Chapter 47: Reversing the Era

Chu Muyun was not surprised by Chen Ling’s arrival.

He smiled slightly, pulled a chair out from the store, and signaled for Chen Ling to sit.

"It seems you finally have the patience to hear me finish explaining our 'justice'."

"I'm all ears."

Although Chen Ling was desperate to know everything about the USB drive, he believed that since Chu Muyun had given it to him, he would definitely explain it. So, he waited patiently for Chu Muyun to start from the beginning.

"How much do you know about the Great Cataclysm?"

Chen Ling recalled what Dr. Lin had said earlier.

"They say a crimson meteor streaked across the sky, the gray world intersected with this one, affecting it... and Calamities crawled out. That's it."

Speaking of this, Chen Ling suddenly remembered that he had also seen the crimson meteor on the news in the USB drive...

As if thinking of something, his eyes widened in shock.

"Wait... the one in the USB drive, that was the world before the Great Cataclysm?!"

"That's right." Chu Muyun glanced at him in surprise, seemingly not expecting Chen Ling to guess it so quickly. "What you just said is the 'Great Cataclysm' known to most people in the nine domains, but the actual 'Great Cataclysm' was far more than that..."

"What do you mean?"

"Legend has it that the world before the Great Cataclysm was prosperous and flourishing. Humans could use the power of science to do many things... like flying into the sky, bringing the dead back to life, cities lit bright as day throughout the night, constructing virtual worlds within reality, and even leaving this planet to explore the mysterious and unknown 'universe'..."

As Chu Muyun spoke, he observed Chen Ling’s expression, only to find that the latter had no emotional fluctuation, and couldn't help but ask:

"Aren't you surprised?"

"Huh?"

"What I said, isn't it surprising enough?"

Chu Muyun, like everyone else in this world—no, this era—had grown up here and naturally had never seen the technological level before the Great Cataclysm. To them, everything described in legends was void, just like modern people listening to myths.

"...Oh, it's pretty amazing." Chen Ling nodded expressionlessly.

Aren't those just airplanes, medicine, electric lights, games, and spaceships... To Chen Ling, who had lived in a modern metropolis, these were already commonplace.

However, if his so-called "past life" was actually the world before the Great Cataclysm, then didn't that mean he hadn't transmigrated between worlds...

But was instead traveling through time?

"In any case, 379 years ago, a crimson meteor streaked across the sky. Since then, human material civilization began to regress." Chu Muyun recited it as if it were a set script. "The technological crystallization humans were most proud of collapsed first—photolithography machines, spaceships, and superweapons capable of annihilating the world..."

"You mean... human civilization is regressing?"

"That's right. People before the Great Cataclysm discovered that they could no longer manufacture these things. It was as if the most basic scientific principles within them had all failed. Even if they assembled the parts perfectly, identical to before, they just wouldn't function...

As time passed, more and more things lost their function: mobile phones, computers, high-speed trains, and large-scale power plants...

Panic spread through human society. They didn't know how far material civilization would regress... In this fear, they began to slaughter each other."

"Wait." Chen Ling interrupted Chu Muyun. "Material civilization regressing should be a predicament faced by all of humanity. Why didn't they unite and collaborate to overcome the difficulties, instead of slaughtering each other?"

"They did unite, but it was useless." Chu Muyun paused. "And I also said, they possessed certain superweapons capable of annihilating the world, but not every country had these weapons...

Once these weapons all failed, everyone’s technological civilization regressed to the same level, and the original balance of power was broken... Strong countries were no longer strong, and weak countries were no longer weak.

To protect their status, resources, and wealth, the strong countries chose to..."

"Launch all their superweapons and wipe out the weak countries that didn't possess them??" Chen Ling thought of something. "World War?!"

Chen Ling certainly knew the importance of nuclear weapons to strong countries. If strong countries were the first to know that the technological level of all countries would regress to the same starting line, they would inevitably launch a war first.

Because losing their weapons meant losing their deterrent, and other countries would inevitably target their oil, wealth, and so on...

"You’re basically right, but the strong countries didn't just attack the weak... they attacked each other too. Because if technological levels really regressed severely, human resources would be what truly determined a country’s life or death. They wanted to balance the strength of every country, so they had to weaken the populations of countries with different stances as much as possible.

The crystallization of hundreds of years of human civilization accumulation ultimately became nothing more than pure killing machines under the tide of regression..."

Chen Ling was silent for a long time before saying slowly:

"The intersection of the Gray Realm wasn't the root cause of the Great Cataclysm... human slaughter was."

"After that Great Cataclysm, the world was left in ruins. The survivors thought the world had a new order, but they didn't expect that after only a few days, the Gray Realm began to intersect with reality...

Pollution from an unknown world eroded the earth, cruel Calamities slaughtered living beings, and human society, already at the end of its rope, suffered a devastating blow.

After that, the world was no longer divided into countries. Survivors gathered together and established nine bases. Later, they mastered methods to resist the Gray Realm’s intersection, and the nine bases gradually expanded into the nine domains of today."

"I see." Chen Ling let out a long sigh.

Wait...

If what Chu Muyun said was true, didn't that mean his parents would also perish in the Great Cataclysm?

Not just his parents, but all the relatives, friends, and colleagues he knew would be swept into this catastrophe... and how many could survive it?

Those people standing on the street watching the news at the time would never have imagined that the world would undergo a massive change shortly after.

Chen Ling’s eyes trembled slightly. He now knew everything that happened in that era; he knew that almost everyone he cared about would perish, yet he was powerless to stop it... That era was nearly four hundred years ago. Now that he knew, what could he do?

"...You told me all this, and then what?"

"Then, that is the sole purpose of our Twilight Society, and the 'justice' we believe in." Chu Muyun pointed outside the door. "What do you think of the Aurora Domain?"

In Chen Ling’s mind, the image of Wu Youdong limping, the rickshaw puller’s disdain for Law Enforcers, the vicious and arrogant people of Ice Spring Street, and the Law Enforcers colluding with them for profit all surfaced...

"...It's very chaotic." In the end, that was all he could manage to say.

"Then what if I told you that compared to other domains, the Aurora Domain is already quite good?"

Chen Ling was stunned.

"The Twilight Society gathers a group of poor wretches rejected by society. In the eyes of the world, we might be lunatics, failures, executioners... Our only commonality is that we are completely desperate about this era..."

"So, we gather together."

"Gather together, and then what?" Chen Ling asked.

The yellowish sunset gradually sank into the earth, and half of Chu Muyun’s face sank into the shadows.

He took a deep breath and said, word by word,

"Reverse the era, restart the world."