Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 129 Soft Time

As was destined, Wu Yue spent the rest of his life in anguish and confusion. He had participated deeply in the human memorial project of Zaire as a volunteer, but he did not find spiritual comfort in it. At the age of seventy-seven, Wu Yue ushered in his final moment, but he was not alone at this moment. Chief Chang Weisi, who was over ninety years old, came to visit him with a cane.

"Commander, I'm sorry... I'm not a soldier with firm beliefs. I envy Beihai..." Wu Yue said in the end.

"No, you are. You are one of the best warriors I have ever trained. Beihai is not what you think. He may make mistakes. You don't have to become him."

"Can we... really win?"

"Yes, it's definitely possible, it's definitely possible."

A pair of aged hands grasped another pair of even older hands.

When the nurses from the sanatorium rushed over, Chang Weisi let go of Wu Yue's hand, and tears were already streaming down his face.

That resilient warrior who transcended time during hibernation was also someone Chang Weisi constantly talked about in his later years.

But compared to Chang Weisi and Wu Yue, who couldn't forget Zhang Beihai, Zhang Beihai's father was much more open-minded.

In his last public appearance in a television interview, he frankly admitted: "I have lived many years longer than expected, and everything is fine."

"Don't you miss your son?" a reporter asked.

"He's gone to realize his own life's value, which is a good thing." Facing the camera, Mr. Zhang chuckled, his infectious laughter always putting people at ease.

The Future Historians reached their peak around the 1940s in the Crisis Era, but as the older generation of Future Historians gradually passed away, this short-lived organization quickly disappeared into the annals of time.

The hidden gem of the future historiography school, the girl from the space force who mustered up the courage to carry a sniper rifle and snipe the compressed oxygen tank from a distance to finish off the old aerospace engineer, Dongfang Mingxi, also carried that insignificant guilt and her blessings for Zhang Beihai, and quietly walked towards the rest of her life.

This girl, who once vowed never to get married, fell in love with and married a space force officer who belonged to the same school of history, thanks to her father's efforts. They were the first newlyweds in China to hold their wedding on a space warship (the Wan Nian Yan Di), with Captain Zhuang Yu personally serving as the wedding officiant.

After marriage, Dongfang Mingxi raised a son and a daughter. It is worth mentioning that these children were not born on Earth, but in the medical area of ​​the space station. These twins are the world's first "new humans in space".

Regarding the naming of their child, Dongfang Mingxi and her husband had long ago reached a consensus: the boy would take the father's surname, and the girl would take the mother's surname. The Chinese character "Dongfang," which carries a certain connotation, has thus been passed down through generations.

Let's return our focus to Earth.

The unknown Nordic tycoon ultimately did not fully reclaim Norway's Garden of Eden. After the Wallfacer Luo Ji and his family went into hibernation, the tycoon donated the Garden of Eden to the United Nations.

Eden thus welcomed its two temporary visitors, Garnin and Kant.

The former was the rotating chairman of the Planetary Defense Council for many terms, and the latter had served as the liaison for the Wallfacer Luo Ji. In particular, Kant was very familiar with the place, having lived here for six years as a butler.

After they went into seclusion, there was no further news of them, but Luo Qing once took the time to visit them.

"We can no longer understand the changes of the times, but your charm remains unchanged."

The elderly Garnin said to Luo Qing.

Kant, who was standing nearby, asked, "Mr. Luo Qing, how is Dr. Luo Ji's incantation going? Is there any news about Stellar 187J3X1?"

Luo Qing shook his head: "I don't think so. Fifty years have passed, and his incantation has only just flown past star 187J3X1. It will take at least another fifty years before we can get information about it."

"Then I can't wait any longer. If you see the answer, please tell us in front of our gravestones. I'm really curious."

"Definitely." Luo Qing gave the same brief answer as Sai.

Compared to most ordinary people, Garnin and Kant were both very long-lived. It is said that both of them lived to be over a hundred years old and died peacefully without illness. Luo Qing was quite surprised when he heard this news.

General Fitzroy and Dr. Ringer, who discovered the Trisolaran fleet and ten Trisolaran probes, were old rivals in military and scientific pursuits, both living to their eighties. In the final stages of their lives, humanity built the Hubble Space Telescope, a super telescope with a diameter of 100 meters and a length of several kilometers, in space. General Fitzroy and Dr. Ringer both saw the Trisolaran planet from four years prior through it.

But they never saw the Trisolaran fleet or the probes already flying ahead. Before the ten probes flew over the "snowfield" formed by the third interstellar dust cloud, the two had already passed away with regret.

In recognition of General Fitzroy and Dr. Ringer's contribution to the first discovery of the Trisolaran fleet's probes, the PDC decided to rename the planned Hubble 4 telescope the "Fitzroy-Ringer Telescope."

Luo Qing had suggested to the two men, especially Dr. Linger, that they hibernate, but the latter declined the Wallfacer's suggestion, explaining, "I am afraid of the future."

Besides Shi Xiaoming, who was mentioned earlier, the lives of ordinary people also continue and end in the same way.

At the end of his life, Luo Qing came to the side of Liu Xin, the coal gasification engineer who caused the geological fire disaster.

"Chief Engineer Liu."

In the prison hospital, Liu Xin, whose life was about to fall into the abyss, struggled to find the source of the voice when he heard it. His retina had been burned in the fire disaster, and he had spent more than forty years in darkness during his remaining years of permanent imprisonment.

“You…” Liu Xin stretched out her hands to Luo Qing.

"The Planetary Defense Council has sentenced you to approximately 100,000 years in prison for the crime of endangering the world. Considering that your actions were a methodological error rather than a matter of thought, your life has been spared. I will now extend your sentence to ensure that the 100,000-year permanent imprisonment is carried out properly. Do you have any objections? Do you wish to appeal? If so, I can find you a lawyer."

Liu Xin froze, his hand fell limply to his side, and his pale pupils stared blankly at Luo Qing.

"I have no objection..."

“Okay.” Luo Qing nodded, then gently pushed out with his palm, and Liu Xin’s “soul” that was not visible to the naked eye—actually, his brain and body in a quantum state—was completely separated by Luo Qing.

A near-infinite, eternal quantum prison awaits him.

From an outsider's perspective, Liu Xin suddenly died by the bedside just as the person facing the wall finished speaking those words.

"After cremation, scatter the ashes into the Taiyuan Sea," Luo Qing said to the two forensic doctors behind him.

Liu Xin was not the only person Luo Qing executed in the quantum prison. In this world, all the Trisolaran criminals who had launched terrorist activities were dragged into the quantum prison by Luo Qing at the last moment of their lives, and Luo Qing also announced this fact to the world.

Permanent imprisonment, a seemingly insignificant crime, has become far more terrifying than the death penalty these days. No one wants to stay in an eternal quantum prison. Luo Qing publicly stated that the quantum prison is a cubic space with a diameter of 10×10×10 meters that he personally built. In this space, there is no sight, hearing, or touch, and people have no worries about their health. They can only relive their memories of "before death" in indefinite darkness. That will be their last bit of pleasure until their sentence ends.

Upon learning of the existence of the "eternal prison," the International Court of Justice quietly lowered the term of permanent imprisonment to no more than one thousand years and increased the proportion of death sentences.

Among those associated with Liu Xin is Miao Fuquan, the original owner of the blind mine that caused the geological disaster. This coal mine owner's pre-purchased space burial service was also fulfilled in his own life.

This special funeral, which cost two million yuan, was cremated into ashes amidst the resentful gazes of the Sichuan woman and Miao Fuquan's son.

Miao Fuquan's ashes were placed in a metal urn, which was then transported to near-Earth orbit via a space elevator and finally launched at one ten-thousandth the speed of light in a space orbital electromagnetic accelerator.

The 1% speed of light that the Ladder Project struggled to achieve decades ago is now commonplace.

For Miao Fuquan, this speed was neither too fast nor too slow, just enough to leave the generalized solar system and enter the vast universe in three hundred years.

As for the two old neighbors of coal boss Miao Fuquan, retired worker Zhang Yuanchao died of illness at the age of eighty. His son and daughter-in-law inherited the position of ordinary people, and his grandson Zhang Yan, on whom he had placed high hopes, also grew up like an ordinary person and continued to live in that difficult era.

Physics teacher Yang Jinwen lived to the age of ninety-two. In his last moments, he mentioned a space burial, but his son and daughter, who had come from the United States, ruthlessly rejected the request, saying it would deplete the family's savings.

In the first century of the Crisis Era, time devoured everything at an absolutely uniform speed, and the witnesses of history gradually realized that the life, death, prosperity, and decline of individuals, as well as the rise and fall of civilizations, all had predetermined outcomes.

After all the acquaintances he had made in the early 21st century had either gone into hibernation or passed away, Luo Qing felt that he had done everything he could for humanity at present, so he chose to go into seclusion for a long time.

(End of this chapter)