Past
"Where did you come from?" Yue Yuan asked, looking at the oval-shaped, short alien that appeared on the screen.
His words were translated into a language that individuals of the Crimson Flame Civilization could understand and transmitted from the Lyra to a certain Residential Spaceship of the Crimson Flame Civilization.
The Crimson Flame Civilization has been completely disarmed, and the individual life on the screen represents a newly elected Great Commander within their ranks, with human permission.
"Interstellar Transaction Market." The Crimson Flame Civilization New Commander answered honestly when questioned. His words were also translated by the translation system and transmitted to the Lyra.
Therefore, the answer Yue Yuan heard was the voice of an AI from Human Database.
"Where is the Interstellar Transaction Market?" Yue Yuan asked again.
"We don't know. They don't stay in a particular Star System. Instead, they travel through the universe and trade and communicate with the civilizations they encounter. Our Crimson Flame Civilization just happened to encounter them when we were resupplying in a certain Star System," the new leader of the Crimson Flame Civilization answered honestly as always.
He was only 40 centimeters tall and had a round appearance. He had four legs that looked no different in front from the back, supporting his body. Above him were two octopus-like hands, if you could even call them hands.
Judging from the appearance of this new leader, although the life forms of the Crimson Flame Civilization have four legs, their arrangement is not like that of quadrupedal animals as commonly perceived by humans, where the entire body is parallel to the ground. They are also considered to be upright.
Overall, they look like an egg standing upright with four legs on the bottom. Their skin is hairless and looks white and tender. However, in daily life, they wear a kind of rubber 'clothing'.
According to data from the database, individuals in the Crimson Flame Civilization were also dioecious (separate males and females) and mated. The mating process was very quick, lasting less than five seconds. After mating, the female would lay about a thousand eggs in a very short time, and these eggs would develop into new life under the body temperature of the male.
What's amazing is that there is a significant difference in body temperature between males and females. Only the body temperature of the males can produce offspring. Therefore, they formed a cooperative society very early on, before the advent of the technological age.
The data shows that previous anatomical findings on them were indeed incorrect.
In conclusion, the life forms of the Crimson Flame Civilization are similar to oviparous organisms on Earth. Judging from the number of offspring they produce, they are more likely to be aquatic organisms, because their reproductive capacity is simply too powerful for humans.
One birth can result in thousands of offspring.
Of course, the incubation period is also long, about three Earth years for humans to hatch. However, in the interstellar era, they have learned to use advanced technology to build incubation chambers, which has greatly shortened the process.
This is why they have a continuous supply of soldiers.
"What level of civilization is the Interstellar Transaction Market? What is their purpose? Does the Merchant Alliance you mentioned earlier exist?" Yue Yuan asked, looking at the round, Crimson Flame Civilization life form.
"I don't know, but they are definitely stronger than us, because when they arrived at our location, they appeared at faster-than-light speed, and we still remember that scene." The new leader of the Crimson Flame Civilization made an S-shape with his arms and continued to answer, "We don't know their purpose either, but one thing is certain: they do operate in the manner of cosmic merchants. Even when they encounter weaker beings like us, they do not forcibly plunder us, but instead engage in fair trade with us."
As for whether the Merchant Alliance exists, we don't know. Our Great Commander back then probably said that simply to deceive those fledgling civilizations.
"Hmm, what were you thinking? They treated you with a fair trade, but afterwards you used their name to come to this star field and swindle people?!" Yue Yuan nodded, curious.
"Our previous leaders were blinded by greed." The Crimson Flame Civilization New Commander sighed. "Actually, when we decided to come to this star system, it wasn't because it was a Safe Star Region, nor did we intend to do business under the guise of an Interstellar Transaction Market from the beginning."
The fundamental reason is that we accidentally learned that there might be the Advanced Civilization Ruins in this star system. This is the fundamental reason why we came to this star system. We didn't even tell the Interstellar Transaction Market about this news.
The reason we came up with the idea of robbing weaker civilizations was entirely because we learned from the Interstellar Transaction Market that this star system was Safe Star Region. We only dared to do so because we wanted to improve our technological strength as much as possible before searching for the Advanced Civilization Ruins.
Because we know that exploring so-called Civilization Ruins, besides its benefits, inevitably involves many dangers, we impulsively decided to target the Low-level Civilization in this star system.
"Not for their home planet?"
"Well, that's one of the reasons," the new leader of the Crimson Flame Civilization said somewhat awkwardly. "We wanted to obtain more data on Life Planet in order to create more powerful Life Elixir. Fortunately, we encountered the great Earth civilization, which prevented us from going further and further down this wrong path."
Seeing the new leader's pragmatism, Yue Yuan didn't care whether he understood or not, and simply nodded habitually, asking, "Where is your home planet?"
"I don't know. From the moment I was born, we have been a Wandering Civilization. During my growth, I have never seen anything about our own home planet," said the Crimson Flame Civilization New Commander.
Yue Yuan was very curious about how a civilization that had even lost the memories of its home planet had developed to this point. However, not only did the new leader not know the answer to this question, but even the Crimson Flame Civilization's database had no records of it.
This is very confusing.
Logically speaking, a life form that has developed to Level 3 Civilization should still have records about its home planet, even if we disregard everything else. Just like humans today, although Earth is long gone, there is still information about Earth in the database.
In Yue Yuan's view, there are two possible reasons for this situation. First, this so-called Crimson Flame Civilization may have developed from a group of refugees. Second, this Crimson Flame Civilization may be an experimental civilization created by an advanced civilization.
Of course, this is just speculation; there are absolutely no concrete clues.
Some of Yue Yuan's questions were recorded in the Crimson Flame Civilization database, while others were not.
From the database records of the Crimson Flame Civilization, it is clear that there are problems with the history of the Crimson Flame Civilization. They have records of their primitive living conditions but no corresponding environmental records. They have descriptions of their physiological adaptation to the environment but no descriptions of other life forms living with them.
Their history shows a clear break in continuity.
Furthermore, humans have discovered an interesting phenomenon: the number system used by the Crimson Flame Civilization in mathematics is not the binary system of their two tentacles, nor the hexadecimal system of six (hands and feet combined), nor the sexagesimal system of the number of suction cups on their tentacles.
Instead, it's a strange decimal system.
This is completely contrary to the general rules governing the use of mathematical number systems in the development of intelligent life.