He let out a sigh of relief and retreated into the shadows. Suddenly, there was a flash of light at the edge of the window. He walked over to take a closer look and discovered a brand-new break there, cut by something unknown.

This didn’t seem particularly special—after all, the house was actually assembled from slabs of board, the workmanship extremely crude. It was only after years had passed, with moss and flowering vines covering the roof, that the rough, shoddy seams were concealed, making the whole valley appear magnificent and beautiful.

However, the metallic sheen of the break always gave Eleanor Clark a sense of familiarity.

He reached out and gently stroked the break with his finger, then scraped off a bit of metal shavings with his hunting knife and tasted them. At last, he was certain: this metal panel was a piece of ship-grade steel, and of a very high specification—special steel made specifically for interstellar warships.

This kind of starship steel was indeed of superb quality. Who knew how many ages it had weathered, yet it had only rusted a thin layer; the main body was mostly intact, in much better condition than the metal panels and products in his own cockpit.

But how could steel meant for starships appear here?

Eleanor Clark looked again at the houses scattered throughout the valley. This time, with his new insight, he could easily tell which pieces were ship-grade steel and which were walls sealed with wooden planks.

Some of the graceful curves could only be achieved with ship-grade steel. The entire roof of the central large house was a single piece, looking as if it was a section of hull from a crashed starship, moved here in one piece.

Could it be that this settlement was actually built atop the wreckage of a starship?

At this thought, Eleanor Clark actually felt a bit excited.

Generally, starships were far more advanced than ordinary spacecraft. Even if they crashed, certain key devices inside—such as the intelligent brain that recorded voyage and mission data—could continue to operate for over a thousand years on their own power, waiting for imperial rescue teams or for the retrieval of critical data.

If there really was a starship beneath the camp, then Eleanor Clark was confident he could find its intelligent brain containing the navigation data. Even if the brain had shut down, as long as it wasn’t too badly damaged, he might be able to repair it or extract its information.

This way, at the very least, Eleanor Clark could learn where the starship came from, who and what it carried, what mission it was on, and so on.

Perhaps, this could lift a corner of the veil shrouding the past ten thousand years.

Chapter Eight: The Man Closest to God

As he pondered, the girl suddenly turned over, reaching out to grope beside her, mumbling, “Eleanor Clark, Eleanor Clark?”

Seeing that the girl was about to wake up, Eleanor Clark’s figure flickered and he was already on the bed, lying side by side with her.

The girl rolled over, sleepily found him by touch, then muttered something softly, sniffed him with her little nose, and then, using both hands and feet, wrapped herself entirely around Eleanor Clark, continuing to sleep.

Eleanor Clark was so entangled by her that he couldn’t move, and didn’t dare to shift for fear of waking her. He could only lie there stiffly, quietly waiting for dawn.

But as he lay there, he actually felt an indescribable sense of peace. Sleepiness slowly welled up, and before he knew it, he drifted off.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when Eleanor Clark suddenly sat up, looking around, breaking out in a cold sweat in an instant. Sunlight was streaming in through the window; it was already morning, and the bed beside him was empty—Alice Clark was not there.

He was shocked. He had actually slept so deeply in a completely unfamiliar environment. In the past, this would have been unimaginable, but today it had really happened.

He was Eleanor Clark, the imperial god of death who always maintained vigilance and composure in any environment.

At that moment, the door opened and Alice Clark walked in carrying a tray. “You’re finally awake?”

Eleanor Clark nodded, slowly got out of bed, and used this simple movement as cover to secretly try to activate his body.

“Now that you’re up, hurry and eat. After breakfast, I’m going to teach you how to hunt.”

As usual, the tray was piled high with roasted beast meat, accompanied by fruit wine brewed from wild berries. Yesterday, Eleanor Clark had already tasted this fruit wine—it was astringent with a hint of sweetness, not tasty, but not terrible either.

There was a lot of roast meat, but both Eleanor Clark and Alice Clark had large appetites, and in no time, they had eaten everything clean.

Alice Clark wiped her mouth and said, “Pick a few weapons that suit you. Once I return the tray, we’ll go hunting.”

Eleanor Clark nodded, glanced at the weapons on the wall, and with a thought, a silver gleam flickered faintly in his slender fingers. With another thought, the silver vanished.

Several hunting knives of various lengths hung on the wall, along with a war bow. In Eleanor Clark’s eyes, these crudely made weapons were hardly any better than nothing.

But since the girl had said so, he casually took down two hunting knives and tucked them into his belt, then took the war bow and tried it out. He found that both its draw strength and accuracy were lacking—compared to the Empire’s finely crafted assassin crossbows, it was not just a hundred times worse, but at least ninety times.

Alice Clark came in again and tossed a piece of beast-hide armor to Eleanor Clark, saying, “Try this on and see if it fits. If it doesn’t, there’s nothing I can do—I could only find this one.”

Fortunately, Eleanor Clark was tall and sturdy. He put on the beast-hide armor and tied it with leather straps, and it actually looked quite decent.