and piece the puzzle together themselves. Those that came after could learn from their experiences and make fewer mistakes.

This message board should be the main platform for the relay between the final civilizations of the various Iterations!

Han Xiao rubbed his chin and said with surprise, “This message board doesn’t feel like it came from the Sanctum itself but a change created by the later Iterations…”

Jayz had once said that because the Sanctums were eternal, many final civilizations saw the Sanctums as a breakthrough point and carried out all kinds of plans around it. That caused the Sanctums to ‘mutate’ and gain new functions. The Sanctum’s revival function might be one of them, since the class of the revival targets was not restricted by the different types of Sanctums.

This message board was very likely one of the mutated functions too. Through reading, he realized many civilizations did indeed carry out plans concerning the Sanctums. The first civilization to leave a message clearly conveyed in the message that it was the first to discover the message board function, and there were light spheres of civilizations in earlier Iterations than them.

The first civilization also briefly described the basic mechanisms and functions of the Sanctums, such as the required keys of the other Sanctums. As Han Xiao expected, the Sanctum fragments represented the level of authority.

Even Beyond Grade As occasionally receiving a feeling that Sanctums existed was a mutated function so that the following Iterations could come in contact with the Sanctums earlier and have more time to prepare.

At the same time, the final civilizations in the later Iterations also continued the work of introducing the functions of the Sanctums, adding new mutated functions on the message board. However, most of them were incomplete, and Han Xiao could not see them.

“All the rulers of the Iterations were leading the path for those who came after them…”

Han Xiao’s eyes flickered and looked at the light curtain again with different emotions.

[Today is the day to carry out the ███ Plan. Hope everything goes smoothly.]

[Will the ███ really work? We’re not actually confident…]

[The Rebirth Plan is based on ███. According to our calculations, our success rate is only at about 1.44%. Maybe we’ve not studied it enough and won’t make it through the Great Reboot, but the technology of the Rebirth Plan will be recorded by the Sanctums. We hope those who come after us can continue to study it. The name of our civilization is ███.]

[We’re the ███ Civilization. The Great Reboot has begun; all of this is not a lie. We are using the remainder of our time to leave this message. Our plan will fail. It proves that the ███ technology won’t work. Don’t take our path, it’s a dead end!]

On the light curtain, there were messages full of hope, messages that sounded unconfident, and messages that analyzed the path they took…

Looking at these messages, Han Xiao could almost feel the emotions these civilizations were going through when leaving them. They suppressed their anxiety, despair, and fear, forcing themselves to calm down and leave the knowledge they had to those who came after…

“This must be the true meaning of ‘A Relay Across Iterations’… What an incredible history.”

At this time, Han Xiao finally had a deeper understanding of the name of this mission. He felt complicated and could not help but respect these civilizations.

“Maybe one day in the future, the three Universal Civilizations will leave a message here too… hmm, or the World Tree Civilization?”

Han Xiao sighed, calmed his emotions, and started searching for messages related to the Celestial Star Alliance.

As the messages were arranged by time, he wanted to see where the Celestial Star Alliance came in and how many Iterations they were away.

He read one message after another, and when he came to the fifth last message, he saw the related information.

As this was relatively recent, the messages below were mostly empty. But he saw the familiar phrase ‘World Reset Plan’, which was the Celestial Star Alliance’s plan to get through the Great Reboot.

“Fifth last, huh. This means that the Celestial Star Alliance is at most four Iterations before us, or the last Iteration before us at minimum…”

Han Xiao nodded.

As one Iteration could leave multiple messages, he did not know who wrote the last few messages. It might be other Iterations or the Celestial Star Alliance. Originally, he could judge from their language as the same language would mean they were from the same Iteration, but the message board had already translated all of them into the Galaxy’s general language. Han Xiao tried to but could not turn them back to their original language; he did not know if there was no such function or his level of authority was not high enough. Either way, there was nothing he could do.

The last few messages were filled with blanks. The only valuable piece of information was a phrase in the middle of the last paragraph.

[██████ Information Form becoming real. This is the right path ██████]

Han Xiao scratched his head and did not know what to say.

“Information Form conversion… Both the Intelligent Plague and the Sanctum revival function should share this trait. However, this message actually said this path is the right one… If it really is, how did you guys perish?”

Han Xiao sighed.

He pondered for a while. He then tried to leave a message on the light curtain, but it did not respond.

“Hmm, speaking of which, all the messages on this light curtain are from civilizations, no individuals. I wonder if my authority level is not enough to leave a message, or are the messages left by individuals not recorded by the message board?”

Since there was no way of figuring that now, Han Xiao could only put this question aside and close the message board.

The goal of this trip was mostly achieved. To him, the biggest thing he acquired this time was that he recorded the full methods to open the other Sanctums with his authority level, which was much higher than Oathkeeper’s.

Due to the limit of memory capacity, he would probably have to wait till the next time he entered if he wanted to acquire more things.

“I hope I can see other Sanctums next time. The First Sanctum would be best; my authority level there is quite high too.”

Han Xiao mumbled to himself and returned to the stabilized Sanctum gate.

He glanced at the Sanctum, then turned around and flew into the gate.

When the bright light filled Han Xiao’s sights once again, in the short moment his consciousness was blurry, he only had one thought.

“I’ve stayed in the Sanctum for five hours at most. I wonder how much time has passed in the universe…”