The Last 299 Days of Humanity

Just as Yu Qing successfully implemented his meticulously designed "golden cicada shedding its shell" plan, believing that he had quietly secured insurance for the future of primitive humans and could temporarily put aside some of his worries and catch his breath, a disaster struck without warning.

It was a seemingly peaceful afternoon, sunlight barely penetrating the increasingly thin atmosphere, lazily casting its glow upon the intricate architectural complex of Wengshan. Yu Qing had just finished reviewing a plan to build a secret passage leading to the First Paradise when suddenly—

Boom!

A deep, muffled roar, seemingly originating from the depths of the earth, suddenly erupted. It wasn't a sharp explosion, but rather a heart-stopping collapse and subsidence caused by the fundamental disintegration of some unimaginably massive structure, as if its supporting forces had been instantly drained.

Immediately afterwards, a slight tremor came from the ground, ripples appeared in the water glass on the table, and the holographic projection on the wall showed a momentary distortion and snow.

"Report! Urgent report!" came the urgent, almost distorted voice of the humanoid supervisor over the communication channel. "West of the city! A large-scale collapse has occurred in the western part of the city! The cause is unknown!"

Yu Qing abruptly stood up from his seat, his heart feeling as if it were being gripped by an icy hand. "What's going on?!" he growled into the communicator, his voice a mixture of shock and suppressed rage.

"Didn't the geological exploration report repeatedly confirm that the main body of Wengshan is a complete granite structure, as stable as a rock? Could it be located on some unknown seismic zone where activity has suddenly intensified?"

A model of continental plate movement flashed through his mind, but he immediately rejected it, as Wengshan's location has always been a stable zone on known geological maps.

He immediately suppressed the turmoil in his heart and forced himself to regain his composure. It was precisely in times like these that he couldn't afford to panic.

"Immediately activate Level 1 emergency response! Evacuate all equipment in and around the collapsed area! Engineering department, geological survey team, safety department, bring the most advanced detection equipment. I need to know the situation on site within half an hour!"

As he issued instructions, he strode toward the control center. On the holographic map, the area in the west of the city was marked with a glaring red alert.

When the live feed was transmitted back to the control center, even Yu Qing, with his vast experience, couldn't help but gasp. The scene was far too bizarre and horrifying.

In the western part of the city, it wasn't just the collapse of a particular building or facility, but rather the subsidence of approximately several hundred square meters of land, including its foundation, that caused the entire area to sink several thousand meters! This created a massive, bottomless crater with twisted and broken edges, as if violently torn apart.

The pit walls are steep, with fractured rock layers and twisted metal pipes faintly visible. Several auxiliary buildings on the edge hang precariously on the edge of the pit, like broken teeth.

The broken pipes hissed and gushed out coolant, energy flow, and unknown gases, emitting a mournful cry like a dying beast.

Thick dust mixed with the leaked medium formed a strange smoke that spread outwards, and panic spread like an invisible plague. Through the monitoring screen, one could feel the screams and fleeing of people on the other side.

Yao Dan led the investigation team, braving the risks to approach the edge of the pit, and used state-of-the-art equipment such as deep geological scanners, gravity anomaly detectors, and quantum coherence tomography to conduct an investigation. The results, however, made Yu Qing more worried than a simple geological disaster, and a chill ran down his spine.

Preliminary survey data shows that the solid granite bedrock that should have been thousands of meters thick beneath the collapsed area... is gone.

It was not the common fragmentation into pieces, nor the slow settling, but rather as if it had been cut by the most precise and incomprehensible technology, and then fundamentally "erased" or "annihilated" by some force.

The remaining pit bottom section has an extremely smooth surface, even with a strange luster similar to vitrification produced by the instantaneous ultra-high energy, as if no rocks have ever existed there since the beginning of time.

The surrounding rock structure was unusually intact, without any radial cracks or stress fractures that would be present in a natural earthquake, and the possibility of internal engineering problems (such as mine collapse or underground construction errors) was completely ruled out.

This is something that no known natural force or human technology could accomplish! Yu Qing's heart sank to the bottom, and a chilling thought uncontrollably surfaced in his mind—Da Dian!
His aunt's seemingly casual warning now resonated in his mind like an alarm bell: "They still have the ability and are likely to seek revenge... They are currently holding back only because of the attitude of Tianqing City."

It seems the other side hasn't truly given up. This wasn't a large-scale attack aimed at destroying Wengshan; it was more like a precise, casual act of retaliation, carrying an undercurrent of extreme mockery and warning.

For the mainstream world that has migrated to outer space and whose technology far exceeds human comprehension, this may really be just a trivial little move.

This is like a giant casually flicking a speck of dust off his clothes, or perhaps it's just a routine "punishment" procedure performed by a low-level operator.

Their goal was merely to salvage some of the "face" lost due to the suppression by Tianqing City, and incidentally teach Yu Qing a lesson for his arrogance and close ties with Tianqing City:

See? We can still easily shake your foundations, but we just don't want to, or rather, disdain to, make a big fuss about it for now.

However, this "dust" that the aliens casually flicked away unexpectedly opened a Pandora's box that could shock the world and even change the course of civilization!

At the twisted edge of the sinkhole, as the thick rock layer mysteriously disappeared, a previously deeply buried and extremely hidden underground structure was exposed to the light of day, like a malignant tumor stripped of its outer shell.

It was originally an auxiliary structure of a deep geothermal exploration well planned for Wengshan in its early years but ultimately abandoned. Its location was hidden and its records were vague. But now, it has clearly been completely transformed.

The originally rough concrete interior wall is covered with a special alloy plate that shimmers with a dark metallic luster, and complex energy pipes and cooling systems are attached to it like blood vessels.

Even after such a dramatic change, the core device at the center of those pipes and structures—a massive device composed of countless intricate rings and focusing crystals—still flickers intermittently with unstable, unsettling arcs of pale blue energy, emitting a low, humming sound as if from another dimension.

The overall defense and core energy system of Wengshan was designed, installed, and maintained and upgraded entirely by Yadu. This extra "gift," hidden deep beneath the foundation and clearly not part of the defense system, is quite a surprise!
With just a little observation of its technical style and materials, even a fool could guess its origin—Asia Metropolis!
Even more terrifying things were yet to come. An emergency detection robot, equipped with anti-interference and radiation shielding, was dispatched and cautiously ventured into the exposed underground structure.

The data streams and preliminary analysis results they transmitted scrolled rapidly on the main screen of the command center, causing all those with access to view, including Yu Qing, to feel as if they had fallen into an ice cave. A chill mixed with shock and fear rushed from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads!

That was no ordinary energy core or secret weapons arsenal. Based on its structure, the residual energy signatures, and the fragmented logs recovered from the damaged control terminal, it was clearly an experimental facility for the extraction of dark matter and the imprisonment of higher-dimensional energy!

The Yadu people were incredibly audacious. They used the relatively stable granite geological environment of Wengshan as a natural barrier and the entire Wengshan area and even the western region as a "shelter" and "buffer zone" to secretly conduct this extremely dangerous, unstable, and cutting-edge experiment, which was considered taboo in the mainstream scientific community!
They are trying to "salvage" dark matter, which theoretically constitutes most of the mass of the universe, from the quantum vacuum, and are attempting to confine, study, and even utilize the enormous energy it contains, which far exceeds that of ordinary matter.

The risks involved are clear to anyone with even a basic understanding of high-energy physics—the nature of dark matter is still not fully understood, and any rough extraction or imprisonment could trigger unpredictable chain reactions. A slight mishap could lead to uncontrolled energy annihilation or a tearing apart of spacetime, the destructive scope of which is immeasurable in theoretical models. At best, it could engulf an entire continental plate; at worst, it could cause global ecological extinction or even space collapse!
"Have they...have they gone mad?! Are they planning to drag the entire planet down with them, playing a world-destroying gamble?!"

Yu Qing was so angry that he trembled uncontrollably. He slammed his fist hard on the cold metal wall, leaving a shallow dent.

Anger surged within him like magma. This anger stemmed not only from the audacity and ruthless deception of the Yadu people, but also from the humiliation and betrayal of being utterly despised and treated as a "lab rat" to be sacrificed at will.

While building a "safety barrier" for him, the people of Yadu secretly buried such a deadly and unstable "time bomb" under his feet, under the homes of thousands of innocent people in the future!

What does this mean? It means that beneath the seemingly civilized and advanced exterior of the Yadu people lies a heart of ruthlessness and arrogance!

They viewed Yuqing, the entire Wengshan region, and all the lives of the native humans in the western region as bacteria in a laboratory petri dish—insignificant expendable resources that could be sacrificed at any time for their dangerous "scientific exploration"!

They didn't consider, not even in the slightest, what kind of catastrophic disaster it would bring to this land and the creatures on which it depends for survival if the experiment went out of control!
This news, like a wildfire, spread rapidly through various channels (both the emergency alarm signals issued by the facility itself after the damage was not completely blocked, and the keen observation of various forces that had been secretly spying on Wengshan).

This incident instantly caused an unprecedented uproar and extreme panic worldwide.

"Adu is conducting devastating experiments in the west."

"At the foot of Wengshan Mountain lies a planetary bomb powerful enough to restart civilization."

"Yadu's Madness: Gambling with the Fate of All Humanity!"

...Shocking headlines like these, in various languages ​​and formats, have frantically dominated the headlines and trending topics of all news channels.

Condemnations, denunciations, questions, fears, and demands for immediate explanations and accountability surged towards Asia from every corner of the world like a devastating tsunami.

Of all the reactions, the fastest, the angrier, and the one that immediately decided to take the most extreme action was Tianqingcheng.

Almost without warning, as if tearing through space, Aunt appeared directly in Yu Qing's busy and oppressive control center.

Her face was colder than Yu Qing had ever seen, as if covered by millennia of frost. Her eyes no longer held the indifference, mockery, or condescending pity of the past, but were filled with the chilling killing intent that burst forth from a supreme being when a tiny ant dared to offend it and even threaten its core interests.

The oppressive aura emanating from her made the air in the entire control center seem to freeze, and everyone present unconsciously held their breath.

“Yadu… these ignorant and arrogant carbon-based worms!” Aunt’s voice was like that of someone from an extremely cold abyss where even light could be frozen, and every word carried a chill that made one’s soul tremble.

"They thought they could sneak around conducting these childish and dangerous toy experiments inside the earth's crust and fool us? How utterly ridiculous! Now, thanks to that stupid and pointless revenge, this dirty and deadly secret has been exposed to the light of day."

Her sharp, knife-like gaze turned to Yu Qing, her tone carrying an unquestionable, almost cosmic, decisiveness:
"How could their pitiful, misguided technological path possibly fathom the nature of dark matter? Extract it? Imprison it?"

With their crude technology and shallow understanding, getting out of control was an inevitable outcome; it was only a matter of time, and that time might be shorter than anyone imagined.

Once out of control, the resulting ripples in spacetime and the annihilation of energy will have an impact far exceeding your, and even the wildest imaginations of all carbon-based life on Earth.

Earth, the relatively stable cradle we still need for the time being, will suffer fundamental and irreversible damage.

It could even... directly interfere with certain critical facilities deployed by our Azure City in near-Earth orbit, on the far side of the moon, and at our Mars base, used for long-range hop anchor calibration and energy harvesting. This is absolutely intolerable!

Although Asia is more advanced and developed than most city-states on Earth, in the eyes of the parallel humans of Tianqing City, who have already moved towards higher dimensions and undergone leaps in life forms and spiritual essence, they are ultimately still "lower life forms" limited to carbon-based bodies.

Asia Pacific's seemingly brilliant technology is nothing more than a bunch of chaotic and superficial childish tricks.

Now, this seemingly childish act of playing with fire is no longer a simple matter of civilized competition or technological adventure; it has genuinely crossed the absolute bottom line that Tianqing City cannot tolerate.

These threats have already jeopardized the stability and security of Earth, the "cradle" upon which they rely to complete their final preparations and embark on their distant interstellar migration.

“We have made our decision,” Auntie said calmly, yet with the air of final judgment, like the annihilation of a star or the destruction of a galaxy.

"This hidden danger must be eliminated completely and thoroughly. Any negotiations, warnings, or sanctions are meaningless. Yadu, this node of civilization, has no reason to continue existing. That land will return to its pre-existing, uninhabited, primitive state."

This is the only logical price they must pay for their foolish, arrogant, and extremely dangerous actions.

Yu Qing was stunned, feeling as if his thoughts had been frozen, and his back was completely soaked with cold sweat.

He originally thought this was just an unprecedented serious crisis and diplomatic disaster, requiring him to do his best to maneuver, negotiate fiercely, exert maximum pressure, and even prepare for the worst armed confrontation. However, he never expected that Tianqing City's reaction would be so direct and so brutal.

They wanted to wipe out a civilized city-state with such a large population and highly advanced technology! This was completely beyond his ability to handle, or even imagine.

He once again felt with unparalleled clarity how insignificant, fragile, and vulnerable his own schemes, power, and empire were in the face of these beings who truly stood at the pinnacle of technology and viewed the rise and fall of civilizations as merely the changing of seasons.

And he, too, seemed to be a cruel twist of fate, unwittingly becoming the insignificant yet irreplaceable fuse that ignited this destructive storm. (End of Chapter)