January 1st, 2041, 10:20 PM. Four hours until the scheduled nuclear warhead unlocks time.

“BG, I’m in position.” Banxia knelt on the ground, panting, wiping sweat from her forehead as she pressed the radio on her backpack strap. “I have a bad feeling. That thing might be nearby. I need to speed up.”

“Copy that. Be careful and make it quick,” White Poplar’s voice came through the radio. “Have you found it, Miss? Over.”

Banxia had successfully located Miss Qiu, who remained exactly where she’d been during the previous visit. It looked the same as before—lying grimy among a pile of rubble and stones. The thing had been there for years without anyone touching it, just like a rock.

The girl took out the key from her pocket, bit off the plastic seal with her teeth, and found the control window on the nuclear warhead.

“I’m inserting the key now.”

Banxia forcefully inserted the key into the slot and then pressed her ear against it. After a few seconds, she tapped the warhead like testing a watermelon, then pressed her ear against it again. This time there was movement—through the composite shell, she could hear a “whirring” sound from inside the warhead, like motors turning. More complex sounds followed: metal friction, buzzer vibrations, and the timer starting to work—the nuclear warhead that had been dormant for many years was gradually awakening.

Success! The girl was delighted. The key worked.

Next came entering the password.

“Miss, only you know the password.”

The same phrase again.

Everyone told her only she knew the password, but Banxia felt lost. She had no clue what the password for this nuclear warhead could be.

Touching the six-digit mechanical password wheels, Banxia furrowed her brow. Which six numbers could it be?

Someone’s birthday?

Or some kind of code?

The girl thought while carefully pushing the password wheels, observing the numbers in the moonlight.

Suddenly there was a “click.” Banxia froze.

She discovered that the wheel she’d pushed was locked in place, and stopped on the number “8”. No matter how she pushed, it wouldn’t move. Banxia was surprised but immediately tried pushing the second wheel. When it rolled to “0”, another “click” sounded, and it too was locked.

Banxia described the situation to White Poplar, who was equally surprised.

“The password is only generated after the key is inserted. Before that, this password didn’t exist at all, which is why the Nuclear Industry people said only one person would know it,” Zhao Bowen stood right behind White Poplar, hands resting on the chair back. “That would be the person who inserts the key.”

White Poplar’s eyes widened.

“Manually entering the password is just for human confirmation to unlock the warhead. The unlocking process is irreversible—once started, it can’t be stopped,” Zhao Bowen continued. “I told you before, this warhead was designed to minimize precise microelectronic structures. Many functions had to be implemented through crude methods.”

“Crude?” White Poplar turned his head.

“Yes, crude. Cruder than you can imagine. Take its security mechanism—you might think it uses some advanced encryption algorithm, but it uses a spring,” Zhao Bowen explained. “Yes, a clock spring. According to the Nuclear Industry’s description, when they got to this design stage, they only had a two-centimeter square space left. They needed to design a safety mechanism in that tiny space, and the whole team couldn’t sleep from worry. Later, someone noticed their child’s spring toy at home and had a spark of inspiration to use springs.”

“How do you use springs?”

“They used a wound spring to lock the key slot. The spring is made of a special alloy that takes many years to loosen once tightened,” Zhao Bowen explained. “The most reliable methods are often purely physical—blocking the slot until the set time arrives, preventing others from inserting anything.”

At this moment, the girl’s voice came through the earpiece:

“BG, all passwords entered.”

“Password entry complete,” White Poplar repeated.

Zhao Bowen’s fist clenched. He wasn’t the only one waiting for news—everyone was waiting for this message from twenty years in the future. They were even more nervous than during the Long March 5 launch. The entire team had worked sleepless days for this moment.

All six mechanical password wheels were locked, generating the final password: 802547.

Banxia exhaled. The control window’s red “Disconnected” changed to green “Connected,” indicating successful unlocking.

“BG, unlock successful.”

The current time was 10:25 PM.

The actual unlock time differed from the command center’s estimated time by only three hours. Old Zhao’s team’s schedule had been quite accurate.

“Now leave that area, Miss. The unlocked warhead will enter standby state in six hours,” White Poplar’s tone was steady. “You have six hours to complete all follow-up work and move to a safe zone. Over.”

“Copy that.”

Back at Meihua Villa, Banxia needed to switch the radio’s data link to the two wireless cameras at Xinjiekou, transmitting their video data back to the 2020 Nanjing command center. They had tested the previous night—both cameras were highly unstable, with intermittent signals coming and going. But at this point, no one could ask for better results; they had to make do with what they had.

The two cameras had been at the Xinjiekou intersection for 144 hours. For nearly a week, they had worked tirelessly, transmitting captured images to the wireless router, which broadcast indiscriminately—received if received, ignored if ignored. They charged every morning when the sun rose, working while charging until sunset. At night, their batteries could last at most four hours.

“BG, I’m switching links now, entering silent mode.”

“Copy that, over.”

“Final confirmation—from now on, I’ll move to the underground shelter. After the nuclear detonation, I’ll leave Meihua Villa and enter the safe zone for one week before returning, correct?”

“Yes.”

This meant Banxia would be out of contact for a full week. Before relocating, she would switch the Icom725’s data link to the wireless cameras and couldn’t return to change it for a week.

“Be careful, Miss,” White Poplar couldn’t help adding another reminder. “If any emergency occurs, you can return early to restore communications. Over.”

“Then you’d better pray I don’t come back early,” the girl chuckled.

“Found your temporary shelter yet?”

“Not yet, when would I have had time?” Banxia said. “I’ll look as I go.”

“Please be extremely careful, observe the environment, and try to avoid signs of large wild animal activity. Also, don’t drink wild water without filtering and boiling it first…”

White Poplar’s mind was scattered, saying whatever came to mind.

“I know, I know! I only have six hours, and if you keep nagging, it’ll be down to four!”

The channel fell silent for several seconds.

“See you in a week.”

“See you in a week,” the girl giggled. “73.”

White Poplar was stunned—she remembered to say 73 when saying goodbye, though she never usually followed such rules.

Banxia ended the call, unplugged the hand mic, and connected the image transmission system’s peripherals to the Icom725. From now on, this radio station would receive camera signals. After completing the signal switch, she climbed to the roof to lay down the shortwave antenna and reinforce the whip antenna to prevent nuclear blast damage.

Banxia shouldered her pack, bent down to pick up Old Huang, and placed him on her shoulder, patting his furry little head:

“Let’s go, Old Huang, we’re moving temporarily.”

“Mom, Dad, I’m heading out! Take care of the house!”

The girl carefully closed the apartment door, then the building door went downstairs, looked up at the dark residential building, then pushed her bicycle toward the underground parking lot. According to the expert group’s guidelines, she should take shelter underground during the nuclear blast. Meihua Villa’s underground parking lot was a good shelter—safe and familiar. She would hide there until the nuclear blast, then evacuate the complex afterward, heading to temporary accommodation at Nanjing Agricultural University or Nanjing University of Science and Technology to avoid potential radiation contamination, only returning after a week.

Everything was ready, waiting only for the east wind.

The mine was laid, waiting only for the trigger.

Looking back, even Zhao Bowen himself couldn’t clearly explain how such a complex and grand plan had been implemented step by step. Although he was one of the main drivers, even he found it incredible now. Such a massive project had reached this stage—they had sent the nuclear warhead over and successfully unlocked it. As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The command center personnel had focused on each step daily, raising their heads to find they’d traveled a thousand miles.

This was a milestone that energized everyone on the team.

If that young girl could complete all tasks under such harsh conditions, the command center would disgrace their elite status if they couldn’t execute the plan perfectly.

At dawn the next day, the Special Committee drove their van straight to the building. Zhao Bowen pulled Bai Zhen and Wang Ning inside without a word, driving straight to People’s Life Square.

“Is the nuclear warhead at People’s Life Square?” Wang Ning asked.

“Yes, it’s right under our vehicle now,” Zhao Bowen didn’t look up, his fingers dancing on the keyboard. “Same spatial coordinates, different temporal coordinates.”

“If it detonates, will we turn into light?” Bai Zhen asked.

“Yes, at this distance we’d all become light,” Old Zhao nodded, grabbing the phone from the console and wedging it between his ear and shoulder. “Hello? This is Zhao Bowen, connect me to internal line 04.”

Seven or eight people sat in the van, back to back in two rows, each facing a console, display, and phone. Old Wang was quite shocked when pulled into the van—he suspected these people might secretly possess some space compression technology. The van looked utterly ordinary from the outside, but its interior space was surprisingly large, essentially a mobile communications command center. It looked like a Wuling Hong Guang on the outside, but an AWACS on the inside.

Old Zhao said it was specially modified by the military region, belonging to the combat support troops.

This dusty van sat in the bustling People’s Life Square, at an intersection where hundreds of thousands passed daily. In broad daylight, nobody would guess that this decrepit van, likely to receive a parking ticket, contained such marvels inside—an elite team striving to save the world from amid the city bustle.

“Frequency hop.”

“Copy.”

“Password 645288.”

“14425.”

Crisp keyboard sounds mixed with brief commands in the cabin. Blue monitor backlighting reflected off everyone’s glasses. All were focused on work when Wang Ning’s voice suddenly punctured the solemn atmosphere:

“Are you hungry? I can have Little Zhu order takeout. What would you like?”

Seconds later, everyone in the van removed their headphones and turned around.

“What should we eat?” Wang Ning rubbed his hands. “Local Zhejiang cuisine? Sichuan food? Or some barbecue skewers?”

“Don’t you have your own Meituan app?” Bai Zhen asked. “Why make Little Zhu do everything? Is that all your office director does—order food for you?”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” Old Wang said as he grabbed the phone, waved it around before wedging it against his neck, and pulled out a pen and small notebook. “Working!”

“Spicy beef, that’s good,” Zhao Bowen said. “There are several places nearby, all decent.”

“Alright.” Old Wang nodded, reaching to dial on the console. “Hello? This is Wang Ning, please connect me to line 06… Yes, that’s right. Hello? Little Zhu, could you order some food for us? Have you had lunch? You have? Good, please order two portions of spicy beef, two baskets of crab roe soup dumplings, and some barbecue skewers… Alcohol? No alcohol, we’re working, not having a party. Just get some coconut juice for drinks.”

“Put it on the command center’s tab.”

He hung up the phone decisively, cool and casual, especially that last line—it was truly refreshing.

The others didn’t speak, but there was a subtle sense of disdain in the air as if nobody could stand Wang Ning as a boss.

Half an hour later, Little Zhu appeared outside the van with two large food boxes, tapping the window with his head.

Food had arrived, and the work group took turns eating in shifts.

Zhao Bowen, Bai Zhen, and Wang Ning squatted by the van’s wheels with their lunch boxes, muttering as they ate. With disheveled hair, gaunt cheeks, and unkempt clothes, they looked like migrant workers who’d come to the city. The People’s Life Square security guards glanced over, thinking these three eating from boxes by the busy building entrance were an eyesore and wanted to chase them away.

But before they could get close, plainclothes officers appeared from nowhere to stop them.

The guards were intimidated by the credentials inside the officers’ jacket linings. Looking back at the three figures squatting on the curb eating from boxes, their unkempt appearance suddenly seemed unfathomable.

“How many plainclothes officers do you think are around here?” Wang Ning asked.

“Who cares how many? Does it affect our eating?” Bai Zhen shrugged, stuffing a soup dumpling in his mouth. “When does our next phase start?”

“Tonight, after seven, as soon as we can connect with their signal,” Zhao Bowen answered. “The cameras can work for four hours after dark. It gets dark at six, we start at seven, giving us three hours of surveillance time.”

“What if we don’t catch anything?”

“Then we try again tomorrow,” Zhao Bowen said. “Unless our luck is terrible, the chances of catching it are high. Xinjiekou is where the Blade Guest is most active. The computer team’s simulations show we have a seventy percent chance of catching it.”

“Your theory better be solid,” Bai Zhen spat a small bone onto the ground. “If your theory is wrong, the entire plan falls apart like water through a bamboo basket.”

“It’s as solid as the Riemann hypothesis,” Zhao Bowen said expressionlessly in a low voice.

“The Riemann hypothesis still hasn’t been proven,” Wang Ning said.

“Not having proof doesn’t stop us from using it. My theory can’t be proven either, but that doesn’t stop us from using it,” Zhao Bowen spoke matter-of-factly. “As long as we catch Big Eye, whether my theory can be proven doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a black cat or white cat, a cat that catches mice is a good cat.”

“Is that scientific?”

“Of course it’s scientific,” Zhao Bowen said. “As long as you get results, who cares how you pieced the data together?”

That evening at seven.

“Attention all departments and nodes, this is Zhao Bowen, final routine check.”

“Team One reporting, all normal.”

“Team Two reporting, all normal.”

“Team Three reporting, all normal.”

“This is Command Center, all normal.” It was Winter Jasmine’s voice.

Old Zhao stood in the command vehicle, raising his hand to check his watch. “Everyone’s attention, countdown in five seconds. Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Signal connected!”

As the signal connected, the computer screens in front of Bai Zhen and Wang Ning flickered simultaneously. If not for the static noise dancing on the black background, they might have thought their computers had gone dark.

This was a very long video data transmission chain. Two wireless cameras installed at Xinjiekou were the source, transmitting image signals to the wireless router, which then sent signals to the Icom725. The Icom725 transmitted the data twenty years into the past, finally distributing it to all departments. The two cameras were labeled as Camera One and Camera Two, with Camera One’s signal reception terminal being Bai Zhen’s computer and Camera Two’s being Wang Ning’s.

Both men stared at their computer screens, and they would keep staring until the cameras ran out of power tonight.

“It’s so dark, can’t see anything,” Bai Zhen said. “Should have gotten infrared ones.”

“We just keep staring like this?” Wang Ning asked.

“Yes.”

The task for the two deputy team leaders, Wang Ning and Bai Zhen, was to stay in the van staring at their screens, not leaving their positions no matter what happened.

Zhao Bowen stood between them, occasionally checking his watch. As time passed, beads of sweat formed on his forehead, soon soaking through his clothes. Old Zhao unbuttoned his collar, taking deep breaths. The van’s windows were closed, with the air conditioning set high, endlessly blowing hot air.

No one spoke in the cramped command vehicle, with the breathing of seven people rising and falling.

By now, all the work they could do was complete, with nothing left for them to handle. Everything else was up to luck.

It was like setting up infrared cameras to photograph Siberian tigers in the wild—you can prepare perfectly, but whether you get results depends on the tiger’s mood.

Bai Zhen’s eyes were wide open, barely making out huge dark shadows in the video—the high-rise buildings across the intersection. Nothing else was distinguishable, similar to taking a photo with a Nokia N95 while covering the lens with your finger. The only thing reminding Old Bai he was watching a video feed was the noisy static on screen.

Wang Ning’s view was slightly better than Bai Zhen’s, probably because Camera Two had better image quality than Camera One. After staring at the screen for over thirty minutes, Wang Ning could barely hold on. No normal person could focus on a meaningless, severely out-of-focus black screen for more than half an hour. Old Wang’s gaze started jumping between static dots, trying to catch them.

But the static-catching game couldn’t last long either. By 8:20 PM, Wang Ning closed his eyes for several seconds.

“My eyes are sore.”

Old Wang rubbed his eyes—he was getting old and couldn’t look at screens for too long.

“Get someone to take over, my eyes are sore too.” Bai Zhen stood up, pushing Zhao Bowen into the chair. “Old Zhao, your turn. Let’s take shifts, thirty minutes each.”

So the three took turns keeping watch.

Through two old cameras salvaged from garbage heaps, they watched an empty Xinjiekou.

Zhao Bowen watched for thirty minutes, then Bai Zhen took over.

“I think I saw something,” Bai Zhen said. “A colored light strip… ah, the screen’s distorted.”

“If we don’t catch anything tonight, we keep watching tomorrow night. When will this end?” Wang Ning said. “My screen’s distorted too, signal’s unstable.”

“Well, it’s cobbled together from garbage, can’t expect too much,” Bai Zhen turned his head to say. “The fact it’s still working now is quite remarkable for its age.”

“Remarkable?” Wang Ning said. “This is more like rising from the dead.”

“What brand were these cameras? I should stock up on some at home, might need them later,” Bai Zhen said. “Construction’s started on the basement at my old house.”

“Is it built to three protection standards?” Wang Ning asked.

“Three-protection standards.” Bai Zhen closed his eyes, pinching and rubbing his brow.

“This signal is truly terrible…” Wang Ning sighed, leaning forward to tap the monitor. “Completely distorted, the top half of my screen’s gone red.”

Tapping always works, no matter when.

With Old Wang’s tap, the signal immediately recovered, and the distortion disappeared.

“Strange, the red screen’s gone, but there’s still a red dot…”

Wang Ning was about to reach out and touch the red spot on the screen when his finger froze mid-air.

Then his finger began to tremble slightly.

Behind him, Bai Zhen slowly leaned back, saying in an equally trembling voice:

“It… it it it it’s here!”

Both Wang Ning and Bai Zhen’s screens showed that striking red circular spot, and they simultaneously realized it was the Blade Guest’s eye.

At 9:15 PM, the Blade Guest had finally appeared.

“It’s staring at me.”

They spoke in unison.

Before Bai Zhen and Wang Ning could feel joy, they were frozen in their chairs, unable to move, paralyzed by the big eye’s gaze. This was how animals react when encountering natural predators—the brain, under intense stress, enters a state of rigidity.

A hand gripped Wang Ning’s shoulder firmly, making him jump. Zhao Bowen stood behind him, staring intently at the display.

“Is it staring at you?”

Zhao Bowen licked his lips, speaking softly.

“Yes…” Wang Ning swallowed. “It’s staring at me.”

“Old Bai?” Zhao Bowen asked.

“It’s staring at me too.”

Bai Zhen’s deep voice came from behind.

Dead silence filled the van as others put down their work and turned to look at the two displays. On the screens, that deep red eye was gradually growing larger.

It was incomprehensible how this was possible—Camera One and Camera Two weren’t parallel, and the Blade Guest had only one eye, yet it could simultaneously look directly into both cameras.

Zhao Bowen said softly: “Move your heads.”

Wang Ning and Bai Zhen did as told, tilting their heads left and right. The mysterious phenomenon Zhao Bowen had predicted appeared—although they were watching video footage from cameras, on flat display monitors, and closed-circuit television images, the large eye in the video began moving with their movements.

“It’s following me,” Wang Ning said.

“It’s following me,” Bai Zhen said too.

Wang Ning and Bai Zhen’s movements weren’t synchronized—when Wang Ning tilted left, Bai Zhen was moving right, yet in their eyes this large eye was tracking them simultaneously.

“It’s following me too,” Zhao Bowen stood there, turning to ask others in the van. “What about you all?”

Everyone gave the same answer.

“It’s following me.”

Zhao Bowen’s back was soaked in cold sweat, his hands and feet ice-cold while his scalp tingled. He didn’t know whether to be terrified or excited—excited that his theory was fortunate enough to be proven before the Riemann hypothesis, terrified that once proven, the Blade Guest would become something far beyond human imagination.

“Keep watching it!” Old Zhao ordered.

But the big eye wouldn’t play with them anymore, quickly disappearing from the cameras’ view.

This left everyone in the command vehicle somewhat lost—where did this thing go?

“Where did it go?” Bai Zhen asked.

Zhao Bowen stood there, turning to look west, motionless.

“Old Zhao?”

Zhao Bowen suddenly grinned, a laugh so abrupt and cold it startled everyone in the van. They had never seen such a frightening, ferocious smile in their lives.

Zhao Bowen spoke in a ghostly voice:

“It’s coming to find us.”

The Blade Guest was coming to find Zhao Bowen—more precisely, coming to find Old Zhao, Bai Zhen, Wang Ning, and everyone in the van. It had locked onto their location at People’s Life Square.

As for the nuclear warhead’s exact detonation time, Old Zhao estimated it was around 9:20 PM because at 9:20 PM the video signal was completely cut off.

After the signal cut off, no one moved. Wang Ning and Bai Zhen remained frozen, staring at their displays.

Someone finally asked:

“Did it detonate?”

In the silence, someone replied:

“It detonated.”

Zhao Bowen slowly sat down, his hands and legs trembling uncontrollably.

“If that nuclear warhead is under our vehicle, a miniature sun has just appeared at Xinjiekou,” Old Zhao said. “You’re probably curious how Miss Qiu triggered the detonation. It was voice-controlled—the voice recognition component was in the key. The decryption team carefully analyzed the Blade Guest’s natural language patterns and selected five high-frequency characters for the comparison library: ‘I,’ ‘find,’ ‘you,’ ‘of,’ and ‘result.’ Once Miss Qiu was in standby state, hearing any three of these five characters would trigger immediate detonation.”

“This was the only way we could do it—no manual remote control needed, yet precise enemy identification and ensuring the Blade Guest was within the kill zone. It required luck, but it worked,” Zhao Bowen continued. “It should have worked. I don’t think anything could survive at a nuclear blast’s ground zero… if this thing could survive at ground zero, we’d be out of options anyway…”

“Also, don’t you find it incredible?” Zhao Bowen spoke faster and faster, gesturing with both hands. “It could make eye contact with so many people simultaneously, even through network cables and screens. Part of the reason is that it doesn’t have just one eye. I suspect the Blade Guest has infinite eyes—the number depends on how many observers there are. No matter how many people, no matter what angle, even if surrounded in a 360-degree circle, or enclosed in a sphere with it at the center, it could still make eye contact with every observer.”

“What does this mean? It means it doesn’t follow our universe’s rules. The Blade Guest possesses some mechanism, even a logic—an irrational logic that ignores physical laws and mathematical rules. This logic is ‘observer equals observed.’ For that monster, these two are the same thing.” Zhao Bowen rambled on in the silent van. “It’s completely unreasonable as if forcibly defined, as… as if some supreme and powerful hand wrote them both on a blackboard and brutally drew an equals sign between them.”

“Think further—it changes the fundamental logic of information acquisition. When you obtain information about the Blade Guest, it simultaneously obtains information about you. When you know its location, it knows yours—this is why humans in the future can’t escape the Blade Guest’s hunt. Any countermeasure is exposed before them. One Blade Guest could theoretically lock onto seven billion people simultaneously, let alone twenty-five million Blade Guests—”

Zhao Bowen clutched his hair, his voice increasingly anguished.

“Think even deeper—are there only the types of Blade Guests we’ve seen? It can produce sound, so there’s no reason not to utilize that. Perhaps there are Blade Guests that lock onto you when you hear them speak, or even more unreasonable ones—just knowing they exist means they know you exist, regardless of whether there’s any direct…”

“Click—” The van door opened.

Old Zhao jumped, looking up. The yellow streetlight outside fell on his face, revealing his gaunt, sallow complexion.

“Old Zhao! Why are you still sitting in the van?” Bai Zhen leaned against the door, shouting at him.

“I… I… I…”

Zhao Bowen looked around—the van was empty. He had been rambling to himself all this time.

After the signal cut off, the command vehicle returned to Meihua Villa, and the work group dispersed to handle follow-up tasks. Old Zhao had told Bai Zhen and Wang Ning to go upstairs first, saying he wanted to stay alone in the van for a quiet moment—Zhao Bowen only now realized he had been sitting alone in the van this whole time.

Bai Zhen and Wang Ning had been busy upstairs for nearly the entire night. When it was almost 4 AM and Zhao Bowen still hadn’t come up, Bai Zhen figured he might have fallen asleep in the van and came down to check.

“How are you? Are you alright?”

Bai Zhen reached out to help him.

Zhao Bowen shook his head, crawling out of the van, his legs so weak he almost fell to his knees.

“It’s done for now,” Bai Zhen supported him. “It’s over.”

“It’s over,” Zhao Bowen nodded.

“Also, do you know the exact time of the nuclear detonation?” Bai Zhen asked. “We’re writing reports upstairs and need a specific time. It’s important—it’ll be recorded in history.”

The exact time of the nuclear detonation was 9:19:58 PM.

Probably no one could get a more precise number than that. Banxia lay against the wall in the underground parking garage, holding Old Huang in her arms and her pocket watch in her hand, counting the seconds one by one.

Old Huang was well-behaved, sleeping quietly in her arms, not moving at all.

Starting from 7 PM, Banxia had been in shelter mode, maintaining this position for over three hours. She was nervous—the nuclear weapon could detonate at any second, but the plan hadn’t specified it would detonate tonight. It could be tonight, tomorrow night, or even the night after. She felt a bit of anticipation.

With each passing second, Banxia told herself the next second would bring detonation.

At 9:19:58, in the instant after the pocket watch’s second hand completed its “tick,” during the first half of Banxia’s blink, the ground shook.

Miss Qiu had detonated.

Banxia could hardly imagine such overwhelming power, silently rolling up from underground, as if to overturn the earth itself. She instinctively closed her eyes, listening to the surrounding movements, but the next moment all sound in the air vanished. The girl’s eardrums stung, pain drilling through her ear canals into her brain, causing intense ringing that dampened her hearing.

After a tenth of a second of silence came an earth-shattering explosion that even the severe tinnitus couldn’t suppress. It felt as if the pillars supporting the sky had snapped and the heavens were collapsing.

If anyone had been bold enough to stand on the roof of Meihua Villa looking west at that moment, they would have seen a flash as bright as a magnesium lamp in the air, followed by a tiny purple sun rising between the towering buildings. Its volume expanded from zero to a diameter of 300 meters in just 0.01 microseconds. The violent chain reaction formed a spherical domain in an extremely short time—within it was the strongest force humans could harness. Everything consumed by that intense light would vanish from the world.

This was the first second after the nuclear detonation.

In the second, intense vibrations spread across the entire city of Nanjing, destroying all buildings within a one-kilometer radius of ground zero in the next three seconds. By the third second, hypersonic shock waves had reached Purple Mountain. The nuclear detonation instantly created temperatures of millions of degrees Celsius, expanding the air ten thousand times in an instant, sweeping unstoppably across the world. That was the boundary visible to human eyes—water vapor in the air liquefied under enormous pressure, appearing as a white wall pushing forward.

In the fourth second, the sun collapsed, transforming into a scorching, silent fireball, while simultaneously whipping up fierce winds and massive amounts of sand. The air produced violent convection currents, drawing cold air from the ground, and heating it into high-temperature jets surging skyward. Soil, dust, and smoke covered the ground like flowing water, the flow becoming a vortex, the vortex rolling upward, forming a towering column of smoke reaching into the clouds.

At the fifteenth second, the earth-shattering boom finally arrived, but by then you would have already witnessed scenes of the apocalypse from afar.

Banxia huddled in the underground parking garage, disconnected from everything outside.

The nuclear blast’s disturbance lasted surprisingly briefly—this was somewhat unexpected. White Poplar had described nuclear weapons as so terrifying that she had anticipated earth-shattering results, but in less than a minute Banxia couldn’t hear any sound. Meihua Villa was five kilometers from ground zero; besides light, sound, and vibrations, nothing could reach here.

She needed to stay here for at least two more hours.

The current time was 9:25 PM.

At 11:30 PM she would return to the surface, take her equipment and supplies, and head straight to Nanjing Agricultural University or Nanjing University of Science and Technology, returning only after a week.

The precise time of the nuclear detonation was 9:19:57.476081537419008 seconds plus 198247008538540874521457 Planck times.

No one could get a more precise number than that.

This was the data the Blade Guest obtained.

At that point, the energy in the air began to rise, increasing to one hundred million times its original level over the next long 0.047 seconds.

This was unusual.

It indicated the birth of a star here.

It believed such an event couldn’t happen in this conservation-following universe, but no one could be certain—not the Mother Machine, nor the Mother Machine’s Mother Machine. After all, while this universe followed conservation laws, it also loved imperfection and embraced change, loving uncertainty far more intensely than other universes. In the extremely brief past hundred billion years, it had witnessed the birth and annihilation of tens of thousands of stars, their life cycles changing so quickly it could barely keep up.

During the next long 0.047 seconds, the Blade Guest thought slowly.

Regrettably, it couldn’t be concluded.

This wasn’t its purpose—as an agricultural machine, it wasn’t skilled at contemplation. Such questions could only be pondered by the Mother Machine, which possessed all the wisdom of seven billion people on this planet, while the Mother Machine’s Mother Machine possessed the total wisdom of seven trillion civilizations. Above the Mother Machine’s Mother Machine, there were said to be still more Mother Machines.

So it passed the question to the Mother Machine.

Though not expecting much, it still hoped the Mother Machine would provide an answer.

Stars were another great creation parallel to wisdom. They were the universe’s brain cells—hundreds of billions of brain cells forming nerve fiber bundles, trillions of nerve fiber bundles forming regions and cortexes, all regions and cortexes forming a whole in super-high dimensions. The brilliant flickering of billions of stars suggested this universe was actively thinking. Without doubt, it was thinking, its timespan of thought extending beyond all endings, contemplating a great question encompassing all things.

The Blade Guest watched the star’s birth.

It still thought of the bird nests hanging on high-rises, the herds of wild cattle and deer on the roads. These days it had tirelessly built nests for small animals, rescued them from gutters, and tried to teach them knowledge—all this would end in 0.047 seconds.

At 11:30 PM that night, Banxia walked out of the underground parking garage.

She froze.

Standing in the complex, amid post-nuclear winds carrying heat and the smell of burning things, her raincoat and hat billowing.

Red was the world’s dominant color—the clouds were blood-red, the high-rises blood-red, trees and flowers blood-red. The sky was bright; though it was nearly midnight, the light was like late afternoon around 4 or 5 PM. Was this also caused by the nuclear blast?

Banxia faced west, toward the nuclear detonation, but suddenly noticed light coming from the east, illuminating half her face.

It grew brighter and brighter around her as if the sun was abnormally appearing at 11:30 PM.

The girl turned her head in surprise and saw a red sun rising in the east.