The Last 299 Days of Humanity

Chapter 25 Little Difficulty Shining Star

When Yu Qing arrived at the building where they were to meet, Daji and Chang'e had not yet arrived.

He barely slept that night, constantly hoping they could escape Qinyuan and return safely.

It was already dawn, but they still hadn't arrived.

Without the cover of night, it wouldn't be so easy for them to escape.

Yu Qing had no choice but to send Erlang to find them again. He had Erlang smell the clothes, indicating that it should look for targets with the same scent.

Strangely, this time Erlang didn't rush out immediately, but instead bit his clothes and pulled him downstairs.

"What do you mean? Could it be that Chang'e and the others are downstairs?"

He followed Erlang down nine floors, and there Chang'e and Daji were indeed there.

They arrived in the first half of the night and have been anxiously waiting for him ever since!

Yu Qing asked in confusion, "Weren't we supposed to meet on the first floor below the roof? How did you end up on the tenth floor below the roof?"

Yao Dan took the small board from Yan'er's hand, looked at it, and laughed, "It was Erlang's doing. When he bit the board, he bit two teeth marks above and below the 'one,' making it look like the 'ten.'"

Yu Qing pretended to be angry and tapped Erlang's head with his finger, saying:

"How dare you alter my imperial decree! Take this man to the Meridian Gate and behead him!"

Erlang let out a groan, lowered his head, and lay there, looking as if he were confessing his sins.

Everyone burst into laughter, and the atmosphere immediately lightened.

After laughing, everyone started exchanging their experiences on how to get rid of Qin Yuan.

Chang'e threw herself into the lake, hid for two hours, and then escaped from the bottom of the lake back to a half-collapsed house on Yaoxing.

Daji hesitated and stammered, unwilling to recount her story for a long time, until Yan'er blurted out:

"We're the unlucky ones, crawling around in a stinky pipe..."

"It's a miracle we escaped this disaster. Now we need to figure out how to deal with this situation. We can't move forward, and even retreating is a problem."

Chang'e said, "I don't think they'll leave for the next few days. When we threw them into the lake, the surface was covered with the dark mass of Qin Yuan's corpses. They've really set up a grudge against us."

Yu Qing said, "There's an old Chinese idiom, 'ants trying to eat an elephant,' but there are more of them than ants! However, they also need to eat. There's no food here at all, and they won't last more than a few days before they have to leave."

"The encirclement here can be lifted, but we still can't fly over their area."

Yu Qing laughed and said, "I will have a brilliant plan when the time comes."

"Then let's just stay here like idiots for the next couple of days. Let's just wait it out with them."

"My wife, we can't just sit here. You have to do something for me."

"We can't get out of here, what can we do?"

"You guys analyze this for me, why was Yaoxing abandoned? I want to know what exactly happened here."

As the saying goes, "One leaf falling heralds the coming of autumn," meaning that knowing what happens here allows us to know much about other things on Earth.

Daji said, "I know a little about what happened more than a hundred years ago, but I know nothing about what happened after that."

Yao Dan said, "Yesterday, my husband deduced that a major sinkhole occurred here sometime after July of 2C35."

Chang'e said, "My lord, are you so sure? You're not just guessing, are you?"

"It's almost certain, but we still need some corroborating evidence. Check the information carefully again; are there any large-scale construction projects you know of in or around Yaoxing that could potentially cause a collapse?"

"Oh! There really is something! Back in 2C11, about 300 miles from Yaoxing, they were planning to build a factory called something like P material modification additives."

"Explain in more detail, how did building an additive factory get involved in land subsidence?"

"My lord, you may not know this, but this additive is no ordinary substance. It is a trace substance taken from an underground environment at 1000°C, which means that we need to drill more than 30 kilometers underground."

This plan drew considerable opposition at the time, with many believing that the Resorts company was committing a crime.

However, construction eventually began on the factory, located in a large canyon 304 kilometers from Yaoxing.

"It's highly likely that this factory is to blame. They could drill a 30-kilometer-deep hole in the ground, maybe not just one, but a whole bunch. Are these additives really that important?"

"My lord, it is an essential substance for improving the flexibility and high-temperature resistance of P material."

"I vaguely remember what P material is used for, but I've forgotten."

"This is a human skin replacement material; simply put, it is used to make artificial skin."

"Humans have skin, so why would we need artificial skin? For burn patients?"

"No, no, no, it's about healthy people taking off their original skin and replacing it with skin made of P material. This skin can maintain its freshness for over 670 years, thus preserving youth and preventing aging. It's also softer, smoother, more supple, and can withstand high temperatures."

At that time, only two companies, Shengtian and Shengdi, were able to produce this type of skin.

To defeat Shengtian Company, Shengdi Company invented a modified P material, which is a P material with additives. With just one parameter, it successfully increased the heat resistance temperature of artificial skin from 127℃ to 693℃.

"Iron men! They're insane! Why would anyone endure such high temperatures? This is utter nonsense! Do they want to bathe in boiling oil every day?"

Chang'e laughed and said, "This just proves that our product is of higher quality, and has nothing to do with whether it has any practical use. Besides, in extreme situations like a big fire, people who can withstand 693°C have a much better chance of survival than people who can withstand 127°C."

“Baby, if you had artificial skin like this, you could have sat in the fire yesterday and picked up the cooked Qin Yuan to eat. You wouldn’t have needed to run away at all,” Yan’er said.

Yu Qing laughed and said, "Get out of here. I'd rather burn to death than do that. Everything has its limits; going too far is never a good thing."

"But people just keep pursuing their ultimate strength."

Did you know that at the time, Shengtian Company's artificial eyes accounted for 70% of the market share? In order to seize the market, Shengtian Company even planned to develop the Ruyi Qianliyan (a type of artificial eye). According to records, one-third of the people immediately pre-ordered this product.

According to the parameters released by Shengdi Company, these eyes can double their resolution with each blink. If you blink three times quickly, the resolution can be increased by 12800 times. There are even rumors that they can see the dancing of a butterfly 2,000 kilometers away.

"What are they trying to do? Are they planning to spy on the Queen Mother of the West while she's bathing?" Yu Qing shook his head.

Yao Dan laughed, "You humans just want to get rid of us and play by yourselves. We don't have eyes that good." Yu Qing said, "How about I get you a pair too?"

Chang'e said, "It can't be installed. It is said that they were planning to release a humanoid beauty with such eyes, but the price is 7800 times that of us."

"I don't care how many times it's multiplied, I don't want it."

Daji asked, "That's what you say, but if you really met such a beautiful woman, my dear, wouldn't you be tempted? She's far more useful than just playing the pipa..."

Yu Qing patted Daji's head and said, "I've neglected you these past two days, and you're starting to get jealous. Chang'e and Yaodan have more up-to-date information, so I sometimes have to deal with them more."

Daji said, "My dear, you're wronging me. I'm not jealous... I... I have more up-to-date information than they do..."

Yu Qing's eyes lit up, and he asked, "Darling, tell me quickly, what is it?"

Daji sighed, "Yes, it is, but I can't read it now!"

"What is it that can't be read?"

"When I hid inside a building, I found a cloud-shaped eye on the outer wall and took out the memory inside."

"What is a cloud eye, and what is a memory chip?"

Chang'e said, "My lord, in ancient times, the cloud eye was called a camera, and memory was called a memory card! If this memory wasn't a new type of product, I might be able to read it!"

Yu Qing couldn't help but hug and kiss Daji, saying, "Darling, you've done a great job. Quickly, let Chang'e try it out."

Daji reluctantly handed it to Chang'e, saying, "How can you read it without the equipment? Don't try to be clever and break it!"

Chang'e took the memory chip, took off her shoes, and lifted the soles of her feet, revealing nine different slots. She inserted the memory chip into one of the slots and exclaimed excitedly, "My lord, it can read! I can read!"

Daji and Yaodan stared in astonishment at Chang'e's feet, clearly not possessing that ability.

Yu Qing was eager to know what kind of image data was inside the memory.

Chang'e said, "My lord, don't have too high hopes. The Cloud Eye is an obsolete technology and probably won't be used in important scenarios. It's unlikely to be used in many high-value scenarios... Alright, you can take a look now."

After she finished speaking, she flicked her finger, and a holographic image immediately appeared before her eyes. A disc-shaped flying machine flew across the screen, shouting loudly, "The ground north of the city is severely subsided. We urgently request its demise! We urgently request its demise!"

There's a blank space followed by a few blurry shadows flashing by, then dozens of humanoid figures flying past the camera, surrounding a humanoid figure carrying someone on its back. The rest of the scene is largely the same, differing only in the number of figures.

But what's most puzzling is that a large flight squadron of about two hundred people flew by with a spherical object arched over it.

Yu Qing asked in confusion, "That's all?"

"That's all."

Yu Qing pondered for a moment and said, "A great deal of information can be deciphered from here."

For example, the shouts in the video have language characteristics from hundreds of years ago, indicating that human language was regressing at that time.

The phrase "the ground north of the city has suffered severe subsidence" confirms that my previous deduction was correct.

Some people had dozens of humanoid creatures, while others had only a few, which shows that there was still a serious gap between the rich and the poor in society at that time.

I did not see any scenes of two people together, which suggests that the society of marriage and family may have disintegrated by then, and that it was a world dominated by single people and childless individuals.

The fact that there are so few images in the memory indicates that the so-called cloud eye has had no content to capture for a long time, which indirectly proves that there were hardly any people left on Radiant Star in 2C36, making it a ghost town.

The only thing I can't understand is that sphere. Why is it surrounded by two hundred humanoid beauties? Chang'e, do you know?

Chang'e said, "I don't know either. But one thing you're absolutely right about is that in 2B99, humanity did indeed launch what was called the 'Minimalist Language and Culture Movement,' where people advocated using the simplest words to express more meaning, thus creating a retro trend."

That's why you call me "wife" and I call you "husband"—these are all direct effects of that wave of influence.

There was a saying at the time, something like "technology moves forward, culture moves backward," but I couldn't find what it meant. You know, human society is becoming increasingly fragmented, with everyone going their own way, and we don't even know how to process all this information.

"My lord, shall we have a storytelling session today? What's the use of just talking about these things? Let's think about how to get rid of those Qin Yuans instead."

"My goodness, this isn't just empty talk. This information will allow me to better understand what has been happening on Earth recently, what it has been, what it is now, and what it will be like in the future. Only then will I have a plan to deal with it. Otherwise, why would I go to Paradise Number Two?"

Yao Dan said, "Find a human wife, have children, what else can you do?"

Yu Qing laughed loudly, "Is it really that simple and crude?"

Chang'e said, "May I interject?"

"Go ahead and say it, I'll agree to even ten of your suggestions."

Chang'e replied, "Nowadays, humans don't call their spouses 'wife,' they call them 'five wheels,' and women call their spouses 'three legs.' So you should say that your husband is going to find five wheels..."

"What a mess. It seems I'm about to face a completely different world, isn't it, my humanoid Shugoru?"

"do not know."

"do not know."

"do not know."

"have no idea.

Yu Qing said, "Now I'll tell you something you all need to know. I've thought it through. We have to leave first thing tomorrow morning. As for how to get rid of those annoying Qin Yuans, I'm thinking of using an ancient strategy called the 'luring the tiger away from the mountain' strategy."

My plan is this: Yaodan will go out first tomorrow morning, fly towards Changtian, and lure as much Qinyuan as possible there. After flying twenty or thirty miles over the sea, he will dive into the water and return to the shore, where he will hide and wait for Daji to pass by before returning five minutes later.

Daji should leave ten minutes after Yaodan departs, taking the same route as him to lure another wave of them, ensuring there aren't many Qinyuan left. The method to get rid of them will be the same as Yaodan's.

Then, five minutes after Daji left, Furong and Yan'er went out and circled around Yaoxing once on each side. If there were still many Qinyuan, you should act like Daji and lead them towards Changtian.

If Qin Yuan had little left, Chang'e carried me out again, flying swiftly towards the direction of Ma Luo. Fu Rong and Yan'er followed.

If Yao Dan and Da Ji are unable to catch up or encounter any unforeseen circumstances, we will not stop to wait. We just need to meet up at Ma Luo in the end.

Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that we may encounter other obstacles along the way, or face being separated again. If this happens, everyone must find a way to reunite within ten days.

This obviously requires a pre-arranged meeting point. I think the rooftop of the tallest building in Maldives should be chosen. In case of special circumstances, the second pre-arranged meeting point can be the rooftop of the largest hospital.

(End of this chapter)