Watching the turtles head toward the beach, Zhang Ming waved and returned to his sheet-metal hut.
His daily routine was remarkably healthy. Without electricity, he rose with the sun and rested at sunset, just like people in ancient times.
In an age with no pretty girls, no video games, no anime, no novels, no RNG, no flame wars, no rivalries-nothing at all-there was nothing to do but go to bed early.
Zhang Ming finally understood why the old men and women in his neighborhood would keep babbling to their dogs.
"Whitey, Mommy told you not to poop on the ground." "Use the sidewalk when you cross the road, or you'll get run over." "Blackie, come to Mommy. Are you cold? Let's put another layer on you." "Blackie, how could you eat poop? Mommy told you not to eat poop."
He had thought those old folks were out of their minds. Only now did he realize that it was a profound...
Loneliness!
"Bedtime, bedtime." Zhang Ming tapped his head and entered his sleeping state.
At the edge of the Pacific Ocean, along the boundary with the Mysterious Zone.
A massive scientific expedition officially began!
"Tomorrow's weather forecast: north to northeast winds, force 6, with gusts up to force 7. Low of 17°C, high of 28°C. Wave height: 3.5 meters. Visibility: 10 kilometers."
Li Xianfeng stood in the observation room of a massive, hundred-thousand-ton military vessel, gazing into the distance through a pair of binoculars.
The surrounding warships and research vessels numbered twenty-six in total, carrying ten thousand military personnel and three thousand experts from all sorts of fields.
Their target: the Pacific Ocean's Mysterious Zone!
"These last few investigations haven't gone very smoothly." After reading the report, Li Xianfeng let out a breath. "Still, it's nothing to worry about. Getting started is always the hardest part."
The seawater in the Mysterious Zone was strikingly different in color from that of the Pacific Ocean.
The Mysterious Zone's waters were blue tinged with black, creating an oppressive, stifling feeling.
The report in Li Xianfeng's hands stated in black and white: "Upon entering the Mysterious Zone, we saw a hellish blackness," "an abyss-like sense of unease," "the loss of leaving one's homeland," "an inexplicable desire to return to Earth," and "like a small child separated from their parents."
These psychological reports had all been submitted by elite special forces soldiers, each one selected from ten thousand candidates!
The Pacific Ocean, by contrast, was azure blue. Fish occasionally leaped from its surface, and it brimmed with a familiar sense of life.
At the boundary thirty kilometers away, the blue-black and azure waters were as sharply divided as the river on a Chinese chessboard. The winding, dragon-like boundary stretched for thousands of miles beneath the vast sky, disappearing into an impenetrable haze.
The Mysterious Zone was right before them!
"As soon as the investigation teams enter those blue-black waters, they lose their bearings extremely quickly. Those psychological sensations aren't unfounded," explained Wang Yuheng of the Special Affairs Department.
"Several batches of drones and unmanned submarines have already gone missing. Several groups of our special forces have also risked entering, but they've only made brief forays while tethered by ropes. They haven't dared venture too deep. To varying degrees, these team members have shown stress responses, just as the reports describe."
Without betraying any emotion, Li Xianfeng asked, "So the part of the Mysterious Zone we've explored so far contains almost nothing besides seawater and some marine life?"
Wang Yuheng said, "Yes. No islands or continents... We did find a few fish of species never before discovered on Earth. That indicates there's marine life in the Mysterious Zone too."
"How big is the Mysterious Zone? Have you found any dangers?"
"We haven't found any dangers, but we can't say for certain how big it is."
Li Xianfeng sat in his seat with a frown, dissatisfied with the investigation's results.
After all these days, this was it?
An expert with graying hair hurried to explain, "Because of the planet's curvature, as well as the various gray mists that are difficult to penetrate, our radar's search radius is quite limited."
"That's why we plan to launch a satellite. As long as the launch succeeds, the island where Zhang Ming is staying will have nowhere to hide!"
"And with satellite positioning, many of our problems will be readily solved."
Rescuing the stranded Comrade Zhang Ming was certainly necessary.
If Zhang Ming died in the Mysterious Zone and triggered natural disasters in Great Xia, the resulting losses... were truly enough to make their scalps crawl.
Of the original sixteen surviving groups in the Mysterious Zones, thirteen had died in just one month!
The death rate was staggering!
The circumstances were bizarre and varied. Some had been killed by monsters; some had suddenly gone mad and jumped into the sea; others had had their ships abruptly sink overnight.
But one thing was always the same: after these people died, natural disasters immediately struck their home countries. Magnitude 8-9 earthquakes were practically standard, with perhaps a volcanic eruption thrown in, followed by a massive tornado.
Only three mirages remained in the final round. No. 1, the luxury cruise ship carrying three thousand passengers, was still relatively stable thanks to its large population. Miraculously, it had not encountered any major dangers.
The second was No. 13, the Arctic Ocean expedition team.
The third was No. 16, Comrade Zhang Ming, taking on a deserted island alone.
No. 16 was actually still alive!
A month ago, this result might have left everyone's jaws on the floor.
But now, hardly any spectators were passionately arguing online anymore. Natural disasters had ravaged the entire world, and fewer and fewer places could still access the internet safely.
Only a tiny handful of extreme trolls kept tirelessly repeating themselves.
"No matter what, the rocket launch must succeed!"
After a month of modifications, their ship was just barely capable of launching a small rocket.
Of course, they had only one chance.
"Li, there's a satellite call from across the Pacific. They say they have something to discuss with you."
"Understood." Li Xianfeng took the phone without much surprise.
A familiar voice came through the receiver, speaking fluent Chinese. "Hello, Mr. Li. Have you been keeping well lately?"
"Hello, Professor Greer," Li Xianfeng said. "My health is fine, but Mother Earth's relentless blows have nearly left me brain-dead."
"Ah, who hasn't been suffering...? Still, as long as the man in No. 16 stays alive, Great Xia won't suffer any serious damage, will it?"
Professor Peter Greer was a highly renowned researcher in the field of parapsychology.
In his youth, he had visited famous mountains and historical sites in Southeast Asia, Great Xia, Japan, India, South America,
and other regions in search of traces of the supernatural, and had written the million-word masterpiece, The Supernatural History of Earth.
Supernatural phenomena had not suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
They seemed to follow certain peculiar historical patterns, with peaks and troughs throughout humanity's thousands of years of history.
But in past eras, even during a peak, perhaps only a dozen people with supernatural abilities would emerge in an entire century. During a trough, a whole century could pass without a single one.
Thus, after the onset of the supernatural age, Peter Greer's academic research had become especially valuable.
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