WS - Chapter 106

Chapter 106

On Mingtan Prime, inside the Mingtan Aerospace Bureau's Monitoring Department, on one of the screens among the continuously scrolling lines of characters, a long string of garbled code suddenly appeared.

But soon, that long string of garbled code was pushed upward by the constantly emerging lines of text behind it.

The technician responsible for monitoring this screen and several nearby ones happened to be taking a few sips of tea from his cup and then turned to chat with the technician beside him on the left.

In those few seconds of delay, he perfectly missed the window to spot that garbled code.

The monitoring technician missed it, but Deputy Director Sun, standing two rows of workstations behind, saw it clearly.

Although Sun Liqin couldn't understand the meaning of the garbled code either, but...

Perhaps this is it.

Two rows behind the screen with garbled code, a technician had been operating his console intently for a while and finally retrieved the data Deputy Director Sun wanted. When he looked up, the person who had been standing just behind him moments ago was gone.

The technician straightened up blankly, looking around like a bewildered meerkat. In the vast office area of the Monitoring Department, Deputy Director Sun was nowhere to be seen.

So... should he keep working now? Or should he send the data to Deputy Director Sun? The technician scratched his head, a bit troubled.

But what kind of trouble is a single document, really?

True troubles are those that cannot be spoken of, that one must bear alone; even if unbearable, one has no choice but to endure.

Deputy Director Sun, his face pale, walked down the corridor. His dress shirt was soaked through, wet enough to wring out. Step by step, like a ghost that had lost its spirit, he headed to his own office.

Meanwhile, in the Monitoring Department, the technician wondering whether to send the file to Deputy Director Sun soon didn't need to keep considering.

Because in just a minute or two, one of the front-row screens suddenly turned blood red and emitted a beeping alarm.

The previously fairly quiet Monitoring Department instantly erupted, like water hitting boiling oil.

As its name suggests, the Monitoring Department is tasked with continuously monitoring all dependent planets in the Mingtan System, from top to bottom, from space to underground, for any safety risks. With current technology, if a planet's geology is unstable, crustal changes can generally be predicted months in advance. Such changes appear on monitoring screens as data strings in three severity levels: yellow, orange, and red. These data strings are not pushed away by new lines of code; they float at the top of the screen until processed.

Thanks to advanced prediction technology, even if a string appears just as a technician leaves work, it can perfectly well be handled the next morning. After all, it's a warning several months in advance.

But what was happening now...

Even the veteran technicians who had worked in the Monitoring Department for over a decade were flustered, hearing the never-before-heard beeping and seeing the entirely red screen.

Amid this shock, the Monitoring Department was in chaos, with people gathered around the screen trying to find the cause, making phone calls, and running out to fetch the leadership.

But just two minutes earlier, several floors below, Zhao Youxiang picked up Yao Yuxi's call in his office.

Because of Deputy Director Sun, Zhao Youxiang couldn't call out the familiar technician to ask again.

However, in Zhao Youxiang's view, Yao Yuxi was truly... too imaginative.

With such a large corporation, did she really have so little to do? How did she have time to concern herself with places completely unrelated? And she just couldn't stop with these wild speculations.

As an old employee who had spent nearly half his life at the Aerospace Bureau, Zhao Youxiang had full confidence in Mingtan's technological equipment and monitoring capabilities, especially since he had just given Yao Yuxi a report a month ago. Even if some changes occurred during this month, and Wilderness Planet was doomed, it would still be something happening months later... He'd only just finished the last call; Yao Yuxi was really hounding him relentlessly...

With his own leanings, and this time not seeking any favor from Yao Yuxi, Zhao Youxiang looked down somewhat on her inexplicable agitation.

Still, for the sake of the villa and potential future cooperation, Zhao Youxiang maintained an excellent attitude, offering one reassurance after another, but he did not mention that Deputy Director Sun had prevented him from asking the technician again.

"It's nothing, I checked, really nothing. President Yao, you can rest assured. Don't listen to any other rumors. If there were a problem, our Aerospace Bureau would have predicted it months ago. Nothing's going to happen..." Zhao Youxiang said with a smile, making one guarantee after another, his insincere reassurances rolling out more and more smoothly.

Normally, he could keep repeating such platitudes as many times as he wanted.

But this time, shortly after he started, he was interrupted by Yao Yuxi.

To be precise, it was a stifled cry of alarm from Yao Yuxi that cut him off.

For someone of Yao Yuxi's stature, to emit such an uncontrollable sound—it was definitely not something trivial like a toppled cup.

"President Yao? President Yao, are you all right?" Zhao Youxiang's smile faded, replaced by a hint of genuine concern.

The response was the faint chattering of teeth grinding together. Just hearing it, Zhao Youxiang could vividly imagine Yao Yuxi now, her face pale and trembling to the point of fainting.

Setting aside the villa, Zhao Youxiang genuinely felt that aside from her odd preoccupation with Wilderness Planet, Yao Yuxi was a rather formidable person. Taking over such a massive conglomerate at a young age and securing her position firmly within just two years—she was clearly capable. Zhao Youxiang quite liked Yao Yuxi, in a purely admiring and respectful way.

Now with these repeated anomalies on Yao Yuxi's end, if the police investigated, the content of their call would be problematic. But if Yao Yuxi was truly in trouble and he turned a deaf ear, that would be even more trouble.

Caught in this dilemma, Zhao Youxiang pulled up the one-touch emergency call on his StarNet client. Before pressing it, though, he cautiously asked again: "President Yao, are you all right? Do you need me to call the authorities?"

The faint clicking of teeth didn't stop. Just as Zhao Youxiang steeled himself to press the emergency button, Yao Yuxi's voice, squeezed through gritted teeth and filled with cold venom, came through the StarNet: "Yaoxing Storm!"

Those three simple words were spoken through clenched teeth, tinged with hatred.

Zhao Youxiang had no time to discern any other emotion; his mind buzzed with shock at those three words.

But immediately, he shook his head unconsciously. No, it absolutely could not be a Yaoxing Storm. He must have been misled by Yao Yuxi's anxiety over this period to actually believe her.

But before Zhao Youxiang could open his mouth to ask, Yao Yuxi had already hung up.

And almost at the same time, Zhao Youxiang heard the loudspeaker in the hallway and the sound of many people rushing around.

He instinctively tried to stand, but after one attempt, he couldn't get up.

There was a knock on his office door, and for the first time, without Zhao Youxiang saying "come in," the door was pushed open a crack.

"Director Zhao, meeting on the tenth floor, right now." Through the gap appeared a usually steady clerk whom Zhao Youxiang trusted and relied on, but now his face was full of panic.

"What happened?" Zhao Youxiang asked, but his voice didn't sound like his own.

"The broadcast didn't say; it just told all department heads and deputies to hurry to the tenth floor for a meeting. But... I heard from others that it seems like near Wilderness Planet, a Yaoxing Storm has started..." As the clerk spoke, he unconsciously pushed his head further through the crack and lowered his voice.

But no matter how low, Zhao Youxiang heard those three words clearly.

A chill ran through his entire body.

"Yaoxing Storm"... seventy years ago, probably no one would have known what that was.

Because it began sixty-nine years ago, in the Pinggu System, on Pinggu Prime, one day, when a blinding point of light appeared in the sky. In just a few minutes, that point fractured into thousands of piercing rays that shot down onto Pinggu Prime.

But the horror of that dazzling, almost unbearable light wasn't in its intensity.

At that very moment, StarNet signals across most of Pinggu Prime vanished, the planet's crust shook violently, and the entire planet quaked.

What kind of situation and scene was that...

Earthquakes, plus the loss of signals—driverless cars stopped in rows on the roads, while manned vehicles couldn't brake in time, and so...

On the roads, countless accidents. Nearby, collapsed buildings, fallen houses...

And all electricity and water, which relied on StarNet, cut off completely.

People couldn't contact distant relatives. Even if they were lucky enough to survive the earthquakes and dodge the many car accidents on the streets, when they got home they couldn't swipe open the door locks; after forcing the locks open, there was no water or electricity in the house...

In stores, they couldn't use credit points to buy anything.

StarNet clients became useless. Even ordinary TVs and radios had no signal.

On Pinggu Prime, no one knew what was happening.

At first, people thought it was just a widespread earthquake, and that there would be mutual rescue and help from strangers.

But soon, with the communication cutoff, the scarcity of basic necessities, and the perpetual absence of any rescue—no matter how far one walked, nothing was normal—chaos inevitably took root.

The turmoil on Pinggu Prime lasted for nearly a year.

And due to insufficient understanding of this new astronomical disaster, sixty-seven ships attempting to approach Pinggu Prime were lost.

Among them, fifteen manned ships and thirty-one unmanned ships were lost on the first day Pinggu Prime was struck by the Yaoxing Storm.

These forty-six ships were all regular vessels traveling to and from Pinggu Prime. At the time, they had already approached the planet; most had no reaction time and simply lost control, falling into the empty void of space.

It was their fall that alerted Pinggu's dependent planets and even other star systems to the anomaly on Pinggu Prime.

The following twenty-one unmanned rescue ships were subsequently lost over that nearly year-long period while attempting to approach Pinggu Prime to sample the situation.

After nearly a year, when the aftershocks of that Yaoxing Storm finally subsided, rescue ships from various places could at last land on Pinggu Prime...

Abandoned cities, bones everywhere, the stench of rotting corpses, and empty shops with not a scrap of food to be found.

Where the survivors were, and how they had lived—it was unbearable to ask, unthinkable to imagine.

Even in the village wilds, among the new crops that seemed to offer hope, crude self-made weapons were hurled at rescue teams before they could even speak... What kind of habit was this, and what had caused them to form it?

An unspeakable shock. A rescue that could not be carried out.

In the interstellar age, Pinggu was the first planet to be devastated by a sudden astronomical anomaly.

Good and evil indistinguishable, a past too horrific to face.

The surviving humans were taken to other star systems for physical and psychological treatment.

Pinggu Prime was abandoned ever since.

Although Pinggu Prime was considered a small primary planet among the various systems, the fact that it remained desolate for seventy years speaks volumes about the horrors of that year.

And that point of light that suddenly brightened in the sky over Pinggu Planet, then burst and unleashed a cataclysm of radiant beams, was named, one year later, the "Yaoxing Storm."

The sampling plan, which had cost so many rescue ships back then, did yield some results.

Six years after the Pinggu Prime Yaoxing Storm incident, an expert team successfully predicted a Yaoxing Storm near agricultural dependent planets 125 and 324 in the Changhui System half a month in advance, allowing for the timely evacuation of both planets.

And today, sixty-nine years after the Pinggu Prime Yaoxing Storm incident, research and emphasis on "Yaoxing Storms" across all star systems have never ceased. Although no major breakthroughs have been made in designing signals that can function during a Yaoxing Storm's lingering aftermath, observation and prediction can now anticipate them up to over two years in advance—an absolutely safe margin.

Even the largest and most populous primary planet can be fully evacuated without hurry, requiring only a little over a month.

With over two years, it's so ample that people hardly consider a Yaoxing Storm a real threat anymore.

And over these sixty-nine years, Yaoxing Storms have occurred a total of seven times across all star systems.

Except for the initial Pinggu Prime tragedy, starting from the second one involving agricultural planets 125 and 324 in the Changhui System, evacuations were actually quite timely.

However... due to the terrible tragedy on Pinggu Planet that year, aerospace bureaus across all systems have nonetheless elevated the monitoring of Yaoxing Storms to an absolute top priority.

Just like at the Mingtan Prime Aerospace Bureau where Zhao Youxiang worked, there was an independent department for Yaoxing Storm monitoring, which received much better treatment than the departments that monitored other things and had the most advanced technological support...

Zhao Youxiang knew very well that although Wilderness Planet had been sold to the Mu Group, the Aerospace Bureau's monitoring of it had always continued.

How could it be... that in two years there was not a single hint... and it just struck?

Yes, not a single hint... and it struck.

Near the cave entrance, a pinpoint of dim light ahead gradually brightened, like a beacon of hope.

Yu Nianbing, who had been nearly out of breath and whose legs were aching and trembling, saw the light filtering in from ahead and suddenly summoned a bit more strength.

Hope, just as Song Shiyue had said.

If only they could get out, if only they could leave this place, if only...

One step, and they stepped out of the cave entrance. The bright sunlight was a bit harsh on the eyes, but warm—a feeling completely different from the dank cold inside.

It was very comfortable, very relaxing, and Yu Nianbing almost wanted to collapse onto the ground right there.

Of course, since they were still holding hands, she couldn't just sit down like that.

"We're out. How are you now?" Without even taking a deep breath of the outside air, Yu Nianbing turned to look at Song Shiyue and asked.

Perhaps because she had just come out of the dark cave and couldn't adjust quickly, as she turned her head, Yu Nianbing felt the outside light sting her eyes. She blinked several times before she could clearly see Song Shiyue's face.

Fortunately, from her complexion, Song Shiyue looked about the same as before.

"Let me rest a bit and see," Song Shiyue said, shaking her head. She released Yu Nianbing's hand and made to sit down right there at the cave entrance.

Just then, Yu Nianbing blinked a few more times and wiped the involuntary tears from her stinging eyes with the back of her hand, feeling that something seemed off.

And at that moment, the motion of wiping her tears froze, her gaze fixed on the wristband on her raised wrist.

She knew what was off.

The wristband showed 15:11.

In such a dense forest, could the three-in-the-afternoon sun really be this bright?

Yu Nianbing instinctively looked up, and her face instantly paled.

Half a minute earlier, before Yu Nianbing and Song Shiyue had stepped out of the cave, the StarNet was still flooded with domineering cheesy lines like "I don't care what you think! I want what I think! Listen to me, go now!" and "Don't argue, I don't want to deal with it. Just do as I say!"

But the moment the two emerged from the cave, those danmaku comments suddenly stopped.

To be precise, the danmaku in both of their livestream rooms seemed to hiccup and stopped altogether.

StarNet was that intelligent.

So intelligent that it had detected the strange light outside more than half a minute before Yu Nianbing, calculated that this was a suitable, meaningful shot worth displaying for a second or two.

Thus, the viewers in their livestream rooms saw that unusual point of brilliance in the sky a little before Yu Nianbing did.

"What... is that?"

"A reflection? It's so bright."

"I feel like I'm going to be blinded through the screen. The terrible thing is I have both Song Shiyue and Yu Nianbing's livestream pages open at the same time..."

"Yeah, double whammy."

"I think..."

"Hahaha, I don't care what you think, I want what I think."

"I think... that looks a lot like the un-erupted form of a Yaoxing Storm... —From a frightened little mooncake who loves astronomy"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Hey, friends above, don't talk nonsense, okay? My heart just stopped."

"Holy crap, I think it looks like it too. The movie about Pinggu Planet made a couple of years ago had a similar scene."

"Alright, stop talking nonsense. Movies are movies, how can this be the same?"

"Where's the production team? What does it mean when the camera shows this?"

"I'm feeling like everything is going to be bad."

"Damn, Little Ice Block looked up, and her face went white!"

"Yu Nianbing saw it too. Does she also think it's a Yaoxing Storm?"

"Stop spreading panic, okay! Haven't you watched the news? Yaoxing Storms can now be predicted over two years in advance!"

"Right, right, it's just... just a refraction, that's all."

A refraction?

Is that all?

The viewers on StarNet had watched for only a couple of seconds, yet some already had their suspicions.

Standing under that abnormally intense light, feeling its strangeness with her own eyes, how could Yu Nianbing not think of it?

As for why something that should have been predicted two years ago had suddenly appeared, Yu Nianbing had no time to dwell on it.

After a Yaoxing Storm comes the earthquake.

Yu Nianbing struggled to pull out the most urgent thought from her suddenly chaotic mind. She glanced instinctively at the cave—too late; the people inside were twenty minutes away.

But Yu Nianbing still reflexively shouted into the cave.

Just three words: "Yaoxing Storm."

And the area around them... after shouting, Yu Nianbing quickly scanned their surroundings.

"Go." Yu Nianbing grabbed Song Shiyue and actually pulled her up to her feet.

The strength a person can muster in a crisis is beyond their own imagination.

"Yaoxing Storm?" This time it was Song Shiyue who asked. She hadn't yet had time to dig through the complex, jumbled memories of her original host for the meaning of those words before Yu Nianbing pulled her into a run back the way they had come.

"There's going to be an earthquake. We need to go back a ways, quickly." As she pulled Song Shiyue toward the woods behind them, she panted, "We're too close to the mountain; it's not safe here. There's an open area up ahead."

Yaoxing Storm? Earthquake?

Song Shiyue couldn't help but think of the strength that was gradually leaving her body.

Was it because of this?

This was...

Dragged along by Yu Nianbing, Song Shiyue followed somewhat blindly, all her focus now on pulling the meaning of "Yaoxing Storm" out of her original host's memories.

Searching through memories actually didn't take much time.

However, the time needed for that Yaoxing star to erupt was also not much.

Almost at the moment they could make out the slightly thinner patch of trees ahead, their vision suddenly went white.

The intense light stung their eyes, causing involuntary tears to flow, and they shut their eyes.

"Run." Yu Nianbing's willpower was incredibly tenacious at that moment. She pulled Song Shiyue and continued running in the direction she had fixed before closing her eyes.

With eyes shut, other senses became sharper.

Bumpy, bumpy—the ground beneath their feet, though flat, was trembling.

The rumbling underfoot, the distant roar of water...

Suddenly, Song Shiyue opened her eyes, seemingly unafraid of the blinding light, and yanked Yu Nianbing into her arms, rolling to the side.

Almost at the same instant, right where Yu Nianbing's feet had been, a fissure cracked open with a snap, the ground on both sides rapidly pulling apart.

Song Shiyue still couldn't see clearly; her previous act of opening her eyes had been instinctive and useless.

Fortunately, she could still hear.

"Don't move." Song Shiyue pinned Yu Nianbing firmly beneath her, shielding her and not letting her thrash about.

The earth trembled, with creaking and groaning from within as it compressed and separated...

And then...

Song Shiyue hugged Yu Nianbing tightly, and like a nimble ball, rolled across the ground a couple more times.

Yu Nianbing was excellently protected by Song Shiyue; she hadn't even had time to see the earlier fissure.

But this time, a massive tree that toppled just inches away from them—Yu Nianbing, with her face turned to the side, saw it clearly.

Equally clearly, she saw the branch of that tree scraping against Song Shiyue's arm as she raised it to protect her.

"Your arm!" Yu Nianbing instinctively tried to reach up and touch Song Shiyue's arm, but Song Shiyue once again held her down.

"It's nothing. Don't move for now. It should calm down soon." Song Shiyue carefully listened to the sounds around them, and then her brow suddenly furrowed.

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