Epoch of Twilight

Although Luo Yuan had considered that they would not mind suffering for a few days, he did not consider that this event would leave them with some form of mental scar.

His strength had exceeded the power grade of an evolved human, having the potential to reshape the world and destroy mountains. There was no one who could remain calm if they were to experience these sudden changes.

A gigantic air bubble with a radius of a few kilometers, carrying all the humans and thousands of mutated beasts flew up into the air. The air bubble had intense friction with the nearby air and after several seconds it had formed into a humongous burning fireball. The nearby rain curtain had been torn through by the fireball, forming a mist. Wherever the fireball went, a long white passage followed in the air. By the time the mist dissipated, the fireball had long disappeared toward a far away area.

Within the air bubble, whether it was man or beast, all of them went limp on the ground. None were able to remain standing. Every living creature was born with extreme fear. More so, they all lost control of their bowels, letting the stench permeate throughout the space.

There was silence all around. No one dared to talk, and everyone just stared at one another, intensifying the fear within them. The fear spurred during the moment before being thrown into a bottomless waterfall was nothing compared to this one.

The unknown could effectively draw out more fear deep inside one’s psyche. Humans feared the paranormal type of mysterious forces more than visible and physical threats. The reasoning behind this is, the mysterious feeling could easily trigger a psychological association, further amplifying the effects of fear.

Although the peripheral area of the air bubble was burning intensely, its internal temperature was surprisingly maintaining normal levels. After the initial shock, Ling Zhong-an was working hard to calm his intense heartbeat and quietly pressed onto the air bubble below him.

The air bubble’s membrane was pretty soft and smooth, similar to a thin layer of rubber. It felt as if it could be punctured simply by using a slight amount of force.

However, this was only an illusion. He found out that when he pressed down onto it, it bounced back even harder. Furthermore, if it was deformed over a total of ten centimeters, no matter how powerful the force, the membrane would not stretch any further.

As the peerless among the surviving evolved humans on earth, his power had long surpassed normal human limitations. His palm could easily crush rock into powder, as well as easily pierce through ten centimeters of steel. However, when faced with this type of unexplainable air bubble, his strength was nothing.

In fact, this was actually not just any type of air bubble. It was actually a type of electromagnetic field. An atom’s core and electrons only account for less than one percent of the overall mass. Over ninety-nine percent of space as we know it is formed by electromagnetic fields and that is what men feel when touching a material surface.

Every atom’s electromagnetic field has a different frequency. All that is needed is a tune-up of its frequency and structure in order to become tough and highly insulated.

To a normal human, they would not be able to differentiate one from the other.

Ling Zhong-an felt helpless about everything that had happened today. Even with his battled hardened body, there was nothing he could do. A numbness grew within his body, rendering him unable to muster any strength.

Today, there was the terrifying presence followed by the heavy rainstorm and floods. They were forced to abandon the ice cave that they had been staying in for decades. They had ventured across dangers throughout the journey to the hillside. When he felt that they could temporarily settle down for a bit, it ended up with the hillside being melted off by the flood. This left them at the mercy of this mysterious force.

As for their upcoming fate, he could and would not dare think about it.

"Boss, airships! There are many airships! They have filled up space." The moment Xiaohu suddenly shouted, his voice carried an immense fear. It was not the one vessel from decades ago. It was not even two, it was actually over tens of thousands of vessels coming out of the void in an unexpected manner.

The group of people panicked.

All of them felt sadness encroaching on their hearts and started crying.

"Are we finally finished?"

"I knew it...I knew it. I always said that there would be a day that the aliens would return and the day has finally come!"

"These bunch of bastards. Even if I die, I’ll take a few of them with me."

...

There was crying and there were people cursing. While they were talking, their voices began to slowly fade. With the absolute difference in power, no thoughts of resistance came into their minds. Everyone remained grim and desperate. At last, they even lost the will to curse. The atmosphere was depressing and all that was left were a few individuals sobbing.

"Maybe we might not die!" A person suddenly said at this moment.

This statement had attracted everyone’s attention, those who were sobbing stopped and lifted up their heads. This wretched middle-aged man proudly stroked his head and said, "If they wanted to kill us, why would they rescue us?"

The group of people’s eyes brightened up because of this statement. If they were hunted and then killed, it would be completely pointless. This proud and arrogant alien race obviously would not do such pointless things. If they captured them, they might be of some use to them.

After seeing that even Ling Zhong-an’s gaze had been attracted by this topic, this wretched middle-aged evolved human became excited and said, "Have you ever been to a zoo?"

"Fuck! Are you just spouting bullshit? Who from that era hasn’t heard of a zoo? Don’t keep people guessing, talk!"

"Say, are we as humans an endangered species? Aren’t we scarce?". Seeing that he had angered the group, this evolved human quickly played his hand, "Also we humans have intelligence and once were a civilized race. But don’t you think they have a different point of view about us? I estimate that no matter how we compared ourselves to them, our position would be slightly higher than that of a mutated beast."

The group of people flashed with a complicated mixture of emotion, they were the previous masters of the earth, but they now had to fight for their position with the mutated beasts. However, compared to facing death, this type of humiliation was not that hard to be accepted.

Human civilization had been thoroughly destroyed, reproductively isolated and the entire race was about to go extinct. The remaining humanity had had long worn off and they no longer had any moral integrity. As for honor, a good death was nothing over staying alive. In order to remain alive, they would risk and do anything.

Aside from the initial awkwardness, everyone seemed to have relaxed a bit. The terror from death’s shadow had gradually worn off and although it would not count as being refreshed, when compared to losing the will to live and reduced to an endless state of despair, it could be said that huge differences in emotion occurred.

The group of people began to have an intense debate regarding their future life.

Some of them were worried about being dissected by the aliens as studying material and their lives not being guaranteed. Others refuted the idea and presented their counter-argument, stating that a rare, endangered species like humans had an admiring and historical value. The aliens would not do such a thing such as destroying such fine specimens. With the aliens’ tech, they had no need of a technique such as dissection, as it was a primitive research method.

After a long debate, the final conclusion they came to was that there would be no need to worry about drinking and eating, similar to the lifestyle of a panda. The group of people was fascinated and there were even some who began to envision that type of lifestyle.

Ling Zhong-an never joined the conversation and listened to everyone’s argument. He began to feel lost in his heart. Had they been living in an alien zoo and being admired in an exhibition from the start?

His hypothesis did not seem too difficult to be accepted!

Those who did not join the conversation included Xiaohu. Naturally, it was not because he had vigor. It was because he was attracted towards the tens of thousands of ’alien’ spaceships outside the atmosphere. Every single one of these airships was as large as a mountain, causing him to look in awe. He could not help it and his whole body began to shake.

At first, he was looking with curiosity and respect, but the longer he looked at it, the more doubts began to rise in his heart.

These ’alien’ airships hovered at the Earth’s outer atmosphere and had ships of various sizes. However, it was possible to distinguish that there were two different types of ships from their shapes.

There was one triangular shaped with a sharp level and the other was a big belly disc-shaped type.

The former’s number were rare, numbering only a hundred vessels or so, those were reactionless drive airships that were built during the two years of moving. Every one of those ships was reflecting the sun’s rays and with its smooth, eggshell-like surface, these airships’ surface had no marks or defects.

As for the latter, its surface was rough when looking at it with the naked eye. Xiaohu felt that its craftsmanship was no match to the former. On top of that, there were various types of marks and words.

His doubts arose from those words!

His evolved ability was the sort that was difficult to be measured in levels. He did not have much fighting capability but theoretically for his vision, even if everyone’s vision here had combined together, it was still far more inferior compared to his own.

His eye could absorb the weakest light rays and his vision was comparable to mankind’s current state-of-the-art optical detection system. A few decades ago, he could already see those Glassian airships tens of millions of kilometers away through the thick dust cloud in the ozone layer.

Although there was not much of an improvement in the last few years, locating the airships near the Earth was a very easy task.

"The first cargo ship manufacturing plant!"

"Cargo AS123440!"

...

"The fifth cargo ship manufacturing plant!"

"Cargo CW808000!"

Looking at these words caused him to be in further confusion. Although he barely had the chance to write in these past few decades and had also not read anything as well. He instantly recognized all those characters, all of them were basically Chinese, English and Math. Every last one of them was all part of Mankind’s language.

"This is not possible"

"How is this possible?"

"It must be an illusion!"

He mumbled to himself like a madman. The words before his eyes completely exceeded his understanding, simply incredible!

This type of situation was like a person in poverty waiting for a meal, suddenly discovering that his family was extremely rich and his father was a high official of the United Nations, allowing him to have sex with countless of women in turns, while his mom had five hundred oil fields, resulting in his cash being able to circle the earth ten times.

He rubbed his eyes and then viciously slapped himself on both cheeks a few times until his face swelled up. He felt that he should be awake so he checked again and again.

His strange reaction had finally attracted the attention of the others.

"Brother Hu, what’s wrong? Are you scared of the aliens? There’s no worry, I’m afraid in the future we will be having a good life." An evolved human said ungratefully with a red face.

"Yes! Yes! From our discussion, we deduced that we won’t be dying anytime soon."

Xiaohu retrieved his senses, he looked at the group of people and asked in a serious manner while carrying a hint of excitement, "Are we dreaming now?"

"Brother Hu, what dream? Are you still sleeping?" His woman said in rebuke.

"Brother Hu, this is happiness after listening to the good news, it’s not a dream."

Ling Zhong-an felt something from his tone and quickly asked, "What have you discovered?"

Xiaohu’s face had a sort of indescribable type of strangeness. He swallowed his saliva, opened his mouth and under the urging of the group of people, he said, "If I tell you that these airships in the surrounding space belong to humans, would you believe me?"