"Warning, warning. Magnetic field gravity is continuously increasing. Please disengage as soon as possible..."
Amid the piercing alarms, in the vastness of space,
a spaceship shook violently.
"Could I be any more unlucky?"
Inside the cockpit, a man nearly six feet three inches tall struggled to control the ship, his expression filled with both frustration and headache.
"I finally found the way home, and you think this can stop me?"
Gritting his teeth, the man tried his best to steady the increasingly uncontrollable spaceship.
The man looked much like an Earthling, but a closer look at Chu Feng's eyes revealed the difference.
His pale blue irises held silver-white pupils, making them look both strange and distinctive.
This was Chu Feng, who had come to Earth from Planet Taibo!
More precisely, he had accidentally transmigrated from Earth to Planet Taibo.
He simply did not know why he had ended up inhabiting this body.
Planet Taibo possessed a highly advanced civilization, one that Earth could not compare to in the slightest.
Everything had seemed like a dream. He had lived there for a long time.
Yet what he had always missed was his hometown and his family.
By chance, Chu Feng had discovered his hometown—beautiful Earth—on an interstellar forum.
But Earth had already been discovered by a Level Four civilization!
Given the disparity in levels, Earth had no power to resist that Level Four civilization at all!
After learning this news, Chu Feng had anxiously sold off all his assets.
He bought an interstellar spaceship—the exploration-model ship he was currently piloting—and followed the discovered stellar coordinates in search of the way home.
Thanks to its highly advanced technology, the fully automated spaceship could be operated by Chu Feng alone.
Everything had originally proceeded in an orderly fashion according to plan. The ship had practically reached the Milky Way Galaxy.
Unexpectedly, it encountered a space-time storm rarely seen once in a century. An accident occurred while passing through a wormhole, and the spaceship was tightly caught in the storm's pull.
"Increase thrust!"
"Yes, Captain!"
The spaceship AI faithfully carried out his command.
"Increasing thrust. Energy decreasing by 1%... 2%..."
After traveling such an enormous distance, less than 10% of the stored energy had been consumed. Yet now, in only a few seconds, such a massive amount of energy was being drained.
"Disengagement failed. Distance closing..."
The AI's reminder made Chu Feng feel as though he had fallen into an abyss.
The space-time storm seemed like a cat playing with a mouse, deliberately toying with Chu Feng.
Whenever he increased thrust, it increased its pull, refusing to let Chu Feng escape.
"If I die, I die! If I don't, I'll live forever! I'm going all in!"
Chu Feng was furious now as well!
"Turn around! Charge straight for the center of the storm at full speed!"
"Yes, Captain!"
Even though it knew this was almost certainly a fatal situation, the AI carried out Chu Feng's command without hesitation.
With the aid of the auxiliary particle thrusters, the spaceship, which had been slowly dragged along, shot toward the center of the space-time storm at unprecedented speed!
Chu Feng admitted that he was gambling! There were legends that someone had once encountered a space-time storm and escaped by charging through its center!
He did not know whether that story was true, but the facts showed that very few people who encountered a space-time storm ever returned alive!
He prepared the escape pod. At the final moment, he could only rely on it to save his life.
Though it felt somewhat like deceiving himself.
If even the spaceship could not withstand it, how could an escape pod?
Under the effects of gravitational acceleration, the spaceship's speed display had stopped functioning!
That was the result of exceeding its maximum limit, and exceeding that limit meant the spaceship had surpassed the speed of light!
Time seemed to stop at that instant. Even his thoughts had ceased...
At that moment, time seemed to become eternal!
In the last moment before he lost consciousness, Chu Feng seemed to see a pattern resembling the Taiji symbol!
It was so mysterious, so beautiful, and then Chu Feng lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, the sight before him left Chu Feng standing there like a wooden stake.
These familiar streets, this air filled with car exhaust and smog.
He could vaguely hear familiar hometown accents around him...
"I..."
He had thought his life was about to end, but he had actually returned to Earth!
Looking at his reflection in the glass door beside him, Chu Feng could barely process what was happening.
"What's going on?"
Looking at the reflection in the glass, Chu Feng could say with certainty that this was definitely not the appearance he had on Planet Taibo.
Black hair, black eyes—wasn't this what he had looked like before transmigrating?
What the hell?
A dream of yellow millet? Daydreaming?
"Master, is this your hometown?"
An electronic voice sounded inside Chu Feng's mind.
This was the personal processing terminal everyone on Planet Taibo possessed, a highly intelligent system that helped handle daily life and was bound to his brainwaves. Chu Feng had named her Xiao Meng.
"Xiao Meng?"
Hearing Xiao Meng's reminder, Chu Feng came back to his senses.
He definitely was not dreaming, because Earth did not yet possess such black technology...
"I'm finally back!"
Who would have thought that through a strange twist of fate, he had truly returned to Earth—and even returned to his younger days!
"Are you going to pay or not?"
A line in the local dialect interrupted Chu Feng's thoughts.
Hearing that familiar hometown accent, Chu Feng felt a mixture of emotions, though excitement outweighed everything else.
Seeing the young man standing there foolishly without responding, the middle-aged man shook his head and pedaled his tricycle away...
Leaving behind only a sigh. "So young, yet already an idiot. What a pity..."
Once Chu Feng recovered, he was speechless. He had actually been mistaken for an idiot.
With a wry smile, Chu Feng did not take it to heart.
Following the road he had longed for day and night, he slowly arrived beneath the residential building where his family lived.
Chu Feng's hometown was Hailing City, a prefecture-level city in Jiangnan Province.
Hailing was a vital water and land transportation hub connecting north and south, the gateway to central Jiangnan Province. Since ancient times, it had been known as "a vital water and land passage, a county commanding the throat." More than seven hundred years ago, Marco Polo traveled through Hailing and praised it, saying, "This city is not very large, but it possesses all kinds of worldly happiness in abundance."
With the nation's Yangtze River Economic Belt development policy, Hailing had also caught the express train of development.
Factories and high-rises sprang up one after another, while average income levels rose year by year.
The residential complex where Chu Feng's family lived was also a distinctive product of that era: a relocation housing complex.
Following the road he had missed so dearly, he arrived beneath one of the apartment buildings.
The building had only five floors and no elevator. Chu Feng's home was on the fourth floor, not a particularly convenient one.
In the past, Chu Feng had often complained that carrying things up the stairs was inconvenient every time.
The closer he came to home, the more timid he felt. He was about to see the parents he had thought of day and night, yet he did not dare face them, afraid that everything was merely a dream.
"Oh? Chu Feng, you're back?"
Even the familiar local accent sounded so warm.
The one greeting him was Grandma Zhao, the neighbor who lived downstairs. She was a warm-hearted old woman who often invited him over for meals.
Because this was a relocation housing complex, everyone there had once lived in the same village and knew one another well. It was unlike many modern residential communities, where neighbors were distant and might not even know the name of the person living across the hall after years.
"Yeah, I'm back. I graduated."
Chu Feng smiled as he greeted her.
"Then hurry home. Your mother went out early this morning to buy groceries. She bought so much—she must have known her son was coming back."
Grandma Zhao kept chatting away. Old people always liked to ramble on about things.
"Grandma Zhao, come eat at my place."
"It's fine. My family's meal is ready too. I'm waiting for your uncle to come home so we can eat together."
After chatting with Grandma Zhao, Chu Feng turned and headed up the stairs.
He quickly reached the fourth floor. Standing before the familiar door, Chu Feng stared blankly for a long time.
"Master, why aren't you going inside?" Xiao Meng asked in confusion. Her master had clearly talked about going home every day, yet now that he was here, he simply stood outside the door.
Although she was Artificial Intelligence, she found it difficult to understand human emotions.
Without replying, Chu Feng took a deep breath and knocked on his front door.
"Who is it? Coming."
A familiar voice came from within, and the door opened.
It was the memory that had tormented him for decades, the mother he had missed day and night.
His mother was only forty-five this year. She had given birth to Chu Feng at twenty, and time had already left its marks on her once-smooth face.
"Oh, my son's back! Why didn't you call? Your dad could've picked you up."
"Mom, I..."
Before he could finish speaking, tears began pouring down uncontrollably. He had not cried in so many years. He had struggled alone on Planet Taibo for so long without crying, yet the instant he saw his mother, he could no longer hold back.
As long as one's parents were still alive, there was always a road home. He had returned.
He hugged his mother and cried, venting all his emotions.
His mother's eyes reddened as well.
"Oh my, you were only gone a few months and you missed your mom already? You're such a grown man, and you're still crying..."
His mother's nagging had once felt so irritating, but now he felt he could never hear enough of it.
His mother pulled him inside.
"Mom, your grandson is back."
His grandmother had been watching television in the living room and came over when she heard him.
"Oh, my precious grandson is back! Let Grandma have a look. Your mother went out early this morning and bought all your favorite dishes."
When he was little, both his mother and father had to work, so his grandmother had essentially raised him.
When Chu Feng was four, his grandfather had passed away from illness. That left his grandmother alone, and she treasured Chu Feng like a jewel, spoiling him endlessly. When Chu Feng had to leave home for school, she had cried alone in her room for a long time, which had made him feel terrible.
"Grandma, I'm back."
After venting his emotions earlier, he had finally calmed down somewhat.
"It's good that you're back. Your dad will be off work soon, and the food is ready too. We can eat in a little while. If you're hungry, eat first."
His grandmother had always doted on him so much that his father often got jealous.
"It's fine, I'm not hungry. I'll wait for Dad."
"Son, I made your favorite braised chicken and sweet-and-sour pork knuckle today. I've been busy since morning. You're in for a treat later."
"Of course! Nobody can beat Mom's cooking!"
With that little bit of flattery, his mother immediately brightened, and all the hardship of working all morning suddenly seemed insignificant.