"F-fake... it has to be fake. Something this unscientific..."
Qian Xiu listened to his friend muttering, then felt his grip on his arm suddenly tighten.
The pain in his arm overrode everything else.
"Ow!" He hurriedly knocked his friend's hand away and turned to look at the person who had stood up and shouted. Rubbing his arm, he said gloomily, "They're being so serious about it. It can only be true."
The speech onstage did not stop.
The senior official's tone was calm, like a tree standing steady in a gale, carrying a soothing effect:
"I understand how you feel. Right now, you may find this false and absurd, or you may feel lost and at a loss."
"But please believe me, believe in our judgment, and believe that the Mutual Aid Society will help our spacetime weather this crisis..."
Everyone below the stage raised their heads, their eyes fixed on the figure speaking onstage.
What was happening in reality completely contradicted their worldviews, and most had already fallen into confusion.
They only wanted to get more information from the senior official's words.
At that moment, however, the senior official onstage looked toward Zhang Tianyuan and made room beside him.
Taking the cue, Zhang Tianyuan stepped forward to stand alongside him.
Sweeping his gaze over the nearly ten thousand bewildered people below, Zhang Tianyuan gave a brief introduction. "Zhang Tianyuan, president of the Parallel Spacetime Mutual Aid Society."
"I was the one who brought news of your apocalypse through a Spacetime Tunnel."
As they looked at this stranger, the crowd that had been buzzing just moments ago fell silent in an instant.
Like penguins watching their leader speak in a cartoon, everyone lifted their heads higher and leaned farther forward.
At this moment, Zhang Tianyuan's name, age, and appearance no longer mattered. All anyone cared about was his identity and what he would say next.
Under everyone's gaze, Zhang Tianyuan remained calm and composed.
"Perhaps you don't know this, but besides your spacetime being threatened by an apocalypse, other spacetimes are facing the same predicament. Some are like yours, some are actively responding to the disasters, while others have already been destroyed by the apocalypse, with countless lives lost in the catastrophe."
"Behind every parallel spacetime are billions of living, breathing people. The Mutual Aid Society was founded to save those lives."
"So that's how it is!" As Qian Xiu listened to Zhang Tianyuan, his eyes grew brighter and brighter. He had guessed correctly.
Qian Xiu could not help standing up
and bracing himself against the shoulders in front of him to lean forward, hoping for a clearer look, but he was immediately warned.
Zhang Tianyuan did not notice the little disturbance below, because Qian Xiu was far from the only person reacting that way.
He raised one finger and continued speaking:
"But fighting an apocalypse often takes more than the strength of a single spacetime. Your spacetime, for example, will face tsunamis thousands of meters high in 2012, enough to drown every living thing on Earth."
"Besides that, there will be super-earthquakes caused by tectonic plates colliding, which will cause entire cities and even countries to sink below the horizon. There will also be volcanic eruptions..."
"Every natural disaster you can imagine, and those you cannot, will occur. Faced with such a predicament, if you rely on yourselves alone, even gathering the strength of the entire world will only allow you to preserve a population of fewer than a million."
Listening to Zhang Tianyuan's descriptions of the disasters, everyone below was led into imagining them.
If such disasters happened, where could they escape to?
Build spaceships?
Or dig holes and burrow into the mountains?
Qian Xiu also exchanged a glance with his friend, and they suddenly shook their heads together.
If they really had to face such disasters, they could not think of any way to save themselves.
They were just a group of ordinary engineers. Expecting them to think through such problems was giving them far too much credit.
"Then how does your Mutual Aid Society plan to save our spacetime?" In the front row closest to Zhang Tianyuan, a woman could not help voicing everyone's thoughts.
"A very good question."
Zhang Tianyuan motioned for her to sit down before saying, "The disasters I just described are indeed impossible for a single spacetime to withstand, so we must seek help from other parallel spacetimes."
"Gathering the strength of all spacetimes, standing united like a fortress and cooperating to weather apocalyptic disasters-that is the purpose of our Mutual Aid Society."
Zhang Tianyuan smiled:
"In another parallel spacetime, there is also a country with the same name as yours. Its culture, customs, and history are all extremely similar to yours.
"Just a few days ago, we reached the first cross-spacetime cooperation agreement in human history.
"Through negotiations, the parallel spacetime has agreed to let our Mutual Aid Society relocate all the citizens of your spacetime there for refuge before 2012."
Since they could neither avoid the disaster nor withstand it, all they had to do was run!
Faced with such a simple, blunt approach, everyone was so stunned that their mouths
would not close.
Qian Xiu had certainly never expected the answer to be so simple.
"We just move straight to another spacetime, and that's it?"
"It's that simple?"
"So that means we'll have to leave home and go to another spacetime..."
People had some trouble imagining events unfolding that way.
But they were not given much time to think.
The senior official beside Zhang Tianyuan stepped forward and added, "President Zhang is correct. We have reached the first cooperation agreement spanning spacetimes in human history with our brother nation in another spacetime."
"Our cooperation covers many fields. Not only must they help us when the apocalypse arrives, but we must also help them now."
"An apocalyptic viral incident occurred in that parallel spacetime. More than 99 percent of its population has died, and production, business operations, and society have now ground to a complete halt."
"Our task now is to aid our brothers and help them restore sufficient productivity before 2012 arrives."
"You are the first batch of personnel our country is dispatching to provide targeted assistance. Your task is to help them restore electricity and water to their cities, provide medical care for the people of that parallel spacetime, and protect their safety."
"And the help you provide to that parallel spacetime will, in turn, save our world in the future."
The senior official gazed at everyone.
"This assignment carries a certain degree of danger, but overall, it is not high. It is classified as top secret. If you choose to withdraw now, you will only need to wait at the base until the classification is lowered before you can leave."
"Next, you can learn about the situation in the parallel spacetime before making your decision."
One shocking piece of news after another came crashing down like a thunderstorm.
By the time Qian Xiu and the others came back to their senses,
they saw that everyone onstage had stepped down, and a huge screen had been lowered from above.
The administrative staff who had once accompanied Zhang Tianyuan to Legend World took the stage and began using the footage they had recorded earlier to explain the basic situation in Legend World.
From the KV Virus to the Darkseekers, from what they had witnessed to a comparison of the two worlds' histories.
There was no shortage of bloody, horrifying content on the screen, yet it held everyone's unblinking attention.
Although the two sides existed in different spacetimes,
the tragic plight of the other spacetime still weighed on everyone's hearts.
"Are you going?" Qian Xiu's friend suddenly nudged him.
"Yes!" Qian Xiu answered.