Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse

Chapter 1438 - 711: The World of Crimson Crystal (7,000 Words!)_2

”Yeah.”

Xu Ying nodded slightly.

”This giant ship, along with those three that were destroyed, probably fought inside the time–space turbulence for a very long time.”

Xu Xin rubbed his chin, where a faint stubble had already grown.

Time–space turbulence scrambles not just space, but time as well.

Once you’re swept into it, the flow of time becomes chaotic—so this guess is pretty reasonable.

He remembered when he eavesdropped on that commander; the commander had said that this one and only returning giant ship was already running out of energy and needed a refill.

At the time he just thought it was because the ship had burned a massive amount of energy resisting the time–space turbulence.

But thinking about it now, from departure to return, it had been less than three hours.

With a ship this huge, even if it had been in combat, burning through all its energy in just three hours feels a bit too off.

With how cautious that alien invader commander is, there’s no way he hadn’t prepared more than enough energy, right?

But if things are like what Yingying guessed...

”Those huge tanks outside with insanely high temperatures, some even glowing red, are the result of long-term overload cruising; and that cooling device I casually stored in my wristband...”

Xu Xin turned his wristband around.

”Was actually a temporary cooling unit they added just to cope with the excess heat?” Li Wenxi picked up the thread, suddenly enlightened. ”And those alien invader corpses that have been dead for over seven days... thinking about it this way, it really does make sense!”

”So, those three destroyed giant ships might also have held out in the time–space turbulence for a long time, instead of being wiped out in such a short span.” Xu Xin muttered to himself.

”I knew it.” Li Wenxi said with understanding. ”How could the alien invaders’ giant ships be that weak, gone in just a few hours?”

”But didn’t you say before that this space is cut off from the outside world?” Xu Xin asked.

”The space is, but the time isn’t,” Xu Ying said. ”The alien invaders don’t have the ability to traverse time, so they definitely can’t create a giant ship that’s immune to time turbulence.”

This hypothesis could basically explain almost everything they’d encountered so far.

”Then it should be like that.”

The giant ship passed through the Transmission Array’s beam of light, intending to annihilate the humans living in that World Tree with overwhelming force.

But they hadn’t expected that just as they were transmitted over and were about to emerge from the Transmission Array, they would be caught by the tentacles of some unknown gigantic beast and dragged back into the Transmission Array.

Maybe they went through a fierce battle; or maybe, at the very instant they were dragged in, all four giant ships were swept into the time–space turbulence.

And the material of the ships protected them from the spatial chaos.

But it couldn’t block the chaos of time.

So they were trapped in the time–space turbulence for a long time.

Maybe for over a dozen days, or several dozen, or even a hundred days, or more.

Time could be so wildly disordered that even different areas inside the same ship might have completely different time flows.

And during that period, the ships kept running at full speed to resist the terrifying time–space turbulence.

This caused their power systems to overheat for long stretches, and their built-in cooling systems couldn’t keep up, forcing them to find other ways to cool down—hence the small cooling gadget now in Xu Xin’s wristband.

During this stretch of time, some of the alien invaders inside the ships also died for various reasons.

Just like the hundred or so alien invaders they’d run into before, and these two now crushed underfoot.

They showed signs of having been dead for more than seven days, their bodies left inside the ship, with no one to claim or bury them.

Because the ship had only just returned, and before that, the remaining alien invaders onboard were all busy trying to save their own skins—who would bother collecting the corpses?

And once they were back, all the remaining alien invader soldiers disembarked at once and stayed in that city surrounding the Transmission Array, while the ship flew tens of kilometers at once and stopped in the desert.

The guy piloting the ship probably never wants it to come near that Transmission Array again for the rest of his life.

Of the four giant ships, only one made it back—truly a brush with death.

This very likely was the truth.

”Putting it that way, they really are miserable, kind of pitiful.”

Even as Li Wenxi said that, her face was all smiles, her eyes curved into crescents. ”No wonder that alien invader commander went so berserk after coming back, totally losing any leader’s demeanor. Anyone in his shoes would snap.”

”If that’s really the case, then these alien invaders totally had it coming.” Xu Ying laughed too. ”They just wanted to take out a human World Tree, and ended up paying a massive price—way worse than anything they faced roaming the universe.”

”Yeah, four ships and only one came back, all beat up and with loads of casualties.” Li Wenxi sighed.

”We humans are really lucky.” Xu Xin chuckled.

”Is it really just luck...”

Xu Ying gave Xu Xin a long, deep look.

She kept feeling that the gigantic beast that dragged all four giant ships into the time–space turbulence... should actually be the work of her real brother, the Xu Xin from another timeline.

She didn’t know how he did it, but...

There’s no way that beast just happened to live in the cracks of time–space and pulled a random giant ship for fun, right?

”Alright, now that the temperature has almost dropped, it’s time for our next step.” Xu Xin said.