Three Futures

The gale swept past, crimson grit scraping against their armor with a soft rustling sound. The wasteland beneath their feet seemed endless, with only enormous earthen platforms and stone pillars, like ghostly silhouettes, jutting abruptly from the Earth's surface.

This was a true apocalypse. Humanity's weapons had ultimately destroyed humanity itself. Even when observing from space, Su Ming had been able to make out the craters left behind by nuclear explosions with the naked eye.

The Earth resembled a cracked, dried mudflat after a rainstorm, its concentric ripples marking where each raindrop had fallen.

Walking through a place like this made it truly difficult to feel cheerful. Even the worlds of Fist of the North Star or Fallout had at least a few living people.

Yet as Su Ming and Old Zheng rode the flying carpet all the way here, they had seen very few living creatures, and those they did see had clearly endured Nuclear Radiation. Their forms had now been completely warped into monsters.

"Our country has nuclear weapons too." After a long while, Zheng Xian finally covered his mouth and said, "But seeing things like this, I don't know whether studying nuclear physics was right or wrong."

Su Ming looked through his eyepieces at the nearly identical scenery along the roadside. "Stay calm, Old Zheng. We still don't know what caused the apocalypse. Humans aren't the only ones in the universe who have mastered nuclear energy. But this probably isn't a Parallel World. It's some future."

"You mean we underwent Time Travel inside the Celestial Variant?"

"Who can say? Maybe the 'white blood cells' or 'phagocytes' inside a Celestial are time passages."

Zheng Xian coughed twice, his throat feeling extremely uncomfortable. "What I'm thinking about now is whether we can still get back."

"Not a big problem.