Chen Ling's arrival didn't surprise Chu Muyun in the slightest.
He smiled faintly, pulled out a chair from the small grocery store, and gestured for Chen Ling to sit.
"It seems you're finally ready to hear about our 'justice.'"
"I'm all ears."
Although Chen Ling was eager to learn everything about the USB drive, he believed that since Chu Muyun had given it to him, he would eventually explain it. So, he patiently waited for Chu Muyun to start from the beginning.
"How much do you know about the Great Cataclysm?"
Chen Ling thought back to what Dr. Lin had told him.
"They say a crimson teor streaked across the sky, and the gray world intersected with ours, affecting this world... And then calamities started crawling out. That's about it."
As he said this, Chen Ling suddenly rembered the crimson teor he had seen in the news on the USB drive...
A thought struck him, and his eyes widened in shock.
"Wait... The world in the USB drive, that's the world before the Great Cataclysm?!"
"Exactly." Chu Muyun gave him a surprised look, seemingly not expecting Chen Ling to figure it out so quickly. "What you just described is what most people in the nine major domains know about the 'Great Cataclysm.' But the actual 'Great Cataclysm' was far more than that..."
"What do you an?"
"According to rumors, the world before the Great Cataclysm was prosperous and thriving. Humans, with the power of science, could achieve many things... Like flying into the sky, reviving the dead, cities lit up as bright as day, creating virtual worlds within reality, and even leaving this planet to explore the mysterious unknown of the 'universe'..."
As Chu Muyun spoke, he observed Chen Ling's expression, only to find no trace of surprise. He couldn't help but ask:
"Aren't you amazed?"
"Huh?"
"Doesn't what I just said amaze you?"
Chu Muyun, like everyone else in this world—or rather, this era—had grown up here. Naturally, he had never seen the technological level before the Great Cataclysm. To them, everything described in the legends was as abstract as myths are to modern people.
"...Oh, that's pretty incredible." Chen Ling nodded expressionlessly.
It was just airplanes, dicine, electric lights, video gas, and spaceships... These were all commonplace for Chen Ling, who had lived in a modern city. But if his so-called "previous life" was actually the world before the Great Cataclysm, then didn't that an he hadn't traveled between worlds...
But through ti?
"Anyway, 379 years ago, a crimson teor streaked across the sky. After that, human material civilization began to regress." Chu Muyun spoke as if reciting a well-rehearsed script. "The technological marvels humans were most proud of were the first to collapse—lithography machines, spaceships, and superweapons capable of annihilating the world..."
"You're saying... human civilization is regressing?"
"Exactly. People before the Great Cataclysm discovered they could no longer create new versions of these things. It was as if the fundantal scientific principles behind them had all failed. Even if they perfectly assembled every component, identical to before, it just wouldn't work...
As ti passed, more and more things stopped functioning—phones, computers, high-speed trains, and large-scale power plants...
Panic spread through human society. They didn't know how far material civilization would regress... In this fear, they began to turn on each other."
"Wait." Chen Ling interrupted Chu Muyun. "If material civilization was regressing, shouldn't that have been a challenge for all of humanity? Why didn't they unite to overco it instead of killing each other?"
"They did unite, but it didn't help." Chu Muyun paused. "And as I said, they had superweapons capable of annihilating the world, but not every country possessed them...
Once these weapons all failed, and technological civilization regressed to the sa level for everyone, the balance of power would be shattered... Strong nations would no longer be strong, and weak nations would no longer be weak.
To protect their status, resources, and wealth, the strong nations would choose to..."
"Launch all their superweapons and wipe out the weaker nations that didn't have them??" Chen Ling seed to realize sothing. "A world war?!"
Chen Ling, of course, understood the importance of nuclear weapons to powerful nations. If strong nations knew that all countries' technological levels would regress to the sa starting point, they would inevitably strike first.
Because losing their weapons ant losing their deterrent. Other nations would inevitably target their oil, wealth, and other resources...
"You're mostly correct, but the strong nations didn't just attack the weak ones... They also attacked each other. Because if technological regression was severe, human resources would truly determine a nation's survival. To balance the power of every nation, they had to weaken the populations of nations that opposed them.
The accumulated achievents of human civilization over centuries, under the tide of regression, ultimately beca nothing more than pure killing machines..."
Chen Ling fell silent for a long ti before slowly saying:
"The intersection with the Gray World wasn't the root cause of the Great Cataclysm... Humanity's self-destruction was."
"After that Great Cataclysm, the world was in ruins. The survivors thought a new order had been established, but within days, the Gray World began to intersect with reality...
Pollution from an unknown world eroded the land, and vicious calamities slaughtered living beings. Human society, already on its last legs, suffered a devastating blow.
After that, nations ceased to exist. The survivors gathered together and established nine bases. Later, they discovered thods to resist the intersection with the Gray World, and the nine bases gradually expanded into the nine major domains we have today."
"I see." Chen Ling sighed deeply.
Wait...
If what Chu Muyun said was true, didn't that an his parents would also perish in the Great Cataclysm?
Not just his parents, but all the relatives, friends, and colleagues he knew would be swept up in this catastrophe... How many would survive?
The people standing on the streets watching the news back then would never have imagined that the world was about to undergo a massive transformation.
Chen Ling's eyes trembled slightly. He now knew everything that had happened in that era. He knew that almost everyone he cared about would perish, yet he was powerless... That era was nearly four hundred years ago. Even if he knew, what could he do?
"...You told all this. And then what?"
"And then, this is the sole purpose of the Twilight Society, the 'justice' we believe in." Chu Muyun pointed outside. "What do you think of the Aurora Domain?"
Chen Ling's mind imdiately flashed to Wu Youdong limping along, the rickshaw puller's disdain for law enforcers, the ruthless and arrogant people of Ice Spring Street, and the law enforcers who colluded with them for profit...
"...It's chaotic." In the end, he could only muster those two words.
"What if I told you that, compared to other domains, the Aurora Domain is actually quite good?"
Chen Ling was stunned.
"The Twilight Society gathers a group of outcasts rejected by society. In the eyes of the world, we might be lunatics, failures, executioners... Our only commonality is that we are utterly disillusioned with this era..."
"That's why we ca together."
"Ca together, and then what?" Chen Ling asked.
The dusky sunset gradually sank below the horizon, casting half of Chu Muyun's face into shadow.
He took a deep breath and spoke word by word:
"Reverse the era. Restart the world."
Reviews
All reviews (0)