Hao Ren's thoughts returned to just before, to the instant before Zom completely reached its critical point and collapsed into ruin.
Nolan, the only NPC in the Dream Ark, had been unable to upload her special "soul" code to the Crystal Core Research Station through the drone link. There had also been nowhere near enough time to establish a new relay protocol in the drone link. With everything seemingly at a dead end, the only thing Hao Ren could think of was preserving Nolan's soul by any means possible. Since he couldn't transmit it out, he had to find somewhere nearby to store it.
Since the compatibility issue only existed inside the drone link, Giant Turtle Rock Platform's own data-processing capabilities were sufficient to handle that level of incompatibility. That was why Hao Ren's final attempt had been possible: he downloaded Nolan into Giant Turtle Rock Platform's mainframe.
Of course, the hurried download had still been less than perfect. Nolan's soul had inevitably suffered some damage after being downloaded into the mainframe, mainly because of the compatibility issues. That was why the ship had been busy processing Nolan's data until just now, and why the Data Terminal had remained there. Still, the good news was that her memories and emotions had not been seriously affected. Nolan was an NPC, and her data inherently possessed a high degree of self-reconstruction capability. After some restoration and debugging, she had finally recovered.
Looking at the gray-haired girl pacing anxiously across the holographic projection, Hao Ren scratched his cheek, unsure where to begin explaining. He could only start by introducing the place: "This is my spaceship—Giant Turtle Rock Platform."
"Your... spaceship?" Nolan's memories still stopped just before Zom's destruction, and she had spent the final phase of those memories in a daze, so she