Darwin
McMurdo Research Station, south of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
4:17 AM.
The mercury column on the thermometer was stuck at the minus fifty-six degree mark.
Outside, a biting wind, traveling at eighty miles per hour, was whipping against the exterior walls of the mobile home, carrying ice shards.
Inside the prefabricated house, there was a mixture of diesel exhaust fumes, burnt coffee, and the stuffy smell of electric blankets being repeatedly heated.
Two young surveyors, dressed in bright orange winter coats, were lying on their cots, snoring like dead pigs.
On the rubber floor at my feet lay several flattened Coca-Cola cans and a half-empty box of damp Marlboro.
"Boom----!!"
Suddenly, a terrifying explosion resounded at an altitude of ten thousand meters!
The vertically downward shock wave, like a giant hammer, forcefully pierced the entire ice field from the stratosphere.
The rough porcelain mug on the table suddenly bounced up half an inch, spilling its cloudy coffee.
The rough icicles that had formed around the window frame shattered and exploded on the spot due to the exaggerated resonance.
"Damn! Did the West Antarctica Ice Sheet collapse entirely, or are those Chile secretly testing missiles?!"
Caldwell tumbled and scrambled onto the non-slip mat, not even bothering to fasten his snow boots.
Then, using both hands and feet, he lunged toward the airtight observation window next to the polar region and pulled down the heavy lever.
"Squeak--"
The thickened glass window was forcibly pried open with a crack.
In that instant, a gale-force wind of minus fifty degrees Celsius rushed in, washing away all the warmth that had been painstakingly accumulated in the room.
But Caldwell seemed frozen solid, his gloved hands gripping the window frame tightly, his eyes wide open.
Outside the window, the sky was a long, leaden gray.
The thick sea of clouds that had been hovering over the pole all year round was actually cut in two by a straight line.
It was an absolute straight line that stretched across the entire cloud layer.
"This... this is impossible..."
Caldwell said blankly.
Even if you burned through a Supersonic ramjet engine, you couldn't possibly create such a smooth fluid shear surface...
Guys, I'm serious, don't laugh at me.
The forums on Reddit and 4chan are constantly buzzing with arguments about Nazis remnants of the Third Reich hiding outside the Antarctica ice wall.
And what about alien motherships...? Maybe those conspiracy theorists actually guessed right this time.
"Smack!"
Just then, a folder containing hundreds of pages of geological drilling reports was thrown out from behind without warning.
It hit Caldwell's windproof hat.
"Stop spouting that bullshit conspiracy theory you picked up at the Boston party, Caldwell!"
The old stationmaster, Hank, had somehow appeared behind the window, dressed in a military green overcoat, looking like a lame old polar bear.
He spat the chewed tobacco into the tin bucket at his feet.
He wiped the ice shards that had melted from his face, his tone unusually irritable:
" The Department of Energy and the Pentagon deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars into our account every quarter so you can drill for ice core samples!"
This isn't a place for you to give Dick to Nazis and aliens!
Shake the pressure relief window shut right now! Do you want all the heating pipes to freeze and burst?
Take the probes to drilling room number three! Get everything moving!
"Smack!"
The heavy, windproof windows were slammed shut, completely isolating the fierce, cold winds outside from the noise inside.
Meanwhile, twenty miles away.
The northern edge of the Ellsworth Mountains is a dead zone that is difficult to detect even by military remote sensing satellites.
The blizzard formed a violent white cyclone here, with wind speeds already exceeding ninety miles per hour.
In this vast expanse of white chaos, a tall figure silently stepped onto the boundless ice surface.
"Call--"
John stood with one hand in his pocket, expressionless.
The transparent Bioelectric Field, like a deflecting prism, smoothly parted the surrounding raging Stormfront to both sides.
The extreme cold of minus fifty degrees Celsius did not leave a trace of frost on his trench coat.
The blond hair remained motionless in the strong wind, and even yawned listlessly.
"... It should be here."
As soon as he finished speaking, John's lips curled into a smile, and the azure in his eyes turned into two dark golden glints.
With Microscopic Vision and X-Ray Vision, it pierced through into the depths of the ice field.
The snow and the thousand-meter-thick ice sheet appeared as transparent as layers of white paper being turned over in his field of vision.
The line of sight then descended further, finally revealing a massive black outline clearly through a crevice in the permafrost.
Yes, a behemoth, its size is comparable to half an aircraft carrier.
"Found it."
John withdrew his gaze, the dark golden light in his eyes quietly fading away.
But how is it supposed to float to the surface?
Am I really expected to personally break through the thousands of meters thick ice layer like a cheap miner?
John's brow furrowed with impatience, but then Joe El's instructions before he left flashed through his mind—
As the only surviving member of the House of El, his body inherently possesses the highest level of biometric information.
As long as one stands within this magnetic field range, the dormant defense center will automatically respond.
And in the instant that thought crossed my mind...
Under the influence of an unknown gravitational field, the cells in John's body instinctively generated a mysterious high-frequency resonance.
"Buzz---!!"
Immediately afterwards, a deep tremor came from deep underground.
The entire ice sheet, spanning hundreds of miles, began to tremble without warning the moment the tremor began.
soon.
Centered on the toe of John's shoe, hundreds of straight cracks instantly appeared on the surface of the ice field within a one-mile radius.
"Boom boom boom boom--!!"
Hundreds of millions of tons of ancient ice were violently pierced from the depths of the earth's crust, turning into a storm of shattered ice crystals that filled the sky.
Immediately afterwards, thick mechanical keels, as thick as skyscrapers and gleaming with an obsidian luster, began to rise savagely from thousands of feet underground.
Then they all broke through the ice cap together.
This is just the beginning.
"Buzz--"
The dragon bones that broke through the ice resembled living snakes, beginning to twirl, overlap, bite, and extend in mid-air.
Tens of thousands of chips constantly shifted and reconstructed, fitting the collapsed Icicle together and placing them between the skeletons, transforming them into natural support.
In an instant.
A fierce wind howled, and steam filled the sky.
Within a minute.
A base, its entire body shimmering with a cold, dark light and interspersed with countless Icicle, rose from the ground.
It stands majestically on the ice field.
The entire base is over twenty meters high, its rugged angles casting a breathtaking shadow in the snow.
A semi-transparent veil was erected at the top of the fortress, forcefully pushing away the surrounding snow.
The main gate, which was tightly closed at the bottom and stood ten meters tall, was now exposed.
"Hmph... their pomp and circumstance are quite impressive."
John smiled with interest, put his hands in his pockets, and calmly stepped onto the stairs, walking straight toward the gate.
Just as he approached the gate...
Suddenly, a beam of light swept out from the dark crystal directly above the door, scraping across John's entire body from top to bottom.
The instant his figure approached within three meters of the fortress gate—
"Buzz—DNA bottom sequence alignment complete."
A cold, mechanical voice rang out.
"Confirmation of the sole surviving member of the House of El bloodline; transfer of highest combat readiness authority complete."
Welcome aboard, Supreme Commander Carl El.
With a muffled, high-pressure screech, the massive, heavy door cracked open from the center and then slowly slid into the bulkhead on both sides.
At the same time, a warm breeze thoughtfully flowed out from inside the door, dispelling the extreme cold of the polar region.
John calmly stepped over the threshold and into the fortress.
The place is filled with a dazzling array of mechanical artifacts.
Suspended streams of light and crisscrossing energy conduits quietly unfolded in mid-air.
Beneath the deep crystalline dome, a data stream composed of unknown symbols flows silently.
John walked straight through a half-mile-long corridor to the deepest hall in the base.
The hall was surrounded by twelve enormous projection screens.
On the slowly rotating dark blue control panel, Jor- El's hands were naturally clasped together in front of his abdomen.
He wore a heavy, dark blue alien robe, his expression solemn, as if he had been waiting there for a long time.
"You've come, my child."
Joe El's voice echoed in the empty hall.
John stopped, put his hands in his trench coat pockets, turned his head to look around at the equipment, and asked with a hint of sarcasm:
"So... this is the outpost you were talking about?"
To be honest, it is quite spectacular.
"But you went to all this trouble to bring me here, you didn't just want me to visit some alien antique exhibition, did you?"
Joe El didn't respond immediately, but instead stared silently at the young man before him.
His gaze was gentle, weathered, and even carried a hint of elder's loving kindness.
A moment later, he slowly turned around, his wide robe rippling with a faint light in the air.
"Before introducing this base, John... or should I call you by your real name, Carl?"
"You need to understand why you were born, and why our ancient race, which once traversed the stars, has come to destruction."
As he spoke, Joe El raised his right hand and gently waved it in the air.
In an instant, the towering crystal walls surrounding the hall vanished with a roar.
The entire control room was completely replaced by a vast, boundless sea of stars.
Amidst the interplay of light and shadow, countless interstellar warships, blotting out the sky like giant, mobile spaceports, roared through the magnificent Nebula.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Krypton was the most dazzling wonder in the known universe.
Joe El's voice flowed slowly through the hall.
"Our ancestors crossed dimensional barriers and sowed the seeds of outposts and research stations on tens of thousands of suitable planets."
Our pioneering fleet has traversed tens of thousands of star systems, establishing one incredible civilization after another.
Even this exploration vessel beneath your feet is nothing more than a spark scattered across deep space during the golden age of space.
However, the glory of holograms did not last long.
The interstellar fleet in the scene began returning one ship after another, and the once vibrant alien colony was deliberately abandoned.
The magnificent stargate fell silent amidst the violent explosion.
Ultimately, all the images shrank back to the mother planet itself, shrouded in a crimson mist.
"But arrogance ultimately stifled the spirit of exploration, and complacency became the most deadly poison."
Joe El closed his eyes, his voice revealing a helpless weariness and pain:
"In pursuit of absolute social order and Eternity stability."
The Supreme Council of Elders Joint Council forcibly implemented the ' Population Control System '.
They sealed off access to deep space, abandoned all frontier outposts, and retreated all resources back to their home planet.
"From that time on, all decline became irreversible, like Domino effect."
"We abandoned gazing at the stars and instead, in a near-suicidal manner, demanded all resources from our home planet."
Unrestrained exploitation ultimately disrupted the gravitational balance at the planet's core, leading to an irreversible chain reaction of destruction.
"Military leader Zod instigated a coup at the last minute... but it was nothing more than the struggle of a drowning man; destruction was already inevitable."
Joe El turned around, his gaze passing through the spinning star chart, and fixed on John stood silently with his arms crossed.
"Your mother and I calculated the final decay period of Krypton long ago using mechanical models."
On the eve of collapse, at the cost of being convicted of treason, we sent you, still an infant, onto an escape pod and to this young planet.
Hearing this, John, who was leaning against the edge of the control panel with his arms crossed, couldn't help but twitch his lips.
It's the same old story again.
The same old sentimental trope of sacrificing oneself for the sake of continuing the flame or for a noble cause.
In the public relations promotional videos that used to be produced by Vought International, he would read the scripts hundreds of times a year until he was sick of them.
I'm sick of hearing that.
"It's indeed a very touching story..."
Thinking of this, John casually flicked his nails.
"So here's the question: since you calculated so accurately and have the escape pods in your hands, why don't you come to Earth with me?"
"Why choose to stay on that planet destined to explode into fireworks and wait to die?"
Upon hearing John's words, Joe El paused almost imperceptibly.
He turned his head, offering no explanation, but spoke in a deep voice:
"Some destinies... are etched into our fate from the very beginning. Come with me."
The two crossed a suspended bridge of light that stretched straight downwards, eventually stopping in front of a sealed cabin emitting a blue glow.
Thousands of elliptical, transparent capsules are densely packed on the cantilever, with pale green liquid flowing through the pipes.
"This is the base's life incubation chamber."
Joe El stopped by the railing of the suspended corridor and said calmly:
"All Kryptonian are artificially cultivated in such containers."
"Once each embryo is activated, their future social division of labor will be completely solidified."
Workers, soldiers, scientists, leaders...
From the moment we awaken, we have no right to choose; we are forced to live our entire lives in a fixed position on the gears.
At this point, Joe El turned his head, a hint of emotion appearing on his illusory face:
"But your mother and I firmly believe that a civilization that has been deprived of free will from its inception is already dead in name only."
"Isn't a system that designs children to be miners but aspires to be bards a cruel curse?"
"Our generation is also a product of this rigid system."
Our genes bear the scars of the old system; we cannot defy the constraints of the underlying code.
But you are different; you are the only child born naturally in Krypton's centuries-long history!
Your future isn't written in any code; you have the right to choose your own future.
Joe El's voice echoed in the hall:
"That is why we are willing to be martyrs of the old era, returning to dust along with that decaying greenhouse."
And you... carry the purest hope of two worlds!
(The next chapter will be updated at midnight sharp, be sure to read it! Be sure to read it!)
(So handsome!)