4. The Superiority of Advanced Civilizations

On the first night after finding a job, because both of them were broke, they simply ate some dog food, watched TV for a while, and then each returned to their rooms. As for whether they would feel bored during the long night, actually not, because poverty limited their activities, after all, lying still was the best way not to feel so hungry.

Around half-past eight, Gu Tao heard mumbled whispers coming from the next door warehouse. In modern society, young people who follow the routine of rising with the sunrise and resting at sunset were becoming rarer and rarer.

Sometime outside, it had started to rain – probably the last rain before winter. There's a saying that each bout of autumn rain brings a wave of cool, and after this rain, it seemed that winter was about to make its official entrance.

He took out a sleeping bag from his backpack, shook it open, and spread it on the floor, all in one go. Then he arranged the other items from his backpack around him, creating the appearance of a private space, before burying his whole body in the sleeping bag.

After lying there for a while, he suddenly felt something was off. After some thought, he realized he had not set up the alarm device. With no other choice, he braved the cold in his long johns, crawling out from the warm sleeping bag, he took a pile of strange items from his backpack and placed them in every corner of the room, and after a series of adjustments with his watch, he shivering climbed back into the sleeping bag and took out a notebook to seriously record the daily work summary.

Besides him, probably no one on Earth would recognize the text. Even if someone saw it, they would likely think it was just the meaningless scribbles of a child with autism, but he had been doing this job for six years and intended to keep going.

"Can't go back, so why keep a journal?" Gu Tao murmured to himself, stroking his chin, but after a while, he answered his own question, "What if I can go back, right?"

Having said that, he pulled out a small iron box from his shabby backpack. After activating a mechanism, the little iron box suddenly split open in his hands. The pieces of metal began to wriggle after splitting into small pieces, and turned into metal spiders, no bigger than the head of a chopstick. The spiders scurried away in all directions, and only then did he lie down to continue sleeping.

Don't look down on his ratty backpack. No exaggeration – if someone could analyze the contents of his backpack, human technology would leap forward by over a thousand years. That shabby pack was his mobile fortress, comprising weapon systems, detection systems, and defense systems all in one.

How to put it – well, even though all the equipment in his bag was for individual soldiers, and could not compare with the legion-level devices from his mother planet, they were absolutely extraordinary, earth-shattering equipment on Earth. For example, his weapon system consisted of a super-compressed combat exoskeleton – ever heard of Iron Man? The exoskeleton in that palm-sized rhombus iron box was far superior to Iron Man's, not only enhancing strength greatly but also able to directly negate the frontal assault from standardized legionary blasters, integrated with a photonic blade, medium-range single-soldier shooting weapons, and jet propulsion devices. His detection system included Mineral Excavation Gloves, a construction helmet for mind-controlled magnet particle manipulation, Deep Scanning Goggles, and the Hercules Collar. The gloves could easily allow an ordinary person to crush diamonds, the construction helmet enabled the use of blueprints and willpower to control magnetic particles to build the required architecture, the goggles could scan for all material compositions up to three thousand meters underground and twelve thousand meters underwater, and as for the Hercules Collar, it was an experimental device that allowed ordinary people to create a passage into the rock layer a kilometer below the earth's surface in a short time.

As for the defense system, besides the smart probes he had installed in the room, there were the rather disgusting-looking sentinel robots—namely, the tiny spiders that he had just activated. These little spiders would automatically attack any intruders upon detecting a threat, including cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes, and rats. Gu Tao had always used them as a pest control device. As for attacking humans... without any precautions, these small but terrifyingly penetrative robots could kill any intruder within six seconds.

Of all the equipment here, aside from the weapons systems, the most powerful was the thought-controlled helmet. That helmet could control a type of minuscule magnetic particle, up to a maximum of twelve tons. These twelve tons of magnetic particles could take on any shape desired according to the instructions. The repulsive and attractive forces between them could reach half a ton, meaning the instantaneous interactive force between two particles the size of pills could reach half a ton. And at full power, twelve tons of magnetic particles could compress a tank into a sheet of metal in an instant. These magnetic particles could be launched by the Centaur Vessel and could also be concealed in the surrounding environment—the ground, rivers, even the crevices of buildings could be easily filled with these powerful specks of dust.

Although they were industrial items, they would undoubtedly be terrifying weapons on Earth. And that's not even considering the despicable artificial intelligence's mention of the Titan Mecha, the defensive counter-attack device of the Explorer Base. Once they launched an assault, the existing technology on Earth would not be able to stop them, not even nuclear bombs. After being blown up, they would simply dust themselves off and keep going.

"Time to sleep, time to sleep."

Gu Tao curled up completely inside his sleeping bag. Although he said it was time to sleep, it was actually a bit early to do so—so early that even forcing himself wouldn't work.

The cold wind whooshed outside the window, raindrops pattering on the glass with a rapping sound, accompanied by the creaking sway of the old house. It was typically a perfect environment to fall asleep in, but there was just no sense of sleepiness.

In fact, he didn't care about the environment when sleeping. His training had been to survive in the worst conditions. Now, although he was sleeping in a warehouse, at least it was a place sheltering him from wind and rain. After a cleanup, it was quite clean, much more comfortable than living in caves, under trees, or beneath bridges. Over the past six years, he had frequently lived in such places.

While his thoughts roamed aimlessly, drowsiness gradually crept up on him. But as he was drifting off, suddenly his wristwatch vibrated intensely. He sat up abruptly, but saw nothing.

"Don't tell me it's haunted," Gu Tao said as he took out a pair of goggles from his bag and put them on. "What a pity, Daddy is really not afraid of ghosts."

What the eyes see may be an illusion, and what the ears hear is often uncertain, but the highly sensitive probes would never lie. This type of vibration indicated that there was energy radiation appearing within the security zone. Since no physical entity was visible, the only possibility was a form of energy. On Earth, the only energy forms that might suddenly appear and persist were continuous electrical arcs or, well, ghosts.

As for why there would be ghosts, after all, if there can be aliens, what's so surprising about ghosts?

After Gu Tao put on the glasses, the view in front of him instantly shifted into another image altogether: every object was revealed in a radiation format, looking somewhat similar to thermal imaging, but far more sophisticated – thermal imaging has difficulty distinguishing specific objects, but radiation imaging was different.

Inside the room, Gu Tao saw a shadow swaying back and forth. At first glance, it really did look like a ghostly figure. He pointed a finger at it and the glasses immediately responded, canceling out the radiation image of all other objects and leaving only the dim outline of that apparition.

"You tell me, what else can your kind of energy do other than scare people?" he sighed, stretching out his arm from the sleeping bag with a watch on his wrist: "Neutralize it."

With that nonchalant statement, the watch suddenly released a burst of electric arcs, followed by a faint crackling sound in the air, and then the shadow completely vanished from the view of the glasses, without a trace.

Gu Tao took off the glasses and buried himself back into his sleeping bag, not the least bit concerned about the ghostly occurrence. However, the drowsiness he had just woken up from was gone, and out of helplessness, he picked up the logbook again and wrote down with a pen: "Neutralized the thirty-fifth spirit escapee, belonging to a human soul, threat level 0."

After writing that down, he threw the notebook aside, resting his hands behind his head and staring out the window; anyway, he somehow drifted back to sleep slowly.

As for why he would dispose of this spiritual body without a second thought, the reason is quite simple. The Explorer's Guide clearly states that the explorer's own safety is the top priority, similar to the Three Laws of Robotics, it's an absolute precedence. They shouldn't interfere with the progression of the areas they are exploring, but they're not so foolish as to sit idle when they're attacked. Otherwise, what's the use of bringing the Titan with them? In theory, if this planet discovered them and wanted to steal their equi]pment technology or harm their lives, they would have the right to declare this civilization as aggressive and prioritize its removal.

Such is the supremacy of a superior civilization: the "I mean you no harm, so you best not harbor any ill will toward me either. Play nice and I'll give you a hand, mess with me and I'll wipe you out" kind of supremacy.

In the early morning, Gu Tao was woken up by Xin Chen knocking on the door. He groggily opened it to see Xin Chen, also in a daze. Then, rubbing their eyes, they stood facing each other at the doorway.

"Let me tell you, I lost my pet." Xin Chen pursed his lips, on the verge of crying: "My Lvlv is lost, I'm about to cry."

"Can you speak properly, do you think you're PDD or something?" Gu Tao looked at the man making a scene and acting coquettishly: "Isn't that nauseating."

"But Lvlv is gone."

"First, tell me what Lvlv is."

"It's a ghost... I felt sorry for it, so I took it in. Before you got here, it was the one keeping me company."

Gu Tao was taken aback, then instantly understood why this ridiculously regimented guy looked so listless when he saw him yesterday. This fool... actually used his own psychic energy to feed a spiritual body. His brain must be really messed up.

"So... are you telling me, you can see ghosts?"

Xin Chen was stunned for a moment, looked up with surprise on his face at Gu Tao: "Can't you see them?"

When he said this, it was like when Gu Tao said he grew a third testicle and tentatively asked Xin Chen if "together we might have five," but Xin Chen responded with a surprised "You have four?"