Dawn Sleep

In the 94th year of the new emperor's calendar, at the end of spring.

The second district of Aslan Star City, Imperial Crystal Academy.At seven o'clock in the morning, the sun was just right.

The Imperial Institute of Crystallography is an advanced institution independent from the Black Shark Base about 20 years ago, specializing in post-war crystal particle-related fields.Just received a grant from Empire last winter, it was renovated from top to bottom, down to the shiny floors.

A spirited young man hurried down the corridor, and round the corner saw the man he was looking for.

It was the back of a woman.She is slender, wearing a white lab coat, and her silver hair is braided behind her head, exuding an intellectual and noble temperament.

"Dean... Dean!"

The young man chased after two steps, "Professor Lance!"

Diana Lance turned around.She squinted her blue eyes and smiled at her student, "Huh, Kobayashi? Are you calling me?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not used to the title 'Dean'...Is there any problem in finding me if you come here so early today?"

"Hey, the thesis is stuck again." The young man laughed twice, "Didn't I come to the professor for help?"

"Look, I told you that you couldn't chew on that topic, now you know it's tricky?"

Diana helplessly patted the back of the student's head: "Tell me, what do you not understand this time?"

"Uh, that is, about the ability of the crystal nest to have a time wormhole..."

"Well, sure enough. Come to my office and talk."

……

Regarding the ability of Jingchao to affect time, there has been no direct evidence.

With the end of the legendary final battle, the crystal nest has been completely destroyed, and it is even more difficult to verify.

The term "time wormhole" that is generally accepted today is actually a theoretical hypothesis inferred by scientists and historians after pulling out various clues and piecing together the memories of many witnesses.

In this hypothesis, the crystal nest once felt that it was in danger, and the energy quanta released by the mother core distorted the local time dimension, resulting in the so-called time wormhole.

What the time wormhole connects is the 55th year of the new imperial calendar and the 17th year of the old imperial calendar, exactly a hundred years apart.

There are more than one time wormholes, but most of them are scattered in the universe without human habitation, and there are few that actually fall into the blue mother star.

Then get rid of the ones that have never been discovered, and the ones that the discoverers thought they had strange hallucinations and didn't go into it...

The number of people who have truly seen another time and space through this spectacle can be counted on one hand.

However, the fate of mankind took a huge turning point at that time.

Kobayashi: "Although the professor has said it several times, I still think it's strange, or wonderful."

The two came to the dean's office.Diana opened the curtains, and the bright sunlight poured down like a waterfall.

The young man surnamed Lin graciously opened the seat for his mentor, stood beside him and touched his nose:

"Professor, you think that in the 55th year of the New Emperor Calendar, the crystal nest mother core created a time wormhole because it felt the crisis of extinction..."

"That's why I tried to look to the past—that is, the age when human beings were still in the most desperate trough, to find human beings who could accept its inspiration, isn't that right?"

Diana: "In our theory, yes."

The 55th year of the new imperial calendar.

That was the era when the human counterattack finally saw the light, and the future became brighter and brighter.

"If Jing Nest hadn't created a time wormhole, it stands to reason that Gaius would not be inspired, the Crystal Cult would not become an anti-human heresy, and the space pirates would not be helped, and we would not be able to fight so much later. difficult."

"Then the victory of mankind should come sooner and more easily."

Having said that, Kobayashi blinked in confusion: "But think about it from another angle—"

"If the crystal nest mother core didn't create a time wormhole, the commander wouldn't have contacted the past through a time wormhole when he was a child, as he wrote in his later memoirs?"

"Oh, you said Commander..."

Diana pursed her lips and smiled, she sat down on the chair, her expression became much softer.

It seemed that just mentioning that person could make her feel much more at ease.She is obviously no longer the timid girl she was back then, but this dependence has become a habit.

Kobayashi was immersed in his own thoughts, speaking faster and faster: "If this is the case, then maybe His Majesty the Great will not be born at all, the old empire will not be overthrown, and there will be no Holy Battle and White Bird Project, and Crystal Nest will not be born. Forced into having to turn to the past for help..."

The young man snapped his fingers and muttered, "Then where did it all start? It seems to be a question of which came first, the egg or the chicken... My head hurts thinking about it!"

Diana shook her head.

"Humanity still has a long way to go in science, and our understanding of time and space is still very shallow."

"Perhaps the essence of time is not the one-way flow that we subconsciously think of, but a closed-loop cause and effect—at least partially, a closed loop can be formed, and it is impossible to find who comes first."

The young man murmured: "The cause and effect of the closed loop..."

Diana looked out the window and said softly: "We are walking in such a time, the only thing we can decide is our own forward posture."

"Choose cowardice or courage, be content with darkness or pursue light."

Outside the window, white doves are flying under the morning light.

A few students on the street corner were reciting some poems.Adults going to work wait at the station as girls walking their dogs pass by.

The flowers in the flower beds are in full bloom, and in half a month, the big cypress trees on both sides will also enter the season with the most lush leaves.

Looking at this ordinary and warm scene of Star City, Diana smiled and nodded.

"Well, today is also a good day."

The 17th year of the old imperial calendar.

Black, scorching winds blew across the land of the Blue Mother Planet.

The crooked steel jungle is hidden on the other side of the black sky. It is the so-called urban area, a paradise that the poor of the empire can't reach.

The wild areas where the poor gather are connected with barren slopes and hills.Crazy roars came from there, like the howling of wild beasts, but they were spoken in human language.

"Burn them to death!!"

"The disabled humans infected with chronic crystal disorder are viruses, burn them to death!!"

Vultures with crystal bone wings hovered high in the sky, waiting to peck at the scattered corpses after another riot was over.

On the ground, a middle-aged man held a torch high, his eyes were bloodshot, and he screamed hysterically, "Is it burnt out!!"

"Those viruses, those bastards, have they all been burned!!"

The blackness in the wind is soot and charcoal.Many of the powders were peeled off from charred and carbonized corpses.

The flames burned intermittently on the weeds and stones.On this barren slope, there are dead people falling here and there in all shapes and sizes. In the distance, there is a piece of scorched black, which is the human beings who were burned to death.

"Kill them, kill them all, kill them all!!"

"How dare you hide the disabled humans in the late stage of chronic crystal chaos, and hide three! That woman is bewitched, she wants to kill everyone, we want to kill the viruses in the R8 wild area!!"

Suddenly, more than a dozen figures surrounded him, each looking at the middle-aged man holding a torch and shouting coldly.

The one in the lead was carrying an earthen gun in his hand, and it was loaded with a click.

"What are you doing, what are you doing?" The middle-aged man smiled with cold sweat, his voice was hoarse after shouting for too long, "Although I am also from the R8 area, I...have nothing to do with those cruel humans and low animals. , has nothing to do with Irene Jie!"

"And my son, my son was infected with chronic crystal disorder, and after I found out, I burned him to death with my own hands! I burned my son to death with my own hands, I burned—"

The man's voice was drowned out by several relentless gunshots.Plasma splashed, and the sturdy body hit the ground.

He also threw out the torch in his hand, drawing a small bright arc in the night.

The 17th year of the old imperial calendar, the end of summer.

In the poor area named R8 wild area, the most brutal riot in the history of the old empire took place.

The human empire has only been established for 17 years, and the bloody smell of the era of melee at the base has not dissipated.The wild area is a chaotic place of moral loss, and conflicts between intervals are common.

However, this time, the outsiders who invaded the R8 wild area were surprised to find that many disabled humans infected with chronic crystal disorder were hidden in this wild area, and there were even three terminal patients.

The culprit is named Irene Jie, a new human being, who is the de facto leader of this wild area.

According to the laws of the old empire, it was not a crime to kill civilians suffering from chronic crystal disorder, while terminally ill patients must be executed.

In the universal view, disabled humans are lowly slaves and livestock, and it is absolutely unacceptable for such a species that has failed to evolve to threaten the life and safety of new humans.

So the riot continued for a day and a night.Irene Jie herself, as well as those disabled humans who were infected with chronic crystal disorder, were burned to death alive.

The troubled times distorted human nature, outsiders wantonly vented their malice, and almost slaughtered the entire R8 field.They abused women, dismembered those who resisted, and crushed the skulls of children for entertainment.

As night fell, the flames were extinguished and the blood dried up.

There was a young man with a blank expression, holding a charred corpse in his arms, walking up the hillside like a wandering spirit.

"...Irene..."

"My... Irene..."

Judging from the slightly bulging belly, the corpse should have been a pregnant woman...that was his angelic, kind and beautiful wife.

——After many years, historians will investigate and find that when Ms. Irene was killed, she was having a lover.

In this chaotic era, the ceremony of "marriage" is only worthy of nobles.But in short, Irene and her opposite sex have already had the most intimate relationship as a lover, and they have conceived and will have a child...but she died suddenly and tragically.

The man climbed to the top of the slope with the charred corpse in his arms.

He lowered his head and saw the crowd wandering below.

...What an ugly, humble species.

Evil kills good, riots upset the balance.A civilized society and moral code that took thousands of years to build can fall apart so easily.

A sickening feeling of disgust surged through the man, followed by emptiness.

Life that will eventually die, race that will eventually become extinct, civilization that will eventually collapse... So what's the point of all this?

Men don't want to look at those ghostly humans anymore.

When he slowly raised his head, the starlight from the universe penetrated the gloomy sky and black wind and shone on him.

The starlight tonight seems to be whiter and brighter than in the past, making people dizzy.

It seems that the starry sky is connected to another time and space, making the silent ravings turn into oracles.

There seemed to be a strange light in the man's ashen eyes, like a believer who had realized Taoism.

His chapped lips moved, and he said softly, "Is that so...is that so?"

"Death is eternity... Destruction is eternity... Chaos is truth..."

"Irene... I see... I think I get it."

The man looked down at the charred corpse in his arms.He suddenly let go of his hand, allowing his lover's body to fall from his arms.

The scorched "human stick" rolled down the slope of the hill.Several vultures flapped their wings and chased after them.

The man never looked at his wife's body again.He fell back, listening to the ravings from a few light-years away, and closed his eyes.

He fell on the hill with a peaceful expression, as if sleeping deep in the starlight.

——Many years later, some scholars believed that the man who lost his wife and children overnight in the most cruel way was Gaius, the Archbishop of the Crystal Sect who was later inspired by the Crystal Nest.

Blue Mother Star, a space station in the near-Earth space.

"waste!!"

A thunderous and muffled growl sounded from the gloomy laboratory.

The tall emperor stepped out from the shadows, "A group of trash...!"

The suspension lamp in front of the laboratory illuminates the rough facial features.The emperor had thick eyebrows and thick lips, reddish-brown messy hair, and green eyes that were as dark as a wolf.

Rows of researchers knelt before the emperor.The leader was tearful and kept knocking his forehead to the ground.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty, we can do it again! It's almost there, almost successful, please give us another chance, Your Majesty will definitely succeed next time!!"

The tyrant Odin raised his arm, he waved his rough palm, and the guards behind him immediately pulled out their guns in unison.

"No, no, I don't want to die—"

"Okay, let's shoot!!"

Suddenly, a young researcher jumped up, and the crying of the person in charge was cut off.

"I can't take it anymore. I do that kind of human experiment every day. I live in fear during the day, and endless nightmares at night..."

"I listened to the screams of the experimental subjects, and watched those inhuman forms of death..."

The young man's eyes were red, and the veins on his neck were throbbing, "Your Majesty, they are also human beings, living people...!!"

Odin narrowed his eyes.

He pointed to the young man: "This kid is too noisy, I don't like it."

Two guards stepped forward from left and right, and easily restrained the young man trying to resist with crystal bones.

The experimental team leader who was begging for mercy was so scared that his teeth were chattering: "Your Majesty...Your Majesty, this guy must be crazy, how dare he..."

Odin: "Find out all the people who have had a relationship with him, no matter blood relationship or friend relationship, and bring them to the Gray Owl Laboratory to be the next batch of experimental subjects."

"You tyrant, an inhuman tyrant!!"

The young man roared and struggled, his legs kicked in the air, "You will suffer retribution, one day you will go to hell!!"

The emperor didn't change his face: "Shoot."

The gunfire rang out and stopped.Neither cursing nor begging could be heard.

After a few muffled bangs of the corpse falling to the ground, there was only blood splattering on the floor.

Odin's eyes fell on the flowing blood.

Failed again.

How many times has this failed.

The tyrant won't admit that his nightmares haven't stopped since Gray Owl Labs cracked the horrific truth about the particle race's colonization.

The once proud crystal bone has become a parasite like a maggot attached to the bone.From the skin to the flesh of the body is soaked in the poison, can only helplessly wait for the moment of the outbreak.

Human beings have been imprisoned by crystal particles, the doomsday is counting down, and there is no way to delay this extinction.

Even if the brightest geniuses are gathered together and the most extreme means of living experiments are used, there is still no way to research the crystal particles that can be stripped from the human body.

Tried again and again, failed again and again.

The empire he created by stepping on the mountain of corpses and the sea of ​​blood, this interstellar empire that has realized the unification of mankind for the first time, should be sacred and glorious, and will always be remembered by the universe.

It turned out to be...

Become the last empire of mankind.