Through difficult, sluggish communication, we finally began to learn what had happened to the Deep Diving Ship after it lost contact.
The ancestors had indeed seized that one-percent chance of survival: they had successfully crossed the Critical Layer!
What happened afterward also confirmed Abyss Shilin's Void model. After the Deep Diving Ship crossed the Critical Layer, the contamination it suffered suddenly decreased. As it continued onward, the Abyss's pollution of orderly things began to lose its effect. The Deep Diving Ship displayed an extremely high degree of "immunity," which matched the condition of the spacecraft wreckage in our possession and certain components of the Black Shuttle.
Thus, even though the Deep Diving Ship had been on the verge of breaking apart when it crossed the Critical Layer, with only its final defensive layer and Core Area still functioning normally, it barely completed that perilous journey. When even its final defensive layer collapsed, it burst through the Abyss Gate using only its core compartment—the Abyss Gate that was already located on the Other Side.
The Deep Diving Ship's basic structure shared the same lineage as most Imperial starships. Even if its compartments came apart, they retained relatively complete navigational capabilities and living conditions. Therefore, the Deep Diving Ship, reduced to only a core compartment, still retained the ability to travel in that unfamiliar world. Though most of its laboratories and detection equipment had been destroyed, the ancestors successfully found signs of life in the unfamiliar universe using the small Workstation built into the core compartment.
The text on the communicator displayed the circumstances of the locals' contact with the ancestors: "This was quite fortunate. That universe was one of the Star Ring Federation's remote colonies. Our purification forces received a report that an exit from the Chaotic Sea had appeared in