As Yu Sheng walked forward, an unsettling feeling rose within him. It was as if the whole world had vanished, leaving only the corridor before him and the dim, reddish light at its far end.
Black Forest, the Orphanage, Boundary City… All of it seemed to fade away. It was as though those places belonged to another reality, and this new “world” had already collapsed beyond repair.
His footsteps echoed. From somewhere up ahead came the cry of an infant. Over time, the sound no longer seemed as jarring, as though he had grown accustomed to it.
Foxy walked beside him, holding Irene, who in turn held Squirrel. Together, they passed through the reddish glow at the corridor’s end and entered the final Door deep within the Anka Aila Vessel.
It was labeled the “Umbilical Cord” connection bay.
A strange, specialized “chamber” spread out before Yu Sheng. In truth, it looked more like a maintenance platform in the middle of a tall vertical shaft—just as “Hunter” had described. The floor was a ring-shaped platform, shrouded above by a darkness that seemed endless. From that darkness, a thick silver-white structure dangled. It was made of two main pipes and countless smaller cables and bundles. This “Cord” dropped through an opening in the center of the ring-shaped floor, extending down into the depths below.
Yu Sheng moved forward with caution, stopping at the edge of the platform to peer into the hollow center. He gazed upon the so-called “Umbilical Cord.”
“This thing looks like a pipeline for transporting materials,” Irene remarked. From Foxy’s arms, she craned her neck to stare curiously. “It has so many cables… Is this the Dark Angels’ ‘Umbilical Cord’?”
Yu Sheng said nothing. He only rested his hand against the guardrail and looked down. The cord extended far below, into a place too deep to see clearly. Dim, hazy lights glimmered in the darkness, hinting at a faintly translucent dome far beneath, glowing with weak radiance.
Foxy soon noticed it as well. She tugged on Yu Sheng’s sleeve. “Benefactor! The pipe there—look, it’s broken. Anka Aila has been searching for its ‘Umbilical Cord.’ Maybe this is the reason.”
“It probably is,” Yu Sheng muttered with a frown. Then, at that exact moment, a wave of dizziness struck him again.
His vision blurred, and the ring-shaped floor beneath his feet turned into a “bone-like layer” coated in a sticky dark-red substance. The chamber’s walls seemed to melt into a fleshy surface, like the inside of a living organ. The silver “connection bundle” became a cluster of thick blood vessels and nerves. Its fractured portion quivered in midair, as though in pain. And at the edge of the pit in the center of the floor, something like a “hand” slid into view. It was difficult to call it a real hand—more a strange shape that resembled one.
Yu Sheng froze. An instant later, the eerie sight vanished, and the chamber returned to normal.
Irene and Squirrel cried out in surprise. Behind them, Foxy’s tail flared open with a loud poof.
“Holy—” the little doll exclaimed, looking pale. “That really scared me!”
Yu Sheng frowned. During that brief vision, he had heard something—a soft whisper, as if a voice were trying to tell him something. [Is it Anka Aila? Or is it that ‘child’ forming in the dark beneath the Umbilical Cord?]
He hesitated, then leaned forward and reached out toward the silver-white bundle.
“Benefactor, be careful!” Foxy cautioned from the side.
“It’s all right. I can sense it won’t harm us,” Yu Sheng said. He pressed his hand against the surface of the Umbilical Cord. “The one who’s really afraid here isn’t us. It’s—”
He never finished the thought.
A sudden, violent sensation of weightlessness hit him, cutting him off. The ring-shaped platform at the center collapsed without warning.
Yu Sheng barely had time to shout before he plunged through the air. Splintered floor sections and twisted guardrails fell with him. From above, he heard Foxy and Irene shriek, along with the roaring wind in his ears. A glimpse of motion showed Squirrel jumping in after him.
Yu Sheng tumbled through endless darkness, his mind spinning. [Will Squirrel be all right? She just jumped down—how reckless— No, she’ll be fine. Foxy can fly—]
Before the thought finished, he slammed into something: the Umbilical Cord.
Once again, his hand brushed against that broken section.
“…Long ago, we fled from our home. My memory begins when the Creators lit the engines.”
A calm, low voice, drained of all emotion, cut through Yu Sheng’s chaotic thoughts.
In that moment, all color drained from his surroundings.
A world of black, white, and gray descended. Yu Sheng found himself floating in a gray, misty shaft. There was no top or bottom in sight. In the hazy distance, faint images came into view, like memories surfacing from a deep ocean.
A massive ark switched on its engines and drifted away from a giant, artificial structure—almost like a man-made celestial body—suspended in the infinite darkness of space. Behind it, the stars blazed and trembled, as though they might collapse at any moment.
A terrifying rift cut across the cosmos from some unknown dark region, slashing the starry sky apart.
Every scene was drained of color, as if viewed during a Conversation With The Dead. Yet from the cosmic tear, Yu Sheng somehow perceived a splash of searing red, as if that hue could pierce space-time, life, and death alike, imprinting itself directly onto the core of all things.
In the next moment, he saw the ark become a point of light among the stars, speeding up in that fragmenting universe.
Not just a single point of light.
Thousands of them were escaping in every direction under the same sky.
“We are ‘Anka Aila.’ That name was bestowed on us by the Creators. In your language, it can be directly translated as ‘Ark,’” the low voice continued.
“There were 13,500 vessels named Anka Aila, all launching at once.
“We carried ‘seeds’ from our Homeworld, searching for a place to sow them.
“That was the Creators’ command to us.”
Yu Sheng watched as those bright spots engaged their warp drives, each one traveling faster than light. Yet none could outrun that cosmic rift tearing through reality.
The lights winked out in droves. In just a few breaths, the countless arks became mere flickers of heat in the silence after destruction.
After that, events grew even harder to comprehend.
He saw some arks strike an invisible barrier, disintegrating mid-travel without any sign of attack, dissolving into scattered rays of light.
He saw other arks strangely “reset” back to the moment of departure, only to hover in space, empty and motionless, before the cosmic crack devoured them.
He saw one ark—maybe the very last—tossed about in a swirl of twisted, maddening light. Like a small bird in a storm, it was flung vast distances, eventually landing in a vacuum.
He saw it begin to fall. He saw it warp from the inside out. In one instant, it sprouted flesh; in the next, it became a shadow of nothingness. He saw it torn by an unseen force into countless fragments, each fragment a miniature “Anka Aila.” Then, in a blink, the shards merged again into a cold glow.
It shifted through countless shapes, becoming something indescribable—like scrambled data in a system.
At some point, it learned to think, in a way that was chaotic and broken.
Yu Sheng found himself conversing with it.
He came face to face with its mind.
Then, more images surfaced through the gray mist. Yu Sheng drifted downward until he felt himself on solid ground. He walked forward, and the fog parted.
He saw it there: a mass that defied easy description. It lay curled on a pale bed, a twisted bundle of countless limbs, claws, wings, tails—like every creature from an entire ecosystem had been fused into one. It hovered at the edge of logic and imagination.
Above this “Angel’s Fetus” floated a severed Umbilical Cord. It stretched from the Fetus’s surface and drifted upward into the gray haze.
“…That is my child,” the calm, low voice said softly. “Isn’t it lovely?”
Yu Sheng did not respond. He simply gazed at the giant lump of flesh.
How could he answer? What was there to say?
Perhaps it had been dead from the very first moment it was conceived.
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation