The Big Bang

The Big Bang

Boom!

A world-shaking explosion erupted, and a crimson fireball brighter than the sun instantly appeared in the sky. The shockwave swept across thousands of square kilometers. Flames, gales, earthquakes, and dust howled and raged, flattening countless trees as if the world were ending.

"Ah..."

Ji Xinghuo jolted awake and sat upright in the darkness.

The aftereffects of the explosion still lingered in his mind, roaring without end. His eyes were filled with confusion and fear, and only gradually calmed down several minutes later.

"That nightmare again. Damn it!"

Ji Xinghuo cursed under his breath and shook his head helplessly. He glanced at the glowing clock beside his bed. It was one in the morning.

For the past week, he had had nightmares every night, and they had always been exactly the same. In the dream, his perspective was fixed. At first, he appeared in outer space, speeding into Earth's atmosphere like a meteor. In the end, he exploded above a vast forest.

Every time the explosion happened in the dream, Ji Xinghuo woke with a start, feeling as though his brain had truly exploded.

And the culprit behind all of this...

"Lights."

Ji Xinghuo called softly, and the bedroom gradually brightened.

Before his eyes could adjust to the light, Ji Xinghuo rolled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw a haggard, exhausted face. Several conspicuous blood vessels showed at the corners of his eyes, and he looked utterly terrible.

Anyone would be drained after sleeping poorly for a whole week.

"It's time to deal with this."

Ji Xinghuo muttered as he opened the cabinet behind the mirror and took out an exquisite woven necklace. Fine nylon cords had been braided into an intricate, beautiful band. Its pendant was a gemstone enclosed in a netted setting, and it looked quite delicate.

Ji Xinghuo's expression was complicated as he looked at the gemstone pendant.

More than ten days ago, he and several classmates had gone on a graduation trip to the Lake Baikal region. On the final day, he had spent twenty Asia Yuan at a local Reindeer Tribe stall to buy this necklace as a souvenir.

That stall had several hundred similar woven necklaces, differing only in their pendants.

Ji Xinghuo had noticed nothing unusual when choosing it. He thought it looked nice, bought it, and wore it home to Chang'an that night.

Then the nightmares began.

After having the same nightmare for several days straight, Ji Xinghuo had identified the cause: the pendant on the necklace, that gemstone resembling a glass marble.

The gemstone's outer shell was transparent. Inside was a brilliantly colored nebula shaped like an eye, but the center of its iris was hollow, as though its pupil had been gouged out. Several fine cracks spread outward from the middle, giving it an inexplicable, incomplete beauty.

This thing was clearly not a natural gemstone but an artificial object. It was not worth much.

Out of curiosity, Ji Xinghuo had conducted some research on it.

He discovered that the gemstone was unbelievably hard, definitely far harder than diamond and beyond the upper limit of his hardness tester. Its brittleness, melting point, water solubility, and electrical resistance could not be measured, and its composition was even more impossible to determine. It was entirely beyond his understanding.

He had spent a long time trying, yet failed to leave even the slightest mark on it.

Once, Ji Xinghuo had even soaked it in his own blood, with no result whatsoever.

Unable to learn anything from the gemstone, Ji Xinghuo turned to his nightmares for clues.

The first thing that came to mind was the "Tunguska Explosion."

Many details of the explosion in his dreams matched the Tunguska Explosion. It had exploded in the sky, left no crater or celestial fragments, and its blast radius and the extent of forest destruction all corresponded with data from numerous historical investigations.

However, the Tunguska Explosion had occurred in 1908, while it was now 2223, more than three centuries later.

Moreover, the explosion site was far from the Lake Baikal area where he had traveled, nearly eight hundred kilometers away.

There was distance in both time and space.

Even so, Ji Xinghuo still suspected that the gemstone in his hand was likely related to the Tunguska Explosion. It might even have caused that mysterious blast.

"Unfortunately, other than the dreams, I have no evidence."

"Otherwise, I could solve a century-old mystery from more than three hundred years ago."

Ji Xinghuo gave a self-mocking smile. The problem now was how to stop having nightmares.

He had already tried everything. Whether he carried the gemstone with him or placed it in another city thousands of kilometers away, he still had nightmares whenever he slept, as if he were bound to it.

Holding the necklace, he returned to the bedroom, untied the cord, removed the gemstone from its netted setting, and carefully examined it in his palm.

"Could this really be an Ability Seed?"

This was not the first time Ji Xinghuo had entertained the thought.

In fact, he had initially suspected that the gemstone might be an Ability Seed. But it did not match any of the traits of Ability Seeds he knew. Whether in the Ability Seed database of the Astral Defense Council, or ADC for short, or on the official website of the national Astral Department, he could find no matching Ability Seed.

An "Ability Seed" was a wondrous object containing an "ability."

All Ability Seeds on Earth came from the Star Realm.

In 2033, thirteen Star Gates suddenly opened across the continents. Passing through them allowed people to enter the Star Realm.

The mysterious, vast Star Realm shocked the world. Its emergence overturned scientists' understanding and violated known laws of physics. The Star Realm connected the entire Milky Way. Using it as a bridge, one could travel to every planet in the Milky Way, even every set of spatial coordinates in interstellar space! Unlike the empty desolation of outer space, the Star Realm was a world brimming with life.

Countless species flourished throughout the vast Star Realm. Their sheer number and diversity surpassed those of any ecological planet, making Earth seem like a drop in the ocean by comparison. The speed and intensity of evolution among Star Realm species were also millions upon millions of times greater than in Earth's biosphere! The Star Realm was home to many intelligent races and numerous civilizations far more powerful than Earth's.

The opening of the Star Gates brought an unprecedented catastrophe upon unprepared humanity. Alien invasions, nuclear war, the Third and Fourth World Wars, nearly two centuries of global turmoil, and the threat of extinction completely rewrote the fate and course of human civilization.

Now, in the 23rd Century, Earth had rebuilt its order and structure.

Humanity had long adapted to the existence of the Star Realm and used its unique resources to drive rapid technological progress and vastly improve productivity.

Yet the things that had affected humanity the most were the supernatural powers originating from the Star Realm.

People had become accustomed to calling them "abilities."

Whether intelligent civilized races or lowly beastlike creatures, beings in the Star Realm could produce individuals with immense power.

Their abilities varied greatly: controlling lightning, possessing enormous strength, changing form, becoming invisible, leaping through the air, and more. Those were merely the most common abilities. There were also many strange and miraculous powers. The further one advanced along the path of evolution, the stronger one's abilities became, and one's lifespan increased as well! By killing Star Realm creatures, one had a chance of obtaining their abilities.

And what carried those abilities were Ability Seeds!

Humans were not born with supernatural powers, but by fusing with Ability Seeds, they could gain abilities and achieve evolution of life.

During the Star Gate Era, humanity had managed to repel the invading Astral Alien Race not only by being willing to perish together with nuclear weapons, but also because pioneers had gained abilities, evolved step by step, and acquired the strength to contend with powerful members of the Astral Alien Race.

Today, among the global population of more than forty billion, over two billion Aberrants possessed abilities.

Ji Xinghuo was not an Aberrant, but he knew a great deal about Ability Seeds.

In this century, everyone had learned more or less about Ability Seeds, and had encountered them in real life as well.

Ability Seeds did not arise solely within Star Realm creatures. They could also form naturally within the Star Realm's environment and came in all kinds of shapes. Some resembled plant fruits or roots, some looked like mineral gemstones, some were energy crystals, and many others were bizarre and difficult to identify.

The Astral Defense Council, which had branches in countries around the world, had created Earth's largest Ability Seed database.

Ji Xinghuo had carefully gone through all twelve thousand-plus Ability Seeds in the database, paying particular attention to several hundred gemstone-shaped ones.

Yet not a single one matched the gemstone in his hand. Not only did their appearances differ, but the gemstone was also vastly unlike the common characteristics of Ability Seeds.

All Ability Seeds displayed "vitality."

Ji Xinghuo had handled Ability Seeds several times. No matter what form one took, when held in the hand, its "vitality" was easy to sense. It was like an egg about to hatch. There was no need for deliberate identification; one could clearly feel its abundant life force.

Yet he had felt no vitality from the gemstone. It was plainly an inanimate object.

That was why he had dismissed the possibility of it being an Ability Seed from the start.

But now...

"Nothing is absolute." Ji Xinghuo now felt that he might have been wrong. His eyes remained fixed on the gemstone in his palm. "Perhaps it's a one-in-ten-thousand exception. It looks like an inanimate object, but it's actually an extraordinarily rare Ability Seed."

If it was an Ability Seed, then it could be fused.

There was no clear standard for whether a human could fuse with an Ability Seed. Generally speaking, the better one's physical condition, the higher the chance of successful fusion.

Ji Xinghuo stood up.

He looked toward the Training Room connected to his bedroom. The mirror on the opposite wall reflected his figure.

He was exactly 1.8 meters tall, neither tall nor short among adult men, only two or three centimeters above average. However, his physique was well-proportioned and lean. The ratio between his upper and lower body was close to the golden ratio. He had broad shoulders, an arm span nearly two meters wide, long hands and legs, and a body of solid muscles containing considerable explosive strength.

This was the result of years of training.

In pursuit of strength and the goal of becoming Aberrants, everyone on Earth worked out.

This was especially true for young people filled with hopes for the future. Each of them was full of drive, and many began spending every day in gyms from their teens onward, undergoing all kinds of physical training to prepare for fusing Ability Seeds.

Ji Xinghuo was the same.

He had started training at fifteen and had scarcely ever slacked off. It had been seven years now.

Although he had not yet become an Aberrant, Ji Xinghuo had great confidence that as long as the Ability Seed he fused with was not particularly high-grade, or its ability was not exceptionally strange, his chance of successful fusion would be at least eighty percent.

"I originally planned to keep training for another year or two after my graduation trip, then take the physical tests and apply for a Super-Limit Ability Seed."

"Now I have to fuse with an unknown Ability Seed..."

Ji Xinghuo showed a hint of hesitation.

As a citizen of the Asia-Pacific People's United Community, after reaching adulthood, one could take four physical fitness tests. As long as one met the standard in any one of them, one could receive an Ability Seed for free and attempt to fuse with it to become an Aberrant.

This was a benefit for every Asia-Pacific Community citizen. The state gave everyone a fair chance.

If fusion failed, not only was no compensation required, but one could also receive free recovery-period medical care at the best public hospitals.

If it succeeded, there were corresponding obligations.

Whenever needed in the future, Aberrants had to unconditionally answer a government summons once and serve the country until their term of service was complete.

Ji Xinghuo had been confident of passing the physical tests when he was eighteen, but he had never taken them because he wanted a higher score.

The higher the score, the more abilities one could choose from, and the better their quality.

The ability grades provided by the state, from low to high, were: Basic, Quality, Outstanding, and Super-Limit.

The vast majority of citizens who passed the tests could only choose abilities from the first three grades.

Only citizens who passed all four tests of strength, speed, endurance, and willpower with high scores, then passed multiple rounds of evaluation by the Astral Department, could apply for the highest-grade Super-Limit abilities. They would enter a queue and receive the ability in chronological order.

Ji Xinghuo's original goal had been a Super-Limit ability, and he estimated that he had roughly a thirty percent chance.

But things were different now.

"If this really is an Ability Seed." Ji Xinghuo murmured, "Judging by the gemstone's hardness and the strange phenomenon of it giving me nightmares, the ability it contains is at least Super-Limit grade. And it could very well be above Super-Limit, reaching the quality of a Starfall-Grade ability!"

Starfall-Grade! Ji Xinghuo's heart pounded fiercely several times.

Abilities at that level were all incomparably powerful. Their value could not be measured in money. The few Starfall-Grade abilities publicly revealed throughout history had never been sold, only exchanged.

"For a chance at a Starfall-Grade ability, it would be worth it even if fusion failed!"

"At worst, I can try again after recovering. It would only delay me by a few months."

Ji Xinghuo stopped hesitating.

However, there was a problem before him: how was he supposed to fuse with it? There were two most common methods for fusing Ability Seeds.

The first was ingestion: directly eating the Ability Seed and digesting it.

The second was injection: dissolving the Ability Seed into a prepared solution, then injecting it into the body's blood vessels for absorption.

There were also some rarer fusion methods. For instance, turning the Ability Seed into gas and inhaling it; mentally resonating with it and merging it into the brain; or certain rare Ability Seeds could directly seep through the skin and enter the body.

The most troublesome fusion method was implantation. This generally applied to organ-shaped Ability Seeds taken from biological bodies. Like undergoing surgery, one had to implant them into one's own body.

If he could choose, Ji Xinghuo naturally wanted to fuse through "ingestion" the most.

The gemstone was not large, about the size of a human eyeball. He could swallow it in one bite. But he doubted whether he could digest it, given its hardness.

What he feared most was that it could only be fused through "implantation."

Ability Seed implantation was not as simple as stuffing it anywhere in the body. Research had to be done beforehand, rejection had to be considered, and medication might be needed to eliminate rejection. There were wounds to stitch, postoperative recovery, and other concerns. All of that required a professional surgeon.

Most importantly, an Ability Seed was usually implanted at the body part where it would take effect.

For example, Thunderclap Hand was an Ability Seed in the form of a section of tendon capable of Discharge Electricity. It had to be implanted into the palm and connected to one's own tendons before one could gain that ability.

Ji Xinghuo stared at the eye-shaped nebula within the gemstone.

"An eye!"

"Could it need to be implanted into my eye socket?"

Ji Xinghuo's scalp went numb. The space inside an eye socket was limited; it could not hold two eyeballs. Before implantation, he would have to remove one of his own eyes.

The price was far too great.

What if it failed...

With modern medical technology, transplanting an eyeball again was not difficult, and he would soon regain his sight. But the pain endured during surgery and the psychological impact were not things an ordinary person could bear.

Ji Xinghuo held the gemstone against his eyelid to compare it.

"This gemstone really looks too much like an eyeball!"

Suddenly, a thought appeared in his mind. Without much consideration, he tried gently touching the gemstone to his right eye.

The eyeball was the most sensitive organ in the human body. Ji Xinghuo immediately felt a slight sting and instinctively closed his eyes.

Yet the stinging sensation grew stronger and stronger, as if sand had gotten into his eyes. Tears streamed down his face.

It was not only his right eye. Both eyes hurt.

"What's going on?"

Ji Xinghuo forced his eyes open through the pain. His vision was a blur, as though a thick mosaic had been laid over everything before him, and he could see nothing clearly.

He touched his cheek and felt something warm and sticky on his hand. He could vaguely make out that it was red.

"My eyes are bleeding..."

Ji Xinghuo's heart tightened. Then he reacted. "Where's the gemstone?"

The gemstone that had been in his hand had vanished at some point. Before he could rejoice that this method had actually worked, a sudden, agonizing pain exploded in his head. It felt as though an awl were churning his brain. He cried out and collapsed onto the floor, blood pouring from all seven apertures.

Boom!

Before Ji Xinghuo's pitch-black eyes, he saw the scene of the great explosion again, just like in his dream. Before his consciousness sank into darkness, one thought flashed through his mind: This time, is my head really going to explode?