Warm, bright sunlight outside the window shone into a clean and tidy room. Gradually, a mischievous ray of sunlight crept onto a gentle, scholarly sleeping face. The sleeping young man's brow twitched. Perhaps the sunlight had disturbed him, but soon his frown deepened, fine beads of sweat seeped from his forehead, and his body stiffened as though he were trapped in a nightmare from which he could not wake.
"Ah!"
A cry of pain shattered the peaceful, gentle morning. Mu Xiao abruptly sat upright, opening a pair of sword-cold eyes that flashed with a fleeting, intimidating light, utterly at odds with his gentle and scholarly face.
"What happened?!" Mu Xiao breathed rapidly, his chest heaving and heart pounding. His wolf-like, fierce gaze swept across the room as he instinctively asked again, "Where is this? Wasn't I fighting to the death?!"
His entire consciousness froze.
"No! I should have died... but I came back to life?"
The room remained quiet. Only a person sitting on the bed like a statue, utterly motionless, broke the stillness.
Mu Xiao forced himself to calm down. He quickly ruled out the possibility that someone had saved him and dismissed the possibility that an enemy family had captured him alive. He coldly surveyed every arrangement in the room and suddenly noticed that some items were antiques in his new world, yet they felt both unfamiliar and intimately familiar, as though he would understand how to use them the moment he touched them.
"What is this overwhelming sense of incongruity..."
A contradictory feeling of familiarity and strangeness welled up within Mu Xiao.
At that moment, it was as if he had touched upon some trigger. Countless scenes flashed through his sea of consciousness like lightning. Memories of his lost youth and memories of becoming a New Human all surged forth. That path of evolution, from ordinariness to slaughter, was vivid before his eyes—yet in the end, he had died in a fierce battle on the moon!
At this moment, Mu Xiao's face no longer held any vigilance. It was filled first with astonishment, then shock, and finally an immense, indissoluble gravity and disbelief.
"Was this rebirth?"
He still could not believe those "absurd" things in his mind. He immediately got out of bed and walked to a metal desk. Pressing his palm against its surface, he found it was not as cold as he had imagined, but as warm and smooth as jade, bringing forth that same familiar yet strange feeling.
Light lit up across the metal tabletop, moving like tiny snakes before a one-meter-wide light screen popped out and hovered before him. A pleasant, sweet female voice rang out.
"Master Xiao, welcome to Xixi."
A highly realistic beauty appeared on the light screen. Smiling sweetly with lifelike expressions, she said, "Xiao Xiao, you got up ten minutes early today! Xixi has canceled the alarm command! Please approve it, Master Xiao!"
"Ha!"
Mu Xiao lowered his head and held his forehead, one hand braced against the edge of the metal desk, letting out an incomparably complicated laugh. The scene before him, the sensations of his body, the smell of the air, everything in the room told him that none of this was an illusion. It was real.
"...Please approve it, Master Xiao!" the holographic beauty repeated.
Mu Xiao knew perfectly well what this holographic beauty was. It was a household intelligent computer. Such antiques did not exist at all in the new world where he had lived, only in the old world he had once known.
The holographic beauty repeated herself again. Helpless, Mu Xiao gave his approval, then issued a command for a "mirror."
The metal tabletop split apart, and a large mirror rose up, clearly reflecting Mu Xiao's current appearance.
It was a face with regular features, mature clarity, and refined gentleness, the sort that made people immediately think of a trustworthy, decent man. Only his sharp, bright eyes and cold temperament were different.
"Damn it! It really is what I looked like back then. Compared to my former self, I look like such a decent man now, but I'm missing so much, and this body is unbelievably weak..."
Mu Xiao finally accepted that he had been reborn along an unimaginable timeline. But soon, irrepressible ecstasy surged through him as he clearly recalled that his former self should have died at the hands of his enemies.
Returning to this old world meant the new world had not yet arrived. Everything could be changed! Memories of everything in the old world surged forth like a tide...
Before the new world arrived, humanity had already entered an era of cutting-edge technology, and the moon had become the holy land of human civilization.
Mu Xiao had been born in that holy land that countless humans envied to madness. But when he was sixteen, he had defied his family's discipline during his rebellious youth, until his vast and powerful family completely collapsed amid the struggles for power on the moon. The halo that had once shone like stars faded into darkness.
His parents became sacrifices in that struggle for power. Only he and his younger sister survived, but they were cast out of the moon, humanity's holy land, and reduced to struggling for survival on Earth. At first, he suffered bitterly in that dog-eat-dog society and gradually understood that his former glorious status was gone. He tempered away the arrogance and sharp edges of youth. For the sake of his sister, who depended on him for life, he became a decent man and prepared to live an ordinary life. He did not seek revenge, because the moon was something he could never shake.
But then the New Human Plan appeared, and the world entered the "Evolution Era," reigniting the flames of revenge within him. Yet he paid a terrible price for that revenge: the death of his only sister. It drove his desire for power to an extreme. Day after day, he fought without end. After countless hardships of blood and sweat, stepping over the corpses of innumerable powerful beings and monsters, he killed his way into the moon's headquarters. There, he learned that the force that had defeated his family was one of the sinister powers behind the New Human Plan. He even uncovered a world-shaking secret on the moon, and for that, he paid with his life...
Mu Xiao suppressed the past in his heart and calmly faced this miraculous rebirth. He would not allow any flaw in his thinking as he began to confront his current circumstances.
The technological era he now inhabited stood at the beginning of life's evolution. In other words, he had been reborn at the very start of the world's evolution... How had this world developed into a chaotic, dark age? How had humans become New Humans? How had those peerless powerhouses been born, what stories lay behind them, and what earth-shattering conspiracy lay behind the entire tale? The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. It was as though he stood upon the shoulders of a giant, seeing the history of the Evolution Era's development with incomparable clarity. Endless opportunities lay before him!
"If my rebirth was arranged by fate, then I will seize my own destiny! I will never again stumble blindly onto that extreme path of evolution!"
"With memories of the future, if I can't rewrite my little sister's tragedy, then what right do I have to live on? What right do I have to surpass my former self and embark upon the endless path of evolution!"
"The things that made me regret will never happen again! The opportunities I once missed will all be in my grasp! As for those enemies from the past, I'll make sure they die horribly!"
"All the hardships and pain of the past will become the source of strength that drives me to the summit!"
"All future New Humans will revere me as supreme! Every false god will become my stepping stone! I will become a true god!"
Mu Xiao's fingers moved constantly across the intelligent light screen. Sheets of data, like snowflakes, popped out from it and surrounded him on both sides.
"The Earth Federation... the Evolution Era! I'm so happy I could die!"
He confirmed once more that the world he was in was indeed the beginning of the Evolution Era, afraid that this was only a beautiful dream.
"If I couldn't clearly feel my breathing and heartbeat, I'd really suspect I was dreaming." Mu Xiao looked at the information on the light screen, all of it news from this era. At this time, the world was entirely peaceful. There was no so-called apocalypse.
But Mu Xiao knew perfectly well that all of this was merely the calm before the storm.
"At least I have Veteran Evolution Level and have fought on the moon..." Mu Xiao felt more relaxed and exhilarated than ever, as though the entire Evolution Era lay within his control and his fate was already following his will. But before he could be happy for long, he discovered something that made his face drain of color.
The light screen clearly displayed today's date: August 28, 2288!
What a memorable and auspicious date, yet to Mu Xiao, it was like swallowing a pile of dead flies. His expression turned ugly to the extreme.
Because today was the day the Earth Federation would erupt into the Evolution Frenzy, or rather, the apocalyptic crisis. No one in the past could forget this date. Now that it was written so clearly, how could Mu Xiao fail to recognize it? Thus, his plan to become an Advanced Evolver several years in advance was completely ruined.
"The apocalypse will break out at five in the afternoon. It's around eight in the morning now. I have less than nine hours to protect myself and make arrangements that benefit me..." Mu Xiao's mind entered an emergency state. It raced at high speed through all the memories he possessed of human evolution and its secrets, turning them into his own cheats.
Ever since Mu Xiao discovered that he had been reborn, and that he was at the most crucial moment of the Evolution Era, his emotions had never been as calm as they appeared. But he was fortunate that the crisis had not yet occurred, which meant the world had not yet fallen into an utterly disastrous state.
For him, it was still relatively "safe," and he still had time to adapt gradually to his "new life" and adjust his state of mind.
But now that he knew today was the "apocalypse date," the impending apocalyptic crisis forced him to accept his current circumstances and begin planning how to survive.
If the world he had first been reborn into had been the later stages of the apocalypse, then everyone would already have adapted to it, and the people of the past would have established their own powers. Mu Xiao would have had no advantage at all. He would also have missed many major events and lost the golden opportunity to improve rapidly. That would have been truly terrible...
Because this initial period was the darkest era of the entire apocalypse, but it was also the era in which the great age of evolution began to take shape.
Furthermore, this was the Earth Federation, possessing cutting-edge technology. If Mu Xiao had been born during the peak of this world, he would have been nothing more than a minor figure, threatened by powerful people at every moment. Especially in this dark era, those threats would be even clearer and more fatal. But now, everything was still in its infancy. He had a chance to evolve into the strongest New Human, perhaps even rise above every power that had once existed.
To him, this was the advantage of foresight!
Do not forget that he possessed the experience of Veteran Evolution Level in this world. That was undoubtedly an extremely precious fortune.
After facing so many unbelievable events in a single morning, Mu Xiao was still able to calm down and think with extreme rationality because he himself had been a powerful New Human who acted alone and made his own decisions.
At this moment, he did not forget about his little sister's safety. No matter what, he had to protect her. He did not want the tragedy to repeat itself. But after calling several times without an answer, just as he grew impatient and anxious and was preparing to call her school, Mu Xuanyin sent him a message saying she was in class and would call him back later.
"She still has time to get back..." Mu Xiao sent several messages without telling her what was happening, lest she become too frightened and helpless. He only told her to come home quickly and preferably call him back immediately.
Soon after, Mu Xiao's optical computer phone rang. Seeing that it was his younger sister, Mu Xuanyin, he answered at once without hesitation.
"Brother, is something wrong? Why are you looking for me so urgently? I still have class later..." A soft, gentle female voice came through.
"Come home immediately!" Mu Xiao said coldly and sternly.
"Did something happen?" Mu Xuanyin asked anxiously. Clearly, Mu Xiao's tone had frightened her. He had never spoken to her this way before.
"Don't ask so much. Come back quickly. Once you're home, no matter what happens outside, don't pay attention to it. It's too wasteful to explain over the phone. You'll understand when you get home."
"Okay! I'm coming back now!"
Mu Xuanyin obeyed Mu Xiao completely, especially since the two had depended on each other for life and shared an exceptionally close sibling bond. If it were not something serious, Mu Xiao would not have spoken to her in such a tone. Especially regarding the family, she had been young at the time but still retained some memories. As she grew older, she had vaguely guessed some of what had happened, so she naturally worried about their circumstances.
Mu Xuanyin had lived with him since childhood and was highly independent. Mu Xiao set aside half his worries and began planning his own affairs.
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