Epoch of Twilight

Luo Yuan was being extra cautious and careful throughout the entire return journey. He had previously thought that interstellar journey was safe, however now he felt as if there was danger lurking everywhere.

This universe was far larger than what he had previously thought.

The appearance of the Fourth-dimension creature meant that this star domain was unsafe.

When he finally got himself together, he was self-deprecating. He found out that if he was ever within the grasp of god-like beings, his power could no longer guarantee the safety of his life. He felt as helpless as a normal human.

After all, safety was the first basic necessity of a living creature. Without safety, everything else was just a dream.

No matter if it was Luo Yuan or the rest of Mankind, everything was in the creature’s distance. Even if it was up to hundreds of light years away, possibly a few thousand light years, they would still be within its grasp.

From the perspective of dialectics and probability, both the Glassian and Mankind had been safely multiplying by tens of thousands of years. This meant the event of encountering a fourth-dimensional creature was a low probability occurrence.

The reason for the incident where he encountered the four-dimensional creature could be blamed on Luo Yuan transcending into a semi-four-dimensional existence. He was like a bump on a smooth piece of paper. To the four-dimensional creature, it seemed particularly eye-catching and grabbed its attention.

What came next was lucky, a smooth flight straight back into the Barnard Star System without any incidents. Luo Yuan did not alert anyone and quietly returned to his house. He took out a few balls of highly compressed aqua spheres from the dimension ball he always carried, then swallowed the aqua spheres one by one. He then opened the holographic imaging equipment and found many unread messages from the time he was away.

...

"Earlier, the entire Space City was in a stir. Everywhere was super lively. Too bad you missed it." This was Zhao Yali’s message.

Luo Yuan looked at the time displayed and it was sent not long before he had left the Space City. However, even if he was in Space City, he could and would not participate in this sort of lively atmosphere.

"Why aren’t you back yet after so long?" This was Wang Shishi’s message.

This equipment had some special traits as had anti-radiation properties, but this was its most basic functionality. Every second, there would be an astronomical number of frames running through the screen. However, to him, this type of imaging seemed to move frame by frame.

Afterward, he sped up the playback of the holographic imaging. Those who had messaged him were his wife, a few of his children, and a few of the high positioned government officials.

The former were asking normal household questions, but the latter were inquiries about the general policy of the government. However, subtly under those words, they carried the desire to return home to Earth.

’30-odd years had passed, humans could finally return to Earth!’ Luo Yuan suddenly realized.

...

However, moving was no simple task. Mankind was no longer like what they were in the past when they escaped while carrying almost nothing.

Within the 20-odd years of expanding in the Barnard Star System, Mankind had long accumulated countless belongings.

From the fourth planet’s topography, which had lost a huge amount mass after all these years, it was easy to spot that in all these years, humans had accumulated various belongings.

Its total mass was now equivalent to the moon’s mass. Although part of the mass had been converted into energy through nuclear aggregation, most of it had been turned into various machinery, equipment, ships, and reserve resources.

Although Mankind had not developed a habit of waste, except in their mining and smelting industry. That could remain on the fourth planet under the control of the central A.I.’s mining and smelting capabilities. The rest had to be brought back with them.

The distance between the Barnard Star and Earth was only 6 light years. To today’s version of humanity, it was not some difficult task any longer. With the Reactionless Drive warships, it would only require 2 years to make the trip. To top it off, this star system was rich in resources. There was no doubt that it would be the best mining source for humanity.

Two years after gaining victory in the war, humans had gradually began their moving project.

If it was according to the standard moving procedures, it was estimated that mankind would need to wait for another three to four years, possibly even five to six years to commercially mass assemble the used Reactionless Drive Airships. After the airships were produced, the project could then be continued.

Even if the moving project would take up to 10 years to complete, this was normal and was within expectations.

However, the miniature universe floating near Space City had greatly sped this process up.

The miniature universe’s dimensional plane had been expanded ten times by Luo Yuan, giving it more than enough space to carry mankind’s largest cargo airships and other various gigantic equipment.

The factories located in the outer ring of Space City had been cleared up one after the other. Various machinery had been placed within a designated cargo container before it was loaded onto the cargo ship directly through the space door.

Daily work was required to transfer up to a quadrillion tons of materials into the airship near the space door.

...

2 years later, countless mining machinery on the fourth planet remained continued following orders. They continued to send huge amounts of the extracted minerals to the smelting factory so they could be purified into various resources. These were later sent to Space City’s resource warehouse reserve through cargo airships. Numerous cargo airships flew between the fourth planet and Space City. Almost everything remained the same as it usually was, consistently busy. The only difference was that the entire Space City was now long empty, long abandoned by mankind.

...

Luo Yuan briefly waved his hand and a Space Disc dashed towards his direction. Through the flight process, it was constantly shrinking down from its massive size and formed a round sphere that came to rest on Luo Yuan’s palm in the end.

The entire miniature universe had been sealed within the core of the Space Disc.

After Luo Yuan had grabbed it, he looked at the Earth from afar. He then activated his space-time bubble and sped facing that direction.

...

Earth!

Ling Zhong-an carefully lay on the ground and placed his ear on the snow, closely listening to the movement underneath it. After a while, his ear moved briefly and a smirk slowly formed on his face.

Although the Earth’s temperature was still slowly rising, it remained around -30°C annually and during the winter, the temperature would even drop to -50°C.

The extremely cold weather had caused the mutated beasts to adopt underground activities. Every last beast who could survive until this day had some form of hidden talent, pushing those that could not adapt to extinction.

To rely on the mutated beast’s footprints and nests were the previous methods they used for hunting in the snow. Although it was a fairly useful tactic a few decades ago, it had now become less and less reliable.

If there was insufficient patience, subpar listening, and a lack of a strong foundation, then chewing on tree bark was all that humans could do.

Luckily, Ling Zhong-an was armed with those skills. He was transformed into an extremely experienced hunter through a decade of hunting.

He lightly knocked onto the thick ice cubes. His extreme hearing could rely on the ice cube’s echo differential to determine the location of the mutated beast’s cave. He would then be able to locate his target quickly.

He refused to drop his guard, he would keep his body lying on the icy surface and continue to crawl forward for another ten meters or so. When he reached the top of the cave, he would then instantly burst out.

His feet were carrying about ten tons of force and he stomped with all his might onto the ice layer. Due to the long, persisting extreme winter, the layers of ice over here had a high probability of cracking under a strike from a huge force. A crack of about half a meter wide suddenly appeared on the ice layer.

After that, Ling Zhong-an did not hesitate and leaped down. A few moments later, a burst of miserable howls came from the ice crack.

Half a minute later, he leaped out from the ice crack carrying a mutated beast that weighed nearly half a ton.

This mutated beast’s brain had been crushed and had long been dead. Ling Zhong-an looked around but the tremor from the landing had made him drop a few pieces of its brain out onto the snow. He felt sorry and swiftly picked up them up and stuffed them into his mouth.

If it was the past, he would not even glance at these kinds of stomach-turning foods. He was born an evolved person and even during desperate times, he still would not consume raw and bloody foods; what more this type of disgusting brain matter.

However, after a decade-long of living like a wild man, he had long forgone whatever remnants of hygienic behavior he used to have. In this world of ice and snow, he was not that lucky on a daily basis to be able to hunt such prey. Most of the time, he had to chew on the dry tree bark and roots to satisfy the hunger.

He casually wiped off the blood stain from his mouth, estimated the next prey’s location, and happily moved onto the next cave to continue hunting.