The Calamitous World

As usual, after the Xiong Bing Lian finished their training for the day, they were free to do as they pleased.

But it was drizzling outside today, and the sky was overcast. No one felt like going out, so they all gathered in the classroom to listen to Qiang Wei play the guitar.

Her fingers brushed lightly over the strings, and a melodious tune flowed from them. Everyone gradually lost themselves in the melody, and the fatigue from training seemed to fade a little.

When she finished, everyone applauded, filling the classroom with a lively atmosphere.

"Qiang Wei's got some skills. Didn't know she could play like that," Liu Chuang said to Ge Xiaolun beside him. But the latter seemed so lost in the music that he hadn't come back to his senses. Liu Chuang called him several times without getting a response, so he tried again.

"Xiaolun, Xiaolun! I've been calling you forever. What're you thinking about so hard?"

Ge Xiaolun finally snapped out of it and said:

"Oh, nothing. Qiang Wei, she... played really well, right?"

"Yeah, Qiang Wei's got some skills. What do you say? Should we ask her to play another one?"

"Another one! We've gotta have another one!" Zhao Xin called out from nearby.

As they spoke, Ge Xiaolun and the others began making a racket, urging Qiang Wei to play another song.

Meanwhile, with Denuo Technology far more advanced than that of Earth Civilization, Super Seminary had detected the Taotie Fleet's movements. Du Kao was solemnly organizing preparations for the coming war against the Taotie.

The Taotie had come this time without knowing the Xiong Bing Lian existed, which gave them an advantage. Still, their combat strength remained a concern.

The vast gap in technological advancement meant they had to account for every possible scenario to give themselves the best chance of winning.

Now that he was a citizen of Planet Earth, Du Kao naturally devoted himself wholeheartedly to its affairs, doing everything he could. For Earth's sake, he didn't care whether he lived or died. He was no longer a Denuo Galaxy commander. He was a commander of Earth, a soldier of Earth, and he was determined to defend his home and country.

"Lian Feng, if I'm killed, I want you to take my place and continue the Black Great Wall Plan. No one on Earth knows it better than you."

"General..."

"Don't look so sad. I only said if."

"Yes, sir."

Dark Forest

Night had fallen. The pitch-black sky seemed to be painted with endless ink, and an uneasy atmosphere hung throughout the forest.

But after passing through that building, Yi Chen felt as if he had arrived in a city.

He had no recollection of the city before him, yet it stirred an indescribably familiar feeling in him.

He tried to remember if he had ever been there, but a sharp pain suddenly struck his brain, as if something were being torn away from it. The pain kept assaulting his nerves. He clutched his head, as if that could ease the agony.

But it didn't help at all. The more he thought, the more he felt things disappearing from his mind, so he had no choice but to stop. By then, his clothes were soaked with sweat, and his silver hair hung damp and disheveled around his head. He braced his hands on his knees and drew deep breaths.

"Where... am I?"

Yi Chen looked bewildered. The sensation had lasted only a short while, but he seemed to have lost something. He had apparently already forgotten that, not long ago, he had been in that silent, dark forest.

After resting for a while with his hands on his knees, Yi Chen began wandering through the city. It was a modern city, but it lacked the bustle one would expect. Apart from the sound of his footsteps, there was nothing else. Everything around him was deathly silent, an unnerving sight.

Yi Chen tried to enter the Dark Dimension and connect to 'Star Departure.' Soon, an ethereal voice rang out in his mind:

"Hello, Star Bolt Power. This is 'Star Departure.' It's our first meeting. What would you like to look up?"

"Can you find any information about this city?" Yi Chen asked without beating around the bush.

"I'm sorry. 'Star Departure' has no information about this location. Would you like me to analyze and record it?"

"Yes."

"Beginning analysis. 1%... 2%... 5%... Bzz—Analysis halted. Unknown energy-based life-form detected nearby. Unknown energy-based life-form detected nearby. Distance: 500 meters... 400 meters... 250 meters... 50 meters..."

A few seconds later, a creature encased in blue-and-red armor appeared in front of Yi Chen, flying through the air.

The creature stood a good seven or eight meters tall. The armor covering it was badly damaged and had lost its former fearsome appearance, making it look rather wretched.

Some red liquid had seeped through the cracks in the armor, and parts of the wiring inside were visibly corroded.

Seeing the armored beast fly over, Yi Chen moved aside to observe. Oddly, though, the beast didn't seem to notice him. It flew straight in one direction, as if he weren't there.

With no time to hesitate, Yi Chen space-jumped after it to see what it was up to.

Even badly damaged, the armored beast was still fast. Before long, Yi Chen had followed it to the center of the city.

The scenery along the way felt even more familiar to Yi Chen, though he still couldn't remember where he had seen it.

At the city center, Yi Chen spotted another armored beast, larger than the first. The armor covering its body wasn't damaged like the other one's. It was brand-new.

"Ku Xi, the target has been eliminated. Please advise on our next move," the damaged mech said to Ku Xi, who was scanning the sky.

"What happened? Even a civilization at this level managed to do this to you? You'd better go home while you still can!" Ku Xi glanced at the battered Yijin and spoke coldly.

"There was an accident. I ran into a few Gene Warriors, but they were injured. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have made it back. Also, those Gene Warriors all headed toward the former site of Luoyang. Should we send someone after them?"

"Forget it. Our top priority is finding the flagship 'Core' that was lost here a hundred years ago. We're running low on energy, and the energy on Earth can't possibly keep up with our consumption. If we don't find 'Core,' we'll have to ask our superiors for support. Neither of us will come out of that well."

After speaking, Ku Xi ignored Yijin. He tapped the air with both hands, and a huge blue screen soon appeared before him.

After watching them closely for a while, Yi Chen realized they couldn't see him. He found it a little strange, but didn't dwell on it. He folded space to appear beside Ku Xi and looked at the blue screen.

What came into view was land patterned in black and white, with countless bottomless rifts splitting the surface like cliffs stretching ten thousand feet deep. Just looking at them filled him with dread.

He guessed the landscape could only have formed if it had first been soaked in volcanic magma and then covered in ice and snow. The black was rock that had melted and solidified again, while the white was ocean that had evaporated and frozen.

Before long, the image on the screen shifted from the surface to outer space. Yi Chen clearly saw a planet surrounded by blue oceans and streaked with black and white.

He wanted to deny it, but the memories flooding his mind told him this was Earth—this was the state of Earth.

The planet's green vegetation had been almost completely destroyed. From space, there was no longer any sign of its former green oceans. And it seemed the sun's heat wasn't enough to melt the snow and ice, since large stretches of the surface were still buried under snow. Yi Chen couldn't imagine how humanity could survive in such conditions.

At the sight of the devastated Planet Earth, Yi Chen's mind went blank for a moment. But he soon recovered. Though this was Planet Earth, it probably wasn't from the same world as his own.

It must be a parallel universe!

Having been reborn three times, Yi Chen believed parallel universes existed. He was also certain this wasn't his original world. In his original world, there was the Xiong Bing Lian, there were Angels, and Earth hadn't been reduced to this.

Though he understood that this wasn't the planet he originally came from, everything that had happened here still weighed inexplicably on his heart, as if a breath were trapped in his chest with no way to release it.

The image on the screen settled on Earth. Then Ku Xi spoke to Yijin:

"The armies of all the countries on Earth add up to more than ten million. We nearly wiped out Earth's main forces in the war a hundred years ago, but the scattered resistance forces still managed to fight us for almost a century. And in the last ten years, all these Gene Warriors have appeared. Our situation is getting more and more troublesome."

"From now on, avoid contact with the Gene Warriors as much as possible. Don't fight unless it's absolutely necessary; conserve our energy. Once we find 'Core,' we'll hit them with a planet-destroying barrage. Even if we can't destroy Earth completely, we can wipe out most of it. Hmph. The rest can struggle on."

"Understood."

After that, the two of them flew toward outer space together, and Yi Chen chose not to follow.

He stayed behind and continued analyzing this world. The previous analysis had been forcibly interrupted, and it was now running again. But because he had no relevant knowledge to draw on, it took a whole week just to obtain some basic information about this world.

When I get back, I'll ask Yan to teach me how to calculate the properties of these basic substances. I've never encountered them before and never studied the relevant theories, so the information I can get just by having my genes analyze them is too vague.

As he thought this, Yi Chen began reading the information already stored in his knowledge base. Text raced through his mind.

A little over a hundred years ago, while people in this world were still busy with their everyday lives, war arrived without warning.

One day, a ray of light suddenly pierced the sky. The crimson beam cut through the atmosphere and shot straight into a city.

At that time, Planet Earth's technology was fairly advanced. Even a hundred years ago, that city had been equipped to defend against intercontinental missiles. But its defense systems were utterly powerless against the scorching beam. They didn't even have time to sound the alarm.

The city's towering buildings and the people within it were destroyed in an instant, vanishing from Earth.

A full-scale war soon erupted. Faced with a conflict that threatened all of humanity, the countries of Earth had no choice but to unite against their common enemy. Yet even then, they were utterly powerless to resist.

The war never stopped. Earth's armies suffered defeat after defeat, countless cities fell, and humanity's habitable territory rapidly shrank. Food supplies began to run short.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

The invaders weren't merely spreading death. They began plundering resources on a massive scale. Energy that should have lasted hundreds of years was completely stripped away in just a few short months. Their plundering didn't stop there, either. They turned their sights on the star that nurtured all life—the sun.

The invaders' technology couldn't drain a star's energy all at once, but it took only fifty years for the sun's energy output to dwindle to almost nothing.

After that, humanity's survival faced an immense challenge. Without energy from the sun, even plants struggled to survive. Food had to be produced through artificial cultivation under artificial stars, but it was never enough for the world's huge population.

Humanity endured this difficult existence for more than thirty years, until the Gene Warriors appeared. With a force capable of standing up to the invaders, humanity's living conditions finally began to improve. Later generations called those difficult years the "Age of Calamity."