Chapter 356: The Real Megacorp

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

After establishing contact with the fleet two million light-years away, Li Wenyuan first saw a dilapidated spaceship and a local resident who was scared to death of it.

To be precise, it was a sudden death caused by cardiac arrest. A physiological scan of the resident showed that the nerves used to control the diastolic muscles of the heart had been violently stimulated in a short period of time, directly causing the heart to stop beating.

However, this was only a direct inducement. In fact, the scan also showed that the local resident had been working hard for a long time and his heart had been overworked for many years.

There was also an old-fashioned pacemaker above his heart. From the looks of it, it had been used for at least 20 years. This meant that the local resident actually knew what was going on in his body.

However, this old pacemaker stopped working about five years ago. He did not change it. He might have known about this, but the pressure from ail aspects finally made him ignore the time bomb in his heart.

Li Wenyuan’s orders for this batch of advance party spaceships didn’t include firing. They only followed the instructions and monitored the unknown units that approached them.

The thing that the natives thought was a cannon muzzle was actually an external scanning device. The so-called energy gathering was just his imagination. As long as he held on for a little longer, the artificial intelligence on the spacecraft would judge him as a no-threat target and launch humanitarian relief the moment it detected that his vital signs were deteriorating rapidly.

Unfortunately, his body, which could no longer bear the burden, decided to leave just like that, and he became a lonely soul in space.

Li Wenyuan didn’t have much of a reaction to this. The death of an individual was just an insignificant thing in the vast galaxy. He could roughly guess the reason why this native chose to approach the battleship. There were still many old spaceships that fled in all directions in the galaxy. This native didn’t do what others did. His gambling mentality became a fatal trigger this time.

After establishing contact with this advanced fleet, the entire fleet began their secret exploration according to the plan. A total of more than 200 armed scientific research ships headed to different galaxies.

Although it was called an armed scientific research ship, it was actually called a battleship with scientific scanning equipment. Although its ability to detect abnormalities and collect data was weaker than a specialized spaceship, its combat ability had significantly improved.

This was an improvement that Li Wenyuan had made in order to explore these unknown galaxies. If necessary, he didn’t want to cause too much commotion.

At the same time as the exploration, there was also the extraction of the memories of the native. The most convenient way was to directly understand the situation of this galaxy from the memories of the native. That native was obviously a species of civilization at least in the interstellar space era.

Thus, the relevant memories were converted into data and sent to Li Wenyuan. He also began investigating the possible suspicious points in this memory and obtained a preliminary understanding of this galaxy.

However, what surprised him was that the memories of this native were too flat. They were so flat that he could not find any abnormalities or obtain much useful information.

Although he had never expected to find an abnormality just by extracting a person’s memories, his main goal was to understand the general situation of the galaxy. Unfortunately, this native did not even have this part in his memories.

[I’m a member of the Miner Clan. My serial number is U1E25Z99. U means that we belong to the Ui class. E25 and Z99 mean that our predecessors have undergone genetic modifications of underground life adaptation and extraordinary endurance. The people above said that we were born to mine.]

This was the native’s self-awareness. He didn’t have a name, or rather, the people around him didn’t have names. They all called each other by code names, and only those at the higher levels were qualified to have names.

[Our development is very fast. From birth to being able to operate mining machinery, it only takes three years. The foreman told us that this is so that we can repay the company faster.]

After that, there were decades of darkness.

At first, Li Wenyuan even thought that there was a data error in his memory. After looking at it carefully, he realized that this native had actually been mining underground ever since. He had never left the ground from the beginning to the end.

The chaotic lights and the numbing life day after day made this memory almost forgotten. There were only blurry lights and shadows and the sound of knocking on stones in this memory.

[The foreman said that the company has a new welfare policy. As long as we can work underground for 20 years, we can advance from Ui to U2. It’s said that once we reach this level, we can leave this place and mine elsewhere.]

The natives in his memory seemed to be the happiest during this period. Even the colors of his memories seemed to have become much brighter.

However, after that, there was an even longer knocking sound. It was so long that even the owner of the memory had forgotten how time had passed.

Until a voice from memory appeared:

[The working age of your heart has already exceeded the theoretical maximum. If you want to continue living, I have two plans here. One is to perform a genetic surgery for you and increase the gene number L77. This can increase your lifespan by at least 20 years, but this is not cheap. With your income level… you might need to sign an additional agreement to work for me for 300 years after your death.]

[As for the second option…]

[1 choose the second option.]

This was the voice of the owner of the memory. This memory seemed to be very important to him. Even though so much time had passed, he still remembered his choice.

[What a pity… Then I’ll install a pacemaker for you. In theory, it can help you live for more than ten years, but there will always be all kinds of accidents that will make it useless, and you have to pay… this amount.]

After that, there was a short silence. When the light appeared in his memory again, this native already had his own spaceships.

This was the award he received after working in the company for more than a hundred years. The company announced that he was a model miner and gave him a benefit: He would buy this old spaceship with a debt loan for another fifty years.

The owner of the memory signed a debt contract with the company without hesitation. From then on, he went from a miner working underground to a miner working in space.

He was still mining, but now he was digging on the asteroid belt.

This place was not much safer than underground. The old spaceships could not withstand any collision with the meteorite, but he still chose to do so until not long ago.

He and a group of miners who were also working in space discovered the remains of a batch of spaceships. This was no different from a pie falling from the sky for them, who were wandering in space. They were prepared to recycle this pile of waste to improve their lives.

Even before Li Wenyuan’s fleet arrived, the native was still thinking about trivial matters like “How much is this alloy board worth”, “How much can that instrument be sold for”, and “We can have a good meal tonight”.

However, everything disappeared like a dream as his body reached its limit.

The final motivation that made this native risk his life to get close. Li Wenyuan checked his memories for a while and finally locked onto the first time this native left underground.

The place where he worked was a desolate planet. The surface was covered in exposed rocks and sand, but there was a mineral vein of some precious mineral underground.

Because he had worked for 20 years, he could go to another planet with a better environment. However, on the way, he had been looking at the stars in the universe.

When others asked him, he said that he had never thought that the outside world would be so beautiful. Even if he died in the arms of these stars, he felt that his life was worth it.

He violated the company’s rules and regulations by saying that he was not proactive enough. He was fined to work for the company for three months for free and had to correct his speech mistakes. He announced at the labor conference that he had realized his mistake and would work hard for the company until he paid off the debts owed by his ancestors.

Although he recognized his mistake, he never stopped thinking about it and became even more active after obtaining his first spaceship.

Originally, he had already saved enough money to buy a vacation and could start his interstellar space trip. However, because he used a pacemaker to extend his life, the company thought that it was not safe enough and that he might die in space. The value of living was not enough, so they asked him to pay the deposit to get this vacation.

However, he was very clear about his health. If he continued to rely on mining to earn money, he might die before he could earn enough money.

This was the motivation for him to take the risk. It was his instinct to survive and his desire for dreams. He should have lived in a daze in the mines and then died in a daze. In the end, what made him different from others was still a certain hope in his heart.

There was almost no useful information in this native’s memory. The only thing that could help Li Wenyuan was that he had confirmed that this galaxy seemed to be under the rule of a megacorp.

This was indeed a true megacorp. Unlike the large corporation civilizations in the Milky Way, this galaxy’s megacorp had already completely monopolized the entire galaxy. Be it technology, economy, or military strength, it was the absolute overlord here. It was a true Corporate Empire.

However, the name of this megacorp was very interesting. They called him a servant, which made Li Wenyuan curious about their background.

“Also…”

His gaze returned to the native who had died on his dream-chasing journey. Thanks to his sudden death, most of the native’s body tissues had been preserved well.

Due to the delay caused by the distance, before Li Wenyuan made this decision, a portion of his brain tissue had inevitably become permanently necrotic. However, this was not a problem for him.

“At the very least, there will be a group of your companions to continue this dream..”