Past, Present, Future

"Get ready for combat!" The moment the words left his mouth, the five of them scattered toward nearby cover with practiced coordination. Lao Bai darted into a street-side building, kicked open a half-ajar door, placed the rectangular crate holding the fuel rod in a safe corner, chambered a round into his Scythe assault rifle, and pressed his back swiftly against the wall beside a window. Every motion flowed as one smooth sequence. "In position!" "Plus one!" "Ready here too!" They had rehearsed this kind of teamwork countless times. Guided by the green dots on their VM maps, the five-man squad spread out evenly around the structure, locking down every conceivable approach. Virtually no blind spots remained. The members of the Ox and Horse Squad waited with bated breath for the battle to begin. Yet a long time passed, and the street stayed dead silent. Not a sound stirred. Standing on the front line alongside Lao Bai, Jieyan held his breath and carefully scanned their surroundings. Apart from the vines swaying gently by the windowsill and leaves rustling in the breeze, not a single sign of movement could be seen along the entire street. *Could it have been an illusion?* The instant the thought crossed his mind, a sharp whistling rush shrieked overhead. Before anyone could utter a word, something detonated above them. *Boom—!* Crouching behind a half-collapsed concrete wall, Ye Shi froze in place. "Holy crap?! Mortars!" In reality, mortars were terribly inefficient in urban combat. Cover was everywhere, drastically limiting the lethal radius of shrapnel. Yet the enemy seemed entirely oblivious to this, launching three more shells in rapid succession. Without exception, every shell burst in midair—and all of them detonated a full twenty meters away from their positions! "And they're airburst rounds..." Kuang Feng furrowed his brow. He glanced at the signal bar on his VM screen, then quickly squinted out the window. Tiny, delicate fibers were drifting slowly down from the sky, resembling the fluff of dandelion seeds. That was the culprit cutting off their signal! "It's a signal-jamming round!" Ye Shi's curses drifted from the distance. "Dammit! No wonder my drone stopped responding!" The Type 5 Light Cavalry exoskeleton recently added to the NPC shop came equipped not only with a visored tactical helmet, but also a palm-sized, shoulder-mounted close-recon drone capable of sharing its feed directly to the user's or their teammates' helmet visors. Yet right now, the drone was useless. It wasn't just Ye Shi's drone that went dark; Kuang Feng's Y-1 Firefly quadcopter had similarly lost all function. Lao Bai switched on his helmet's external speaker and bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Ye Shi, find high ground, locate their spotter, and take him down! Jieyan, stick with me—we'll figure out a way to take out that mortar!" The language barrier proved an absolute blessing at that moment. The players couldn't understand the NPCs, and by the same token, the NPCs had no idea what the players were saying. "Copy that!" Jieyan had just started to rise when a thick tongue of flame suddenly roared from a window directly across the street, sweeping a storm of bullets toward them. Chips of stone and dust burst across the concrete embankment. Startled, Jieyan hastily ducked back behind cover, moving in a low crouch through the chaotic gunfire. Seeing his teammate pinned down, Lao Bai immediately brought up his rifle and fired a burst at the opposite window, providing covering fire for Jieyan to reposition. At the same time, intense gunfire erupted from the other side of the street. That was where Kuang Feng and Fang Chang were stationed! Lao Bai frowned deeply. These people didn't fight like an undisciplined mob. At the very least, they were far better trained than ordinary marauders! "Free fire!" Shouting at full volume, Lao Bai emptied the remainder of his magazine into the opposite window, slapped in a fresh one, and began maneuvering out of his position. The enemy mortar kept firing, and the entire block's signal would soon be completely severed from the outside world. Ye Shi was making his way upward; reaching the twentieth floor or higher ought to restore communication with the shelter. Meanwhile, Fang Chang and Kuang Feng had already engaged the enemy. A four-man fireteam had advanced along their flank and run straight into them. Muzzle flashes flickered through the narrow mouth of the alley, sending gravel and dust showering across the street. Neither side exchanged a word. A fierce firefight erupted in silence. Fang Chang took two rounds to the chest. Fortunately, his armor plate caught them. Gritting his teeth, he let go of his empty PU-9 submachine gun and brought up his Daybreak compound bow, his pupils contracting slightly. *Bullet time!* The flying debris suddenly slowed. The entire world slowed with it. Including himself! Locking onto the figure veiled in smoke, he drew the bowstring as swiftly as he could and released his grip. The string vibrated at a visible frequency, and the fully drawn three-edged arrow plunged into the haze like a bolt of lightning. In the same breath, bullet time ended! *Whoosh—* The shadowy figure took Fang Chang's fully drawn arrow straight to the chest, grunted, and fell backward onto the pavement. Catching sight of the pitch-black armor worn by the fallen fighter, Fang Chang felt a flicker of surprise in his eyes. *Just who on earth are these guys?!* ... Reaching out to drag his arrow-struck comrade back behind cover, Dimitri, clutching an assault rifle, was equally stunned. His shock didn't stem from their identities. Their objective was clear, and they knew precisely who they were after. What astonished him was that the equipment and combat awareness of these targets completely defied their expectations. *Pre-war police exoskeletons!* *Where did they get their hands on gear like that?!* Still, no matter who they were, none of them were walking away today! "Left lung's punctured! Raven's not gonna make it!" shouted the combat medic attending to the wounded man. "Hemostatic spray! Quick! Patch the wound first!" "These savages... are using bows and arrows?!" Another soldier barely finished his sentence when a burst of submachine gun fire snapped inches over his head, sending him ducking back in terror. "Don't underestimate them!" Dimitri barked. "There's something off about that guy's bow!" *Helmet-assisted targeting?* *Or cybernetic eyes?* That reaction speed was absurdly fast. More importantly, the fact that this squad had seen through their ambush beforehand had caught him completely flat-footed. Their exoskeletons masked heartbeats and ninety percent of thermal signatures. Even an Awakened of the perception branch shouldn't have detected them from that kind of distance! Dimitri tore a fragmentation grenade from his webbing, but before he could pull the pin, a piercing whistle cracked through the air and detonated above his head almost simultaneously. Over a hundred steel ball bearings exploded from the arrow, sweeping across a wide arc and catching the team huddled behind cover completely off guard. It was only thanks to the armor on their exoskeletons that the flying shrapnel was deflected; otherwise, that single arrow would have wiped out more than half of them. Dimitri dared not take any chances. Clenching his fist, he signaled the two teammates still able to fight to fan out through the rubble on both sides, flanking the heavy cone of fire. Just as the ambushers were reeling in shock, the archer, Fang Chang, wore an expression of equal disbelief. *Taking an explosive arrow head-on and walking away fine?* *Well, damn.* *Have another, then!* Without hesitation, he drew another explosive arrow worth fifty silver coins and nocked it. Just as he prepared to draw, Kuang Feng clapped him on the shoulder. "They're flanking us!" Fang Chang's expression hardened, and he made an instant call. "Fall back!" ... In the reading room on Floor B4 of Shelter 404. The digital screen along the wall simulated a crackling hearth, emitting a soothing, rhythmic pop. The atmosphere here was truly pleasant. The only drawback was how easily one lost track of day and night. Chu Guang hadn't gone out on patrol today. Instead, he sat on a plush sofa, leafing through a popular science volume he had pulled from the bookshelf. The book was titled *Past, Present, Future*. Although the subjects touched upon were merely broad overviews, they proved eye-opening to Chu Guang all the same. "As early as Year 20 of the Prosperity Era, research vessels of the People's Federation had explored every planet in the Solar System and launched the Alpha Centauri exploration initiative." "By Year 30 of the Prosperity Era, the Alpha Centauri initiative had reached initial completion, and the People's Federation's first colony ship successfully cleared port..." *Alpha Centauri has to be around 4.24 light-years from Earth.* *Did they master faster-than-light travel?* When his eyes settled on a particular line in the text, an odd expression came over Chu Guang's face. "...Gravitational bonds?" According to the book, during the Prosperity Era, physicists of the People's Federation discovered that a "gravitational bond" existed between any two massive celestial bodies. Aerospace engineers referred to them as "gravitational conduits." Under classical motion, regardless of the propulsion used, a spacecraft traveling from the Solar System to another star system would require hundreds or even thousands of years. Yet by utilizing a gravitational conduit, a craft could execute a "jump" between two massive stellar systems in a comparatively short time. Generally speaking, the time required for a jump was directly proportional to the spacecraft's mass and the distance between celestial bodies, and inversely proportional to their mass, governed by a specific formula. According to this formula, jumping between the Solar System and the Alpha Centauri system was actually faster than jumping between Earth and Mars. Indeed, countless gravitational conduits existed. They could bridge star system to star system, stretch between planets within the same system, or even link cluster to cluster. However, due to jump-point constraints, nearly 99.99 percent of these conduits had no practical value even if they existed. Fortunately, physicists of the People's Federation solved the problem. They not only formulated methods to calculate the heading of a gravitational conduit, but also derived the equation for determining jump points, turning hyperspatial navigation via gravitational conduits into a reality for the Federation. This breakthrough simultaneously laid the foundation for the continuation of the Prosperity Era. Controlled fusion solved the energy crisis, while the discovery of gravitational conduits made extrasolar colonization viable, resolving both resource scarcity and living space in one stroke. Human civilization thereby ushered in its first "ascension," taking its first step from planetary natives toward masters of the stars. To be frank, the book described that period much like a power-fantasy novel. Perhaps because the target audience was children, the colony ship bound for Alpha Centauri was painted as nothing short of paradise on earth. As for the present... It felt more like the aftermath of a failed tribulation. Not only had all "cultivation" been lost, but the entire People's Federation had been annihilated in body and soul. Chu Guang could now somewhat understand how Yin Fang felt. The more one learned, the easier it was to feel bewildered about the future. "Damn it..." "If only I'd transmigrated a century earlier!" Genuine question: was it too late to chug some bootleg booze now? According to *Past, Present, Future*, had one transmigrated to the early or mid-stages of the Prosperity Era, as long as one didn't court death by climbing into a hibernation pod for "time travel" just to see what the future held, one likely wouldn't have lived to see the collapse of that prosperous world. Chu Guang turned the page. Regrettably, the book offered no detailed derivation of the "gravitational bond." Much like how popular science books in parallel worlds rarely printed the full mathematical proof of relativity, it simply summarized the concept as "finding shortcuts through hyperspace." Chu Guang knew a bit about hyperspace—literally, higher-dimensional space. And that was what surprised him most. In modern physics, force was generally explained as collisions between particles comprising matter and gauge bosons mediating forces. Within that framework, the four fundamental forces, excluding gravity, could be consistently explained, calculated, and matched with experimental results. That was the Standard Model. The cornerstone of modern physics. Yet the model was not without flaws. Just as Newtonian classical mechanics failed to explain the movement of massive celestial bodies, the Standard Model carried the limitations of its era—an inability to seamlessly integrate gravity. Thus, string theory was proposed, a conjectural framework where the three fundamental forces were described as open strings, while gravity was described as a closed string. Based on that conjecture, gravity could transcend all dimensions. *Did the physics of the two worlds just connect?* Even if it was only a single conclusion shared between two sets of theories. Staring at the lines of text before him, Chu Guang suddenly recalled the audio recordings unlocked on Floor B2, specifically the section mentioning the morphogenetic field. "...If gravitational bonds can exist between star clusters, could similar bonds exist between universes?" Chu Guang had no idea what the mass of a universe was. Like oil reserves, as prospecting technology advanced, the estimated quantity often seemed to grow larger rather than smaller. Yet assuming the mass and distance of two universes were both infinite, Chu Guang plugged them into the simplified formula mentioned in the book. The resulting spacecraft mass, *m*, came out to an infinitesimal value. In other words, according to the theory of gravitational bonds, even if such a conduit existed between two parallel worlds, it would not permit even a single quark to pass through. *What about particles with zero rest mass, though?* Like photons. Information transmission required a carrier. If carriers could be exchanged, transmitting information became possible. As for what that medium specifically was, likely only physicists from the People's Federation era could say. "The morphogenetic field connecting parallel worlds might very well be based on a similar principle." "But how does one lock onto a parallel world?" Chu Guang gently closed his eyes, taking a moment to digest the concepts he had just absorbed. His twenty points of intelligence were finally paying dividends. Had he not become the Administrator, he might have made quite a sensational physicist back on Earth. At the very least, uploading the contents of this book to the official website's database would be enough to trigger an earthquake in Earth's physics community. He might even bag a Nobel Prize. Of course, that was an ideal scenario. The Earth of his original world lacked the capacity to verify such theories, and the simplified descriptions in a children's science book could hardly serve as rigorous scientific proofs—at best, they offered a correct direction. As for himself, he would most likely be treated as an envoy of an advanced civilization, and the book would be viewed as evidence of a benevolent alien enlightenment. Which brought up a practical question. How many silver coins should he charge for this book? Thinking of Kuang Feng on the forum, the corners of Chu Guang's mouth curled into a grin. "Keep grinding your levels, boys." "Once you help this Administrator revive the People's Federation, I'll award you the title of Chief Physicist of the Earth Federation for fun, and toss you a few Nobel Prizes while I'm at it. How's that sound?" Of course, if anyone proved too impatient, they couldn't blame him for taking advantage. Chu Guang chuckled mischievously as he turned the page. Just then, Xiao Qi's voice chimed in from the side. "Master." "What is it?" "The signal for your Burning Corps has vanished from the map." *Holy crap?!* Jolting upright, Chu Guang snapped the book shut, tossed it aside, grabbed the tablet from the table, and pulled up the map. The five green dots had indeed disappeared from the East District of Qingquan City. "System!" A pale blue window appeared before his eyes. Chu Guang switched directly to the player list and saw that their status icons were still green, allowing him to exhale a slow breath of relief. Only their radio communication had been cut, not the morphogenetic field! The clones were still alive! It was likely some sort of signal-jamming device suppressing their transmissions. While unexpected incidents could always happen, the safety of the fuel rod directly dictated whether Shelter 401 could be brought online. This matter permitted zero room for error. Reaching a decision in less than a second, Chu Guang tapped the tablet screen with his index finger and hit send on a pre-drafted mission order. "Send Mosquito's plane over to take a look!" Xiao Qi's energetic voice rang out. "Right away!" ... At the same time, on the northern runway of Dawn City. A wooden aircraft taxied slowly out of the hangar doors, its propeller spinning up. Only a minute earlier, Mosquito had been lecturing his disciples on how to handle a glider. Now, without a word of explanation, he leaped into his cockpit and pulled his dog-pelt aviator cap down over his head. The aircraft's twin machine guns had already been upgraded from puny seven-millimeter popguns to ten-millimeter Maxim-IIs. The wooden glider had evolved completely from a recon craft into a dedicated ground-attack plane. Mosquito had painted a set of jagged shark teeth across the nose, making the front of the plane look like a great white shark gaping its bloody jaws. The skin didn't add attack power, but it looked damn cool. Let's see anyone mock his strafing runs as peeing on the ground now! "Practice on your own! Do whatever you want, just don't take off!" The four training gliders had no weapons mounted; even if they went airborne, they'd be useless in a fight. Hearing that, the four disciples instantly grew indignant. Fatal: "Damn it!" Soul Chaser: "You're hoarding all the action for yourself again!" Slayer: "Get down and let me fly!" Peacemaker: "%#@&!" "Piss off! You think a real mission gets handed to rookies? Go pass your pilot's license in real life first!" Fatal: "Like you have one?!" Mosquito didn't waste his breath. With a smirk, he shoved the throttle all the way forward, hauled back on the stick the instant he hit takeoff speed, and pulled down his helmet goggles. The mission was simple. Patrol the East District of Qingquan City and conduct a low-altitude search for Lao Bai and the others' signal. If trouble was found, provide close air support. If they were confirmed safe, scout their route ahead before the battery ran out. Mosquito's gamer instincts told him that whenever this type of mission popped up, the second scenario could be completely discarded. Without even thinking, eighty percent of the time something had gone terribly wrong! An entire squad vanishing from the map? Whoever was behind this was no small fry! His blood surged. Though still a dozen kilometers away, Mosquito's index finger was already resting on the weapon safety. "Brothers!" "Hold on, I'm coming!" ... In the East District of Qingquan City. Gunfire crackled like firecrackers. Leaving Jieyan in place to pin down the machine gun across the street, Lao Bai circled around the flank, intent on taking out that infuriating mortar first. Yet when he reached his vantage point, he realized the situation was far more complicated than he had imagined. A heavy exoskeleton was anchored right in the center of the residential compound's flowerbed, two armored arms braced against the ground in a sprinter's stance. A cannon mounted on its back fired continuously into the sky. With every shell launched, a cloud of dust kicked up from the pavement. What kind of mortar was this? This was an exoskeleton-mounted self-propelled artillery unit, for crying out loud! The three exoskeleton-clad soldiers guarding the walking artillery spotted Lao Bai the instant he emerged, raising their rifles without hesitation to spray a volley toward him. Narrowly dodging the sweep, Lao Bai ducked behind a residential building and peeked his barrel out to return fire. However, the enemy was clearly seasoned. Three assault rifles fired in unison, their fierce suppression driving him back behind the wall. The three soldiers didn't stop there. Moving with sharp coordination, they fanned out in a triangular formation, bounding forward under alternating covering fire. Glancing at the fracture running across his left forearm's armor plate, Lao Bai gritted his teeth, swapped magazines, and began falling back toward a neighboring half-collapsed building. The entire sector had no signal, likely because the jamming powder had drifted their way. He couldn't even tell if his squadmates were dead or alive. Fortunately, the cannon on that heavy exoskeleton had ceased firing, which should take some pressure off Fang Chang and the others. "Damn it... where the hell did these guys come from?!" *Could Fang Chang have triggered a dev-scripted hit squad by dumping stock on the market?* *Hardly.* *They weren't the only ones fleecing the players.* Just as Lao Bai was wondering, a gunshot rang out in the distance. One of the three soldiers pursuing him took a round to the side. His armor plate cracked, and his knees buckled, nearly sending him sprawling to the ground. A comrade beside him lunged forward, grabbing him and hauling him into nearby cover. Cowed by the sniper's presence, they dared not leave cover, forced to detour through the rubble where line of sight was restricted. "Beautiful!" Delighted, Lao Bai didn't let the golden opportunity slip. He immediately fired a volley, pinning down the pair attempting to flank him. The fight ground to a stalemate! Both sides leaned against cover, trading potshots. To Lao Bai's dismay, however, the walking artillery began firing again. And this shell landed barely ten meters to his flank! With no choice left, Lao Bai abandoned his suppression of the three soldiers and fell back toward a building across the street. Crouching behind cover, Wulun reloaded his rifle, clenched his teeth, and signaled his two remaining men to pursue. The tenacity of these targets far exceeded his expectations! Dimitri hadn't reported back yet, and an enemy had somehow bypassed their frontline entirely, infiltrating all the way to the mortar position six hundred meters behind the firefight. Tapping his index finger against his helmet, an idea struck Wulun, and he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Surrender! You are surrounded!" "We will not kill you, provided you hand over the black box you stole from us!" The words echoed through the street. Holding his assault rifle, Lao Bai frowned. *What's this guy babbling about?* His command of the Human Alliance language wasn't as good as Fang Chang's; he could only manage a few scattered words at best. When spoken slowly he might catch the gist, but spoken fast, he was utterly lost. Still, not understanding was no excuse to lose face. Mimicking the man's pronunciation, Lao Bai shouted the exact same sentence right back. "Surrender! You are surrounded!" Wulun: "???" *We're surrounded?* *Has this guy lost his mind?* Yet just as the thought crossed his mind, a piercing shriek suddenly ripped through the sky. Wulun whipped his head around, only to see a roaring shark with gaping, bloody jaws hurtling straight toward their mortar position. Terror flashed through his eyes, and he yelled in panic. "Ted! Look out!" Ted, inside the heavy exoskeleton, had evidently spotted the aerial anomaly as well, hastily pulling his anchored arms from the ground. Yet it was already too late! Twin ten-millimeter machine guns spat long tongues of flame from the shark's bloody maw! "A-tat-tat-tat! Die, sucker!" Supplying his own sound effects as the cockpit rattled violently, Mosquito held the trigger down with manic glee, raining fire across the cannon-bearing exoskeleton. Though plastered in armor plates, an exoskeleton was still an exoskeleton. No amount of plating could withstand the concentrated kinetic fury of a fixed-wing gun run. Under the relentless hammering of two ten-millimeter heavy machine guns, the heavy exoskeleton was riddled into a sieve within seconds. The ammo rack and battery pack erupted in plumes of flame half a meter high. Before the operator could even scream, he and his armor were blown to bits. The aircraft pulled up sharply, soaring back into the sky. "Bastard!" Staring fixedly at the climbing plane, Wulun's eyes went completely bloodshot. Grinding his teeth nearly to dust, he held his trigger down and emptied an entire magazine at the sky until the aircraft vanished from sight. His two comrades did the same. Rage had pushed them to the brink of madness. Yet as squad leader, the last vestiges of reason pulled Wulun back to his senses. The enemy had air support! Even if it was only a ridiculous propeller-driven craft, those two heavy machine guns were no joke. Their own equipment wasn't advanced enough to defy common physics. This was the River Valley Province, far from the Dead Coast and right on the enemy's doorstep. Their foes had virtually unlimited reinforcements and supplies, while their own unit had neither. Recalling what the man had shouted earlier, Wulun's heart sank further. *Maybe that guy wasn't joking after all.* *Their reinforcements really might be closing in!* They had only this one shot! If they couldn't capture them, they would have to execute Plan B: push further north and seek assistance from the marauders they had previously funded. With no time to hesitate, Wulun drew the flare gun at his hip, fired a flare into the sky to alert the forward team, and barked at his two men. "Retreat!" ... The battle was over. The enemy abandoned their positions and withdrew deep into the ruins. Mosquito circled overhead several times, but finding no opening for a second strafing run and confirming that his teammates were safe, he banked around and headed home. Carrying the crate holding the fuel rod, Jieyan linked up with Kuang Feng and Fang Chang before heading toward the flare to reinforce Lao Bai. There, they found him. "Holy crap?! You okay?" Staring at the shattered armor plates across Lao Bai's chest, Fang Chang's jaw dropped. "Don't worry, only took seven or eight rounds," Lao Bai said, peeling off the dangling pieces of armor with a sigh. "If this were real life, I'd probably be a goner." Kuang Feng cleared his throat. "No need to say 'probably.' Be confident." Jieyan asked nervously, "Do we pursue?" Lao Bai shook his head. "Pursue my foot. The mission comes first. Call Ye Shi back so we can hit the road... It'll be bad news if their reinforcements show up!" How were they supposed to pursue anyway? Their VM signals still hadn't recovered, and the enemy had vanished into the ruins. They couldn't just abandon the fuel rod here. Glancing toward the burned-out heavy exoskeleton nearby, Fang Chang walked over and hauled the charred corpse out from the wreckage. After patting down the body for a moment, Fang Chang paused, fishing out a necklace from beneath the collar. Hanging from it was a scorched metal tag. Embossed upon it was the emblem of a torch. "Find something?" Lao Bai walked over and asked. "Yeah." Fang Chang nodded, dangling the tag. "A torch emblem... It's got his name engraved on it, but I don't recognize the script." Looking at the blackened shell of the exoskeleton, Lao Bai unclipped a flare from his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it beside the wreckage. Plumes of red smoke billowed upward. "We'll leave this for the NPCs." Lao Bai patted Fang Chang on the shoulder. "Let's move."