Chapter 681: Spaceship at the Bottom of the Lake (Patreon)

Transformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List

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"Master, please follow me."

On the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the Secret Country, Accel had been waiting there in advance, knowing that Sun Cheng would come.

"Yes."

Sun Cheng didn't beat around the bush. His mind was entirely occupied with thoughts about the Spaceship. He went straight to the point, asking, "How large is the Spaceship, and have you conducted any measurements on it? What is the extent of its damage?"

"The Spaceship is exceptionally large. However, because it has been buried deep underwater for so long, we have cleared some of the silt from the covering, but the exposed area is probably less than a third of the Spaceship. We can't assess the Spaceship as a whole for now..."

Accel had clearly prepared well. "As for the extent of the damage, we can't evaluate it at the moment."

Sun Cheng nodded understandingly and didn't blame them.

Lake Titicaca reached a depth of nearly three hundred meters, and the Spaceship had been lying at the bottom of the lake for at least thousands of years. Just cleaning the silt from its surface was comparable to a massive national project.

When he had been flying in before landing, he had already seen several heaps of silt piled up like mountains about two kilometers from the lake shore.

A conservative estimate would put the lakebed silt that Robots had dug out and piled there at least in the hundreds of thousands of tons.

"Take me down to have a look!" Sun Cheng was growing impatient.

Earth's resources were abundant, but not unlimited. Every bit used was a bit less, and there were too many factions vying for them. Since the Cybertronians had survival abilities far beyond those of Earth's inhabitants, why insist on building their base on Earth? In such a vast universe, wasn't there beauty elsewhere?

Accel didn't know what Sun Cheng was thinking at this moment, but he could tell that Sun Cheng was eager.

Without further ado, he made a beckoning gesture and headed toward Lake Titicaca not far away.

The two of them quickly submerged into the lake. The lake's once azure waters had become somewhat turbid recently due to the Robots' dredging work on the lakebed. Fortunately, Sun Cheng and his team were Decepticons. Even if they lost their vision, they could still explore the surrounding terrain and environment by emitting electromagnetic waves. However, what they "saw" through this form of exploration was significantly different from what their eyes would perceive.

The two Decepticons swam swiftly and covered a distance of several kilometers in just a few minutes, descending to the deepest part of Lake Titicaca.

"It's right here, Master!"

Accel led Sun Cheng to a bustling "construction site."

Sun Cheng looked around, and he saw hundreds of Robots diligently working at the bottom of the lake.

These were Robots specially modified for dredging. Each one stood no less than three meters tall, with what appeared to be storage pouches resembling backpacks on their backs. These dredging Robots had a massive suction port on their arms that could be inserted into the silt, capable of sucking up lakebed sediments, including rocks with a diameter of up to 20 centimeters, and depositing them into the storage pouches on their backs. Larger accumulations would be shattered by specialized Robots to a size the dredging Robots could absorb, increasing efficiency significantly.

Thanks to the diligent work of these Robots around the clock, when Sun Cheng and his team arrived, they could already see part of the Spaceship's outline.

The first area the dredging Robots had cleared turned out to be the tail section of the Spaceship.

Despite the Spaceship's surface seemingly covered in something resembling coral reefs, it didn't hinder Sun Cheng and the others from their observation.

"Hiss!"

As Sun Cheng laid eyes on the five enormous, circular engine nozzles protruding from the rear of the Spaceship, each with a diameter exceeding forty meters, he couldn't help but take a sharp breath of cool air. However, the excitement on his face only intensified.

"The Ark... It really is the Ark..."

Just like the murals they had seen in the underground tomb where they buried the Pathfinders, this was a massive Spaceship, flattened in shape, with five engines mounted at its rear.

In Mirage's memory, as a member of the Cassette Legion, he had witnessed the flagship of the Autobots, Optimus Prime - the Ark.

It was a mighty, beautiful, and incredibly wondrous Spaceship, said to be designed by the top Autobot scientist, Jack, and constructed by the finest Autobot engineers, Reckless and Crane.

During the first Civil War, aside from the Cosmic Rust outbreak that infected both sides, there was another crucial reason why the Autobots managed to negotiate a ceasefire with the Decepticons. It was because the Autobots won a pivotal battle against the Decepticons.

In that battle, which Megatron did not personally participate in, Optimus Prime, who was then still a student under Sentinel Prime, led over three hundred elite Autobot warriors aboard the Ark Spaceship and launched a long-range raid on the Decepticons' rear positions.

In that decisive battle, Optimus Prime and his team, using the Ark's naval artillery, destroyed three Decepticon military fortresses and wiped out several elite units under Shockwave's command, forcing the formidable Decepticon commander to accept a painful defeat.

It was this battle that established Optimus Prime's position as the future Autobot leader.

Due to the lack of effective countermeasures, the Decepticons had no choice but to swallow their pride and eventually reach a temporary ceasefire agreement with the Autobots, ending the first Civil War that had lasted for millions of years.

It was this incident that inspired Megatron to order Shockwave to personally lead the design and construction of his flagship, the Retribution Number, a terror-inducing warship even by the standards of the Council of Primes era.

The excitement lasted for quite a while before Sun Cheng managed to suppress it.

He knew that his earlier statement, made in the heat of excitement, was not entirely accurate. The Spaceship before him, while resembling Optimus Prime's Ark, was not the Ark itself.

Strictly speaking, it should be considered a prototype of the Ark, a medium-sized transport Spaceship mass-produced during the Council of Primes era for carrying colonists and cargo.

Skyfire's memories held many records about it.

It was said that when Skyfire left Cybertron to embark on an outer space exploration and search for ways to save Cybertron, he did so aboard this type of Spaceship.

"Can it transport hundreds of colonists and tens of thousands of tons of supplies simultaneously..."

Sun Cheng gazed at the Spaceship before him with fervent eyes, even though it wasn't the colossal Spaceship he desired, one capable of transporting tens of millions of tons of cargo.

But it would suffice!

If Base Two could obtain the manufacturing methods for it, Sun Cheng was confident that within a few years, he could establish his own empire on Mars, the second habitable planet in the Solar System.

With these thoughts in mind, he took control of his body and swam towards the Spaceship that had likely been resting at the bottom of the lake for countless years.

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