Ten minutes later, the young woman finally calmed down.
"Feeling better?" Chen Xuan rubbed his shoulder. Her arms were thin, but she was surprisingly strong. If not for his Heavenly Cloud Skill, she might have hugged him hard enough to break his ribs.
"Sorry. I was so happy I lost track of how hard I was squeezing," Lin Qing said sheepishly.
Chen Xuan believed her.
Before they spoke, he had removed Thousand Thoughts Sword and switched to Voice of Trust to gauge his new guest's attitude. From the start, the ability had registered goodwill or better. None of her actions had been deliberately faked.
"I want to know what happened back there. On Space City."
Chen Xuan had been curious about that for a while. Looking back, a lot of things had been strange. The first thing she had called him was a "survivor." N43 had been deserted, with not another soul in sight. Yet it had shown no signs of major damage. At least until the armed mech smashed through the partition and burst into the hall, the place had been in perfect condition. Someone had even kept it spotless; the floor was polished enough to reflect a face.
"Our enemies wanted to destroy us. Crystal Palace was their weapon." Lin Qing studied his neck for a moment. "It looks like you don't have the Individual Interconnection Protocol installed, so I'll have to explain it aloud. Shopkeeper, you saw the six-legged mech chasing me, right?"
Chen Xuan nodded. The sight of the mech bursting through the wall had been hard to forget.
"That was an enemy. Or rather, one of them."
He noticed her wording: one of the enemies, not a mech piloted by one. "Did the AI rebel?"
"It wasn't AI. It was alive, with a degree of self-awareness. It was more like a life-form made of microscopic machines. We call them Nano-Lifeforms," she explained.
"You mean it was made up of lots of nano-scale units?"
Lin Qing shook her head. "That isn't entirely accurate, but it's a useful way to understand it. They originated from Nanoworm Technology, and Nanobugs really are tiny. Those tiny units brought about all sorts of technological changes. But when they gather, a degree of self-awareness emerges, much like how enough nerve fibers can form a brain. That consciousness can't simply be divided, so every Large Nano-Lifeform has a unique mind. Does that make sense?"
"More or less. Go on."
"Nanoworm Technology was in use everywhere back then. It was so flexible in scale and application that by the time we realized some Large Nano-Lifeforms had developed intelligence and emotions, it was too late. Riots broke out in some cities. A washing machine that worked fine yesterday would swallow its owner and churn them into paste today. A traffic light might turn into a monster and direct a line of self-driving cars over a cliff." Lin Qing pressed a hand to her forehead. "But those so-called signs of rebellion were all a distraction. Their target had been clear from the start: Crystal Palace."
"Why?" Chen Xuan sensed they had reached the heart of it.
"Because Crystal Palace drew its power from a Cold Fusion Core—or rather, an Annihilation Reaction Core. If it fell to Earth intact, it would be a super-meteorite, ten times more destructive than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs! According to the experts, the entire biosphere on the Earth's crust would be reset, and the surface would return to a molten state."
An Annihilation Reaction Core? Something that could wipe out Earth's entire ecosystem?
Chen Xuan doubted his home world could develop technology like that in just a century.
And wouldn't that destroy the Nano-Lifeforms too? Then he reconsidered. Carbon-based life dominated the current biosphere. For a life-form as hard to classify as Nanobugs, overturning that order might not be suicide at all. It could wipe out every potential competitor in one stroke.
"I see. They made Crystal Palace fall on purpose, and you were trying to stop it."
"Not just me. There were twenty people aboard the spacecraft. Every one of my teammates died along the way..." Lin Qing said, her voice heavy with grief. "Crystal Palace was enormous, and it had its own defenses. Missiles launched from the ground could barely penetrate them. Our team was humanity's only hope. You know how it ended. We failed. We never even had a chance. If you hadn't appeared there, it would all have been over."
Chen Xuan finally understood why she had taken him for a survivor—and why his shop had appeared there.
She might not realize it herself, but when the mission had become impossible and she had been trapped with no way out, she must have made a desperate plea from the bottom of her heart.
But this was nothing like the problem Liu Shuyue had faced.
Crystal Palace had already fallen. Even if Earth had not been shattered, it would have been thrown back to prehistoric times. Expecting the abilities he had in stock to turn that around was giving him far too much credit.
Of course, he wasn't about to reject her thanks to his face. "What matters is that you survived. This world might be a little boring, but at least it's safe—"
"No! What happened in the future will happen again if we do nothing!" Lin Qing grabbed his hand once more. "Our enemies already exist in this era!"
As far as Chen Xuan could tell, she was afraid he would walk away.
Had the shock been too much for her?
"What's your evidence?"
"I connected to your network. Everything I found online matches the data in my memory bank!" she said firmly. "You said you're the shopkeeper of the Ability Store, right? There aren't detailed records of that, but there was a period when abilities played a dominant role, especially in battles against invasions from other worlds. You must have heard of the Dimensional Limit Organization."
Invasions from other worlds? The words made Chen Xuan's heart skip.
He remembered the red sky Liu Shuyue had split open with one stroke of her sword, and the gun-wielding witch who had been determined to see Joan of Arc dead.
"I'm afraid I haven't."
"Huh?" The young woman froze, then smacked her forehead. "I had it backward. You can't have been caught by the Dimensional Limit Organization, or there'd be a record of you. Sorry, I didn't live through this period, so I can only compare the information I have. Have any mysterious people attacked or pursued you?"
Chen Xuan frowned. Did she mean people like Crazy Thursday? "Why do you ask?"
"The Dimensional Limit Organization's full name is the Organization for Maintaining World Stability and Limiting the Spread of Abilities. From its founding, it set out to secretly bring people with abilities under its control, to keep them from abusing those abilities for personal gain." Her answer caught Chen Xuan off guard. "If you aren't a member, they'll notice you sooner or later. According to declassified intelligence, the organization was still operating in secret in 2025, with no public presence. Independent ability users were often taken into custody without ever realizing they'd been watched."
She glanced around. "Of course, people they'd taken into custody left traces in the records. I'd guess you haven't been exposed yet, but that doesn't mean you're safe."
Seriously?
And which should he question first—the claim itself, or that ridiculous name?
Chen Xuan looked out the window. The neighborhood was as peaceful as ever. Birds chirped in the trees, and now and then a few old men appeared on the benches along the shaded path to bask in the sun. In all his twenty-odd years, he had never felt there was anything wrong with this world.
Or had things been wrong ever since he started dreaming?
"How do you know all this?" Chen Xuan asked after a moment's silence. "Even if it isn't a secret in the future, I doubt this organization would tell the world about its dirty work."
"Because I'm a member of the Dimensional Limit Organization!" Lin Qing said, pressing a hand to her chest.
Chen Xuan gave her a strange look.
The young woman seemed to realize how that sounded and hurried to correct herself. "Don't misunderstand. I'm not going to arrest you. Thirty years from now, all sorts of cybernetic bodies had replaced unstable abilities. Besides, I don't think those arrests were right... No." She paused, then spoke with greater conviction. "That entire theory was wrong. The Dimensional Limit Organization failed to prevent the disaster, and the whole world was razed. But things are different now. Thanks to you, I've come back a century. This time, we have enough time to stop the Dimensional Limit Organization and change humanity's fate!"
Chen Xuan frowned. We?
She held out her hand. "I have all the intelligence, and you have powerful abilities. If we work together, we can't fail!"
Chen Xuan pushed her hand back. "Go get a job. You're responsible for half the damage to the shop. Once you've paid it off, you're free to go."
Lin Qing stared at him in disbelief. "This world is going to be destroyed!"
He shrugged. "So what? We don't even know how similar the two worlds are. I run an Ability Store, not a save-the-world association. Who can do anything about something a century from now?"
Before you continue