The ancient return was exposed by his sister's live stream.

The study fell silent again.

Chen Siyao stood at the door, staring at the floating bead for a long time.

"Six years," she whispered.

He turned and walked to the living room, turned on the projector on his wristband, and pulled up the talent list sent by Cai Jingwen.

Thirty-seven top space physicists, twelve quantum mechanics experts, and eight string theory researchers.

She looked at them one by one.

The sky outside is still blue. The sun is still shining. People are still going to work, shopping, arguing, and dating as usual.

No one knows that the boundaries of the solar system are shrinking inch by inch.

. .

the first year.

The Human Union Astronomical Observatory was the first to detect the anomaly. Three deep-space probes near Neptune's orbit lost contact on the same day, with all signals cut off.

The investigation team sent two warp drive spaceships over there.

The spaceship didn't return.

the second year.

All eight orbiting space stations around Uranus were rendered unusable within a week. The last images transmitted back showed that the outer walls of the space stations were covered with black, filamentous objects.

The UN Security Council held an emergency closed-door meeting.

The video was played at the meeting. Nineteen of the twenty-seven representatives from the Security Council stood up.

"What is that?"

"have no idea."

"What do you mean by 'I don't know'?"

The third year.

Neptune has disappeared.

It wasn't an explosion, it wasn't a collapse. It was an entire planet that was completely swallowed up within three months.

The entire process was captured by the telescope of the Human Alliance. Black threads wrapped around the ice-blue planet from all directions and then tightened.

It's like crushing a grape with one hand.

But not even a drop of juice spilled.

The news was suppressed for forty-eight hours. Then it was leaked.

Global riots.

In the fourth year, Uranus followed in Neptune's footsteps.

The UN Security Council could no longer contain itself. The Speaker uttered that word during a global live broadcast...

A gold-devouring behemoth.

A living, colossal monster capable of devouring the entire solar system. It is squeezing inward from the outer reaches of the solar system. The Black Tide is its body.

Those threads are its tentacles. And at its center is an eye larger than Jupiter.

The live stream was interrupted for six seconds. This was because 1.1 billion people worldwide simultaneously accessed the live stream, causing server overload.

Six seconds later, the signal was restored, and the live chat was completely white.

Most of the content consisted of just two words: "It's over."

The panic lasted for three whole months.

In three months, the global crime rate soared by 400 percent. The governments of seventeen small countries were paralyzed. Twenty-three million people flocked to religious sites to pray.

Then... humanity calmed down.

It wasn't true calmness; it was a kind of tranquility born from utter despair. After crying and screaming enough, I realized there was another option besides waiting to die...

Get to work.

The UN Security Council passed the Solar System Survival Act.

The entire text is only one page long, with three core points:

First, effective immediately, all entertainment industries, luxury goods manufacturing, and inefficient infrastructure projects within the entire Federation of People's Associations will cease. All industrial capacity will be redirected to the "Escape Plan."

Second, dismantle Mercury. Dismantle the asteroid belt. Dismantle the moon's crust. Dismantle Saturn's rings. All usable metals, minerals, and energy resources are used to manufacture the ultimate equipment.

Third, the hydrogen and helium reserves of Venus and Mercury, as the ultimate energy source, have been exhausted.

On the day the bill was passed, the mining platform in Mercury's orbit began operating 24 hours a day.

Three days later, the first signs of mining appeared on the lunar surface.

A week later, the asteroid belt was filled with the Human Federation's dismantling fleet.

The Human Resources and Social Sciences Academy listed six research directions.

First, artificial wormhole technology. By using extreme energy to warp spacetime, a shortcut can be torn open in three-dimensional space, bypassing the encirclement of the gold-devouring behemoth, and directly reaching a safe area outside the solar system.

Second, the digitization of human consciousness. Abandoning the physical body, human consciousness is uploaded to photon digitization. As long as photons exist, "human" remains alive.

Third, the high-dimensional space bubble jump engine. Create a high-dimensional space bubble, put the entire ark inside, and jump out from the direction of the "thickness" of the bubble membrane of this universe.

Fourth, the ninth-order warp drive. Building upon the existing fifth-order warp drive, it increases space compression by four orders of magnitude. Theoretically, it could reach 100,000 times the speed of light.

Fifth, particle decomposition, recombination, and transmission. The ark and its inhabitants are decomposed into streams of quantum particles, which dissipate along higher-dimensional gaps and are then reassembled in a safe area.

Sixth, a high-dimensional phase shift isolation system. The behemoth's devouring effect occurs in three-dimensional space. Therefore, the Ark should be shifted into a three-dimensional "interlayer," the same location, but with a different phase.

Six roads.

Five years later, most of them are still at the mathematical model stage.

Only two made it to the laboratory.

The first project was the "artificial wormhole," and the first phase was completed. Chen Siyao's team successfully created a brief-living "artificial wormhole" in the laboratory.

The second is the digitization of "digitalized life" consciousness, and the first stage is complete.

At the Human Union Academy of Sciences, the complete consciousness of an experimental monkey was successfully uploaded to the photon computing matrix, where it survived in a virtual environment for seventy-two hours, exhibiting the same behavioral patterns as before the upload.

Chen Siyao stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of Baotian City, watching the transport aircraft coming and going in the sky above Pengcheng. The density was more than ten times higher than before.

"Sister Jingwen." She pressed the communication bracelet, "How's the wormhole project progressing?"

"The first set of experimental data is in." Cai Jingwen's voice was noticeably tired. "The spatial distortion rate reached 0.3%. It's very low, but at least it proves that the theoretical direction is correct."

"0.3 percent," Chen Siyao repeated.

"Yaoyao, you need to give us time. This isn't building a spaceship, or mining. The energy density required for space folding..."

"I know. Continue."

Cai Jingwen paused for two seconds. "Yaoyao, your brother..."

"He is in seclusion."

"……how long?"

"uncertain."

The communication was disconnected.

Yang Wanqing poked her head out from the kitchen: "Yaoyao, you haven't eaten again."

I'm not hungry.

You haven't eaten for three days.

Chen Siyao turned and glanced at her. Yang Wanqing withdrew her head, then poked it out again a few seconds later:

"How about I make you a cup of nutrient solution? You're at least a being of the Dharma Body, you won't starve, but I feel uncomfortable seeing you like this."

Chen Siyao didn't say anything, but walked to the dining table and sat down.

Yang Wanqing quickly made a cup, handed it over, and then sat down opposite him.

"Yao Yao".

"Um."

"Why didn't you tell the Human Alliance?" Yang Wanqing lowered her voice. "Tell them that Master has a way, tell them there's a portal to another world..."

"I can't say."

Why?

Chen Siyao held the cup but didn't drink.

"Ten thousand years ago, the migration of the entire cultivation civilization rested on my brother's shoulders. Ten thousand years later, it's still the same." Her voice was very soft.

"If the People's Federation finds out, all the resources, all the expectations, and all the pressure will rush to him alone."

"They'll stop their research, all that wormhole stuff, all that consciousness digitization—they'll give up. After all, the Supreme God's around..."

Yang Wanqing remained silent.

"I want them to take matters into their own hands." Chen Siyao looked up. "Every additional path means a greater chance of survival. What if something happens to my brother..."

She didn't finish her sentence.

Looking at her, Yang Wanqing suddenly felt that this person was carrying a frighteningly heavy burden than her best friend.