Chapter 120 Cataclysm
The sky was so blue that it made people feel relaxed and happy. Tall houses built of stone were lined up one after another, with exquisite and complex patterns carved on them. The bricks and stones on the ground were very smooth, but they were engraved with gorgeous carvings inside. Green vines with clusters of white flowers hung down from the roofs, wrapped around the stone pillars and arches, and decorated the streets with vitality.
There were not many people walking on the street, but they all had relaxed and satisfied smiles on their faces, their steps were leisurely, their expressions were relaxed, and no one was in a hurry or looked sad. People were modest, gentle, and polite, and they smiled at strangers on the street. Their clothes were also very different from those of people today. Most women wore solid-colored bras and long skirts made of light gauze, which made them look lazy and elegant; most men showed their arms and muscular chests, which were full of strength and beauty. They wore glittering gold jewelry and flower branches on their wrists. Only a few people wore shoes, and most people just walked barefoot. Shoes were not a necessity for them, but just a kind of decoration.
This is a city full of both classical beauty and modern atmosphere. Passersby would occasionally open an electronic hologram in the air to make video calls, and there were oval or whale-shaped aircraft flying overhead. Traffic lights and markings were not only on the road, but also in the air, forming a criss-crossing traffic network. There was also an electronic screen in the air in front of us that was more than ten meters long and wide, playing instant news.
Rong Yuan stood in the middle of the intersection in a space suit, looking out of place on the street. A girl holding a bouquet of flowers came from the opposite side, smiling straight towards Rong Yuan. Rong Yuan looked up at the sky, without avoiding, and the girl passed directly through his body.
Rong Yuan's expression remained unchanged. He knew that the extremely realistic scene before him was a virtual holographic image. This street, these passers-by, and this girl were all scenes from a long time ago.
When he entered the reference room, he thought he would see rows of bookshelves or a huge storage device. Instead, he found an empty room that was not very spacious. There was a small sign next to the door: " Please close the doors and windows when asking questions to prevent other light sources from affecting the visual effect."
Rong Yuan closed the door, and the room suddenly became dark. He thought for a moment and said, "I want to know the history of this place."
As soon as he finished speaking, thousands of faint light spots lit up from the walls, floor and roof. He seemed to be standing in the center of the stars in the sky. The light spots flickered like a galaxy flowing around him. After a moment, the scene in front of him suddenly changed, and the street appeared around him.
…
A string of music broke the tranquility and leisure on the street. A piece of news suddenly appeared on the electronic screen: "Fifteen days from now, at 9:48:32 in the morning, the Meteoric Comet will be closest to the Earth. The Observatory is ready to capture it... This comet, which contains rich mineral deposits, only passes by the Earth once every 582 years. If we miss this opportunity, we will have to wait another 582 years to see its true face again..."
…
The scene changed, and a planet full of holes and shaped like a round-nosed missile was full of robots mining and excavating. A woman whose face could not be seen clearly, wearing a simple protective suit, said excitedly to the camera: "Unexpectedly, the reserves of magnetite on this planet are 200% more than we originally expected! This is a major discovery! According to scientists' speculation, such a huge amount of magnetite is enough to meet our energy needs for more than 100,000 years!"
In the background of the shot, a spider-like robot, carrying a truck-sized light blue stone on its head, crawled out of an underground pit.
…
The scene changed again, and Rong Yuan saw the prototype of the current Moon Heart City: the interior of the planet had been hollowed out, and a huge blue crystal was fixed to the core of the planet by a metal bracket. At the end of the bracket where it connected to the planet's shell, there were some large and small buildings, all flashing with gorgeous lights. After wearing the translator, Rong Yuan was able to understand the meaning of the various signs on those houses. They were all hotels, beverage shops, restaurants, and repair shops. After the planet was mined out, it seemed to have been built into a tourist destination. The countless capsules naturally disappeared, and were replaced by countless incredibly large flowers. The entire underground city was like a sea of plants.
Rong Yuan was currently on a platform in mid-air. This underground city that never sleeps imitated the Earth, with many large and small "clouds" suspended in the air. The surface was soft, and once you sat on it, you would sink into it, making you want to sleep involuntarily. On the platform where he was, there was a child in his teens sleeping soundly with his legs spread out. On a nearby cloud, there was an old couple with gray hair, snuggling together and talking in a low voice.
"Lena, let's go down and play!" A curly-haired girl on the cloud slightly below him said, pulling her companion's hand.
Her companion was a chubby little girl. She hugged the soft cloud, closed her eyes and hummed, "No! I want to sleep!"
The curly-haired girl continued to pull for a while, but when she saw that she couldn't be persuaded, she had to give up. The girl sat on the edge of the cloud, looked down, and then jumped down! She fell dozens of kilometers with the sound of the whistling wind, and landed directly in the center of a huge umbrella-shaped flower below. The milky white flower suddenly closed and bent down, and then bounced up again after a moment. The girl flew into the sky with a happy laugh, and her body turned several times in the air before landing in another flower.
Soon, many people were attracted by her laughter and joined in the game. Even the fat girl who was sleepy couldn't hold back and finally jumped in.
Everyone was having fun when suddenly the entire planet seemed to shake, and a huge roar echoed repeatedly throughout the dungeon. Amid screams, the white clouds in the sky fell to the ground one after another, and some people fell down due to the vibration of the sound waves, lying on the flowers and unable to get up. At several entrances to the dungeon, black gun muzzles extended in, aiming at the panicked people, and following behind appeared in sight , a creature that did not even have a human appearance.
…
The earth is wailing.
Countless shells fell from the sky with blazing white flames, and on the ground, there were also attacking beams heading for the enemy. Amid the roar of artillery fire, the earth was completely scorched, countless buildings burned and collapsed, and hideous steel spaceships were shot down from the sky one by one. There were also people on the ground fighting the enemy, whose bodies were much stronger than theirs. Humans could hardly withstand a single blow when fighting them head-on, and countless people died. But no matter how many people died, the successors would continue to join the battle one after another, without retreating or fearing.
…
"We won! We won! We drove out the invaders, and humanity won!"
On the wasteland, humans ran and shouted, feeling sad and happy. Such a tragic victory made everyone bear heavy pain. When the invaders left, many people put down their weapons, knelt on the ground and cried, looking more like losers than the invaders.
However, this is not the end, a greater disaster has arrived.
The harmfulness of weapons of mass destruction used by both sides in the war did not disappear with the end of the war. The earth is more fragile than humans imagined.
Like dominoes being knocked over, a series of disasters formed a chain reaction. Continental plates frequently shook, volcanoes and earthquakes erupted everywhere, and smaller islands and coastal lands sank into the sea; glaciers melted, and heavy rains fell day and night, and huge waves as high as nearly a thousand meters were raised on the sea surface. Human cities were flooded without resistance, and even some low peaks were not spared; the sky was filled with smoke and dust that lingered all day long, and the air was filled with gases that were harmful to the human body. In just a few years, a large number of people suffered from unprecedented diseases, and people often fell down while walking on the road. A large number of animals and plants were also extinct in the war, and humans also fell into a serious food crisis.
"This is a difficult decision, but we have to abandon the Earth. This planet has become no longer suitable for human habitation. In order to survive, we will go into the universe and find a new home." said the leader with a tired face in the news.
Humans obtained space travel technology from the spacecraft shot down by alien invaders. This technology developed rapidly during the disaster due to people's urgent needs. As a result, most people took spacecraft and headed for the distant universe.
Not everyone has the courage to travel into the unknown dark universe. Some choose to stay and continue to suffer on Earth.
A few years later, another group of people chose to leave. However, they did not go far, but went to the planet that had been transformed into a tourist resort, and built a base that was barely suitable for human survival. They watched the changes on the earth from afar, waiting for the day when the nightmare would end and they could return home.
However, how can the development of world affairs always go as people predict?
…
The few people who finally held on to the earth experienced unimaginable pain. Every spring and summer, the continuous torrential rain and floods would submerge the places where they lived, and people had to be driven by the floods to migrate to higher mountains; in late summer and early autumn, the high temperature that could roast people would quickly evaporate all the water, rivers and pools would dry up, the sea level would evaporate, and the groundwater would dry up. For a little water source, people had to dig deeper holes and migrate to lower altitudes. People who migrated back and forth like migratory birds had to endure the extreme cold in winter when water turned into ice. Even if they were wrapped in thick animal fur, people continued to freeze to death.
What's more, because of those weapons, the earth is also covered with harmful rays and gases, which are corroding the human body all the time.
Ten years, twenty years, a hundred years...
The people who were watching the Earth from the Moon Heart City never saw the good changes they expected, and the situation was developing in a worse direction.
Civilization has been destroyed and people are no longer human.
It only takes a hundred years for a civilization that took tens of thousands of years to develop to be completely forgotten.
A developed civilization requires long-term systematic learning and years of osmosis before it can be inherited by later generations. However, the survivors on Earth during the disaster did not have an environment for learning. After the catastrophe, the sophisticated instruments of the civilized era were either meaningless or destroyed in floods and alternating hot and cold climate changes. When the last person on Earth with memories of the civilized era died, it announced the end of the previous civilization on Earth. The new generation born in the disaster era, who have been migrating and looking for food and resisting severe cold and heat for most of their memory, let alone inheriting and developing the past civilization, most of them have only mastered simple writing and calculation. In this era, having this knowledge is enough. For them, how to run faster, have more strength, climb higher, and find food to fill their stomachs in an environment with nothing is the skill that determines life and death.
Soon, numbers and words were forgotten. People used sticks and stones to drive away wild beasts, wore simple clothes made of animal skins and leaves around their waists, and howled like wild beasts to increase their intimidation.
Perhaps it was the changes that humans made in order to adapt to the environment, or perhaps it was the ubiquitous radiation on the earth that changed the genetic structure of the human body, and the appearance of humans on Earth gradually changed - the back became bent, the limbs became more slender and powerful, the skin became rough, the teeth became sharp, and the body was covered with long hair.
They no longer look like humans.
Causation: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Zhuangzi: Zhuang Zhou dreamed of a butterfly? The butterfly dreamed of Zhuang Zhou?
Yu Mo: Monkeys become humans? Humans become monkeys?
