Test: Transmission

Test: Transmission

At the Plane Shuttle Base, Wei Keng had to pass sixteen rounds of training and assessment. They were essential preparation before entering other planes.

At first, Wei Keng had been a little worried. He'd been specially recruited and might end up dragging the whole team down. But later, he discovered that the cultural knowledge he had to learn and memorize wasn't difficult.

The assessments were divided into two types according to their purpose!

The Gaokao in the 21st century was designed to trip people up. Because of the rat race, one of its goals was to eliminate a batch of candidates. So, on top of testing basic knowledge, it set one trap after another to see if you were inflexible in your thinking and would fall for them. Without those traps, wouldn't seventy or eighty percent of everyone who took the exam in the capital get into a top-tier university? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

These assessments clearly weren't like that. They simply set a passing score. Once you passed, the Time-Space Department would take you! The more soldiers Han Xin commanded, the better.

On June 17, there was a written exam on politics, economics, and general knowledge of science and technology.

Starting on August 23, candidates were randomly assigned to factories and industrial settings from the 21st century, including metal smelting and chemical production, for fifteen days or a month of practical work.

Wei Keng, who considered himself of only average ability, completed the entire course twice, making sure he could pass with room to spare.

Wei Keng was also among the last to take the exam. Thanks to his thorough preparation, he got perfect scores across the board. All those days of keeping his nerves on edge had paid off.

After all the assessments were over, there were two days left.

The instructor looked at the report Wei Keng had submitted and said, "Mm, very good. Take it easy for the rest of your time here and visit the exhibition on the customs and culture of the target plane. Everyone else has already gone to report in, so there's no one to accompany you for now. You're free to do as you like for the next two days."

The Training Center's reasoning was that the target plane corresponded to the second half of the 20th century in the Main World. Its customs and culture differed greatly from those of the present day, so people from this era needed to familiarize themselves with the setting. For example, they might have to queue at a bank or pay in cash, things modern people had never experienced.

Wei Keng thought that made sense. Still, he probably just had to go through the motions.

Five hours later.

On a street wedged between tall buildings in a retro style, Wei Keng carried a backpack and opened his antique Smartphone. Then he launched an early-generation navigation app from the information revolution era—"Deceitful," uh, Gaode Maps.

On this road with no pedestrian walkway, he constantly dodged the vehicles behind him that paid no heed to the rules.

A few Bionic Female Robots were strolling along the street, imitating fashionable women from the 21st century. Faced with their inexplicable smiles, Wei Keng glanced at the strategic spots and grumbled inwardly, What are you smiling at?

Wei Keng wasn't simply wandering freely through this city that imitated the 20th century.

Over the past few hours, the communicator on his arm had assigned him four guidance tasks. They were basically a beginner's tutorial for visiting the target plane.

Task 1: If you need to sort out lunch for yourself in the 20th century, how can you do it with the least amount of money?

After a trip to the supermarket, Wei Keng had Instant Noodles and Ham Sausage in his backpack. He also checked to see if there was any Shepherd's Purse in the flower beds. When he confirmed there wasn't, he thought, Tsk, this setup isn't realistic.

Task 2: If you go out at night in the 20th century, use one hundred yuan to buy the things you need.

Wei Keng went to a small convenience store and bought a flashlight. Then he brought out his ID card. He considered buying a fruit knife, but decided it was a controlled weapon. A ballpoint pen in his shirt pocket would do. In the end, he also picked up some Pepper Spray.

Task 3: Find a place to stay using the cheapest method. Wei Keng felt his ID card and decided to go to an internet café. Oh, right, he needed to buy toiletries at a supermarket, then wash up using the restroom sink at three in the morning.

Before he knew it, the sun had begun to set. The city, built from old photographs, stirred a vague sense of familiarity in Wei Keng.

The houses were all boxy, with white-striped tiles on their walls. A few neon characters hanging over a commercial building in the distance had gone dark.

Wei Keng couldn't help slowing his pace, his gaze growing hazy.

That easygoing stroll came to an end when he turned into an alley and found himself face-to-face with a huge dog.

Wei Keng stared at the snarling beast and angrily asked the electronic system on his arm, "What the hell, is this part of the assessment too?"

The system on his arm refused to answer, so Wei Keng had to face this sudden Encounter Battle on his own.

The sun's dusky light crept up the wall with every passing second, and the alley grew dimmer by the moment. The shadows in the corners deepened, but the dog's bared white teeth remained just as conspicuous.

As Wei Keng watched the glossy-coated beast approach one step at a time, he began a nervous inner monologue. If you encounter an animal, don't be scared. Don't panic. Don't run away; running might trigger its hunting instinct. As an adult male human, the right thing to do is—

Wei Keng glanced toward the corner of the street, slowly set the bag of food down by his feet, and then—

He suddenly dashed to the Fire Escape Window two meters away, grabbed a small hammer nearby, and smashed the glass. Amid the clatter, he snatched up a Fire Axe.

The dog sprang at him as soon as he made his move.

Wei Keng cursed inwardly. Damn it, dogs in the 21st century ran away when they saw me with an axe. If one charges at you, it's rabid.

Wei Keng hefted the weapon in his hand. His youthful blood was pumping, and his heart was racing.

Adult men in the present day were generally 1.9 meters tall. People in the past might not have been able to beat a leopard in the wild, but today was the height of the terror of the upright ape's hand-to-hand fighting ability, built up over tens of thousands of years. Of course, people nowadays generally didn't rely on hand-to-hand combat.

As the Giant Dog leapt toward him, Wei Keng shouted to bolster his courage and swung the axe at it. Uh, the dog immediately backed away, so he missed. Still, he'd driven it off for the moment.

Wei Keng quickly fished the Pepper Spray out of the side pocket of his backpack.

He'd been mentally prepared for this sudden test. If a great writer never "assumed the worst of others," Wei Keng, on the other hand, had always "assumed a villain's motives in a gentleman's heart." He'd suspected the Base's planners might arrange all kinds of scenarios for him: thugs trying to rob him, police questioning him, fortune-tellers grabbing him, and so on. That was why he'd deliberately bought Pepper Spray, which was legal and quite useful.

When the Giant Dog sprang at him a second time, Wei Keng pressed the trigger and shut his eyes.

Irritating pepper oil could instantly incapacitate a medium or large animal. The catch was that you had to wear goggles. Otherwise, if you rubbed your eyes, you'd be crying your eyes out right alongside the bear.

"Awooo! Whimper!" The dog howled like a tortured soul.

Its cries gave Wei Keng a way to judge its position. He'd barely cracked his eyes open and hadn't even looked properly before swinging the Fire Axe hard into its rump. Before its ferocity could flare up and make it turn around, another burst of spray drove it back. With both "chemical" and physical attacks, Wei Keng flew into a rage and prepared to chop the beast until it fled all over the street.

Just then, a whistle sounded, and the dog turned and ran.

Five minutes later.

A rotary-wing police helicopter arrived overhead. Special police officers in mechanical armor lowered a cage carrying the dog. Judging by how skillfully the dog approached the helicopter's cage, it was clearly a military dog.

One of the testers held a clipboard and, right in front of Wei Keng, marked a check beside the final assessment.

Wei Keng said, "For the final assessment, you just let a dog bite me?"

"As a Shuttler, you need to do more than master knowledge. You also need to understand how you'll respond in an emergency." The tester looked at Wei Keng. "You did very well. Fourteen people in your group were eliminated."

Then he turned on the projector and played footage of the others' tests.

The final assessment didn't necessarily involve a dog. There were plenty of schemes in the 20th century.

In one scenario, a Bionic Female Robot posing as a woman in a small apartment pretended to be injured and asked for help. She led the candidate back to the apartment, where a gang of large, dark-skinned men ambushed and beat them up. After taking their money, the gang tried to steal their ID card and film them.

Another scenario involved a snatch-and-grab from a moving car. That setup required Wei Keng to walk along a main road, but he'd gone into an alley instead, so they couldn't arrange it.

No one had been eliminated in the cultural exams, but people had been cut from this part. So what was the point of this final assessment? To let people of the present day know how treacherous people in the Old Era could be.

After watching, Wei Keng pointed at the dog on the helicopter and blurted out to the examiner, "You're worse than that dog."

"Woof! Woof, woof!"

The military dog didn't like being pointed at and barked at Wei Keng again.

Afraid of getting bitten, Wei Keng swiftly pulled his hand back.

The dog had won.

When the results for the new Shuttler Reserve Force came out, the files were sent to the review division of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Wei Keng's file sat on a desk for a while before finally receiving an approval stamp.

After graduating from the Training Base, Wei Keng arrived at the Gravity Well Facility.

He'd seen it in videos more times than he could count, but seeing it in person still left him awestruck! It was a Wonder Facility of this era.

It was shaped like a horn. The entrance at ground level was two kilometers in diameter. The inner walls of that section of the tunnel were made of reinforced concrete, with Gold Foil laid over them to ensure the desired optical properties.

As the tunnel descended from the surface, it gradually narrowed. About six kilometers underground, it contracted into a pipe just one meter in diameter. After descending dozens more kilometers, it reached the mantle, where it was only one millimeter across. Once it pierced the mantle, the passage narrowed further, but it always remained aimed at the Artificial Singularity at the center of the Earth.

From the surface, it looked like a Golden Horn Entrance, dazzling and magnificent!

At the mouth of the enormous shaft, six massive Steel Bridges stretched across the center, suspending a Laboratory Base four hundred meters in diameter.

Inside the experimental base, Wei Keng lay in a metal shell-shaped protective pod, five meters tall and weighing seven tons. He was one of the people taking part in this Cross-Space Trade expedition. There were fifteen other newly inducted members with him, eight men and eight women in all.

Team leader Ke Feijia was the oldest. He'd already traveled to that plane three times.

Ke Feijia was also lying in his pod, reminding the others of the final precautions.

Ke Feijia said, "You've all passed the interplane assessment. I urge you to remember what you've learned and pay attention to the key points. Don't get carried away. Absolutely not—especially those of you whose personality test in the final assessment included the comment 'impulsive.' Don't think I'm nagging. Some Physical rules in the Different Plane are abnormal, and our target plane contains individuals who are extremely unusual."

As he spoke, Ke Feijia glanced meaningfully at Wei Keng's window on the communications interface.

In Wei Keng's pod, dozens of hovering cameras captured him nodding solemnly at Ke Feijia's camera.

At the huge entrance to the ground-level shaft, two kilometers across, the base suspended from six intersecting gantry cranes lit up completely, reflecting a golden glow. Inside the base, the consciousnesses of the people in the Capsule Pods had already been converted into high-energy states.

A laser beam now shot into the shaft.

Loudspeaker inside the suspended base: Remote sensing of the passage to the Earth's core is normal. Energy storage of the traveling consciousness is normal. Photon stability is normal. Analysis of particle-phase information is normal. The target plane's response is normal...

The point of light shot into the shaft, carrying consciousness toward the Earth's core, toward the target time and space—to travel!

A New Force from the Main World set out for the vast, unknown planes and times.

Traveler's Handbook: In Contemporary Space-Time Detection, planes near the Main World that show extensive signs of Human Civilization are provisionally classified into four categories: Adjacent Planes, Near Planes, Distant Planes, and Different Planes.

Adjacent Planes: They share part of the same history, but for unknown reasons, history branched off and their development was impeded. Most of their technology is still understandable. So far, no Adjacent Plane more advanced than the Main Plane has been discovered, as if to suggest that humanity's current state is the end of history. Examples include a world reduced to a wasteland after the Cold War, or a history in which the Double S Party unifies Europe and occupies Africa and Latin America, facing off against Asia and Oceania, led by the New Continent of the Free World.

Near Planes: They are still Earth, but the divergence may have occurred in prehistoric times or in the future. Physical Laws have changed significantly. Although these planes have super-technologies such as spaceships, they are based on peculiarities in the Physical rules, and their breakthroughs in Computing Technology don't match the Federation's. Supernatural phenomena that affect life or are directly connected to it often appear in these planes.

Different Planes: They aren't limited to Earth, and their Physical Laws are extremely strange. They contain super-individuals such as those who have experienced Divine Arrival, as well as mysterious mechanisms of influence like Mental Pollution and curses. These planes are extremely dangerous. Scientists can't even deduce how humans could have plausibly originated in such worlds. The only reasonable hypothesis so far is that early Space-Time Vortices caused people to cross over, spreading humans there and forming settlements.

Distant Planes: These Space-Time Regions contain complex material environments, including celestial bodies, continents, and oceans, but no signs of Human Civilization have been found. At the same time, the Time-Space Department has confirmed that humans can naturally exist, reproduce, and evolve there. These Distant Plane regions are the most numerous. Time-space departments in both the East and West have sent Human Seeds there. Because of the nature of Time-Space Flow, seeds planted today can be reached by traveling to that plane in the next century, at a point a thousand years beyond the previous visit.

Simply put, in these planes, the Main World builds human civilization directly from its origins.