Chapter 229 – Fearless

The black man was dressed in a special white armor and it looked like it could serve as an astronaut suit once the helmet part was sealed. It didn’t look heavy and was probably not made from metal.

Everyone was still in a daze when the black man became impatient and snapped, “Damn it, is this a side effect from being in hibernation for too long? Have your memories been affected?”

All of them were still confused, and Su Jin was the first to speak, “Sir, my head feels really heavy and dizzy. Could you tell us where we are and what we’re supposed to be doing?”

The black man smacked his forehead and grumbled, “Damn it. They’re seriously having side effects from hibernation.”

He looked back at them and asked puzzledly, “So… none of you remember anything?”

All of them shook their heads immediately. Even though they had agreed not to work together, this was a situation where everyone was going to play along with Su Jin. Everyone desperately needed all the information they could get.

The black man mumbled, “Is the hibernation period too long? Looks like we’ve got to wake the crew up from time to time, or it’s going to be chaos.”

He looked at them again, sorted his thoughts out, then explained, “Hello everyone, I’m the third captain of this ship, Fearless. During this time, I will be in charge of managing the ship, so I’ll introduce everything to you right now.

“Fearless is the greatest thing mankind has produced ever since we entered the Space Age. Warp drive has enabled our speed of travelling in outer space to exceed that of light for the first time, so space travel has become reality.

“After that, the world government trained a group of the most outstanding humans, including botanists, historians, geographers, linguists, sociologists; the most excellent of spacecraft operators, the best artisans, and the bravest fighters. In short, the world government has prepared a group of elites to live on Fearless.

“Fearless has begun its journey based on the calculations of cosmologists, so you could say that we’re the first batch of humans in space. Our mission is…

“To find energy sources! Find a new planet suitable for human inhabitation! Search for extraterrestrial lifeforms!” said one of the members of Team Volcano Mountain excitedly. He looked like he was in his twenties and wore a pair of gold rimmed spectacles, which made him look rather studious, or rather, very nerdy. He seemed very interested in stuff like that.

But the black man shook his head and said, “Based on the dark forest hypothesis that our ancestors have come up with, humans have no right to conduct such a search expedition until our technology reaches a high enough level.”

“Dark forest hypothesis?” Some of them didn’t understand what this was.

The man in gold rimmed spectacles immediately explained, “The total amount of resources in the universe doesn’t change, but the development of any civilization requires resources. In order to fight for resources, once a civilization discovers another and finds that it is a weaker one, they would kill the weaker one off. Thus, every civilization views the universe as a dark forest, where everyone is both the hunter and the hunted, so they tremble in the darkness and tread very carefully.”

The black man nodded slightly and said, “That’s right. To a certain extent, the dark forest hypothesis has some biases, but it’s still something that’s very likely to happen. Our ancestors used their own imagination to write science fiction stories based on this hypothesis. My favorite one makes this concept a beautiful and magnificent one, yet something extremely thought provoking.”

“Are you talking about the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series? It was pretty good. I liked it very much too,” blurted Su Jin. The man in gold rimmed spectacles nodded immediately to express his agreement.

The black man laughed and said, “Looks like you’re all beginning to regain your memories.”

Su Jin smiled and shook his head. “It’s still in bits and pieces, so we’ll still need you to continue explaining things to us.”

The black man nodded and went on, “Our journey is not for the sake of those things mentioned earlier. We are looking for God!”

“God?” Everyone had a strange look on their faces. They didn’t expect a sci-fi related Challenge to mention the Creator from folklore.

But there was a glint in Su Jin’s eyes. “This God you’re talking about is… referring to a species, right? It’s not the existence of one particular being but… the existence of a species that’s as good as God to humans.”

The black man nodded slightly and Su Jin looked even more puzzled. This matched the storyline of the movie Prometheus almost perfectly, plus the title of the Challenge was Alien Invasion too. Did this Challenge merge all the Alien movies together? Was the Handbook actually copying movie scripts now?

“Are we close to our target now?” asked the leader of Team Volcano Mountain.

The black man shook his head and said, “No, we’ve already found God!”

The entire place fell silent and Su Jin’s eyes widened.

“Damn,” he thought. “If this is going according to the plot of Prometheus, then it means that the aliens are already on the spaceship. But if that is so, why does he look like he hasn’t been attacked yet?” Su Jin was very puzzled.

“We’ve found God?” asked Wu Chen quizzically as he raised an eyebrow.

The black man smiled as he looked at them and said, “Of course we haven’t found the real God yet, but we’ve found God’s book of Genesis!

“Based on the folklores from different races and historical records analyzed by historians, sociologists and linguists, astrologers and cosmologists have calculated a position in outer space. That position is called the Hiding Place of God!

“A large number of historical records and antiques have left clues that show that the ancient deities talked about in history disappeared in the same part of space, and that is the Hiding Place of God.”

He licked his lips and looked like he was having trouble staying calm. “This is Fearless’ only mission – we must get to the Hiding Place of God and find the truth behind the folklore from ancient times.”

“The best case scenario would be for us to find some deities, while the worst case scenario would be for us to return to nothing. We started travelling at the speed of light toward the Hiding Place of God, and after we started doing that, all of us automatically went into hibernation mode because that will help to extend our lifespan.

“And finally, 132 years later, we arrived at the Hiding Place of God. That was a giant planet that was very similar to Earth. Or rather, it looked more like a magnified version of Earth.

“The gravity pull, the composition of the air, the timing of the planet’s rotation etc. were identical to Earth’s and it even had the same vegetation as Earth. This was truly a miracle, especially since this planet was only a little more than a hundred light years away. Yet, humans had failed to notice the existence of this planet and had to discover it from calculations and by going there.”

Everyone listening knew that this was merely a Challenge, but they were still rather surprised. A copy of Earth actually existed more than a hundred light years away? That was really interesting.

“What about animals? Did you discover any living animals? Were they similar to the ones on Earth too?” asked the man with gold rimmed glasses excitedly.

But the black man’s expression faltered at this point. He nodded and said, “We did discover some animals, but… perhaps they were once closely related to the ones we know on Earth, but they’re very different now.

“For safety, the main spaceship did not land on the planet. Instead, we sent a smaller survey ship with a large number of fighters and scholars out. Immediately after they landed, they attracted the attention of the creatures on the planet. The creatures got into groups and attacked us at once. There were so many different sorts of creatures, we didn’t even have the time to record everything. Also, they were very good at fighting, so we lost a lot of people on first contact.

“There were gigantic insects, birds that resembled fighter gets, fog-like creatures that could appear and disappear at will. Our fighters were getting slaughtered. In order to win and to stay alive, the nuclear bombs on the survey ship were detonated. This cleared some land and they were able to take this chance to get out of there.”

Everyone was really shocked. If a simple survey ship carried nuclear bombs, the main ship would definitely be even more powerful.

The black man continued, “Given the circumstances, it would have been impossible for us to survey this planet at all. But that wasn’t the end of our journey. We discovered a satellite orbiting the planet, which resembles our moon. Everywhere that the moonlight shone on, the creatures would avoid immediately, which created a giant area of nothingness.

“And after testing, the moonlight seemed to contain a hidden energy that was able to kill the creatures, but this hidden energy was completely harmless to us. So, we continued our mission based on the movement of the moon. That was how we were able to conduct our survey normally.

“The survey process was very smooth. We discovered some relics built by intelligent creatures as well. But the planet is too large. If we wanted to finish exploring the entire planet, it would take way more than one tiny Fearless. Even if all of mankind moved to this planet, you would still need a few centuries or more to do that.

“As we went through the survey, we understood more and more about this planet. The shocking part was that this planet was actually a dead planet. A deity-like being came to this planet and transformed it so that this dead planet was able to become a livable planet. That’s almost like creating the world, so I think calling these beings ‘God’ wouldn’t be an exaggeration, would it?”

Everyone nodded. Pulling off something like this was as good as creating the world. These beings were creators like God, so it made sense for the black man to say that Fearless was here to look for God.

“But later on, we realized that this species was able to transform this planet not by their own abilities, but by relying on a book, which is the Book of Genesis that I mentioned earlier.

“We didn’t find a lot of relics, but introductions to the Book of Genesis were everywhere. The linguists on board Fearless did their best to decode the language in hope of unravelling this mystery, but we didn’t have enough resources to do so. Fearless is merely a spaceship after all. It’s too hard to support their work in understanding the full mystery behind this book. Also, this was a heavy burden on Fearless as well. That planet is very similar to Earth, but without any means to manufacture and all that, it’s too hard for us to maintain a steady supply of resources to the people on the planet.

“We were disappointed and pained because we felt like we had let our fellow humans down. But luckily…” The black man suddenly became excited as he started pressing some buttons on a watch-like item on his wrist. A beam of light shone from the watch like a projection. “Luckily, we got ourselves a copy of the Book of Genesis!”

Su Jin and the rest couldn’t help but gasp when they saw the projection of the Book of Genesis. The words inscribed on the cover were in a language that none of them could understand, but based on the book’s design and color, that… that was definitely a copy of Hell’s Handbook!