Starting as a Wallfacer, his defection to the Three-Body Problem shocked the world.

"How am I supposed to cook this after it's been flattened like this for the first time?"

Luo Congmin hummed a song as she skipped and hopped along in front of her.

"Brother Zhang Xiang, are we really going to see my dad today?"

Luo Congmin turned around and looked at Zhang Xiang, who was following behind.

"Of course, you probably haven't met your father yet, have you?"

When Luo Ji went into hibernation, Luo Congmin was only two or three years old. Even if she had seen Luo Ji at that time, she doesn't remember him very clearly now.

After taking care of the girl for a few days, Wang Miao couldn't stand it anymore and made up an excuse to leave. Ding Yi also went into seclusion and stayed in the Dream World for a whole day.

Therefore, the task of taking care of the child fell to Zhang Xiang.

So, does this mean I've really become a nanny?

Left with no other choice, Zhang Xiang decided to take Luo Congmin to the hibernation center so that the child could meet Luo Ji, since she still hadn't even seen what her father looked like.

"Of course, you can also see your aunt and Uncle Shi Qiang."

Zhang Beihai's family went into hibernation last month. Lin Xuan applied to the PDC for a few spots for them, so that they could hibernate for two hundred years.

Luo Congmin had been raised by Zhang Beihai's wife since childhood, so she felt even more attached to her aunt than to her father, whom she had never met.

The two quickly arrived at the hibernation center. After Zhang Xiang showed his PDC credentials, he led Luo Congmin to Luo Ji's hibernation pod.

At this moment, Luo Ji had been lying in the hibernation pod for several years. He closed his eyes tightly, his face expressionless, as if waiting for the world to awaken him again.

"Wow!"

Luo Congmin pressed his face against the glass wall of the hibernation pod, and the hot breath he exhaled quickly condensed into a white mist upon encountering the low temperature.

"Is this my dad?"

Luo Congmin carefully observed the man inside through the glass.

Although Luo Congmin didn't remember ever seeing this person before, the familiar feeling of being connected by blood still made her feel a trace of warmth from Luo Ji's cold body.

"dad."

Luo Congmin called out softly, but Luo Ji was clearly unable to respond at this moment.

She reached out and tapped on the glass, making a "clang clang clang" sound.

After leaving the hibernation center, Luo Congmin fell into deep thought.

After a long while, she turned to Zhang Xiang, who was standing to the side, and asked him.

“Our teacher said that in the future everyone will enter such a square box, and then lie down inside and not move. Will my dad be like that too?”

Upon hearing this, Zhang Xiang's lips twitched involuntarily.

"That square box you mentioned... is it called a coffin?"

……

"Now we begin the 74th session of the Planetary Defense Council, regarding the resolution to amend the Wallfacer Act."

Inside a room, a dozen or so senior executives from PDC were sitting around a large round table.

They are like the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur in legend; every decision they make will affect the development of the entire human society.

"General Fitzroy has already reported the Hubble 2 observation images to us. The Trisolarans are starting to get anxious. Those ten probes are accelerating and heading towards Earth."

"They seem to be very afraid of Lin Xuan's Mirror Project. Ever since Lin Xuan proposed the Mirror Project at that meeting, the Trisolarans immediately launched probes, which is enough to tell the story."

"There are a total of ten detectors. According to computer estimates, these launched detectors are only about the size of a truck."

"This proves that our choice was correct."

“I propose that we end the Wallfacer Project and focus all our resources on Lin Xuan alone.”

"Agree."

"I agree. We should accelerate the construction of the Mirror Project and Reach, complete the deployment of defensive forces in the solar system, and deliver a head-on blow to the approaching Trisolarans."

However, a dissenting voice arose at this moment.

"I propose that the opposite wall project be preserved."

The speaker was Thomas Wade, the current director of the PIA.

“The Wallfacer Project has already consumed too many resources. Now that we have clearly identified what the Trisolarans are afraid of, why not stop this foolish behavior as soon as possible?” one representative retorted.

"What if we guess wrong?"

Wade's words immediately silenced the room.

"Gentlemen, my thinking remains the same: any plan should continue until there is clear evidence that it is wrong. Besides, even if we terminate the Wall Project now, the money has already been spent, and it is impossible to get it back."

"But this will at least reduce some of the losses. The economic systems of various countries are already on the verge of collapse. Reducing the remaining three Wallfacers to one will allow us to focus on the work ahead."

“Excuse me, sir, I need to correct you. There are four Wallfacers. The first Wallfacer, Taylor, has not yet been stripped of his Wallfacer status.”

“Uh…ah? Yes, sorry, it was my mistake. Taylor’s presence was really too low, and I heard that he has recently gone into hibernation and applied to go to 200 years in the future.”

"See, gentlemen, this proves that I was right. The remaining Wallfacers have no more resources to spare, so why terminate this plan now?"

Wade was an exceptionally eloquent speaker. When the Ladder Project was first proposed, due to data errors, he only had half an hour to prepare and explain the plan and correct the mistakes.

That meeting took place at the same time that Lin Xuan became a Wallfacer. Lin Xuan originally wanted to see Wade as soon as possible, but because she had to protect Luo Ji's safety, she could only hurriedly leave a tracking device on Cheng Xin and then leave.

"That's true. What if we're wrong? After all, Lin Xuan wasn't the only Wallfacer present at the meeting. Maybe the Trisolarans were afraid of the spell Luo Ji launched!"

Everyone present, except for Wade, burst into laughter.

Although PDC had launched the so-called "spell" at 187J3X1 several years ago, just as Luo Ji had said, nobody took his plan seriously at all.

Everyone considers Luo Ji to be an academic fraudster.

They believe that Luo Ji did this to preserve his Wallfacer privileges, so he deliberately did something to make people think that he was indeed fulfilling his Wallfacer responsibilities, but in reality, it only made him more ridiculous in front of all mankind.

"We need to speed up the shipbuilding process. As things stand, the development of our three fleets is too slow at the moment."

"This will consume a lot of resources, sir. Earth's annual resource production is limited. Since the establishment of the Space Force fleet, the production of this resource, which was originally increasing, has been declining. If this continues, all farmland will soon be desertified."

"So what? Is the Trisolaran crisis more important, or is protecting the environment more important? Mr. Pedro cares so much about environmental issues, could he be a member of the ETO?"

Since the construction of the three fleets began, the ETO has been constantly inciting the masses to resist the PDC, and there have been three armed suppressions in recent years alone.

Later, the PDC offered a reward of up to 50 for information leading to the arrest of an ETO member. Anyone who successfully reported an ETO member would receive a reward ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The policy had good intentions, but it quickly triggered the "cobra effect" in society.

The Cobra Effect refers to the situation in India during the colonial era, where the British government, in order to reduce the number of cobras, issued a law that offered a bounty for each cobra killed.

However, the Indians, driven by the bounty, began breeding cobras. When the Indian government realized this and cancelled the bounty, the snake breeders released the snakes; the released snakes then multiplied rapidly, resulting in an increase in the cobra population instead of a decrease.

Economists coined the term "cobra effect" based on this, to describe how flawed political or economic policies not only fail to solve problems but actually exacerbate them.

The situation is similar to what happened back then. Initially, everyone was very active in searching for ETO members online, but later, it became a case of anyone whose views deviated from subjective politics being labeled a "walking 50."

Advocating for environmental protection? What's the point of protecting the environment? You just don't want humanity to develop and defeat the Trisolarans. I'm going to report you, you walking 500,000!

Advocating for reducing the burden of education, subsidizing students in need, abolishing the high school entrance exam, eliminating unnecessary rote memorization, and giving more young people the opportunity to enter university? Go ahead, marketing accounts! First, smear him as a capitulationist who is overthrowing the human education system, and then label him an ETO!

Even though the internet is so developed now, and people can find out the real news with just a few taps on their phones, most people still choose to believe marketing accounts and blindly follow the trend to attack someone they are not even willing to spend a few minutes learning about.

As a result, the whole world fell into a state of "political correctness," where no one dared to speak out or express their opinions, a phenomenon that was particularly evident in European countries.

Because once you put forward a view that differs from mainstream opinion, you will be fiercely criticized by the blind masses.

Many scholars have been threatened, vandalized with paint, and harassed by phone for speaking the truth. Under prolonged torment, some have chosen suicide because they could not bear the burden.

They didn't die at the hands of the ETO, nor at the hands of the Trisolarans, but at the hands of their own people.

From then on, no one dared to speak out anymore, and the culture of human society as a whole, like fundamental physics, stagnated.