The Brothers

Chapter 4 1.04 Brothers

Observed from the main world of Earth, a certain adjacent plane defined by the Transmigration Department.

This is still Earth's history, corresponding to the historical coordinate 1963.

This plane has undergone preliminary exploration by Earth. Both Asia and Europe in the main world have invested exploration forces in this region. However, due to the relative stability of the plane, the risk of conflict within twenty years of the current timeline is small. Intense conflicts between Eastern and Western spacetime forces will occur in other adjacent timelines.

Therefore, according to the "Tian Ji's Horse Racing" strategy set by the main world headquarters, the elite personnel here need to be temporarily withdrawn.

Current location and environment: Beneath the waves of the Arctic Ocean, in the observation hall of the Arctic research vessel "Ship Island."

A man who looks quite similar to Wei Keng, but is clearly much more capable, is reading a transfer order report sent from the main world through his vision, frowning.

The report is entirely about one matter: ending his personal work here, his remaining time in this timeline must not exceed ten months, and he must arrive at another plane.

Wei Qiang asks his system's supervisor, "My mission level stability is Grade B. For the higher-ups to change my mission is?"

Supervisor Zhang Qin replies, "Military secret, we have no right to investigate. However, your successor has already been nominated. Do you want to guess?"

Wei Qiang holds his forehead and shakes his head, "No need to say, I know. Ai~ misfortune in the family. He's coming here? This place is deep water. With his personality, can he handle it?"

Wei Keng and Wei Qiang are clearly brothers. The characters "Keng" and "Qiang" both mean strong. "Keng" comes first, so Wei Keng is the elder brother, though he only arrived in this world five minutes earlier.

Wei Qiang completed his master's degree at the age of fifteen and spent one year studying the high-energy physics of his declared target plane. While Wei Keng was still drifting through university, Wei Qiang had already arrived in the interdimensional region where their father once operated and had spent fifteen years there.

The time flow in adjacent planes is faster than in the main world. As his psychological age grew, Wei Qiang felt helpless about his elder brother's various behaviors.

He did not admit that his elder brother was stupid. From childhood to adulthood, Wei Keng had shown above-average intelligence in many matters. It was only in terms of personality, whenever it involved competing with others, that he appeared mediocre.

Wei Qiang: 'He never even fought with me for the position of elder brother. When he learned I was the younger brother as a child, he was very angry. Later, he never called me younger brother again, always calling me Ah Qiang.'

From elementary school to middle school, Wei Qiang consistently ranked at the top in every academic year's exams.

As for Wei Keng? From the start of the semester, he would relax, relax, and relax. His grades would steadily decline, constantly moving towards the middle. Was it a lack of ability?

No.

Every time during the winter and summer vacations, when they were alone.

Wei Qiang would discover that when he set his daily review tasks, his elder brother would also set his own daily learning goals.

His learning progress would constantly catch up to his own. Whether it was memorizing texts or doing calculations, he could reach Wei Qiang's level within one or two months. And then, when school started, after the first few exams went quite well, after a month or two, he would blend back into the crowd.

The most memorable thing for Wei Qiang was Wei Keng's catchphrase: "Am I not normal and ordinary like this?" -- From childhood to adulthood, Wei Keng never felt there was anything wrong with being mediocre.

"Alarm, alarm--

Latitude 73.715046, Longitude 64.955931, biochemical target detected."

The alarm sound on the warship and the flashing on the upper left of the operation interface pulled Wei Qiang from his thoughts.

Wei Qiang's expression turned serious. He put on his helmet, and the visor, pulled down, projected the image captured by a drone over the distant sea onto his retina.

Between white ice floes and waves.

Before him, a colossal sea monster squid, wielding sixty-meter-long giant tentacles, was destroying an iceberg. A mechanical device attached to its tentacles emitted infrasonic waves that gradually approached the iceberg's resonant frequency.

The azure iceberg began to turn white, cracks spreading internally, followed by fragmentation and crumbling.

Wei Qiang, representing his faction in this dimension, confirmed the intelligence about the northern neighboring country conducting biochemical military experiments in the Arctic Ocean.

He was programmatically recording and filing the information.

Most creatures on Earth were limited by their nervous systems and couldn't handle extreme body enlargement. However, by implanting corresponding auxiliary skeletons, incorporating internal air sac structures, along with chips, artificial circuits, muscle electrical stimulation, and nutrient fluid injection mechanisms, creating such colossal sea monsters was possible.

It was just that this sea monster technology shouldn't have appeared here; it was a product of another timeline in this dimension. Its appearance was a disruption caused by other transmigrating factions.

Halfway through destroying the iceberg, the giant octopus, with oxygen pipes embedded in its abdomen, seemed to sense it was being monitored by the research vessel to the south. It stopped the experiment and plunged back into the deep sea.

However, the controllers of this sea monster didn't know that a fish equipped with electronic devices was attached to the sea monster's head, covertly transmitting sonar signals.

On the research vessel, Wei Qiang lay back in his chair, watching a red dot on the electronic map on the large screen drifting towards the coastline.

The biochemical base of this sea monster, well, it seemed to be located with the northern neighboring country's nuclear submarine base.

In the main world, on this beautiful day, a tiltrotor aircraft landed at the school. It was said that the National Defense Students were being selected early, and many high-ranking military personnel had arrived. Many students went to join the commotion and watch, leaving some areas quite empty.

Wei Keng was trying to catch a cat, the same one that had snatched his tempura skewers a few days ago. Now, it eyed the grilled skewer in his hand warily, yet it couldn't bring itself to leave. Wei Keng had eaten most of the skewer, leaving only a small piece at the very end of the bamboo stick, which he had tightly secured with cotton thread.

The cat slowly approached, suddenly opened its mouth, took a bite, and tried to retreat. But the grilled meat was tied on very tightly; it couldn't pull it free.

Wei Keng: "Mimi, good kitty~~"

Like a mischievous uncle, Wei Keng dangled the skewer again, blowing on it to waft the aroma towards the cat.

White cat: "Meow~"

Wei Keng: "Meow~"

Wei Keng's gaze grew more focused, constantly calculating the distance between his body, his hands, and the cat. Now, if it just came a little closer, he'd have a better chance of grabbing it by the scruff of its neck.

With a thud, the manhole cover of the sewer shifted. The cat, startled, darted away. Wei Keng realized several people had arrived behind him.

The cat-fishing activity was cut short, and Wei Keng couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed.

Was he feeling angry? A little, but he couldn't show it.

There were four people in total, including a professor from the school's own department and someone in formal attire whose department was unknown.

However, he was a bit surprised to find that the visitors were looking for him?

"Service? Isn't the dimension-hopping activity a voluntary system?" Wei Keng asked, trying to deflect.

"Two days ago, a new decree changed it to a compulsory service system. As a student receiving state loans, you fit the criteria for conscription," the person from the Space-Time Shuttle Human Resources Development Committee explained patiently.

The school teacher then chimed in, "One person joins the army, the whole family is honored." The tone sounded encouraging, but Wei Keng couldn't help but feel it was more like persuasion.

Wei Keng couldn't help but retort, "If I enlist, then the whole family enlists." He then unconsciously patted himself on the back, "How does it feel like the whole family will become martyrs?"

The people from the Space-Time Department had Wei Keng's file; otherwise, they wouldn't have passed the background check.

Upon hearing Wei Keng's words, the Space-Time Department representative said to him with great solemnity, "Student, the organization is aware of your family's situation. However, the country needs you now. After deliberation, the organization has devised a plan: if either you or your brother encounters danger in a sub-dimension, we will spare no effort to ensure one of you is withdrawn from the front lines."

With the organization's guarantee, Wei Keng had no choice but to go along. Along with other conscripted National Defense Students, he donned the auspicious red flower of enlistment. After completing the necessary procedures for a leave of absence at the school, they lined up and boarded a tiltrotor aircraft.

Under the organization of the academic staff, many senior and junior female students offered them cups of water and then pinned flowers to the lapels of everyone's coats. Finally, they tucked an egg into each person's pocket.

This farewell ritual, said to have originated in the 21st century, made Wei Keng feel a bit bewildered. Of course, if they had wrapped their heads in floral headscarves, it would have been even more authentic.

Sitting inside the aircraft, Wei Keng saw the white cat from outside perched on a treetop, watching him as if bidding him farewell. The white cat licked its paw near its mouth, then extended it and waved. This "farewell" gesture left Wei Keng dumbfounded.

Most of the students conscripted this time were academically excellent, while Wei Keng was selected based on special circumstances.

There was a reason for this.

In the 27th century, dimension pioneering was still in its nascent stages. When exploring various dimensions, not only did personnel need to be dispatched across different timelines, but permanent nodes also had to be established after their return.

These permanent nodes, due to the differing physical rules of each dimension, took on various forms.

However, the nodes in some dimensions were locked to the genes of the previous explorer! This led to a de facto inheritance of dimensional traversal positions.

Therefore, in terms of family background, Wei Keng was considered second-generation on Earth.

[The first batch of traversers, including Wei Keng's father, didn't have this awareness initially. As the first group, they unintentionally left behind these 'inheritable' things for their descendants.]

Now, in the sub-dimension world where his father had traversed, the organization wanted to send a successor, and he and Wei Qiang were the best candidates! If other traversers went, they would face the trouble of interrupted progress and having to start from scratch.

Currently, in the dimensional world where Wei Qiang was preparing to end his mission, there was already a foundation laid by their parents for the two of them to enter service and traverse there.

Wei Keng's (he) father had transmigrated in 1937. His first pot of gold was made through cross-dimensional exports of chips, special steel, engines, and electronic control system technology. The capital accumulated there allowed him to organize production and research. When he left that dimension, he was the founder of a large trading enterprise.

During the early stages of dimensional exploration missions, to facilitate mission progress, it was necessary to accumulate capital quickly. Therefore, many methods could not be considered righteous. For capital to expand, it had to be involved in war.

As a dimension exploration action supported by the state, the compromises made out of necessity to open up the situation were the norm for transmigration operations.

Four hours later, Wei Keng was assigned to the corresponding training base.

The big red flower on his chest had long since flown off to some unknown corner with the roaring air currents when he disembarked.

Upon arriving at the assembly point, he received a cross-dimensional call from his younger brother.

Cross-dimensional calls required specialized facilities, and the training base was located near the Gravity Well Mouth facility in Pu Hai.

Wei Keng found the destination, lay down in a hibernation pod, connected his brain nerves, and completed the docking of the chip-controlled dream state with the phase-change particles of the Gravity Well.

[The time in the two dimensions is different, so to complete the call, Wei Keng's consciousness must shield bodily sensations during hibernation and synchronize time with the other side.]

After opening his eyes in the dream, Wei Keng saw that he was in a ship's cabin. Before he could even look around, Wei Qiang, holding a Jingdezhen ceramic tea set in the captain's cabin, spoke.

Wei Qiang: "My dear brother, I saw the evaluation your school gave you. Uh, 'This student is helpful and lives a simple life.' Tsk tsk, such a standard evaluation. It probably means there's nothing else to say. I don't think you're cut out for studying." His crosstalk-like tone was waiting for Wei Keng to play the straight man.

Wei Keng: "It was you, wasn't it? You signed me up, right? It must have been!"

These three consecutive questions, like Ma Chao's crusade against Cao Thief, exuded resentment. Of course, this resentment was merely floating on the surface, like oil on water.

While speaking, Wei Keng also confirmed that he was a life-sized projection in front of Wei Qiang, as he couldn't pick up the teacup to drink with him.

Wei Qiang also exclaimed loudly, "Brother, cross-dimensional travel is great! Lying drunk on a beauty's lap, waking up to hold power over the world. Once you taste that, you'll definitely be reluctant to leave."

Wei Keng: "What beauty's lap, world power? I heard there was a conflict in time and space, and you were short of people, right?"

Wei Qiang smiled without a word.

Wei Keng: "Take care of yourself, be careful."

Wei Qiang: "You too."

There was no need for overly sentimental words between brothers; a tacit understanding was enough.

Wei Qiang had other matters to attend to. He walked over to the communication screen and began to have a heated conflict with the company's management regarding the issue of "group heir." Wei Keng had nothing to add and went offline.

Wei Keng looked at the closed screen, gazed at the wall, and zoned out for a while.

In this life, Wei Keng actually had his own plans.

Wei Keng: First, live a mediocre life for a hundred years, forget the bad things from the previous life. Forget the self who was pushed to extremes and could only respond to the world with extremes. Then, with the simple efforts and hopes of this life, be reborn, shed the shackles of the past, and live as myself.

But, life often doesn't allow you to have your way.