Chapter 507: Chapter 457: Descent

Stuffing waffles into his mouth—they don’t produce crumbs, serving as an alternative to bread and biscuits for astronauts.

Another dull and tasteless day in space…

Out of the corner of his eye, Ivan inadvertently glanced out the observation window of the Science’s multifunctional experimental module and saw two tiny rice-grain-sized dots floating far outside the window.

“Cough cough cough!”

Ivan started coughing violently, forgot about eating, and quickly floated to the observation window, staring intently.

There was no mistake, those two dots were distinctly humanoid figures.

One of them was wearing a rudimentary red diving oxygen mask, looking purely human.

The other one had a big head, a thin neck, and round eyes, perfectly fitting the stereotypical image of a little gray alien from sci-fi works.

The two figures were just floating there, with no visible spacecraft or safety ropes around.

“Этоневозможно!”

This is impossible!

For a moment, countless movie scenes flashed through Ivan’s mind.

Star Wars, E.T., Mars Attacks, The Invasion…

To his shock, those two figures seemed to have noticed the International Space Station and waved at him from afar.

(The orbital inclination of the International Space Station can reach up to 51.6°, covering mid to high latitude regions, and orbits Earth every 90 minutes.)

The little gray figure on the right even opened its mouth, trying to shout something at him.

‘Could it be that I’ll be the first human in history to make contact with aliens?’

This wild thought flashed through Ivan’s mind, and immediately, the little gray figure seemed to realize that sound couldn’t be transmitted in a vacuum. It liquidated its arm and reshaped it into huge… block letters.

Ivan, whose sister was studying in China, instantly recognized that it was Chinese. He hurriedly took out his phone, frantically opened the translation app, and managed to snap a photo of the mysterious text before the space station sped away and missed the observation window.

“Ivan, GOC is asking if our anomaly detection rotation component is in place.”

Fellow Russian astronaut Aleksey, who had climbed into the Science’s multifunctional experimental module,

saw the burly Ivan holding the phone with an almost reverent expression, solemnly pressing the translate button.

Then, from the speaker, emerged precise and standard Chinese pronunciation.

“Dai pai bu Lao Tie.”

————

“Dai pai your head dai pai.”

Li Cheng, wearing an oxygen mask, rolled his eyes and gave Gray Rain a knock on the head, speaking muffled through bone conduction Bluetooth headphones, “Don’t scare the astronauts silly, they might really think they’ve seen aliens.”

Posing as a little gray alien under the guise of being “also a Gray family member,” Gray Rain puffed out his chest, “What do you mean think they’ve seen aliens, I’m genuinely a real alien.”

Uh… that might actually be true.

Zelovin was indeed an alien, and one far more advanced than Earth by thousands of years.

“Alright, ten more seconds.”

Seizing the opportunity, Li Cheng took half a minute to admire the magnificent view of Earth from a near-Earth orbit angle with Gray Rain. Along the way, pinpointing the location of the UK.

In the pitch-black universe, Earth rotated slowly and majestically, the line of dawn like a golden ribbon sweeping across the surface.

To the right of the line of dawn were clouds like silky cotton floating over the land’s folds. Snow-capped mountains, deserts, oases, and oceans undulated in light and shadow.

To the left of the line of dawn, Eurasia rested under the night, with the twinkling lights of countries and cities forming a line.

“We should go.”

The Electronic Pet Egg opened, and Li Cheng put Gray Rain away, floating 400 kilometers above Akmola State, Kazakhstan, with the last small chunk of Ten-Complete Great Replenishing Pills in hand, locking his gaze on the British Isles.

The next second, they vanished.

——————

London time, 4:38:44 AM.

Sixteen seconds until the deep red alert arrives.

“Moo——”

At the junction of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in the Ural Mountains, a Kazakh cow, sensing something, looked up at the sky while grazing.

Not far from the herd, GOC operatives in Central Asia, seated on a pickup truck and preparing to set up observation equipment at the mountain top, also seemed to sense something and gazed towards the horizon.

Suddenly, at 6000 meters above the ground, high-altitude cirrus clouds were inexplicably split vertically from the middle by an invisible force, tearing a nearly hundred-kilometer gap towards the west.

The cloud sea churned, and only after dozens of seconds did the raging air currents, comparable to a hurricane, reach the ground.

Sand flew and rocks rolled, dust covered the sky, and the herd huddled together in panic, bells ringing incessantly.

The wind was so strong it even shook the pickup truck.

“WTF…”

A dust-covered GOC operative in the truck bed instinctively grasped the railing and stood up, looking at the peculiar weather phenomenon with his mouth wide open, enough to fit an egg.

The GOC director in the front passenger seat sighed, having just received a message on his friend’s communication interface,

Not only Central Asia, but all weather satellite stations in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and Western Europe simultaneously detected an enormous-scale weather anomaly spanning 3,500 kilometers along 51° north latitude.

Meteorological satellite readings surged wildly; such an exaggerated phenomenon over a wide range surely would be seen and recorded by countless people, adding numerous challenges for the GOC in calming public opinion later.

The director listlessly waved his hand outside the car, “Let’s head back.”

The subordinates looked puzzled, as they were just about to set up detection equipment on the mountaintop, “Sir?”

“This is beyond our ability to intervene. Let the Brits handle their own issues.”

The director’s expression was complex, his voice scattered by the wind, “Hopefully, not too many people die…”