Hearing his question.
Su Wen thought for a moment.
At the same time, he recalled the many instances of Time Travel he had experienced.
Then, he calmly gave his answer:
"As a newly established scholar, I probably have no standing to make any definitive judgment on this subject.
But in the future.
As astronomer Professor Brian Cox once said.
The sun we could see simply by looking up at this moment would eventually become a faintly glowing ember within a brilliant nebula.
The remains of that once enormous and magnificent star.
Its fate was to gradually cool in the vast, frigid expanse of space, just like the countless stars whose endless ages had already come to an end.
So, when we looked up at the sky and gazed toward those distant stars and galaxies.
We were actually looking into the past.
Light from those distant celestial bodies needed to cross immense spans of time and space to reach Earth.
And the instant we saw when we looked up now.
Was probably a piece of cosmic history hundreds of millions of times broader than Earth's own history.
Pascal once said: Give life to time, rather than time to life.
(To the time to life, rather than to life in time).
Human civilization would eventually advance toward the distance.
I thought.
There was probably no future more worth anticipating than a romantic and magnificent view of history written across the stars."
"An excellent answer."
After hearing him, Jiang Xiuyuan continued:
"Just as Su Wen said.
Humanity explored ruins and advanced toward the border known as the abyss of knowledge because civilization could not remain at a standstill forever."
Hearing this.
A reporter from Coastal City's most authoritative newspaper asked:
"Professor Jiang, when you went to the Deep Sea Ruins, weren't you afraid you might remain there forever?"
"I am human too. Of course I was afraid.
But my fear was probably more guilt—guilt over being unable to fulfill my responsibilities as a father, a husband, and a son."
He pushed up his glasses and said calmly:
"But if I really had remained there.
I hoped that the research materials I left behind could offer this world even a little help.
Then someone would always see the future I looked forward to in my place."
Su Wen fell silent.
After all.
He had personally witnessed civilization's future three thousand years later.
Scattered applause gradually rose through the quiet lecture hall.
Then.
The applause surged like a tide.
Gathering into the highest praise, endless and deafening.
This scene.
Was faithfully recorded online as well.
One report after another appeared:
Civilization Would Not Stop Moving Forward
How extraordinary knowledge derived from the Origin Era could drive the future forward: Professor Jiang Xiuyuan's vision
Yu Gong Moves the Mountains—in modern terms, it could probably be described in just two words: "inheritance"
The grandeur of the galaxy, humanity's romance
The names Su Wen and Jiang Xiuyuan also spread across the internet.
An hour later.
The lecture ended.
As the attendees left.
Jiang Menghan handed Su Wen a bottle of water backstage.
Her voice carried a trace of coldness that was not easily noticed:
"That man really only cares about research. He doesn't even care about his own life. I don't want you to become someone like him either."
Su Wen understood how she felt.
So he smiled gently and said:
"Every era would always have people like that.
The father of stellar astronomy, William Herschel; Michael Faraday, who proposed electromagnetic field theory; Max Planck, pioneer and founder of quantum physics.
From your perspective, Professor Jiang was indeed somewhat selfish.
But that was not for me to judge.
I understand you.
So I promise you: 'I will always put the people around me first.'
After all.
I am not rigid and old-fashioned, nor am I as great as they were."
Hearing his promise.
An indescribable light appeared in the girl's beautiful eyes.
Her tone remained cool, but her attitude had improved considerably:
"Father knows you are an extraordinary being, so he specifically applied to Night Watch for an Advanced Resource Exchange Permit."
"So the special guest list for today's lecture wasn't decided casually."
Su Wen was very smart.
He instantly understood what Jiang Xiuyuan meant and shook his head with a smile:
"At such an important occasion, Professor Jiang gave me a chance to prove myself. He really does trust me.
Come on, this is good news worth celebrating. I'll treat you to milk tea."
"Blueberry tastes better."
The girl analyzed it seriously.
The boy smiled and teased:
"Then put an extra straw in your cup later. I'll have a taste too."
"Su Wen, you're such an idiot."
The day passed.
At night.
Inside the Detroit Night Watch office.
A doctor performing surgery beneath a spotlight saw his door being pushed open.
At the door stood a white American man dressed in a Beatles-style studded jacket.
Grinning, he picked up the letter lying on the table:
"Dean, an anonymous letter signed 'Rhine.'
Guess who sent it—the Zero-Sum Game, the Shepherd, or the Dormant Sect?"
"Stuart, I am only good at asking corpses for answers.
As for deducing the sender, that might be easy for a sheriff, but for a forensic pathologist, there was nothing interesting about it.
Why don't you open the letter and see what it says?"
The hippie opened the letter.
Two minutes passed.
He finished reading it.
Then he opened a can of beer, his voice no longer quite so flippant:
"The Leis Angton Group—if we acted without proper search procedures, how many years would we get?"
The forensic pathologist replied calmly:
"This time, we won't need to act ourselves."
"What this letter says looks promising, Dean. Don't forget to prepare the trial materials. You have no idea how annoying the clerks at the Doomsday Great Wall are."
"I still remember that half a month ago, I walked out of the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
I went to Larry's bakery to buy a baguette.
That was when the streets would gradually grow warm beneath the sun.
Even in autumn.
Although the shade of the trees was deep, you could still see dazzling sunlight through them.
Unfortunately, it had now completely entered the night."
The middle-aged Englishman, a forensic pathologist by profession, murmured calmly to himself.
The blade in his hand did not tremble in the slightest.
With incomparable precision and speed, it severed the Abyss Infection Source lesions from the corpse fragments on the operating table.
"Can we find Night Watcher 'Rhine' in the personnel records?"
The hippie said with a smile:
"The only record was when the Grand Duke of Bavaria mentioned him at a Westminster House of Lords meeting.
Hey, looking at it this way.
Aren't you afraid he might actually be an infiltrator in disguise?"
Bang!
Dean drove the scalpel into the wall.
Then.
The forensic pathologist calmly reached his conclusion:
"What he did complied with Detroit's rules.
And it complied with Night Watch's bottom line.
Therefore.
I agree."
Before you continue