Chapter 262: Origin of the Aurora Lord

"What did you say??"

Han Meng came back to his senses and immediately shook his head. "How is this possible... I know the Aurora Lord doesn't belong to any Divine Path and is an existence independent of all power systems in the world, but he absolutely cannot be a Fuser."

"That depends on how you define a Fuser."

Dr. Yi looked at Han Meng and Chen Ling behind him, waving his hand drunkenly. "Forget it... This isn't a secret in the base. Since our Deputy Captain Han Meng is curious, I'll give you surface-dwellers a good lesson... Follow me."

He carried the wine bottle and swayed toward the other side of the corridor.

Han Meng didn't know what this drunkard was up to, but he frowned and followed, with Chen Ling close behind.

"Good evening, Dr. Yi."

"Good evening, Dr. Yi."

"Dr. Yi, 12139 needs you to take a look when you have time. Sorry for the trouble."

“……”

Dr. Yi's status in the Aurora Base seemed to be extremely high. During the time they walked through the corridor, every figure in a white lab coat would bow and greet him. A tall female researcher even winked at him as she passed.

"Dr. Yi, where are you going?"

"Just finished an experiment, going to vent and relax..." Dr. Yi reached out naturally, pinched the female doctor's plump buttocks hard, and grinned. "Wear something exciting tonight, and don't lock the door~"

"You devil." The female doctor didn't expect him to be so bold as to touch her in front of others. She glared at him coquettishly and turned to leave.

Han Meng, behind them, took it all in, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter.

After the female doctor walked away, Han Meng said indifferently, "Drinking and flirting during work hours... Your Aurora Base really has a great atmosphere."

"Heh, thanks for the compliment."

"You said the Aurora Lord is a Fuser, so what Calamity did he fuse with?" Han Meng asked again. "The Aurora Lord is a Ninth-Rank. If he is a Fuser, wouldn't his fusion target be at least 'World-Ending' level?"

"Calamity? No, no... The Aurora Lord didn't fuse with something like a 'Calamity'."

Dr. Yi pushed open a door at the very edge of the third level. A long corridor that looked like an art gallery appeared before Chen Ling and the other. Under the bright incandescent lights, photos and manuscript notes were displayed on both sides, like a history museum.

Chen Ling's gaze swept over the photos on the wall. Below the photos were the dates they were taken. As they went deeper, the years of these photos became more and more distant... But eerily, as the years became more distant, these photos became clearer and more advanced.

Looking at the photos from the last two years, they were even black and white. In this corridor, time and technology were flowing backward in a form never before imagined.

"This is the Aurora Base's archives, but I prefer to call it the 'Human Extinction Museum'," Dr. Yi said unhurriedly. "From the perspective of the Aurora Base, it records everything from before the Great Catastrophe to the present...

If the history since the birth of humanity is a number axis growing in the positive direction, then since this thing appeared, this number axis began to retreat in the negative direction... And its final point is the origin, which is 'extinction'."

Dr. Yi's finger tapped on a photo at the very end, then he continued forward unhurriedly.

Chen Ling glanced at it. In the photo, there was a red streak, like a meteor streaking across the sky... This photo was a color photo taken by an astronomical telescope, and it was also the photo with the highest technological content in the last three hundred years.

"And the origin of the Aurora Lord is also it."

Dr. Yi slowly stopped. He took a photo off the wall and handed it to Han Meng.

Han Meng looked down. In the photo, there were nine figures in protective suits. They were holding different exploration instruments, standing in front of a military off-road vehicle, comparing something on a map, their expressions extremely serious.

"What is this?"

"Before the Great Catastrophe, on August 8, 2024, a red meteor streaked across the sky above Earth," Dr. Yi's voice sounded calmly. "According to calculations, that meteor's orbit posed a collision risk to Earth, so after a resolution by human leadership, it was decided to use nuclear weapons to intervene in the meteor's trajectory...

That day, humanity launched high-yield nuclear weapons at the meteor. The shockwave from the explosion caused the meteor's orbit to deflect slightly, missing Earth. But at the same time, a fragment of the meteor deviated from its orbit and fell into the atmosphere.

This fragment eventually fell into the territory of a certain country. The authorities immediately gathered nine young scientists who were leaders in various fields to explore and recover the fallen red star fragment..."

Dr. Yi paused for a moment.

"But ten minutes after they started the exploration mission, they collectively lost contact."

"When the rescue team found them, the nine of them were surrounding an empty crater in nine completely different, eerie postures, like statues. But they had completely lost consciousness.

At that time, all modern equipment within a ten-kilometer radius had failed. It is said that someone in the rescue team at the time tried to use a film camera to capture this scene. When they went back to develop the photos, they found that everyone in the rescue team was present in the photo, except for the nine of them, who couldn't be imaged... leaving only nine mysterious white shadows."

Hearing this, Han Meng couldn't help but ask, "Are you saying the Aurora Lord is one of these nine scientists?"

"That's right," Dr. Yi picked up the photo from before they left and pointed his fingertip at a tall, thin man in the corner. "He is the Aurora Lord."

"And then?"

"At the time, this incident didn't receive much attention. It was just thought that the special magnetic field of the red star fragment caused the equipment to fail. The nine young scientists returned to their respective units to continue working, not noticing anything unusual about their bodies... But since the day the red star streaked across, human technology began to regress bit by bit, and a world war broke out within a year.

In that chaotic war that swept the world, the Aurora Lord was caught in a nuclear explosion, and an entire city around him was turned to ash, with tens of millions of lives evaporating instantly.

In that explosion, intense aurora covered the sky above the ruins, not dissipating for three days and three nights... After the aftermath of the nuclear explosion dissipated, a white-haired figure walked out of the sky full of aurora. It was from that time on that the Aurora Lord became the Aurora Lord..."

"So, the technological regression was likely caused by that fallen red star fragment?"

"Hard to say, but most scholars now believe that the red star itself was the culprit behind all this, and the fragment was just an accident... After all, the volume of the fragment is not even one-ten-thousandth of the real red star."

"But after saying so much, it still hasn't been explained clearly why the Aurora Lord is a Fuser... What exactly did he fuse with back then?"

Dr. Yi's drunken face became rarely serious. He looked into Han Meng's eyes and spoke word by word:

"What he fused with was the scientific inference he spent his whole life studying and exploring... which is 'Field Theory'."