Noah walked on the heavily polluted ground.
If they were ordinary citizens of the federation, they would undoubtedly die in such polluted air.
Let alone being able to see the road ahead clearly, like Noah.
Noah slowly walked forward, and soon he arrived near the underground shelter that his little friend, Alexander, had explored for him.
Just as he was about to continue forward, a voice came from the underground shelter.
"Stop! This is the location of the Imperial Fortress; no one is allowed to approach. Otherwise, you will be killed without mercy!
Regardless of whether you are an Astra Militarum soldier or anyone else, return to your unit immediately.
Do not wander around in front of our fortress, or I will execute you on behalf of your commissar."
This was a warning from an Astra Militarum Commissar of the Imperium. To be honest, this commissar could be considered merciful; at least he issued a warning.
Normally, such an act by Noah in the Imperium, if he had no mission, could be deemed desertion and he would be immediately shot.
But it was clear that Noah didn't understand what they were saying. All Noah could hear was:
"Si jamais vous apercevez un chat hon hon..."
It was an inconcievable dead language.
Due to the complete language barrier, all Noah could hear was a cacophony of sounds coming from ahead.
It seemed like human voices, but he wasn't sure exactly who they were.
This was not the federal language used by the Terran Federation, but a new and very peculiar language.
Out of safety concerns, Noah did not continue forward; instead, he stopped in place.
He needed to figure out what language those guys ahead were using.
He had to have his little friend, Alexander, decipher it, otherwise, he wouldn't be able to figure out where he was.
After all, if there was a shelter ahead, there should presumably be a civilization.
If there was a civilization, then there was a glimmer of hope to understand the situation of the surrounding star sector.
Although Noah felt it was more likely that this civilization had not yet left its home planet.
But there was still a little hope, wasn't there?
"Alexander, decipher the tone of those people ahead, and also the meaning they are expressing."
"Received. Mobilizing reserve database. Attempting to decipher all of their language."
Every smart wristband stored all of the federation's civilian technology, as well as some information that could be stored by civilians. The powerful quantum storage perfectly met this requirement.
Noah believed that with the wristband he held, the federation had stored hundreds of millions of languages of various strange creatures and their modes of expression. Theoretically, it should be able to decipher the other party's language.
"Deciphering. Detecting that the other party's language seems to be a fusion of the Terran Federation's former English, European languages, and Pacific region languages.
This is merely the cracking system's conjecture. Deciphering this language may require some of their data. Please acquire some of their data so we can continue to decipher their language."
"If possible, please capture a person and use psionic power to search their brain to obtain the knowledge we need."
Although the other party's language was a fusion, Alexander could completely decipher it.
But the problem lay in this: as a relatively rigorous AI and unlike the common AIs used by federation citizens, Alexander, without sufficient supporting data, was unsure whether the deciphered information was true or false.
If it couldn't be corroborated whether the deciphered information was true or false, Alexander would not teach potentially incorrect knowledge to Noah. This did not align with its underlying logic.
So Noah needed to provide some data for comparison. Conveniently, all federation citizens possessed powerful psionic abilities.
Using psionic power to search for knowledge in the other party's brain was still effective.
Upon hearing this, Noah naturally wouldn't refuse. The Terran Federation never paid much attention to alien life forms.
It was clear from the data report Alexander gave him that the creatures on the other side were almost certainly not human, as their genetic similarity was even less than 20%.
What did 20% mean?
Even a banana was 50% 'human'!
The other party could at most be considered a humanoid creature, but genetically speaking, they definitely had no relation to humans whatsoever.
These were undoubtedly alien creatures, and the Terran Federation's attitude towards alien creatures remained consistent.
EXTERMINATION!
So Noah had no psychological burden whatsoever in taking action.
Powerful psionic energy began to be mobilized by him, and a small psionic hand entered the Astra Militarum's defensive fortress.
Immediately after, before these mortal troops could react, an Astra Militarum soldier was seized by Noah.
Noah protected this mortal soldier with psionic power, then took him into the Warp. After a short, brief journey through the Warp, he appeared before Noah the next second.
Although genetically, it was impossible to determine that the other party was human.
But when Noah grabbed him, his humanoid frame still made Noah choose not to kill him directly, but instead to knock him unconscious with a slap.
"Alien, your appearance has saved you, otherwise you would surely die."
Noah gently laid the unconscious Astra Militarum soldier on the ground, and psionic tendrils softly probed into the soldier's temples.
A faint blue halo flickered on the soldier's forehead, and his limbs began to twitch unconsciously.
"Genetic scan complete. Target genome similarity to human baseline: 19.7%." Alexander's prompt flashed on his retina. "Detecting abnormal neuronal discharge. Recommend strengthening psionic barrier."
"Reading surface memories." Noah frowned. The creature's brain structure was unusually complex, like a jigsaw puzzle forcibly stitched together.
He suddenly touched a memory node, and the soldier's eyeballs rotated violently beneath his closed eyelids.
For some unknown reason, despite this soldier being in his teens, his memories were remarkably sparse.
All his memories consisted of endless training, training, and then fighting on the battlefield with other young people who had trained alongside him.
And they constantly shouted for a so-called Emperor.
Who was the Emperor?
Noah hadn't figured that out yet.
But Noah finally extracted the language they used from his mind and compressed this data package into a small file to transmit to his little friend, Alexander.
"Alexander, perform a cross-decipherment to ensure that the language of these strange creatures can be deciphered."
"Received. Deciphering. Deciphering time: 4 minutes. Deciphering complete. Specific content has been deciphered. Transmitting into your brain."
The electronic transmission began. Two minutes later, Noah opened his eyes. He now understood the language of these strange creatures.
With the language mastered, he could now better understand the things he had seen in his mind. He acutely noticed something amiss.
"These aliens actually call themselves humans? In what way are they human? Well, they do look like humans, but their genes..."
For a moment, Noah felt a little worried. He couldn't figure out what was going on with these guys.
The Terran Federation could be said to be extremely rigid towards alien races.
But once it involved humans, no matter who it was, they would pause.
It didn't matter how unrelated their genes were to humans, but their appearance was indeed similar, and more importantly, they considered themselves human.
During the Terran Federation's conquest of the entire galaxy, they had never encountered any creatures that called themselves human.
And Noah could clearly analyze from their language that their self-appellation was "human."
This caused Noah to slow down his original actions. He felt it was necessary to figure out what was going on with these guys.
As for genetic matching—
Noah no longer cared about that.
He was a top student of the federation, so he naturally knew that if humans truly lived in space for thousands of years on different planets, without sufficient technological capabilities for planetary terraforming, it was possible for huge genetic changes to occur.
Moreover, some humans also liked to modify their genes, and if they messed around, mutations could also occur.
At one point in the federation, a small group did this, but that small group was eventually directly eradicated by the federation government.
The topic of genetic changes and external appearance was something his teacher researched, and he had followed his teacher in researching it at the time.
They had simulated this possibility in the federation's quantum supercomputer simulations.
Therefore, Noah decided to treat these humanoid creatures with more tolerance and benevolence.
Don't let his role as an explorer fool you; this was driven by his own interest.
Before becoming an explorer, he was a top scientific researcher in the federation.
It is well known that in the Terran Federation, those who can go to other places to explore must be scientists.
Noah scrutinized the soldier he had captured.
He was wearing a gas mask and a coat from a very early period in the federation.
The style of this gas mask was very ancient; if traced back, it could even be traced to the 1900s.
He stared at the creature in the bulky protective suit, suddenly noticing the corroded metal tag on its collar—beneath a blurry aquila, it read: "264th Krieg Death Korps Siege Regiment."
"Strange name."
This was Noah's assessment of him.