The global purge concluded within seventy-two hours.
The world fell into an eerie calm.
There were no protests, no questions. Media coverage was highly unified, leaving only praise for the PDC's new policies.
Fear was far more effective than any preaching.
Amidst this dead silence, an unprecedentedly massive project was secretly unfolding.
...
Deep underground in the Nevada desert, inside a hollowed-out mountain.
This was the Spark Base.
The colossal subterranean space resembled an inverted city.
Pure white alloy walls stretched to the edge of vision. The air was thick with the cold scent of ozone and metallic coolant.
Over a hundred top scientists from various fields across the globe had been secretly brought here.
Among them were white-haired titans of physics and rising stars in genetics.
Right now, they were gathered in the central hall, their faces etched with confusion and anxiety.
No one had told them what exactly they were supposed to do, only that this was a top-secret mission concerning the survival of humanity.
The heavy metal doors slid open silently.
Luo Ji walked in, followed by the five supreme leaders, their expressions icy.
The moment he appeared, the noisy murmurs in the hall vanished instantly.
All eyes focused on the man who had single-handedly overturned the entire world order.
His gaze retained that same dead silence, as if he had seen through to the end of time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new era of human civilization."
Luo Ji's voice, devoid of any emotion, echoed through the hall via the amplification system.
"You are the pinnacle of human intellect, the spark of our civilization."
"But your understanding is still confined to the cradle."
He didn't waste any more words, simply clapping his hands lightly.
Rows of robots carrying silver trays slowly rolled into the crowd.
On each tray rested a peculiarly shaped helmet.
The helmets were made of a matte metal, their surfaces covered in complex blue patterns resembling biological neurons.
"Put them on," Luo Ji ordered simply.
"What is this?" an elderly physicist asked first, adjusting his glasses. "Is it some sort of neural synchronization device? We need to know its principles and the risks involved."
"You will understand soon enough," Luo Ji said, his gaze sweeping over him. "As for the risks, compared to what you are about to see, death is a mercy."
His words sent a chill through everyone present.
Under the watchful eyes of the armed guards in combat uniforms, the scientists hesitated, then picked up the helmets one by one.
The cold touch of metal seeped through their fingertips.
They put on the helmets.
The world vanished before their eyes.
Their consciousness was instantly extracted and thrown into a grand, dazzling illusion.
They became the Star People, experiencing that golden age which used stars for energy and the galaxy as its territory.
It was the ultimate peak of science and rationality, the dream they had pursued their entire lives.
However, at the end of the dream, was the Qu.
It was that twisted, hideous, living fleet that defied all physical comprehension.
It was that utterly unreasonable, overwhelming biological modification.
Fear tore apart the intellect they were so proud of.
Hell descended after the fear.
They personally experienced every shred of agony as their genes were torn apart, their flesh reconstructed, and their dignity trampled.
With lucid minds, they tasted the ultimate humiliation inflicted upon an entire civilization, lasting for hundreds of millions of years.
Just as their minds were about to be completely crushed by this endless despair.
A gentle yet vast will, like the first ray of light at the dawn of the universe, pierced into the dark abyss of their souls.
This power did not come from Luo Ji, but from a dimension they could not even begin to imagine.
Ian poured the massive tech tree of the [Stellaris Mod] into their brains.
The atomic structural diagrams of fundamental materials science were disassembled and reassembled before their eyes.
The double helix chains of genetic codes danced like giant dragons, revealing the deepest mysteries of life.
The mathematical models of warp drives transformed into three-dimensional ripples in spacetime, plucking at their nerves.
This knowledge and these technologies were no longer unattainable dreams from science fiction novels, but reality that could be touched and perceived.
At the same time, two cold, unquestionable thoughts were deeply branded into the very bottom of their minds like a mental seal.
The real world.
The scientists suddenly tore off their helmets.
A deathly silence filled the hall.
Only the sound of heavy panting rose and fell.
Their faces were deathly pale, their bodies drenched in cold sweat, but their eyes shone with a terrifying light.
It was no longer the inquiry and curiosity of scholars.
It was a fanatical flame, a mixture of fear, hatred, and a supreme sense of mission.
They looked at each other, seeing the same madness and absolute resolve in each other's eyes.
The elderly physicist who had first voiced his doubts pushed past the people next to him with trembling hands and rushed to a whiteboard.
He grabbed a marker, his hands shaking violently from excitement, and frantically scribbled strings of complex formulas on the board.
"Quantum interference, so that's how it works, we can deceive it! We can capture the Sophons!"
On the other side, a young geneticist with bloodshot eyes muttered to himself.
"I understand, I understand it all, telomere degradation can be reversed, we can achieve immortality!"
No one gave orders.
No one organized them.
The awakened scientists seemed to be manipulated by an invisible hand.
They spontaneously formed project groups and rushed to different laboratories.
Materials science, energy, biology, spatial physics, and more.
The spark of human civilization was completely ignited in this moment.
Trisolaris.
On the massive monitoring screens, the blue planet representing Earth was developing more and more black spots that could not be read.
"Reporting to the Princeps! The seventeenth Black Domain has appeared! Located in the Gobi Desert of Western Huaxia!"
"The eighteenth! In North Africa!"
"Once our Sophons approach these areas, they encounter intense unknown interference, and the data stream is nearly severed!"
"According to our model simulations, if they force their way in, there is a risk the Sophons will be captured!"
A dead silence hung over the monitoring center.
The Princeps of Trisolaris looked at the planet being eroded by darkness and felt panic for the first time.
Earth seemed to be transforming from a transparent glass fishbowl into a bottomless, awakening abyss.
And the source of all this pointed to that one man they could not understand.
Luo Ji.
Inside the Spark Base, Black Domain Laboratory A-01.
A former terminal cancer patient watched a holographic projection of the cancer cells in his body being precisely eradicated, broken down, and metabolized by countless nanobots, tears streaming down his face.
His body was being reborn.
Next door, in Laboratory C-07.
Inside an absolute vacuum force field container, a miniature cold nuclear fusion reactor was slowly activated.
Humanity's technological leap was quietly taking place in the blind spots of the Trisolarans.