Setback

While avoiding the pursuit of the intelligent machines would solidify suspicion and increase the difficulty of subsequent infiltration, not avoiding them would be even worse. The abnormal organisms cannot withstand the light, and their intelligence would likely disintegrate on the spot.

Looking across this entire star system, only Zerg units are capable of disintegrating on the spot; no one else could imitate it, the label is simply too strong. To actually do that would be tantamount to admitting guilt.

Fortunately, this doesn't happen in plants. If a small area is hollowed out, other tissues will grow, and as long as it's not too out of line, it won't attract attention.

Moreover, the inability to move freely seems to become an advantage at this point; since there is no agility attribute, there is naturally no abnormality in movement.

An Echolocation System forms within the plant and cannot penetrate through windows, rendering the visual system virtually useless. Moreover, the visual system tends to be superficial and reveal flaws, but the Echolocation System completely avoids this problem.

It can hide inside a plant; the veins of a few leaves change, transforming them into audio receivers. Combined with the plant's inherent ability to adhere to walls, it quickly...

Rowan soon experienced setbacks again.

There was almost no sound inside the Castle, and naturally, no echo, so the Echolocation System couldn't collect any information.

The lack of information actually represents some intelligence; at the very least, Rowan knows that no one is active inside the Castle.

Could Cecil really not be here? If those intelligent machines can hibernate to stop moving, then a living person must have daily needs for eating, drinking, and relieving herself. As an elder of the Epoch Clan, she certainly wouldn't do all these daily tasks herself; there must be servants or machines to attend to her.

The actions of these people or things would inevitably create some noise, and it would never be so quiet inside the Castle that even the Echolocation System could not detect the sound.

Although the probability of Cecil not being here was almost infinitely high, Rowan still considered one possibility: if machines could stop working through hibernation, why couldn't Cecil?

If Cecil enters a hibernation state, the machines that serve her daily life will also go into standby mode, thus creating a situation where the Castle is completely silent.

In reality, this scenario is far more likely than it appears, because hibernation is a very common practice in many interstellar civilizations.

Due to the vastness of the universe and the limitations of spacecraft speed, even with things like Star Gate, monotonous flights lasting decades or even centuries are common.

In early interstellar travel, even a single voyage could result in the proliferation of several generations, or even dozens of generations, of people on board. By the time the ship reached its destination, the original crew had long since died, and they were destined from the start to never see the sights of their destination.

This situation is also the biggest driving force for all races to pursue longevity. However, there is a limit to lifespan extension without side effects. So, people began to approach it from another angle: since lifespan is limited, they tried to eliminate meaningless time consumption as much as possible.

Meaningless waiting, tedious interstellar travel—if one could pause the flow of life during these times, and resume it only when something meaningful comes along, wouldn't that be tantamount to indirectly extending one's lifespan?

Hibernation technology emerged from this idea. Nowadays, hibernation is as common as eating and sleeping; people even use hibernation to replace sleep and increase their effective lifespan.

The New Epoch Clan has taken this technology to its extreme. For example, Humins, who was only supposed to live for a few hundred years, has lived for more than five thousand years, almost ten times his lifespan. The reason he was able to do this is inseparable from his frequent hibernation.

Since Humins is like this, it's very likely that Cecil, who is also an elder of the Epoch Clan, is the same. The fact that the residents of the surrounding cities haven't received any notification of a new administrator suggests that Cecil's visit is a private matter.

It wasn't an official Visit, but a private one. And since the owner wasn't home, and there was nothing urgent at the moment, Cecil would likely choose to rest here and wait for the return of the Epoch Clan elder named Saide.

Of course, this is just Rowan's wishful thinking; before the facts are fully verified, there has to be something to look forward to.

Rowan then activated the Swarm's clandestine intelligence network, focusing on Elder Saide's whereabouts to determine his activities and estimate how long it would take for him to return home.

To Rowan's surprise, all the feedback from various channels was that there was no news of Elder Saide. This situation led to only one conclusion: Saide had also entered a period of hibernation, and it was a long-term hibernation.

Although the Epoch Clan elders number in the tens of thousands, they are indeed at the very top of a pyramid built by trillions of intelligent beings. Therefore, no matter how low-key they are, each of them has countless followers.

In this situation, their locations would be marked by those with ulterior motives whenever they appeared or spoke in public. Therefore, if they were silent for a long time, they were either dead or inactive.

With today's technology, barring unforeseen circumstances, almost any remaining lifespan can be calculated. Even a prominent figure like Epoch Clan Ji doesn't need to die completely; as long as he approaches that point, he'll frequently make headlines and cause a sensation. Humins, for example, was in this situation before.

Saide clearly doesn't fit this description. His original race, the Black Tower Race, is Inner-Ring Civilizations that survived from the era of the Original Epoch Clan, so their lifespan is naturally quite long.

Based on their lifespan calculations, Saide was still in his prime. Therefore, the only reason for his disappearance could be a prolonged period of hibernation, in which case only some of his close associates would know his location.

As for the claim that Saide is actually missing? On this Star Sea Alliance territory, that's simply impossible. The Epoch Clan has the power to say such a thing.

Meaningless waiting is not Rowan's style. Since there is no information about Saide, Rowan has no choice but to resort to some unconventional methods. As long as he is careful and cuts off contact before being exposed, at most a few unsolved mysteries will remain, Swarm should not be exposed, probably.

It was that familiar flock of birds again, flying from afar towards the Castle. According to the Castle's artificial intelligence, these birds were residents of the nearby forest, often flying in flocks over the Castle and occasionally dropping their droppings.

The artificial intelligence compared the bird's flight path with the actual flight path and found that the error rate was less than one percent, indicating no abnormalities.