Chapter 54: The Doomsday Crisis Always Comes Unexpectedly

In the small nations supporting Collective Social Rearing, after they gradually gained clear advantage in this heated conflict.

Qin Yu ended his journey in these two small countries and continued onward to other parts of the world.

…

In the year 202 AD,

atop a remote, rarely climbed snowy peak on the Europa Continent,

Qin Yu held several drinks he bought beforehand and a pre-packed barbecue.

On the mountaintop, sipping his drink, eating skewers, and letting snow fall on him, he celebrated his two-hundredth birthday alone.

The rest of the world hadn’t forgotten ‘Professor Qin Yu’ either.

On Qin Yu’s birthday, major media in Huaxia Nation and many countries worldwide published special articles,

celebrating Professor Qin Yu’s bicentennial birth anniversary, honoring the greatest scholar in the Field of Life Sciences history had ever known.

…

On this journey seeing the world,

even though eating was unnecessary for Qin Yu, he still occasionally sampled diverse foods from different places.

Though not every region’s cuisine counted as delicious, each had its distinct flavor,

giving Qin Yu a richer impression of this world and of Human Civilization as a whole.

Similarly, along the way,

there were moments when Qin Yu reached deserted places, and times when he walked through bustling crowds.

Occasionally, he’d cross paths with different people.

While most encounters were brief,

they remained part of the journey’s fabric.

For instance, in those two war-torn small nations, Qin Yu met a Huaxia man doing business in a frontline city.

Without much conversation, Qin Yu supported his business, buying some goods.

Meeting a fellow countryman in such a place delighted this shopkeeper from home.

They chatted briefly about things back home and the situation in those two small nations.

Another time, while climbing a snowy mountain, he found a young man nearly dead from hypothermia.

Qin Yu casually threw him to a campsite below. After rescue and revival, the young man was likely left with unsolved mysteries in his mind.

Arriving in Iceland,

Qin Yu stayed overnight at an elderly woman’s house.

The old woman lived alone and didn’t ask Qin Yu for payment,

only requesting he chat with her, seeking some liveliness at home.

When departing, Qin Yu indeed left no money behind,

but he caught some fish to make up for the frozen fish eaten during his stay.

The old woman was very pleased,

merely inviting Qin Yu to stay again if he ever returned.

…

Antarctica.

Qin Yu opted for less extravagance reaching Antarctica than his Pacific Ocean crossing.

He simply sailed off in a single-person sailboat.

Then chased wind and waves the entire way,

feeling thunder crack above the ocean, storms rage, and massive waves flip his boat –

nearly turning the sailboat into a surfboard.

Truly arriving in Antarctica,

Qin Yu didn’t do much.

He found a spot between glacier and land and sat half a day,

watching clusters of penguins tumbling, hunting, preening feathers,

and gazing at distant glaciers shimmering under sunlight.

He soaked in the quiet, natural hum beneath it all.

Nearby penguins occasionally eyed this stranger.

Perhaps accustomed to researchers from science stations,

the penguins showed little fear yet kept their distance.

Qin Yu sat there awhile,

until twilight faded to darkness. After glimpsing Antarctica’s starry sky, he departed.

…

Back in Huaxia Nation,

its northwest region.

Qin Yu stepped again into a familiar place.

Extending northwest beyond Shuling City,

vast deserts had vanished.

Instead lay dense woodlands, orderly fertile fields,

and grasslands ranking among the world’s finest.

Though beasts hadn’t yet appeared here,

this healthy ecosystem nurtured a rich web of life.

Here, Qin Yu witnessed vast swarms of fireflies.

Unconcerned about dirt or bugs – his body feared neither –

he flopped backward onto seasonal yellowed grass,

watching countless fireflies dance before his eyes, competing with stars above.

He did nothing else, just watched moonlight, fireflies, and plains deep into the night.

But midnight found him

spotting faint, flickering flames in distant darkness.

Qin Yu frowned.

…

Next dawn, owing to the season

and despite Yu-type Bacteria transforming this region into a stable new ecology,

Due to location constraints, the average annual rainfall remained relatively low.

Thus, daily patrols and monitoring were still conducted across this vast prairie to prevent fires.

At that moment, a patrol drone reported back, finding an area suspected of having burned.

After receiving the report, the monitoring staff quickly arrived at the scene to check for any remaining fire spots.

They saw that,

for unknown reasons, this fire had been extinguished right at the start.

Otherwise, during this season, the density of weeds on the prairie would have easily shown how a small spark could grow into a big blaze.

Did the wind blow it out?

Then where did the foam from this fire extinguisher come from?

It seemed more like someone had passed by and casually put it out.

But no wheel tracks were spotted nearby?

Had someone really walked deep into this prairie on foot?

The staff member scratched his head at this scene.

Still, it was a good thing; at least the fire hadn’t spread, or putting it out would have been troublesome.

They used a drone with infrared detection to search the area again,

and after truly finding no one, they had to give up.

After returning,

this staff member chatted with coworkers about it,

and brought up grassland fires,

“Do you think there have been more fires this year than before?”

“Sigh, with unusual climate, high temperatures, and dry air, isn’t it easy for fires to start? Just last month, fires broke out in Europa Continent, and over in Amerika too…”

In the Alps,

Qin Yu enjoyed solo downhill biking once more.

He himself was fine, but he wrecked a few bikes.

Finally, he just did a no-rope bungee jump.

In the Great Rift Valley of Afrika Continent,

Qin Yu faced the starry sky through the canyon above and slept through the night.

When the time was right later that year, Qin Yu went to the polar regions again,

experiencing the auroras and the midnight sun.

Across Afrika Continent, Europa Continent, Amerika, Nine Provinces, and nearby areas,

Qin Yu also experienced different cultures and local customs once more.

During one trip in Afrika Continent, Qin Yu casually rescued some survivors from a fire.

…

Later,

Qin Yu arranged his final journey of this trip, or perhaps his lifetime,

to be beyond Earth.

In this era, places that Human Civilization could reach were no longer limited to the planet’s surface.

Earlier, after the 2611 Longevity Injection became common,

the fifty-year Lunar Surface exploration plan by Huaxia Nation, and what came after it, had achieved solid results in space travel.

First,

in low Earth orbit, Huaxia Nation’s Space Station had expanded several times over the years.

Now, our Space Station had over one hundred permanent Astronauts inside.

During crew rotations with extra personnel for mission tasks, the number of Astronauts sometimes reached over two hundred.

Next came the Lunar Surface.

On the Lunar Surface, Huaxia Nation had built a large permanent Lunar Base.

The permanent population of this Lunar Base was actually a bit larger than at the Space Station.

Normally, about three hundred Astronauts and experts were there.

At busy times, the number inside the Lunar Base could hit five hundred.

This was mainly due to how Moon access worked then and how the Lunar Base was built.

Even at that point, spacecraft used by humans still relied on chemical rocket launches,

meaning rocker and vehicle combos fired off.

Electric propulsion tech for space travel was mostly stuck.

Current electric thrusters could only make very gentle pushes,

mostly used for keeping things like the Space Station and satellites in orbit,

not for carrying loads.

Rockets traveling from Human Civilization to the Moon at that time did not go near the Space Station.

After leaving Earth, circling the planet a few times,

they sped straight for the Moon.

Then, after entering Lunar Orbit, the lander started its touchdown steps.

So, because of how things needed to be done, the Space Station,

closer to Earth, was still smaller than the Lunar Base.

Also,

using tricks like 3D printing, some raw stuff on the Lunar Surface helped build the Lunar Base a little.

It couldn’t all be done with Moon materials, but it did play a part.

Beyond that,

chemical rocket recovery tech and the rockets themselves had also gotten better over those years.

The first made carrying things cheaper; the second made them hold more.

Also, during the whole trip from Earth to the Lunar Surface,

acceleration G-forces were kept below three with careful teamwork of multi-stage rockets.

For people in that time who had used Gravity Protective Fluid, this was easy to handle without much training.

However,

the overall state of Human Civilization’s space travel progress back then was still a bit stuck.

Without big changes, the Lunar Base scale of hundreds might need to stay that way for a long while.

This was mostly about cost and what you got back.

Even though chemical rocket recycling cut costs,

overall expenses meant developing the Moon had little quick business value.

The point of exploring and building on the Moon was more about hopes for the far future

and science stuff.

Before this,

when Huaxia Nation ran its Moon landing plans,

both North Bear Nation and Moon Nation in the HCC tried similar moves.

For a time, they built their own Lunar Bases in separate spots on the Lunar Surface, just like Huaxia Nation.

But in the short run, money hopes weren’t enough,

and compared to Huaxia Nation in the HCC, these two sides had pretty much lost the race.

Naturally, on the Lunar Bases, they didn’t hold on either, and their scale kept shrinking.

By now, though the Lunar Bases from both sides still were around, their size had become much smaller compared to Huaxia Nation’s here.

All across the world, when people talked about a Moon Lunar Base, they mostly meant Huaxia Nation’s one.

…

Qin Yu planned to go for a walk in outer space and on the Lunar Surface.

He could indeed just use Intangibility, then keep rising, rushing right into space and onto the Lunar Surface.

But in the end, he chose to ride Huaxia Nation’s moon rocket.

This way, he also got to feel what it was like to ride that kind of rocket-driven spaceship at the time.

Currently,

Huaxia Nation had opened up Lunar Surface tours and Space Station tours.

Only, because of the cost and limits of carrying people,

each spot for space travel was very pricey, and required waiting in line, or even a lottery.

But for Qin Yu, money wasn’t a problem.

He could make money; in a very harsh way, he might find a big company, get rid of its head, and then short the stock.

Of course, Qin Yu wasn’t that harsh, but with his Super Brain,

he only needed a bit more time and effort to ‘take’ some cash from the stock and futures markets to spend.

After he had pretty much covered all the land and seas,

Qin Yu signed up for Huaxia Nation’s space travel program that year.

…

Just before Qin Yu’s space trip happened,

something else took place in the world.

A news report was sharply noticed by Qin Yu.

This news report was very short.

“Research teams from Amerika’s Moon Nation and Europa Continent watched, and found in the north coast and many areas of the Pacific Ocean, a new kind of algae. It was growing and spreading very fast, taking the top spot in the algae life of those Pacific Ocean parts. The teams saw signs of it in oceans in many places.”

“Scholars linked to this think this new thing might start big, unknown dangers.”

After this news came out,

most of the internet didn’t react much.

First, the whole web was full of too much news all the time;

even stories about humans maybe ending could be found many times a day with a small look.

Most folks, in that case, didn’t pay much mind to such plain-sounding news.

Second,

the push of daily life made most people not feel danger right away at the start.

Deep down, they felt yesterday passed safely, the day before was calm, tomorrow would be the same, the day after too…

But the truth was, over time, things always changed.

Still, Qin Yu clearly cared about this info.

With Qin Yu the biology expert’s gut feeling, this pretty much meant trouble was near.

Algae held a key place in Earth’s environment web.

If algae went bad on a huge scale, it would be way worse than cutting all the world’s trees.

In his past self, in his last life,

over a hundred years, he stayed alert for big dangers that could wreck Human Civilization, yet none came.

In this life,

was it really about to start?

The way fate worked could be truly odd sometimes.

It always brought huge twists and shifts at strange moments.

After reading this news, Qin Yu looked up and gazed at the sky.

His face stayed rather peaceful though.

After all, this was expected long ago.

For Human Civilization lasting a long time, not facing a crisis was impossible.

It might come in a hundred years, or ten thousand years,

or maybe, it was right now.

…

At the same time, the Negentropy Research Institute Qin Yu had set up dealt with this fast.

Started to fight the end times and spot crisis info, the Negentropy Research Institute

truly served its purpose for the first time.

Before the news report came out, the Negentropy Research Institute that caught the info early,

knew at once this news was different from past ones,

and saw the big danger hiding in it.

Why they acted so quickly was mostly because the Negentropy Research Institute was made for this job.

Looking at info, they naturally thought of huge crises popping up.

While setting up next steps, the Negentropy Research Institute also reported this message higher up fast, telling them about the possible danger.