The Missing Cloud City

In the dark expanse of space, a colossal building floats above the orbit of the planet Machine Rift.

The City in the Clouds, a super-ring space station orbiting in high space, is also known as Paradise.

The "Paradise" is divided into ten rings, with a beautiful environment visible to the naked eye, where nobles dressed as if they were saints chat and exchange ideas.

The next moment, the nobles' smiles grew wider and more exaggerated, and flames of data shot out from their mouths and noses.

[You killed the genetic clone of the Governor of District 19, experience +30000]

[You killed the third son of the Skeleton Dragon Clan, experience +50,000]

[You killed the ninth wife of the Governor of District 10, experience +30000]

[You killed a satellite noble in District 7, experience +45000]

The first ring of the ten rings is called the Governor's Ring, where the families of governors from various regions reside.

[You killed a descendant of the Mars family, space colonists. Experience +10,000, Specialization Points +1]

[You killed a descendant of the Landers family, space colonists. Experience +20,000, Random Blueprint *1]

[You have killed a descendant of the Dark Blood family of space colonists. Experience +5000, Gene Fragment *1]

[You killed a descendant of the Morgan family, space colonists. Experience +5000, Bloodline Fragment *1]

The inhabitants of the second ring are all members of alien colonist families. These people have one thing in common: they have all intermarried with aliens. As a result, the descendants of these colonists all look strange. Some have an extra eyeball, some have countless hooks on their backs, and some have their heads split in two.

The firebirds burned them one by one, and these alien bloodlines became accelerants.

More importantly, these alien bloodlines offer exceptionally generous rewards.

If you're lucky, you might even get an entire alien gene chain.

The senior engineer had met these people in his previous life. In the later stages of the planet's main storyline, they used their relationship with aliens to guide people everywhere. The tickets for Noah's Ark were inflated by these people.

The Bird of Paradise rampages ahead, hacking into the minds of countless cloud-dwelling nobles and detonating them one by one, while the engineers behind provide data support.

It seems that peace has been maintained for too long, and these cloud nobles are too unvigilant. They haven't even installed Electronic Barrier. In addition, their bloodline is very precious, so the senior engineers are gaining experience at lightning speed. In just ten minutes, they have obtained 4 million experience points.

These are all personal experiences, plus previous accumulations, totaling 6 million experience points, enough to ensure that senior engineers don't have to worry about any experience issues before reaching level 30.

From the first ring all the way to the fifth ring, the firebird formed from the flames of vengeance almost destroyed all the defense systems.

The senior engineer saw through the Bird of Paradise's goal; she genuinely wanted to destroy the entire Cloud City.

However, the Cloud City eventually reacted, and finally used the information defense technologies of a Level 3 civilization, such as the 'Information Blocking Field,' 'Simulated Force Field,' 'Energy Shield,' and 'Large Data Defense Circle,' to put out fires everywhere.

Looking at the gene slaves and android slaves running around wildly on the ground, Gao Gong had a sudden thought. He vaguely remembered that there seemed to be a player with a perfect hand who was reincarnated into Cloud City and became a member of the nobility.

It's time to find them some work to do.

As a hardworking and ambitious player, I really want to be like the other players on the forum, eating nutritional supplements, sleeping on the streets, and desperately killing monsters to earn money, living frugally every day.

What can you do if fate is determined to destroy you?

At this time, he could only float in a swimming pool the size of a football field, served by dozens of beautiful older women. One would give him a grape, another a slice of watermelon. At such a young age, he was already living a life of idleness and waiting to die.

"Sigh, I want to work hard and fight monsters, but the problem is, there isn't even a chicken here. What can I do?"

"Master, what do you plan to eat tonight?" the butler asked.

"Eat chicken."

Just as "Move aside, I'll deliver first" was about to go for a beauty nap as usual, suddenly, the ground shook violently and the alarm sounded.

A quest suddenly popped up on his player panel, which he had never used since he started playing the game.

[Task: Sudden Descent from the Cloud]

Difficulty: Hard

Mission Briefing: False pleasures and false blessings have left you exhausted. Now, "Cloud City" is under attack by a group of dangerous hackers and risks sinking. At this crossroads of fate, please make your own choice.

Task objective:

Option 1: Steal an escape ship and escape to the planet beneath your feet.

Option 2: Steal an escape ship and travel to the ancient satellite base.

Option 3: Fight hackers and defend the city in the cloud.

Option 4: Do nothing and wait to die.

Mission Reward: Unknown

"Move aside, I'll deliver first." His expression changed, both surprised and delighted. He was delighted that the beginner's quest had finally arrived, but surprised that he was unleashing a powerful move right from the start.

The Cloud City has sunk! Holy crap, is it going to be this intense right from the start?

After casually making a move, the senior engineer turned his attention back to the 'City in the Clouds,' which was now engulfed in flames of data.

This "paradise" has everything except Cyber Hacker or top-tier neural editors. The reason is simple: the signal here is poor.

Normal internet connection is fine, but for professionals, it's a real pain.

Please, a distance of 400,000 kilometers, if you enter cyberspace, Xiang would probably get stuck.

The defenses of the Cloud City are undeniably formidable.

The senior engineer encountered level 50 alien life forms, level 60 advanced bloodline possessors, and even some level 70 planetary creature clones.

But it was all for naught.

Unless it's an ectohormonal life form like the alien bloodline Frasso, but even among alien life forms, this kind of alien bloodline is very rare.

So this time, the Bird of Paradise really went on a killing spree.

Looking at the nearly eight million experience points, the senior engineer reluctantly withdrew his gaze and said:

"I have two pieces of information to remind you."

"One, Cloud City is veering off high orbit, that is, out of the range of the Machine Rift Star. In another minute, even the Hyperlink System will lose signal."

"Secondly, the island is being bombarded by space-based weapons. Although this is a real-world attack, all the signal base stations and data stations on it have been destroyed. Your internet speed will be inconsistent, and data transmission will be disrupted."

"How much time do I have left?"

"30, no, 20 seconds."

"Good!"

The next moment, the senior engineer could sense that the source code of the Bird of Paradise was collapsing, and in return, the data flames were surging.

Suicide attack or impromptu breakthrough? Perhaps both.

The level 40 hacker king, the level 50 source hacker, and at level 60, hackers can completely transform into virtual life forms and become a member of the "Information Sea" in the four major civilization systems.

The mechanical world, the carbon-based sequence, the energy kingdom, the information sea—only the last one seems the most unconventional, giving the impression that one might casually go to sea for no reason.

But the true meaning of "information diving" is that there is an endless amount of information in the universe, and the deeper you dive, the more you gain.

"Why do they all like to unleash their full potential at crucial moments? If it were me, I would definitely unleash my full potential first, and then cause trouble."

The senior engineer has no intention of interfering. The final step for level 60 is to replace all the original code with virtual code, that is, to change from planetary code to galaxy code. If this hurdle can be overcome, even without data pipelines, the Bird of Paradise will have the ability to travel between planets.

This time, the data flame materialized, and a giant bird's beak gradually took shape, covering almost half of the Cloud City. Ten years' worth of data reserves were completely drained.

Then, in the next moment, the bird gently pecked at the sub-light speed engine of the ring space station.

[Task complete, Experience +150,000, Hacker Reputation +20,000, Bird of Paradise Favorability +500, Ahong Favorability +500, Adorlu Favorability +500]

[You have obtained 3 mechanical puzzle pieces (1/5) fragments, 3 specialization points, 10 skill points, and 10 lottery chances.]

[You have obtained the Bird of Paradise Hacker skill *1, Ahong Hacker skill *1, and the Mother City Wanted List *1]

[You have obtained Leader Template Quest Fragment *1]

Mother City Wanted List:

Seventh place - Bird of Paradise

Note: A renowned top hacker, famous in the underworld for his complex and sophisticated coding skills and unique hyperlinking techniques. Since burning down Cloud City, he has become the Cyber Hacker with the highest bounty, bar none.

Bounty amount: 5 billion tokens

10th Place - Prototype

Note: This is a hacker never heard of before, possessing incomprehensible hacking techniques. He assisted Paradise Bird in completing the destruction plan and is wanted by both Cybertron and the Deep Web. Any information about him should be immediately reported to the local machine mastermind.

Bounty amount: 1.4 billion

The City That Never Sleeps, or rather, all the television stations on the planet Machine Rift, are public. As long as you can attract viewers and complete the interaction of 'human data,' your program can run for as long as you want.

This has led to a proliferation of bizarre, addictive, and outlandish programs on television.

No show, including The Fugitive, has ever dominated the ratings in the same time slot.

But one news story did just that, featuring two newly emerged Cyber Hacker whose achievement was—the fall of Cloud City.

At this moment, countless hosts, guests, neural editors, and even masked Cyber Hacker are discussing the same topic.

Where did the city in the clouds go?

Major corporations, foundations, financial groups, and countless other forces are now searching the world for the Cloud City.

Theoretically speaking, if the Cloud City were to fall, it should transform into a gigantic meteor, crashing into the planet and unleashing a cataclysmic disaster.

But there is another possibility: the City in the Clouds flew in another direction, that is, outside the gravitational field of the Machine-Splitter Star.

As for where it will fly to, that's hard to say.

If things go wrong, Cloud City could become the most common type of place in the universe—a wandering space station.

If they are unlucky enough to run into a space pirate group, then the Cloud Nobles will probably become Cloud Slaves.

The only known fact is that the death toll among the Cloud Nobles has exceeded 3,000.

"So here's the question," Madam Hongmeng turned off the TV, looked at Engineer Gao, and smiled, "Where did Cloud City go?"