Warhammer begins in 2026

As the Great Expedition advanced, the human empire's fleet swept across star systems, reclaiming countless lost human colonies.

That day, Huang Feng, along with the expeditionary fleet, discovered a very strange human colony in a remote and desolate star field.

The planet looked lifeless, its surface barren, vast tracts of land desertified, mountains withered, and not a single decent plant or water source to be seen. The entire planet was eerily quiet, devoid of industrial activity and city lights, completely unlike a normal human-colonized planet.

When the fleet first began its exploration, they even thought the area had long been abandoned and uninhabited.

But after the in-depth scan, everyone was stunned.

On this planet, there are complete human life signals, and billions of people are still alive, yet not a single one of them is active in the real world.

After landing and investigating, Huang Feng finally understood the situation.

This planet was once a legitimate human colony, and at its peak, it was densely populated and industrialized, developing steadily for over a thousand years thanks to its local resources.

But as time went on, the planet's underground minerals, water resources, and energy were all slowly depleted.

Resources are gradually depleting, industry is coming to a standstill, the agricultural system is collapsing, and the entire planet has completely lost its ability to continue feeding billions of people.

According to the normal procedure for colonizing a planet, once resources are exhausted, everyone should evacuate and move to a new planet to live.

But the most fatal problem with this planet is that they don't have any STC templates for spaceships.

The pioneers who colonized this place back then only brought STC data on landing, construction, and survival; they had no technical templates for deep space navigation or shipbuilding.

After resources were exhausted, the locals were completely trapped on the planet.

To make matters worse, this star system is perpetually shrouded in violent subspace storms, completely severing the planet's interstellar communication and navigation routes, making it utterly unable to establish any contact with other human worlds within the galaxy. External support cannot reach them, and their distress signals cannot be sent out, effectively isolating them completely in this desolate star system.

We can't leave. We can't build a spaceship; we can't leave this star system.

Staying won't help us survive. With resources completely depleted, staying any longer will only lead to a slow death from starvation and thirst.

Faced with dire circumstances, the humans of this planet have found an extremely unique way to survive.

They used every last bit of energy they had left to integrate the entire planet's network system, old data terminals, and neural connection devices, painstakingly building a virtual network world that covered the entire globe.

From the day the resources were completely exhausted, everyone on this planet gradually gave up on real life.

Through neural access technology, everyone's consciousness is immersed in the virtual network, and they live completely in the virtual world constructed by data.

Their physical bodies are uniformly placed in underground, temperature-controlled hibernation chambers, where they barely survive on a minimal amount of bioenergy.

Their consciousness continues to live, reproduce, socialize, and work in the online world, building a virtual civilization that will never run dry and will always be prosperous and stable.

For the locals, the real world is dead, barren, dry, and hopeless.

Only the virtual world is their true "reality" now.

Huang Feng stood on the desolate and lifeless surface, looking at the empty wasteland before him, and sensing the billions of sleeping bodies underground, as well as the incredibly vast and active data network of the entire planet. He felt a strange sense of wonder.

This was the most unusual human world she had ever seen since the Great Expedition began.

Although everyone is alive, it's as if they've all been detached from the real Milky Way.

Because of depleted resources and the lack of a single spaceship STC template, an entire human civilization has been forced to live within the network.

After learning about the origins of this planet, Huang Feng did not immediately turn around and leave, but planned to thoroughly investigate this special virtual civilization.

Led by several accompanying mechanical engineers and Imperial Guard soldiers, she traced the planet's remaining, ancient data threads. The surface was utterly barren; all urban infrastructure had long since crumbled and decayed. Only the deeply buried fiber optic cables, data base stations, and energy arrays continued to operate at overcapacity, continuously supplying computing power to the global virtual network.

The data flow across the entire planet is enormous, with a dense network of information covering every corner of the earth. The consciousness signals of billions of people converge, intertwine, and flow, remaining incredibly stable.

Through data analysis and source tracing by mechanical engineers, the group quickly identified the source of this virtual world—a giant network core computer room buried 10,000 meters underground.

This core server room is the last super facility on the entire planet and the source of all virtual data. It has never stopped operating for thousands of years. The thick alloy walls isolate it from the desolation of the outside world. Inside, old servers, data terminals, and neural network mainframes are densely packed together, with countless streams of light flashing rapidly, supporting the normal operation of the entire virtual world.

There are no people on duty here; the entire process is automated. Relying on the planet's meager remaining geothermal energy, it has single-handedly supported a virtual home for billions of people.

The mechanical engineers carefully examined the core's operational status, their expressions filled with amazement. They had never seen such a unique civilian network system before; it lacked any military protection, yet its extreme stability allowed it to sustain the existence of an entire civilization.

Standing before the network's core, Huang Feng could clearly feel the vibrant human life within the data stream before him. Daily routines, interactions, life, and reproduction in the virtual world were all vividly displayed, forming a stark contrast to the desolate and barren wasteland of reality.

A sense of curiosity arose in her heart, and she wanted to see for herself what kind of life this human civilization, trapped in a dead end of the galaxy and surviving for thousands of years by hiding in the network, had actually led.

After confirming that the network core was operating stably and there were no hidden dangers, Huang Feng prepared to access the virtual network world and personally explore everything inside.

But just as she was about to touch the data terminal and connect to the virtual network, the massive flow of data in front of her suddenly began to slowly converge.

Countless tiny fluorescent lights intertwined and converged, piecing together a clear human-shaped image in mid-air.

This is a phantom of an elderly and gentle man, whose body is composed of pure data light and shadow. His body is transparent and has no physical form, but his expression is clear, and his eyes carry the weariness and composure accumulated over thousands of years.

The image quietly looked at Huang Feng, without the slightest hostility, its tone calm yet carrying a hint of ancient vicissitudes, and slowly began to speak.

"Foreign travelers, there's no need to try to connect."

"I am the PhD of this world, and also the builder and maintainer of this global virtual network system."

Huang Feng paused slightly, quietly observing the data-driven figure before him.

Through a moment of perception, she could determine that the other party was not a living person, but an intelligent consciousness entity born and preserved through the core of the network, a guardian of civilization that had survived for thousands of years, nourished by the data of the entire planet.

The doctor's image sighed softly, his gaze sweeping over the desolate server room outside, and over the deathly desolation emanating from the alloy bulkhead.

"I know you come from the outer galaxy, and I know of humanity's arrival. For millennia, the warp storms have never subsided; we are the remnants of humanity, utterly forgotten and isolated."

"Back then, I spearheaded the effort, using the planet's last remaining resources to build this virtual network, saving billions of lives. The real world can't sustain us, so I can only allow everyone to live within data, thus continuing the flame of civilization."

He recounted his past with equanimity, without pride or resentment, only the tranquility of having endured a thousand years of solitude, silently guarding this virtual world hidden beneath the wasteland.