Ai Er Ge was annoyed: “Didn’t I say I can only handle one! I’m exhausted!” There was no solar energy here, so his mental energy recharge was taking particularly long. He’d wanted to grab Xuan Mo’s hand earlier, but she flung his hand off cruelly, eliciting snickers from around.
How wronged he was! He’d just wanted to recharge some mental energy, he was on the verge of collapsing!
Suddenly, a soft hand held his, and slowly channelled some mental energy into him. Ai Er Ge’s eyes widened, but was instead greeted with Xuan Mo’s cold expression: “Ai Er Ge, I saw it.” She saw the Galactic Door.
“What? How do you know what it looks like?” He’d mentioned before, every Galactic Door would look different depending on the environment it was in. In fact, it would blend straight into its surroundings, only Ai Er Ge would be able to locate it with his mental powers. However, Ai Er Ge had been too beside himself with worry that not only would he not be able to find the Galactic Door, he would also accidentally reveal himself.
One of Xuan Mo’s hand held Ai Er Ge’s hand, the other stuck itself into the soil, brought up a big chunk, and knocked it: “This entire cave, is the door.”
“Why?”
Xuan Mo pulled Ai Er Ge to the entrance of the cave, and covered his eyes with her other hand to coat a layer of mental energy across his vision. Afterwhich, she pointed at the deepest end of the cave: “There, there’s a stone there, is that your coordinate?”
Ai Er Ge raised his head at a 60-degree angle and stared for a full minute before he figured out which stone Xuan Mo was referring to. He squinted and stared at the stone for a while, trying to make out the writings on it, before he widened his eyes, his voice glum: “Insane, how did you even find that in such a large cave like this. This, this is our coordinate stone, but why is it just a stone carved with coordinates?”
The Galactic Door was a stone gate that was filled with coordinates. It came in all sorts of forms and shapes, but the stone must be whole, and the centre of the stone must be empty, this was such that Elgeian people could pass through.
The stone that Xuan Mo pointed out to him however looked like a small piece that had fallen off from the Galactic Door, and was later pressed into the soil dozens of metres above ground by a busybody.
“Is the Galactic Door destroyed?” Ai Er Ge mumbled, “that doesn’t make sense though, it’s normal for small stones like this to chip off the gate, but why is it this shattered?”
“I’ve seen 27 coordinate stones.” Xuan Mo spoke expressionlessly, “I don’t understand the coordinate stones, your people have your own system of understanding, but I have a feeling, the Galactic Door is still perfectly intact.”
Ai Er Ge looked at the direction that Xuan Mo had pointed and saw the various coordinate stones, a little confused: “It’s not laid out in any particular order, these are all just parts that were chipped off.”
“No, it might be deliberately placed like this, and this cave, the hole, is the Galactic Door.” Xuan Mo spoke, “there are lots of minerals and metals that may be of similar material, if I’m not wrong, the soil can link up each of the coordinate stones, and create a gate-like network, with the cave as the centre, to create the Galactic Door. You’re too bogged down by past knowledge. As long as it works, it can take up any form.”
“You’re speaking as though you’ve seen them before. Didn’t we say you’re not gonna use your mental powers?”
“So when you can’t use your mental powers, you won’t even trust your own analysis and guts?” Xuan Mo sent Ai Er Ge a look of disdain. “That’s why you can only roll around on the ground with the King Bee, but the King Bee isn’t any threat to me.”
“…” Ai Er Ge had a complicated expression on his face. If he’d watched Tarzan of the Apes, or King Kong, he definitely would be beating his chest and howling at the sky.
“Say, once y’all are done flirting, care to suggest what’s to do next.” Someone behind them spoke, unsatisfied.
Zhao Jing Lei looked at them with a dark expression: “Don’t make light of us single people!”
“Captain, I’ve got a wife.” One of the combatants raised his hand and spoke honestly.
“I, I, I have one too.”
“I’m getting married soon.” Yi Fei spoke.
“When did you get a girlfriend? Why didn’t you tell me!” Zhao Jing Lei looked hurt, “goodness gracious, even Yi Fei can get a girl, why am I still single…”
Yi Fei didn’t get angry at his remark, and instead replied earnestly: “You look like you’re out of everyone’s league, not anyone would dare to try.”
“I’ve always thought that you’d marry the research equipment.”
“…” Yi Fei got angry this time. And he demonstrated his anger by sending Zhao Jing Lei a hard kick.
When the bunch of them were done jostling around, Xuan Mo spoke, her expression dark: “You guys sure know how to improve the atmosphere.”
“Can’t help it, the bunch of them aren’t dead yet…” Zhao Jing Lei pointed outwards.
“What happens after they’re dead? You guys gonna fight the monsters physically?”
“That’s why we need to discuss what’s gonna happen next. We don’t even know what that is, and not everyone should be getting into a fight. Ai Er Ge said earlier too, even if you want to punch through its armour, you need some special abilities…”
“Alright, I’ll tell you the solution.” Xuan Mo squinted, “I want to be the commander.”
Zhao Jing Lei paused. He’d never seen such a shameless usurp attempt before, but Xuan Mo’s tone was grave, and it was so serious he couldn’t help but think through the feasibility of letting her take the lead, and what were the other procedures required as a result of this decision.
But Xuan Mo didn’t bother about what Zhao Jing Lei had to consider. To her, letting her lead a team was something the entire Coalition couldn’t get even if they begged her. Much less a team of only a dozen blue planet beings. What’s there to even consider?
And so, while Zhao Jing Lei fell into deep contemplation, Xuan Mo had already began dishing out orders.
“Later on, you, you and you, attack the people in the hole. The remaining people, follow me, rush over and attack the monster.”
“Why, aren’t we just seeking death?”
Xuan Mo didn’t bother replying. Instead, she asked: “When you attack the people in the hole, don’t bother aiming, just pretend you’re attacking and shoot a few times. After that, run over to attack the monster, they’ll understand.”
“You want them to lure them out and attack the monster too? What if they don’t understand?”
“They will.” Xuan Mo was sure. When she noticed that the person had more questions to ask, “don’t suspect your commander, and don’t question. All you need to do is to obey, even if the instructions are sending you to your death.”
“…”
“Now, are we ready?”
“Yes…” A few of them replied, their spirits not particularly high.
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