Shanghai International Convention and Exhibition Center.
Conference Hall No. 1.
On the video feed transmitted from 360,000 kilometers away, astronauts wearing uniforms emblazoned with Hua Nation's flag and national emblem stood solemnly before the control console.
Clear voices echoed through the conference hall and reached the ears of everyone waiting in anticipation.
"Orbital clearance complete. Route confirmed clear!"
"Target energy level: 1,000 TeV."
"Circuit status nominal."
"Powering up!"
The instant those firm words fell, the astronaut standing before the console reached out and pressed the button.
Almost at the same moment, immense energy gathered beneath the crater and formed into a ring.
Driven by energy capable of simulating the instant of the Big Bang, the accelerated protons collided, spraying sparks and debris too fast for the naked eye to catch.
As they watched the energy spectrum displayed by the detector, the atmosphere in the conference hall instantly reached its peak. Everyone rose to their feet, offering thunderous applause and cheering sincerely for that moment.
Protons collided head-on at a center-of-mass energy of 1,000 TeV!
Compared with Europe's LHC, whose maximum proton collision energy was only 14 TeV, the Lunar Hadron Collider's proton collision energy was fully two orders of magnitude higher!
With it, humanity would be able to artificially create trillion-electron-volt neutrinos, simulate the moments of the Big Bang and black hole formation, and even confront the deepest darkness of the universe—the mysterious Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
The roaring applause drowned out every other sound. Looking at the giant screen behind him, Lu Zhou revealed a heartfelt smile, his fist clenched lightly behind his back.
Seven years.
A full seven years had passed since that summer.
That long stretch of time had been enough to change many things, but it could not change the world he had "seen" through