Basically, all the sculptures had suffered damage—some were even so badly shattered that they could no longer be restored. Not even the Data Terminal's computational power could reconstruct the missing parts of those statues and reliefs out of thin air.
Hao Ren could only have the Data Terminal restore their original appearances as much as possible.
The Data Terminal floated in midair, projecting a pale-blue light screen several meters ahead of it. Within the area covered by the screen, time seemed to reverse. Broken sculptures and incomplete reliefs were reassembled as images and placed in the positions where they had originally stood. Vines and moss were removed by the image-filtering system, revealing the walls and pillars' original forms. Less than a third of the scene could be restored. In the irreparable sections, the blue screen projected large, flickering shadows representing "unknown data."
Hao Ren saw sculptures of humans: men and women, young and old, from every race. They stood in neat rows on both sides of the hall entrance, as if they had been placed there specifically to display standard human models.
Farther ahead was a "star map" showing the positions of planets. It had been carved onto a metal plate measuring five meters on each side, which stood like a screen in front of the human sculptures. It not only marked the relative positions of planets and stars, but also used various symbols to label many things. After a simple translation, the Data Terminal determined that the symbols explained the meaning of the star map.
"Looks like this really is a 'guestbook,'" Hao Ren muttered, rubbing his chin. "I'm guessing there's more than one building like this on the planet... Maybe every major city had a 'museum' like this built in its center?"
Vivian shook her head. "We won't