Alien Paradise.

Chapter 446 The Silent City
Six hours later, Chaoyang and Elodie arrived by plane at an area 20 kilometers outside the royal capital. The reason they only went to the far suburbs was because they found that mechanical birds had appeared sporadically in this area.

Fortunately, angels can fly, and as long as they have enough willpower, their speed is not much slower than that of airplanes. Elodie took Chaoyang and flew close to the ground, making up the last section of the journey. When the two first saw this city in the center of the old continent, they were shocked by the scene here.

It's more like an insect nest than a city.

The number of robot birds hovering in the sky was so dense that they looked like a dark cloud when they flew in a group. They were almost incalculable. They were lying on the city walls, tree branches, and roofs. These machines were watching the scene around the city vigilantly, so Elodie did not dare to approach them easily.

The streets were deserted.

They could not see any pedestrians, and all the shops were closed. It was hard to imagine that this was the richest place in the Laurel Kingdom. Even the Brilliant Castle overseas was more lively than the Royal City.

It seems that the activity of machines has replaced the activity of people.

The city seemed to be dying fast.

"I'm beginning to believe what you said..." Elodie murmured, "Machines will grow out of the ground like wheat, and there will be endless harvests."

It's only been a few days...

It has only been about a week since Duke Longjiu was assassinated and Dann withdrew from the capital. All of Gaofeng Company's factories combined cannot produce such a large number of finished products - let alone a complete intelligent machine, even the strange devices they carry inside are far from enough.

"I'm more curious about... where did all the people in the city go?" Chaoyang frowned. Under the telepathic vision, he could see the same color of wish power light pillars everywhere in the royal city, which meant that the city was not as empty as it looked. Judging from the scale of the wish power, there were at least 500,000 or 600,000 people living in the royal city. But they needed to eat and drink, and go out to buy things. If all trading activities in the city were stagnant, how could these people stay?

As for the source of these light pillars, that is naturally where the true body of the God of All Things is.

It was a bright and dazzling yellow-green beam of light, as if it came straight down from the sky and sank into the inner city of the capital. Judging from the general direction, that was also where the Laurel Palace was located. This was consistent with the information provided by Apostle No. 1: Cosmos was located at the bottom of the palace, integrated with the imprisoned goddess of abundance.

"Let's sneak in and look for it," Elodie suggested.

Chaoyang confirmed it again and found that the kingdom of the God of All Things almost overlapped with the royal palace. In other words, as long as he did not enter the royal palace, he would not arouse the other party's vigilance.

However, considering that there were mechanical birds squatting on the roofs of houses and tree trunks, it was not realistic to walk into the capital without hesitation. He observed for a long time and found that there were still trains running on the tracks, and these vehicles would not be disturbed when entering and leaving the city.

Then what we need to do next will be much simpler.

He first went with the angel to a place far away from the royal city, personally intercepted a train, walked into the carriage and found that it was indeed empty - the train itself had been infected by the God of All Machines and was transporting supplies completely autonomously. Chaoyang asked Elodie to destroy the front of the train, leaving only one carriage, and then created a new world power system for the carriage: this system was powered by the "brain battery", which was then converted into rotational power by the pyroxene device developed by the control center to drive the wheels forward.

It sounds complicated, but it's actually just a large bumper car, without even brakes, and it can only go at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour. "Without a fuel engine, using this thing made in the lab, do you think it won't be controlled by the God of All Machines?" Elodie asked curiously.

"I'm not sure. But this thing is a different system from the current machinery. I guess it should be able to resist Cosmos's authority to a certain extent."

In City M, cars were infected almost instantly, cameras were assimilated after a long time, and the street lights were slow to awaken their souls, which shows that the God of All Machines' ability to infect not only has a difference in quantity, but also in order. The biggest difference between the latter two and cars is that they cannot move freely, and the internal electrical structure accounts for a larger proportion. Considering that there is no electricity in this world, such a difference seems reasonable.

There is also what Apostle No. 1 mentioned: "As long as there are gears, springs and rotors, there is a chance of the birth of a soul", which can also indirectly explain the definition of machines by the God of All Machines.

The new energy and the corresponding pyroxene device found in the Acropolis ruins obviously took a different route. It is completely different from electrical energy and mechanical energy, and is more like a device that uses the power of thought... Perhaps the ultimate goal of the creators was to bypass the barrier of the gods and allow humans to directly use the power of will, but in the end only a few semi-finished products were left.

With the slow push of the pyroxene engine, it took the carriage almost half an hour to enter the Saint Sea Station. As Chaoyang expected, the swarm of mechanical birds in the sky completely ignored this single carriage, and there were no soldiers from the Longjiu Army standing guard in the station. The huge station was strangely empty, with no one managing it, but the vehicles were running on their own.

"I have a feeling...the future will be more or less like this." Elodie whispered.

Indeed, Chaoyang felt the same way. Although the trains here were all steam locomotives, they were more cyberpunk than on Earth. Even without humans, machines could easily adapt to the environment and survive.

The two walked through the ticket office and waiting room and came to the street outside. The road was empty, and occasionally one could see the Steam Knights of Long Jiujun patrolling the street, of course they were also fully automatic.

Chaoyang found the light beam closest to him and asked Elodie to take him in at the speed of wind - it was a three-story residential building. Judging from the elegant interior decoration, the people living here were already the middle class of the royal capital.

Opening the door of a room on the second floor, they finally saw the first group of Saint Xia residents.

There were three human-shaped stakes standing around the dining table, with their hands clasped together and their heads raised in prayer. They looked like stakes because their feet had merged into one and were embedded in the floor. Their skin was dark brown, and the material looked like dry wood or some kind of stone. But other than that, their upper bodies, arms, and heads were relatively intact, and their appearance and age could still be discerned.

For example, you can tell at a glance that these three people are parents and children.

Chaoyang felt a chill creeping up his spine.

If this family was already dead, that would be fine. But the problem was that they were still alive... The dead couldn't provide any power for wishes, but there was a thin thread connected to the heads of the three people, proving that they were still praying to the gods in their hearts.

For a moment, Chaoyang thought of a word: human battery.

Staying still can reduce unnecessary losses to a minimum, and eating, drinking, defecating and urinating become unimportant. This may also explain why hundreds of thousands of residents can still continuously provide power to the gods when the city's operations have come to a standstill. At this point, Cosmos has become a complete evil god!
(End of this chapter)