Longevity Diary 2

Zhu Zhengwei discovered that the world was changing dramatically.

"As large numbers of NPCs in the village died, our 'Root Dream' is being lost."

"This is no longer our dream."

"Like a tender sprout breaking out of the Dream Egg, no longer restrained, stretching out its emerald branches, the world has begun to operate on its own."

Zhu Zhengwei felt as though this were a world in another dimension. He blinked. "Perhaps it could be called a higher-dimensional world looming above people's heads, or four-dimensional space beyond the three dimensions?"

Two-dimensional space consisted of length and width. It could be simply described as a painting, or even the paper people and two-dimensional characters that shut-ins talked about. All of those could be considered part of the two-dimensional category.

Three dimensions, meanwhile, were length, width, and height—the three-dimensional world humans currently inhabited.

What, then, was four-dimensional space?

According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, humans were unable to observe four dimensions, just as two-dimensional people in a painting could not see us three-dimensional beings.

But some also said that four dimensions were a collection of countless three-dimensional worlds.

Perhaps that was what lay before him: a collection of countless three-dimensional Servers?

"And according to the conjectures of countless scientists..."

Zhu Zhengwei's imagination ran wild.

"People living in a three-dimensional world possess near-divine power over a two-dimensional world. Four-dimensional beings are the same toward us three-dimensional creatures. The science fiction work The Three-Body Problem also contains similar descriptions of these four-dimensional beings."

And this theory—higher-dimensional beings striking down lower-dimensional beings—worked perfectly well here too.

Why?

Because as Zhu Zhengwei grew stronger in the future and could freely open that mysterious door, they would descend into three-dimensional reality, appear inside human brains, and leap about at will.

They could freely pass through the brains of three-dimensional creatures.

Weren't they fucking four-dimensional beings??

Thinking of that, Zhu Zhengwei found it rather interesting!

Did that mean he was creating a group of gods?

Was he creating a Brain minefield, excavating a Four-dimensional world?

Were those all Four-dimensional Humans born from human consciousness?

"That's terrifying!"

Zhu Zhengwei's thoughts wandered wildly. His imagination truly was something else.

But no matter how one chose to understand it.

The entire "Four-dimensional dream world," as Zhu Zhengwei saw it, had now regressed to the agricultural age.

After all, this was a Dream World territory. There were no factories or sources of production. The black-and-white televisions, motorcycles, Radios, circuits, firearms—

All machinery had become relics. Every item used was one less remaining, with no new supplies to replenish them.

Humanity was astonished by the changes in the world, yet had no idea why they had happened.

In the end, they could only attribute it all to the "Great Cataclysm of Heaven and Earth," the "Theory of World Civilization Cycles," and the "Punishment of humanity by gods."

An inexplicable disaster swept across the world.

Humanity lost the power of technology and civilization, while humanity's last great scientist, Mr. Zhang Zhi, used the power of his scientific laboratory to leave behind a new path for civilization.

Qi Consumption.

At first, people did not know how to practice it.

Then some people were shocked to discover that after certain women died, some qi would dissipate from their bodies. Absorbing that qi allowed them to take their first steps.

The first and second batches had been absorbed by Zhang Zhi. The third batch consisted of the three hundred young women from the Servers. The world revered the mysterious power within them and called them the [Three hundred empresses of God]. Killing them would grant one new life.

The slaughter began.

After the first thug killed a woman and gained immense power, then killed guards who had no bullets left to supply their guns, he discovered that his strength was enough to crush the laws of the cold-weapon era, trample social order, and become a "King" of the New Era. Thus, countless envious thugs began to imitate him, massacring people everywhere and searching everywhere for those three hundred women, killing them to seize their qi.

The world returned to savagery.

Every building became crumbling ruins. The buildings were being abandoned.

"The war has begun. I'll wait for it to settle."

Zhu Zhengwei had not spent these years idly.

After some experiments, Zhu Zhengwei soon discovered that "mosquitoes" and "plants" dreamed as well. So long as they were living things, they possessed structures similar to a "cerebral cortex" and could be drawn into his Root Dream.

Zhu Zhengwei stopped traveling in dreams and turned his attention back to reality, intending to enrich this world's ecosystem and completely form a true civilized world.

"Let's visit the zoo."

Time passed.

This land descended entirely into chaos. Bandits ran rampant, carving up territory among themselves. Every motorcycle, bicycle, electric wire, and item from convenience stores became one less with each use. As if surviving after the apocalypse, people destroyed every street and looted every shop, and the world quickly returned completely to primitiveness.

Amid the troubled times, Zhang Zhi would return every so often to the old house in the back hills of Zhujing Village and place some things there.

Soon, a hundred years had passed. He also wrote down the diary he had accumulated over those hundred-odd years. The first page described this Great Cataclysm:

[I decided not to use qi and instead travel through the ruins of the Old Era in my ordinary, aging body. I personally witnessed the birth of batches of incomparably brutal thugs, free from legal punishment. Shops were destroyed, vehicles dismantled, houses wrecked. There was arson, murder, looting, and pillaging, until only ruins and broken walls remained. I called this day Epoch Destruction Day, New Calendar Year 000.]

[In the spring of New Calendar Year 013, during the thirteen years after that day of destruction, an unprecedented famine began to envelop the land. Ninety-nine percent of humanity had already starved to death. The thugs finally calmed down and began farming. In the south of Shancheng City, I discovered a Treehouse tribe. Wild beasts were increasing in number—wolves, bears—and the nights had become very dangerous. People once again lived in houses built in trees, wore animal hides, and hunted. It took us five thousand years to turn monkeys into humans, but disaster took only a few years to turn humans back into monkeys.]

[In the autumn of Year 017, I discussed postnatal rabbit breeding with a tribal chief named Yun Sa, attempting to restart animal husbandry. In Year 021, simple illnesses such as colds and fevers could claim people's lives. But they appeared, using qi to heal the sick, just as Second Brother had once treated Zhang Xia. I think they could be called Blessing Shamans.]

[In August of Year 027, all tribes worshiped powerful Blessing Shamans as their leaders. Their people silently forgot that every one of them had once been a thug who killed those women to seize their power.]

[In the winter of Year 029, I discovered that over the past thirty years, large numbers of tigers, elephants, and lions had appeared—animals never seen before. The world truly was returning to ancient savagery.]

[On New Year's Day of Year 031, I believed that the old barbaric era would continue for a long time, so I decided to become a sailor and set out to sea. In Year 0035, I encountered a great shark on the east coast. That battle amid the torrential rain remained vivid in my memory. We were both injured, and the Incomplete reagent of divine factor blood I kept on my person vanished without a trace.]

[In Year 0112, I docked my ship on a deserted island for repairs, preparing to begin my seventeenth voyage and write the story of my seafaring diary, exploring the boundaries of the world's territory. Yet I spotted ships sailing in the distance. They tried to speak to me, this wild man. Only then did I learn that civilization had begun to revive today, nearly a hundred years after I had set sail. Humans truly are the world's most tenacious creatures.]

[In Year 0115, I tidied my beard and unkempt hair and returned to the mainland. This was no longer the world of humans in animal hides and treehouses. The land was ruled by kingdoms large and small. At the center stood the Slave Dynasty, [City of a Hundred Stones]. Its emperor called himself a god and named himself Stone Light Emperor Changheng. He ordered one hundred giant stones arranged into walls, creating the miracle city of 'Hundred Stones.' Imperial war elephants transported the stones, and countless laborers were conscripted. I was one of those slave laborers. During the transport of the massive stones, many companions were worked to death beneath the blazing sun.]

[One night in Year 0116, exhausted from moving giant stones, I lay atop one with the other slave laborers and counted stars. Slave Laborer A Da said something that inexplicably moved me: "So those giant stones are soaked in elephant blood and human tears. Even to the touch, they are icy cold."]

[In Year 0117, we overheard the overseers talking and learned that a resistance army had been formed. A group of civilized people from the Old Era Academy followed in Mr. Zhang Zhi's footsteps. Machinery, steam, speedboats, motorcycles—they had inherited parts of prehistoric civilization from old libraries. They were the Old Steam Country, marked by crude steam-powered electricity. But their numbers were few, and all were elites. They were called the Bronze Country.]

[A profound sense of epic history and inheritance spanning three thousand years condensed in that moment. The final baton of the Old Era had been passed into the hands of the Bronze Country. History and civilization were already the past; history and civilization were still the future.]

[In the winter of Year 0118, I heard that the few remaining women among the three hundred had also begun cultivating. To protect themselves, they established a women's tribe and called themselves the Seaside Ghost Country.]

[In the summer of Year 0122, A Da and I began urging the slave laborers to flee at night. We crossed deserts and hills, ate animal meat and chewed tree bark. In the end, only seven of us remained. A Da died as well. We successfully crossed the border and slipped into the Ghost Women Country as its citizens. In Year 0125, we joined the Battle of the Gurbantünggüt Desert as soldiers, laying siege to the City of a Hundred Stones. The three sides fought in chaos. I saw the desert boiling beneath waves of heat, a blood-red blazing sun overhead, a battlefield strewn with corpses, the heads of green recruits, broken and weathered stone spears, and the Ghost Country Empress leading our side, her entire body glowing. She too was a great King, undefeated in battle.]

[The empress had a Tear Mole at the corner of her eye. It was said to have been left there because of someone her two ancestors had encountered. I knew it was because they had met that man—but where had he gone??]