As an adjudicator whose duties varied from day to day and who patrolled the universe, Hao Ren felt that his workload followed Brownian motion. Sometimes nearly everything piled up and happened at once, keeping him so busy he wished he could split himself in two on the spot to gain a pair of extra hands. At other times, the world was at peace, every incident fell silent, and he was idle enough to grow mushrooms...
The investigation into the Crystal Core's whereabouts had temporarily reached an impasse—or not quite an impasse, strictly speaking. The universe was simply vast, while the drone swarm's range of activity was limited, so it had yet to find any useful signals. Hao Ren had uploaded the information Anthony recorded to the drone network's server many days ago and had also sent a copy to the Crystal Core Research Station. The countless super-antennas deployed throughout the Dream Plane universe had all opened their eyes wide and were now scanning day and night for even the faintest trace of information transmitted from the depths of space.
So far, no signal matching the characteristic code had been detected within the explored regions of the Dream Plane.
On the other hand, the probes monitoring activity in the Dream Plane's various ecological reserves had not reported anything unusual either.
Hao Ren had been slumped beside the table since early morning, listening to the Data Terminal's report. "Roll" was curled lazily in a new cat bed by his feet, fiddling with her tail and purring.
Even after being educated for a long time, the cat still had plenty of instincts she could not change. Aside from squatting to eat and occasionally forgetting to walk upright, her biggest flaw was that she had to curl up in all kinds of corners to