Malin rolled over and sat next to Mr. Zhang, taking out a cigarette and lighting one for himself. In this damned world, if his previous life experiences made him want to do something for this world, now his feeling was even more urgent, just as this gentleman had said, the world never revolved around a single race or a civilization. But as a human, he had the right, and even more so the duty, to rebuild civilization.
To be with all those in this world who are willing to fight for the future.
The elevator platform began to descend, and Malin, having smoked half the cigarette, saw the girls full of worry and Anthony. He stood up and tossed the cigarette butt into the ashtray on a small platform table: "Mr. Zhang has left."
"Mr. Malin, according to the Union Agreement, you are now my new guide," said AI Jason.
"How do you maintain yourself and the operation of your robots?" Malin asked.
"The underground automatic factory still has hundreds of uranium materials, which are enough for me to operate for this long, and the trade with the Farolians allows me to obtain enough minerals to maintain the operation of the entire airport. Of course, now there are no spacecraft left, so I handed the airport to the family of young master Anthony in exchange for ore and resources."
Jason’s answer made Malin turn his head to look at Anthony: "It seems like your family’s trade with this AI far exceeds my imagination, Anthony. Do you want to know how the masters of this planet survived before the Great Destruction?"
With Malin’s question, one screen after another appeared behind him.
Anthony glanced at his company and then back to Malin: "I, I am a Mage... I... I’ve always been in pursuit of the ’Truth’, I want to know! I don’t have the talent for diving deep, but I still want to know! I want to know what exactly happened to this world!"
"Jason, start," said Malin, and then turned to join the girls.
"Ladies, let’s revisit history together."
The first to appear on the screen was a girl with sun-kissed skin, wearing a bikini which seemed perfectly normal to Malin, but quite revealing to the others behind him.
"Zhang, are you sure you want to record me? I’m not exactly a beauty," she said, laughing.
"Of course, at least you’re natural. Lydia, next month is our Spring Festival. How about coming over to my place for dinner?"
"Sure, I should be free then, but why aren’t you going home? I remember people usually go home for the Spring Festival."
"Can’t be bothered to go back," Mr. Zhang replied without much sincerity.
"Is this a pre-death record of Mr. Zhang?" Malin asked.
"Yes. Three days later, destruction arrived, and Miss Lydia disappeared, presumed dead." This time, Jason spoke in a common language that everyone could understand, his talent in learning made everyone feel embarrassed.
Next, Malin and the girls saw the last part of Mr. Zhang’s life, saw his despair grow day by day, and ultimately give up his body, connecting his brain to the mainframe system to build a fake home for himself.
But when Malin and the others came in, this no longer young man woke up from his dream and passed away peacefully.
Malin felt that Mr. Zhang must have been fearful... fearful that the whole world no longer had any living people, but when Malin and the others arrived, he left this world with joy... without any regrets, perhaps.
The girls were frightened by the Chaos Attacks in the following records—Earth Union soldiers, as mere mortals, fighting against Chaos left a profound impact on everyone. When Malin saw a soldier use an anti-Chariot mine, slapping it directly onto a Chaos Chariot, burning both the soldier and the entire Chariot to ashes, he was moved by the fearlessness he saw and sighed.
Then came the surrounding situations recorded by the AI.
They saw the Earth Union returning, and although a significant loss of population had occurred, Naples still existed, and people were starting to rebuild their homes.
Malin, watching the contents on the screen with the girls, obtained a timeline provided by Jason.
The first Great Destruction, the Church said the timing was beyond reckoning, with the scriptures recording it as at least ten thousand years ago. Malin could verify the specific date through Eleven, and now he also knew that a millennium after the first Chaos invasion when the Chaos rifts completely closed, all Chaos were repelled, leaving survivors who began to gather and eventually cleared some areas within the old city district of Naples.
At that time, humans still had a complete civilization, knowledge was not lost, and although almost all technical workers had died, at least they could still use technology. Some of them even had enough ways to repair a large portion of the machinery. Jason AI did not make contact with them at that time, as Mr. Zhang had not given him any instructions.
The survivors of human civilization struggled on Earth for a millennium, barely beginning to rejuvenate civilization, before the second Great Destruction, which brought the invasion of different kinds from outer space.
In Jason’s hands, the satellite that humans had just relaunched recorded the fleet of the different kind; they did not choose a ground invasion but rather dropped some biological weapons.
The purpose of these biological weapons was to kill; many people died, some fled to shelters, others escaped to the mountains, and a few hid in the ruins of cities.
This destruction lasted seven hundred years. For the first ten years, humanity struggled desperately; afterwards, the biological weapons were actually fighting against Chaos, who invaded again.
Eventually, the era of the rift tides ended, and the forces of Chaos were once again banished back to Subspace.
The different kind was recalled and then cast into the sun—destroyed by their masters.
In Malin’s view, perhaps the fleet of the different kind had confirmed the overlap of Earth’s coordinates with Subspace; they chose to Purify this planet, which would easily explain the behavior of these biological weapons.
As for why they did not burn the planet to ash, Malin was somewhat perplexed, but at least he had to be thankful they lifted a finger; otherwise, a single burn of glass, and Malin wouldn’t have the life he has today.
Two centuries later, the various species that survived opened the shelters again, beginning to return to the surface.
At this time, many tribes had lost their sense of affiliation with the Earth Union, which existed only in the memories of a very few people.
But nonetheless, humanity once again survived.
The third Great Destruction, two thousand years after the second, brought a global cooling event. Cold currents swept across the entire world, causing incalculable losses—in Naples, the newly built human cities turned into cities of ice and snow, with only one sunny day in three hundred and sixty-five, the rest filled with endless wind and snow. Often, the wind would blow all day long; measuring devices that would usually last twenty years needed to be entirely replaced every seven. Jason had no choice but to stop replacements and abandon surface structures—loss of robots and materials were beyond his capacity to bear.
During this period, Mr. Zhang had left the database. After seeing the harshest world above ground, he left instructions to trigger his awakening and then began his long sleep.
Malin was not sure how to define the Little Ice Age, but this cold wave lasted a full millennium. At its onset, there were tens of thousands of shelters globally, but after a millennium, only one hundred and forty-six were able to open again after the ice sealed period ended.
Among these, eleven shelters no longer held civilization; cannibals survived on cruel laws of survival.
In the remaining one hundred thirty-five shelters, only the Hangzhou Bay shelter along the coastal area of the East Asian continent still recognized the Earth Union.
But this shelter lost the vast majority of its habitable areas, ultimately retaining less than five hundred people who then disappeared from history. AI Jason had intercepted their communications, confirming they vanished forty-seven years after the shelter opened.
Facing an extreme crisis, humanity once again stood up; kingdoms and empires of various shapes and colors emerged in the world. It was also during this period that Spiritual Energy surged and primordial professions appeared among humans.
It was twenty-seven centuries after the third Great Destruction that the fourth destructive event occurred. An internal civil war within the empires of the European region once again opened the rifts in Subspace. The human losses in the European region were heavy in this destruction. Some families that had been passed down since the first Great Destruction were swept into history’s trash heap, but this time humanity held back the assault from Chaos with their own strength and sacrifice. Yet because the losses were too great, they had to choose to contract, followed by the fifth Great Destruction caused by the regression of civilization after the fourth.
During this period, AIs that had survived since before the Great Destruction recognized the existence of Nameless and began to lie dormant—for them, Nameless was just another kind of the different kind.
Then Malin saw some strange signs in the last century of this history—leaders began to emerge frequently in the Asian and European regions—this was the name AIs had given to these people.
Because these individuals possessed insights far beyond ordinary people, either leading humans out of the abyss, creating a wealth of new technology for humanity, helping kingdoms prosper, or becoming Legendary figures who slew Chaos.
Among these names, Malin saw that of old Hoffman, of his two friends, of Faye’s mother... and many others Malin did not recognize.
But Malin saw one name—Chino Gallo.
The oldest surviving member of the Gallo family, Anthony’s great-grandfather, one of the very few on the list whose name was not struck through.
This aroused some curiosity in Malin—if the leaders were a choice of civilization’s self-rescue, then so many leaders... was abnormal.
Malin was very curious.