Earth Era

"Our human civilization seems to be full of flowers. We can cut through mountains, reclaim land from the sea, and control rainfall... Our human civilization seems to be very powerful. But this is just an appearance. The fact is that we are very fragile, very fragile." Li Qi took a sip of his wine, and slowly said to Zhao Huasheng who was sitting opposite him.

Li Qi seemed to be thinking about something, but he didn't seem to. Li Qi's eyes were very ethereal, and his thoughts seemed to have drifted to some distant place.

Zhao Huasheng has always respected himself as a senior. As early as the doctoral course, Zhao Huasheng entered the Institute of Stellar Physics under the Central Academy of Sciences of the Alliance as an intern, and became Li Qi's subordinate at that time. Zhao Huasheng has always admired Li Qi's profound knowledge of stellar physics.

"Maybe." Zhao Huasheng said, "But human civilization is always growing stronger. I believe that in the near future, we will become truly stronger."

Li Qi sighed, and an unspeakable brilliance flashed in his eyes, which seemed to be sadness and pain.

Li Qi stood up and walked to the window of this high-rise restaurant. Through the glass of the window, you can have a panoramic view of the night scene of the bustling city. The lights were so bright that they seemed to cover the moon in the sky. There are winding dragons of light everywhere on the road. Even in this high-rise building that is hundreds of meters above the ground, it seems that the noise coming from the ground can be heard.

It was eleven o'clock, but it was not long before the city fell asleep.

"This is our civilization." Li Qi opened his arms, as if he wanted to embrace everything in his arms. Li Qi's eyes seemed to be fascinated, and his tone became dreamlike: "This is our powerful and prosperous civilization."

"Brother Li, you're drunk, I'll take you home." Zhao Huasheng walked to Li Qi and whispered.

Li Qi shook his head: "Watson, don't be in a hurry to go back. I have something to tell you today."

Zhao Huasheng was taken aback for a moment, and sat down again in his seat. He noticed that something seemed wrong with Li Qi today.

"Our human civilization has almost changed the face of the entire earth. We naively think that we are omnipotent, but the reality is cruel. Take the earth under our feet, how much do we know? Above the earth, the deepest place is Maria The depth of the Mariana Trench is about 10,000 meters. The highest mountain is Mount Everest, which is less than 9,000 meters high. Our submarines dived into the Mariana Trench. Drilling a hole only 11 kilometers deep, it is claimed to be a major step... However, the radius of the earth is more than 6,000 kilometers. It's just one-tenth more... Ninety-nine percent of the place is unknown to us."

"The depth of the epicenter of an earthquake generally does not exceed a hundred kilometers. Even if it is the strongest earthquake recorded in the history of the earth, compared to the entire earth, it is only equivalent to a sneeze on the earth... No, even a sneeze is counted. No, at most it’s just a slight squirm of the earth. But even so, the result is often the death of hundreds of thousands of millions of human beings..."

There seemed to be some mockery in Li Qi's eyes.

Zhao Huasheng knew what Li Qi said. But at this moment when Li Qi said it in such a tone, Zhao Huasheng still felt a little uncomfortable in his heart. It feels like a person who thinks he is extremely powerful is exposed to his fragility and incompetence by others.

"Humans are always talking about protecting the earth, but why does the earth need humans to protect it? Even if the nuclear bombs stored by humans explode at the same time, what will be destroyed is only the surface environment of the earth. The impact of these nuclear bombs cannot be transmitted below the ground. One hundred kilometers away. In the final analysis, human beings are only protecting themselves. As for the earth...even if human beings try their best to destroy the earth, so what? Can ants destroy mountains?"

"Our entire civilization, all our cities, all buildings, all populations, our culture, our heritage, our technology... everything we have is just tiny bacteria attached to the earth, if The earth has its own consciousness, if the earth wants to destroy our human civilization...the earth only needs to sneeze, just one sneeze." Li Qi said.

"Our human civilization is indeed small, but our potential for development is unlimited." Zhao Huasheng said in a low voice.

Li Qi turned a deaf ear to this, but continued: "This is just an earth. What is the earth compared to the entire solar system? What is the sun compared to the Milky Way? Not to mention the Milky Way—the fairy Galaxy clusters, the Virgo supercluster, the visible universe..."

There was a deep sadness in Li Qi's words.

"Let's go back." Li Qi said.

Li Qi was drunk, so Zhao Huasheng drove Li Qi home. While taking the elevator upstairs, Li Qi suddenly gave Zhao Huasheng a very indescribable look.

Zhao Huasheng felt strange, so he asked, "Brother Li, what's the matter?"

But Li Qi smiled to himself: "Goodbye." After saying these two words, Li Qi walked out of the elevator, opened the door of his own room, and then closed the door. Obviously, he had no intention of inviting Zhao Huasheng in for a sit-down.

Zhao Huasheng was a little confused. He felt that Li Qi seemed strange today, but he couldn't say exactly what was strange. After being stunned for a while before the elevator, Zhao Huasheng shook his head and went home.

It was already twelve o'clock in the evening, and Zhao Huasheng was lying on the bed after washing up, but he couldn't fall asleep. Subconsciously, I always feel that something is wrong. There is a feeling that something big is about to happen, but I can't get a clue.

It was around two or three o'clock that Zhao Huasheng fell asleep in a daze, but only four or five hours later, Zhao Huasheng opened his eyes.

There was not enough sleep, so Zhao Huasheng was still very tired at the moment. Under normal circumstances, Zhao Huasheng would not wake up at this time. Because today is the weekend, I am not in a hurry to go to work, and last night, Zhao Huasheng was also ready to sleep in.

Zhao Huasheng woke up from the cold. It's ridiculous to say it, but now it's July and August, when the sun is scorching hot. The sun would rise before five o'clock, throwing its light and heat over the tiny planet, rewarming the overnight-cooled air to eventually become hot. But something seems different today.

Zhao Huasheng put on his coat and walked to the window. The weather was clear, there were no clouds in the sky, and there was indeed a huge sun hanging above the sky, but it looked very dim. The sky is not the usual blue color, but some dark colors are mixed in the blue, which looks very depressing.

Zhao Huasheng is a researcher at the Institute of Stellar Physics, and the closest star to the earth is the sun, so it is obvious that Zhao Huasheng's work focuses on the study of the sun, such as its internal structure, material composition, material evolution and so on. Today's sun seems strange, but Zhao Huasheng didn't think of analyzing it with his professional knowledge at the moment.

Zhao Huasheng just muttered: "It seems that today is a cloudy day." He returned to the bed, pulled up the thin quilt to cover his body, and prepared to go back to sleep.

But a sudden knock on the door broke the tranquility of the morning. Zhao Huasheng had no choice but to get up and get dressed, washed his face and came to the door. After opening the door, a middle-aged man in a black suit with a cold face stretched out his ID card in front of Zhao Huasheng.

"I'm a first-level agent of the Alliance Security Department. You can call me Mengzhuo." The middle-aged man said coldly: "There are some things that require your cooperation in the investigation. Please come with me."

"Ministry of Lian'an? Me?" Zhao Huasheng was a little baffled. After thinking about it, he didn't seem to have done anything bad except snatching a lollipop from a female classmate when he was a child. "What?"

"Please come with me, you will know when you arrive." Mengzhuo still said coldly.

"Okay." Zhao Huasheng thought for a while, and finally agreed. So, half an hour later, Zhao Huasheng came to a spacious meeting room. Quite beyond Zhao Huasheng's expectation, in this conference room, Zhao Huasheng saw many familiar faces, including colleagues and leaders, and some people Zhao Huasheng couldn't recognize clearly, but they looked very familiar. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that those people often saw it on TV.

Zhao Huasheng was seated in an empty seat. For some reason, everyone in the conference room looked very solemn, and no one had a smile on their faces. And after Zhao Huasheng came in, everyone, including those big figures who often appeared on TV, looked at him with somewhat inexplicable eyes.

"May I ask what happened?" Zhao Huasheng asked.

"This is the only relic left to you by Director Li Qi." Meng Zhuo put a safe in front of Zhao Huasheng. After opening it, Zhao Huasheng saw a blank piece of paper lying quietly inside.

Zhao Huasheng was not in a hurry to look at the blank paper, but asked in surprise: "A relic? A relic left to me by Brother Li?"

"Yes." Mengzhuo nodded, "Director Li Qi died late last night, and the preliminary investigation concluded that he committed suicide. At the scene of the suicide, we found this safe, and this blank paper, um, and this paper It read: I am leaving, please be sure to give this blank paper to Zhao Huasheng. He will answer all your questions."

Before Zhao Huasheng figured out what was going on, an old man who had the most appearance on TV knocked on the table and cast his majestic gaze on Zhao Huasheng: "Then, now you can tell us what the sun is going to be?" What's wrong?"