Star Rank Hunter
chapter-288-1

Chapter 288: Meeting The “Primogenitor” [Part 1]

The young man leading Cillin, White Night and Hadar was a member of the royal family, MB. Kensa. He was one of the more influential princes within the empire. He kept a low profile in the affiliated school, so much so that the sons of the three kings—Gen Xingming, Bel and Ulaganuo—were more high-profile than he was.

Of course, the prince had to be special to appear at a place like this. In fact, Cillin had reason to believe that Kensa was the next successor of the throne.

Kensa made friendly conversation with them while they were flying to their destination planet. They were all youngsters, and their age was close to each other. Although the gap between their backgrounds were huge, Kensa said that they would all become servants of the empire if the “primogenitor” chose to accept them.

White Night was as silent as usual, even though he was aware that the prince could very well be the next emperor. Neither Kensa nor Hadar were bothered by his attitude, however. They really don’t.

There were many things White Night and Hadar knew, but not Cillin. He supposed that this was the natural gap between a local and a foreigner. Although he had read a lot of the empire’s history, most of its secrets remained a secret to him.

“Who is this ‘primogenitor’?” Cillin asked.

White Night didn’t know either, but Cillin’s words finally prompted him to look up and stare at Kensa and Hadar.

Hadar knew a bit more than White Night and Cillin, but he didn’t feel like saying anything because he hadn’t truly seen the “primogenitor” with his own eyes. Everything he knew about this person had come from his grandfather, Kristi Lang, and to this day he didn’t know what they looked like or how their temper functioned. Moreover, no image or video recording of the “primogenitor” exists in the world. No one in Black Viper had even met them besides the three heads.

“You want to know about them, huh...” Kensa let out a sigh before continuing, “To tell you the truth, I’ve only met them one time not too long ago, so I think it’s better if you come to your own conclusions after meeting them yourself. I can give you a heads-up, however: don’t panic when you finally meet them.”

Even now, his meeting with the “primogenitor” felt like a dream to him. It was a shock that shook him to the core. Every time he shut his eyes, he would recall their cool eyes watching him silently in the dark. The nightmares persisted for a long time before they finally subsided.

Before the meeting, he only knew “them” as the primogenitor of Black Viper, and that the successors of the three leaders were required to meet them. The successor of the throne would also be meeting the “primogenitor” a couple of times before the succession took place. Kensa didn’t believe in god, but reality often overwhelmed the imagination more times than one could count.

So Kensa couldn’t help but shiver every time he remembered that.

Since Kensa refused to go into details, Cillin had no choice but to speculate on his own. Sitting on Cillin’s shoulder, Wheeze leisurely stuffed a bunch of fish biscuits into its mouth while swinging it tail. Its table manners were so bad that Cillin’s shoulder was completely covered in crumbs, leaving a fishy smell that could be spotted from miles away.

Their destination planet, the planet hidden in the “vanished zone” was a very strange planet. Why? Although the scan results revealed indicated that the planet was very suitable human life, they felt strangely chilly when they set their eyes on it for the first time. It was a feeling without cause or reason.

The planet had no satellite arrays, but there were a lot of space fortresses protecting it from a certain distance. Anyone who wished to enter the planet must go through a stringent inspection, and not even Kensa was an exception to the rule.

When the inspection was finally over, the quartet was finally allowed to continue. However, they weren’t be entering the planet on the spaceplane they came. Instead, a special pilot would be flying them on the rest of their journey on one of the space fortress’ spaceplane.

The occupants of the space fortresses only took orders from the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor. No one else had the authority to command them even if they were a prince, the three kings, or even the previous emperor.

The atmosphere of this place was tense, serious, and panic-inducing, but they weren’t so weak that they were intimidated by it. All four of them were very impressed with the defenders’ quality, however. Everyone here was made of the best of the best, and they were sufficiently obedient and merciless. They were like machines in human flesh.

Even the pilot of their spaceplane was focused his fully on his work after giving Kensa a standardized greeting. He wasn’t bothered by the quartet at all, and his attitude itself was a clear signal that no one should interrupt him. His expression didn’t change even when Wheeze purposely made loud noises while it was chewing its fish biscuits.

“This guy is quite similar to you,” Cillin said to White Night.

White Night shot the busy pilot a look, but didn’t reply.

They got a clearer picture of the planet when they finally entered its atmosphere.

Few parts of the planet were mechanized. Most of the environment were primitive and natural. There were plenty of forests and mountains here just like the planet they were tested on, except they were bigger and older. It was almost like they had entered a primal country of giants.

All kinds of dinosaurs could be seen on the ground and the sky. A lot of unknown species existed on this planet. Even the leaves of a random fern looked ancient and old.

If the “primogenitor” of Black Viper really lived here, then it was no wonder they were called this way.

The spaceplane entered a industrialized zone with by a semicircular shield. There was a landing pad for visitors here. It was the only place where machines and buildings were present. However, there were only robots working in this place and no people, and they gave off the same feeling as the robot Cillin encountered in the underground. Familiar, yet not entirely there.

“Let’s wait for a moment. That one will show up on their own time once they’d heard of our arrival,” Kensa said and pointed at the robots.

The robots that looked almost identical to humans brought them a tray of food before conversing with Kensa for a bit.

Wheeze stared at the robots for two seconds before ignoring them completely. It then went to the food on the table and ran circles around it, sniffing at the food from time to time. Neither White Night nor Hadar were bothered by its behavior. They even cut a few pieces of meat and fed it.

Cillin didn’t eat much. Not everyone was a glutton like Wheeze after all. His curiosity was drawn to their surroundings.

He could see several giant creatures through the translucent shield. There were also hordes of animals that should only exist as fossils at this day and age; creatures whose existence in history had been short and brief.

It wasn’t just one or several extinct species of a planet. They were a massive group of species that entered the limelight of a planet’s history briefly before vanishing completely.

Even with today’s technology, it wasn’t easy to revive these ancient creatures. Most of the time, resurrecting DNAs from fossils were impossible due to excessive damage or other reasons. Cillin had seen plenty researchers calculating sequence alignments and cloning an animal based on them, but most of these creatures either exists in an unstable state or were flawed in some way. Even if they exist in a stable state, they often weren’t identical to the creature the researchers were trying to clone. The sheer amount of randomness involved meant that it was impossible to restore most ancient species to life. This had always been a sore spot to researchers.

But here, Cillin saw a tonne of species that the authorities had claimed was impossible to restore to life at their current level of technology.

If it really was impossible, then where did these creatures come from?

Cillin didn’t believe that these species were natural. After all, he had seen at least one hundred “extinct” species during the time they were waiting for the “primogenitor” to arrive.

Moreover, one couldn’t just throw a bunch of species together and expect them to form a stable ecosystem. It was clear that whoever had created them had spent a lot of time and effort to ensure that the stability of the ecosystem, and that an injection of a new species wouldn’t trigger a massive change or chain reaction of extinction.

Just who on earth had the ability to do this?