Foresight

Foresight

Huang Ji left the hospital and headed for his next stop.

In a single day, he visited three hospitals and met experts in various fields, his ranking steadily rising.

But aside from the especially huge leap the first time, his later progress was only a few hundred places at a time.

On one hand, chief physicians and professors were difficult for him to meet. On the other, the doctors he encountered were all roughly at the same level. They could only make up for gaps in his versatility, rather than bring any explosive improvement.

Still, progress was progress. Magic City's medical standards were high, and every major hospital had industry giants.

He had already scoped things out today and learned the schedules of those big-name professors.

Once he got home and properly integrated the knowledge, he could come back next time and round up all the top professors in one sweep. His medical skills should then rise into the world's top five hundred.

On his way home, Huang Ji walked while continuing to ponder the advancement and decline of professional skills.

Everyone had their peak periods, growth periods, and burnout periods. Even Einstein made most of his scientific achievements during a certain year of his youth, when they burst forth explosively.

In 1905, Einstein was twenty-six years old. He had only graduated five years earlier, did not even have a laboratory of his own, and worked at a patent office. Yet with passion and imagination, he published five era-defining papers in a single year.

That was Einstein's miracle year. In contrast, he had few era-defining accomplishments in his old age, though his violin skills improved by leaps and bounds.

As Huang Ji thought about this, he continuously observed passersby to verify his ideas.

Combining all the knowledge he already possessed, he attempted to extrapolate from the information he observed!

Could he deduce whether a person's future lay in a period of growth or burnout? Whether their skills had reached a bottleneck? Whether they still had the potential to improve further?

The more Huang Ji extrapolated, the more he understood. Before long, he discovered that he had comprehended some new information.

The developmental trend of every person's abilities...

Previously, Huang Ji could only see someone's current skill ranking. Now, he could also know the trend of their subsequent development.

For example, whether they were in a period of growth or decline, whether their skills might suddenly explode in the future, or plummet.

Furthermore, he could sense what factors caused those changes. The information was presented to him directly.

For instance, he saw a white-collar-looking man frantically honking the horn inside his car. He was stuck in traffic.

Within the next year, that man's computer hardware engineering skills would soar, his ranking improving from beyond ten million to the top one hundred thousand!

As for the reason...

"Ugh..." Huang Ji held his head, his vision swimming slightly.

The reasons behind that man's explosive rise in computer skills were an extremely complex mass of information, received all at once. It felt as though Huang Ji had been struck over the head with a club.

After catching his breath and steadying himself, Huang Ji sorted through the reasons for the other man's sudden advancement.

The reason was simple. This traffic jam would cause him to miss an extremely important assessment.

At the company, he would also be humiliated by a female manager and mocked by his competitors, leaving him unable to save face before many people.

And he was the sort of person who strove to better himself, someone who could not stand being provoked by others.

Faced with humiliation, he would not give up in despair. Instead, he would work himself to the bone, desperately thinking day and night of ways to improve himself. That was why his skills would advance by leaps and bounds.

"This is... precognitive information? No, it's only a trend, the most likely outcome of evolution."

"The future is uncertain. This sort of future information is calculated based on the chain of cause and effect as of this very second."

"But even so, it's already wonderfully profound! I merely used the information to extrapolate a doctor's career prospects and the downward trend of his skills, and I unlocked such a huge amount of information!"

Huang Ji realized that his ability still had far, far too much room to grow.

Come to think of it, he had actually unlocked similar precognitive information before: lifespan. Though it was only theoretical lifespan and did not account for accidental death, being able to determine in advance how long a body could live was still a form of foresight.

To make sure his understanding was correct, he walked over and passed by the white-collar worker's car window.

"Beep beep beep!" Frustrated by the traffic jam, the white-collar worker honked wildly, his forehead covered in sweat.

He even shouted out the window, "Can't you turn that way? What are the people behind you in such a hurry for? Back up! Back up! Why are you still moving forward? Damn it!"

At that moment, Huang Ji passed by the car window and sneered. "Loser!"

He had not yet systematically studied foreign languages, but he had picked up some through Zheng Xuan. Moreover, because of his Information Sense, he could naturally understand the meaning of every foreign language.

With that word and his expression, he might as well have said outright: You look like a defeated dog!

The white-collar worker froze, his face turning purple. He knew he had been a little too anxious. Shouting in public like this did disturb others.

But he really was in a hurry. He could not be late!

And Huang Ji did not even know him, so why did he call him a "loser"? Did he really look that much like a failure?

"What did you say? Get back here!" The white-collar worker wanted to curse back, but did not know what to say. Huang Ji had already gone far away.

"Damn it!" The white-collar worker slapped the steering wheel, lowered his head, and stared blankly into space.

"Hehehe..." As he sat there, he felt like crying. Thinking about being late today, he was on the verge of breaking down, with countless grievances trapped in his heart.

Everyone had times when life drove them nearly mad. When a string of awful things piled together, emotions could collapse.

Who did not have some pressure in their heart? Pressure from work, pressure from home, pressure they put on themselves... Even random passersby were mocking him now.

"Am I really that pathetic?"

For a moment, he felt he might truly be crushed by it all.

Yet Huang Ji knew that he would not.

Having already walked away, Huang Ji silently turned back and looked at him once more.

Enduring his dizziness, he saw the rough outline of the man's professional "future."

Originally, this man would improve rapidly for a full year. Then, because of his remarkable progress and outstanding ability, he would receive a promotion and raise, earning the company owner's favor.

And because of that favor, he would begin entering a period of decline...

He would slack off. He would become satisfied. He would believe that he was already an industry elite. Indeed, for a small company, he was very capable, but his achievements would stop there.

However, because of one casual taunt from Huang Ji, a passerby...

This man's growth period had been greatly extended! It would continue intermittently for three years, and at his eventual peak, he would reach the global top thirty thousand before beginning to decline.

Huang Ji had changed his fate with a single word...

"Just as I thought..." Huang Ji smiled and left.

He had seen that this man was extremely easy to provoke, emotional, and easily affected by his surroundings.

In many people's eyes, that might have been a sign of poor mental fortitude. But Huang Ji knew that this man's emotional nature was different from others. He was the type to erupt under pressure!

Some people were simply like that. Once provoked, they had to rely on their own efforts to win back their dignity. They had to make something of themselves!

Seeing that clearly, Huang Ji added another log to the fire in his heart and changed his fate.

Of course, nothing in the world was absolute. For now, his future looked like this, but that did not mean it was certain.

Perhaps tomorrow, some small matter would happen and things would change again. He might truly break down after all.

At this moment, in this second, what Huang Ji perceived was merely the greatest current possibility.

"Future information" and the "future state" of "present information" were two different things.

Anything could happen within three years. What Huang Ji saw was only the future state of present information.

Some "nameless thoughts" or purely random events could not be predicted. Perhaps someone would suddenly act on some inexplicable impulse, have a random lapse in judgment, and make a stupid choice contrary to their own personality and habits. Or perhaps certain quantum fluctuations would affect the macroscopic world, triggering a butterfly effect and a chain of disturbances. Then the fates of most people in society would change, more or less.

Because society linked them closely together. That was the true Human Destiny Community.

Those so-called nameless thoughts might originate from the randomness of quantum fluctuations that had not been determined at all in this moment. They might also originate from Huang Ji himself.

Or perhaps the universe itself had a random parameter. Absolute futures did not exist. As for what exactly that random parameter was, Huang Ji had no conception of it yet.

"So the shorter the foresight, the more useful it is. The longer the span of time, the less meaningful the foresight becomes."

"For example, my own fate."

Huang Ji sensed his own future and quickly discovered that it changed far too quickly. Every time was different!

The last time he sensed it, he was returning to his apartment. The next time, he was going to the hospital. The time after that, he was still standing blankly in the street...

Huang Ji increased the frequency of his sensing. The version of himself one second in the future changed like a rapidly flipping slideshow in his mind!

Seventy changes in one second! One moment he stepped out with his left foot, the next with his right. One moment he looked back, the next he jumped in place.

"Because I possess Information Sense, my future is completely unpredictable. Every prediction I make even changes the future."

Along the way, Huang Ji repeatedly observed others, verified his findings, and summarized this so-called precognitive information, continuously deepening his understanding.

Through similar lines of thought, he successively unlocked extrapolated information in other areas as well.

For example, whether a billboard might fall, and based on current causality, when it would fall in the future.

When would the roadside railing break, and why?

When would a high-voltage relay age and malfunction, and what sort of malfunction would it be?

Using all the mechanics and electrical knowledge he had learned, Huang Ji continuously unlocked the physical futures of various fields.

The method of unlocking them was simple. First, he needed a certain amount of knowledge in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Then, based on the information he sensed from an object, he would extrapolate.

He did not need to be absolutely correct. He only needed to be roughly right! Then he would unlock the corresponding "true extrapolation information."

Simply put, when faced with a problem, Huang Ji first came up with an answer on his own. It did not need to be entirely correct. As long as his reasoning and trend were right, that was enough.

If the solving process was basically correct, he would still get points even if the final answer was wrong.

That way, he could unlock an exceptionally precise and objective future trend, simulated by some unknown, absurdly powerful super-computation model.

That so-called "absurdly powerful super-computation model" might be the universe's physical model.

Although foresight became less meaningful the longer the timespan, it was still the most likely scenario.

So Huang Ji could not help sensing a more distant "extrapolated future." He wanted to know whether humanity had a future!

One year... five years... ten years...

Huang Ji staggered to a stop by the roadside, leaning against a streetlamp as dizziness overwhelmed him.

It was too uncomfortable. He felt as though his consciousness was being violently scoured by a vast ocean of information, until his mind was nearly a lump of mush.

He could only filter out and block almost everything, sensing only humanity's survival or extinction in the future as best he could.

"Urgh!" Huang Ji's heart pounded violently. Clutching his head, he dropped to his knees. Even trying to see only a blurry image was far too much for his current capacity to bear information.

But he wanted to see it, even if only a little.

Finally, when he sensed the year 2045, Huang Ji abruptly opened his eyes!

He saw it!

A blue sun appeared in the sky. It was not that the sun had changed color. The sun was still there, but beside it was an additional blue sphere of light, radiating an extreme brilliance.

Two suns hung in the sky!

The terrifying radiation swept across the globe, instantly killing countless living beings. Not only humans, but all animals, plants, and even microorganisms were vaporized.

Only creatures in the deep sea held out a little longer, but more than ninety-nine percent of Earth's species still went extinct.

"Hah..." Huang Ji panted heavily, drenched in sweat, the muscles in his face twitching and trembling.

Sensing the scene thirty-five years in the future, even if it was only a blurry outcome, had been far too much of a strain.

Huang Ji's vision went dark. After seeing the world-ending disaster, his brain buzzed and he fainted on the spot.

P.S.: Sorry.