World of Calamity

Chapter 19: World of Calamity

That day was like any other—after completing their training tasks, the Xiong Bing Lian members began to arrange their free time as they pleased.

However, it was drizzling outside today, the sky gloomy and overcast, so no one felt like going out. They all gathered in the classroom, listening to Qiang Wei play the guitar.

Her fingers gently brushed the strings, and a melodious tune flowed slowly from her hands. The others gradually became immersed in the melody, the fatigue from training seeming to dissipate somewhat.

When the song ended, everyone burst into applause, the classroom filled with a lively atmosphere.

"Sister Qiang Wei, not bad! Didn't know you had this in you," Liu Chuang said to Ge Xiaolun beside him. But the latter seemed still lost in the music from just now, not responding even after being called several times. So Liu Chuang called out a few more times.

"Xiao Lun, Xiao Lun, I've been calling you for ages and you don't react. What are you thinking about so intently?"

Ge Xiaolun finally snapped back to reality and said, "Oh, oh, nothing. Qiang Wei... that was really well played, right!"

"Yeah, Sister Qiang Wei's got skills. How about it, want to ask her for another one?"

"Another one, definitely another one!" Zhao Xin chimed in from the side.

With that, Ge Xiaolun and the others started making a ruckus, clamoring for Qiang Wei to play another song.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Super Seminary had used Denuo Technology—far surpassing Earth's current civilization—to detect traces of the Taotie Fleet. Du Kao was solemnly arranging preparations for the upcoming war against the Taotie.

This time, the Taotie were attacking without prior knowledge of the Xiong Bing Lian's existence. That was their advantage, but combat strength remained a problem.

The vast gap in civilization and technology meant they had to calculate every possible scenario to have a greater chance of victory.

And now, as a human of Earth, Du Kao naturally devoted himself wholeheartedly to Earth's affairs, doing everything he could. For Earth, he could disregard life or death. He was no longer a general of the Denuo Galaxy but a commander of Earth, a soldier of Earth, with the resolve to protect his homeland.

"Lian Feng, if I fall in battle, I hope you can take my place and continue with the Black Great Wall Plan. No one on Earth knows it better than you."

"General..."

"Don't be so somber. I only said 'if.'"

"Yes."

Dark Forest

Night had now fallen. The pitch-black darkness seemed like boundless ink smeared across the sky, and an uneasy atmosphere permeated the forest.

After passing through that building, Yi Chen felt as though he had arrived in a city.

He sensed that he had no memory of the city before him, yet there was an indescribable, overwhelming familiarity.

He tried to recall if he had ever been here before, but then a sharp pain erupted in his brain, as if something was being torn away from within. The intense pain continuously stimulated his nerves. He clutched his head tightly, as if trying to alleviate the agony this way.

But it was useless. The more he thought, the more he felt something slipping away inside his mind. He had to stop thinking for now. By then, his clothes were soaked through with sweat, and his silver hair was plastered messily over his head. He braced his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

"Where... is this?"

Yi Chen looked confused. Even though that sensation hadn't lasted long, it seemed he had already lost something. He appeared to have 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 to wander around the city. It was a modern city, but it completely lacked the lively atmosphere it should have had. Apart from the sound of his own footsteps, there was no other noise. Everything around him was deathly silent, inevitably stirring fear in one's heart.

Yi Chen tried to connect to 'Star Departure' through the Dark Dimension. Soon, an ethereal voice echoed in his mind:

"Hello, Star Bolt Power. First meeting. This is 'Star Departure.' What would you like to inquire about?"

"Can you find information on this city?" Yi Chen asked directly, without beating around the bush.

"I'm sorry, 'Star Departure' has not recorded relevant information. Would you like to analyze and record it?"

"Yes."

"Beginning analysis. 1%... 2%... 5%... Zzt~ Analysis halted. Detected unknown energy lifeform approaching. Detected unknown energy lifeform approaching. Distance: 500 meters... 400 meters... 250 meters... 50 meters..."

Within a few seconds, a creature encased in a blue-and-red mecha flew into view before Yi Chen.

The creature was a full seven or eight meters tall, but the mecha covering it was already badly damaged, stripping it of its original ferocious appearance and making it look somewhat shabby.

Some red liquid had seeped in through the cracks in the mecha, and Yi Chen could notice that parts of the internal wiring were already corroded.

Watching the flying mecha-beast, Yi Chen chose to observe from the side first. Strangely, though, the mecha-beast didn't seem to notice him at all. It flew straight in one direction, as if he didn't exist.

Without much hesitation, Yi Chen space-jumped to follow it, wanting to see what it was up to.

Even though it was severely damaged, the mecha-beast's speed was still considerable. Soon, Yi Chen followed it to the center of the city.

The scenery along the way made Yi Chen feel even more intensely familiar, yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall where he had seen it before.

At the city center, Yi Chen saw another mecha-beast, even larger than the previous one. Its mecha was not as battered as the first; it was brand new.

"Ku Xi, target eliminated. Please instruct on next actions," the damaged mecha said to Ku Xi, who was scanning the sky in all directions.

"What's the matter? With a civilization at this level, you still ended up like this? You'd better go home while you can!" Ku Xi glanced at the battered Yijin and spoke coldly.

"There was an accident. Ran into a few Gene Warriors. But they were injured, or I probably wouldn't have made it back. Also, those Gene Warriors all fled toward the former Luoyang direction. Should we send someone to pursue?"

"Forget it. Our top priority is finding the main ship 'Core' that was left behind here a hundred years ago. We don't have much energy left. Earth's current energy can't sustain our consumption at all. If we can't find 'Core,' we'll have to request support from above. If that happens, neither of us will have it easy."

Having said that, Ku Xi ignored Yijin. He tapped his hands in the void, and soon a huge blue screen appeared before him.

Yi Chen, after confirming several times from the side, realized that they seemed unable to see him. Though puzzled, he didn't dwell on it. He warped over to Ku Xi's side and looked at the blue screen.

What met his eyes was a land woven from black and white, crisscrossed with bottomless ravines like thousand-foot chasms that stirred a chill of fear just from looking.

He felt that only a landscape soaked by volcanic magma and then blanketed by ice and snow could produce such a sight—the black was rock melted and re-solidified, the white was ocean evaporated and then frozen again.

Before long, the image on the screen began to shift, transitioning from the ground to outer space, where Yi Chen clearly saw a planet wrapped in blue oceans and inlaid with black-and-white patches.

Though he wanted to deny it, the memories flooding his mind told him this was Earth—this was Earth's current state.

The original green vegetation had been almost completely destroyed; from outer space, the once-vast green ocean was nowhere to be seen. Moreover, it seemed the sun's heat wasn't enough to melt the ice and snow, as most of the surface remained covered in snowpack. Yi Chen couldn't imagine how humanity could survive in such an environment.

Staring at the scarred and devastated Planet Earth, Yi Chen's mind went blank for a moment, but he quickly snapped back to reality. This might be Planet Earth, but it shouldn't belong to the same world as his original one.

"It should be a parallel universe!" Yi Chen thought to himself.

As someone who had already been reborn three times, he believed in the existence of parallel universes, and he was equally certain this couldn't be his original world. In that world, there was the Xiong Bing Lian, there were Angels—Earth wouldn't have turned out like this.

Yet even though he knew this wasn't the planet he came from, he still felt an inexplicable ache in his chest over everything that had happened here, as if a weight was pressing down on his lungs with no way to release it.

The image on the screen froze on Earth, and then Ku Xi said to Yijin:

"All the armies of Earth's nations combined total over ten million. Although we nearly wiped out their main forces in the war a hundred years ago, the remaining local resistance has still tangled with us for nearly a century. And in the last ten years, all these Gene Warriors have popped up—our situation is getting more and more troublesome."

"From now on, avoid contact with the Gene Warriors as much as possible. Don't make a move unless necessary. Conserve energy. Once we find the 'Core,' we'll hit them with planet-killing firepower. Even if we can't completely destroy Earth, we can ruin most of it. Hmph, the rest we'll leave for them to scrape by on."

"Mm."

The two then flew off into outer space together, but Yi Chen chose not to follow.

He stayed where he was and began analyzing this world again. His previous analysis had been forcibly interrupted, and now he was restarting it. But since he had absolutely no relevant knowledge base, it took an entire week just to get a partial picture of this world.

"I'll have Yan teach me the basic calculation principles of matter when I get back. I've never been exposed to this before, never studied the relevant theory. Relying solely on gene-based self-analysis gives me information that's too vague."

Thinking this to himself, Yi Chen began reading the information already stored in his knowledge base, and text started racing through his mind.

A little over a hundred years ago, in this world, while people were still busy living their lives, war came silently.

One day, a beam of light suddenly pierced the sky—a crimson ray that cut through the atmosphere and struck directly into a city.

By then, Planet Earth's technology was already fairly advanced; a hundred years ago, that city had the capability to defend against intercontinental missiles. But against this scorching beam of light, the defense system had absolutely no resistance—it didn't even have time to sound an alarm.

The towering skyscrapers, along with the people inside the city, were instantly obliterated, vanishing from the face of the Earth.

After that, full-scale war erupted quickly. Faced with a war that threatened all of humanity, the nations of Earth had no choice but to unite against the enemy. Yet even so, they were still utterly powerless.

The war never ceased. Earth's armies retreated step by step, cities fell in droves, humanity's living space shrank drastically, and food supplies began to run short.

But these weren't the worst of it.

The invaders didn't just bring death—they began plundering resources with a frenzy. Energy reserves that should have lasted centuries were stripped bare in just a few months. And their looting didn't stop there; they next turned their hands to the star that nurtured all life—the Sun.

Though the invaders' technology couldn't drain the star's energy all at once, it took only fifty years for the Sun's available energy to become extremely scarce.

After that, humanity's survival faced an immense ordeal. Without solar energy, even plants could barely survive. Food had to rely on artificial suns for cultivation, but for the global population, there was never enough.

They struggled on like this for over thirty years, until the emergence of Gene Warriors gave humanity the power to fight back against the invaders. Only then did the living conditions begin to improve. That harsh period of time later came to be known as the "Age of Calamity" by future generations.