Chapter 427: Facing Fear in Space |
A low, heavy rumble erupted from the launch pad, like hundreds of thunderclaps exploding simultaneously right next to their ears.
Everyone watching the launch felt their bodies resonate with the ground in that moment.
Other professionals, accustomed to the sight, barely reacted.
But Zhang Minglu was experiencing a rocket launch up close for the first time. His heart surging with excitement, he momentarily set aside his concerns about the experiment and focused on experiencing the multi-layered shock to his vision, hearing, and body.
Amid the roaring sound, flames and thick smoke engulfed the bottom of the launch tower, and the main body began to ascend.
Unlike the spectators outside, Guan Tong, now inside the rocket, was having a very different experience.
Filtered by the thick cabin walls and spacesuit, the earth-shattering noise at ignition was mostly blocked out. What he heard was a low, rumbling sound, reminding him of the diesel truck starting up back in his hometown when he was a kid.
That feeling was soon replaced by another sensation.
Thrust.
Guan Tong felt himself being pressed into the seat by this force. It grew stronger and heavier. For an ordinary person, even moving a muscle would be extremely difficult.
But for Guan Tong, an Ascendant who had already reached the second stage, this force was actually quite limited.
He even inexplicably recalled the assassination mission in Liruo'an, when Adam used his gravity field to kill Bishop Peter. The gravity field that multiplied fiftyfold in an instant was truly terrifying.
Not long after, Guan Tong felt his body begin to shake.
Not him shaking—the entire rocket was vibrating.
They must have reached the dense layer of the atmosphere.
Over the past few days, Guan Tong had been absorbing Mind Power input while cramming aerospace knowledge.
He knew that when a rocket passed through the densest part of the atmosphere, the cabin would shake violently due to air resistance. The astronauts would feel like they were riding a car through a road full of massive potholes, with their teeth and bones vibrating together.
Guan Tong slightly opened his faceplate and glanced out the porthole.
The once-straight horizon had become a distinct arc. The atmosphere, illuminated by sunlight, looked like a thin eggshell wrapping around Tianshui Star.
This feeling was undoubtedly strange and wonderful.
He could sense that as his body moved farther and farther from Tianshui Star, a familiar sense of unfamiliarity kept surfacing.
Guan Tong thought to himself, *I've heard before that many astronauts undergo strict psychological screenings, and they receive psychological counseling after returning from space… It really does seem necessary.*
He hadn't even left the atmosphere yet, and just viewing Tianshui Star from a macro perspective was already triggering strange psychological effects. Once he fully entered space, this feeling would only intensify.
He remembered reading a sci-fi novel before the transmigration. There was a line in it, roughly: *"Life emerging from the ocean onto land was an evolutionary milestone. But those fish that crawled ashore were no longer fish. Likewise, those who truly enter space are no longer human."*
Now, experiencing the departure from Tianshui Star firsthand, Guan Tong felt that statement was absolutely correct.
If humanity truly entered space—not just launching rockets or inhabiting a space station, but actually migrating to other planets—would Tianshui Star still be that important to the migrants?
In Guan Tong's view, migrating to an alien planet wasn't fundamentally different from migrating to a foreign country.
The first generation of migrants might still miss their motherland, still have the idea of "returning to their roots."
But what about the second and third generations?
If humanity could migrate to an alien planet, after two generations, would anyone still consider Tianshui Star, the mother planet, important? To them, the migrant planet would be their mother star.
Would those migrants then feel that it didn't matter even if the Fire Thief's Doomsday Rules destroyed it…
Thinking about this, Guan Tong felt a faint melancholy in his heart, yet he also thought he might be worrying too much.
In a few days, it would be the second anniversary of the Fire Thief's descent. Nearly twenty of the forty-nine Doomsday Rules had already been released. At most, in another three or four years, all forty-nine rules would be concluded—provided humanity could hold out until then.
In just three or four years, whether humanity could truly establish a self-sufficient migrant survival base on an alien planet was still up for debate. Talking about second and third-generation space migrants was far too distant.
However…
Guan Tong felt this couldn't be thought about with conventional logic.
Because while the Fire Thief brought disaster, it was also accelerating human technological progress. Not just accelerating—it had reached the point of "force-feeding."
For example, the "memory digitization" technology. If humanity relied on its own research, it would take at least a decade just to start. Now, due to contact with the nano-cluster intelligent beings brought by the rules, humans expected to break through and master this technology within a year.
Who knew if there would be more such rules later?
Even if not, if humanity could fully digest this technology and find the "special substance that doesn't exist on Tianshui Star" mentioned by the nano-intelligences, breaking through material limitations, technology might enter an explosive development phase.
Suddenly, just as Guan Tong's thoughts were wandering, the vibration of his body came to an abrupt halt.
The environment switched from noisy to silent in an instant. So sudden that his ears even rang with a buzzing tinnitus sound.
It seemed that…
Guan Tong's gaze fell on a paper sheet not far away, its top edge stuck to the cabin wall. Its lower half silently floated up. Not just the paper—Guan Tong caught a glimpse of his slightly long hair also floating up gently.
Sure enough, he thought. The rocket had broken through the atmosphere and entered a weightless state.
He looked out the porthole. The ink-blue sky and curved horizon had vanished, replaced by darkness.
A pure, bottomless darkness, blacker than any night, because there was no air in space to scatter light.
But in the universe, besides darkness, there were stars.
They seemed eternally studded on this boundless black curtain, as if time itself had frozen in that moment.
This was space.
Guan Tong took a deep breath. For once, he set aside all pressure and simply savored this moment of tranquility and peace that belonged only to him.
After completing a series of operations like booster separation and fairing separation, the "Empire Pioneer" had successfully entered Tianshui Star's orbit.
Looking out the side porthole, he could see Tianshui Star, a sphere composed of blue.
Cloaked in a pale white atmospheric shroud, it silently floated against the backdrop of space, dazzling under the starlight.
Looking at it, Guan Tong felt a surge of emotional waves. Hard to describe in words. This visual impact and emotional fluctuation might be summed up by what astronauts often referred to as the "Overview Effect."
After quietly gazing for a moment, Guan Tong knew it was time to "get to work."
Beixing and Suroma had expended massive resources to send him into space—not for sightseeing or expressing sentiments.
According to the plan, after entering orbit, he was to proceed to the cabin temporarily set up for observing Terra and conduct the Unknown Exploration experiment there.
The urgency was because time was running out.
This rule would end in one more day. If he wanted to explore anything, this was the last chance.
"Please follow me. I will guide you to the experiment cabin."
The space robot, following its programmed instructions, began executing its tasks once the rocket had stabilized in orbit.
Guan Tong took a few steps inside the cabin—no, to be precise, he "floated" a few steps.
This weightless state required time to adapt to. While it was interesting, time was what he lacked now.
He opened his Storage Box and selected a specialized item prepared for him by the Countermeasures Research Office for this situation.
The next moment, a pair of metal rings appeared around his ankles. Their built-in gravity cancelation effect immediately grounded him.
Under the robot's guidance, he walked to the experiment cabin.
It was almost empty inside, with only a metal chair welded to the cabin. The porthole glass was tightly covered by an electric curtain. He knew that once the curtain opened, he would see Scarlet Terra.
Just then, a voice came through the cabin's external communication device, transmitted from the ground.
"Guan Tong, can you hear me?"
It was Zhang Minglu's voice, relayed through a space base station composed of several relay satellites, ensuring real-time "heaven-earth" communication with a delay of mere seconds.
"I can hear you," Guan Tong replied.
"Good. We're at the Suroma Ground Control Center now. Your audio and video will be transmitted here with low latency."
Another voice cut in, belonging to the Director of the Suroma Space Agency: "Mr. Guan, once the curtain opens, you will see Scarlet Terra. We recommend you prepare yourself before starting."
"I understand."
Guan Tong walked over to the metal chair and sat down.
This chair was specially prepared for his observation, much like a meditation cushion for someone seeking enlightenment.
Observing Scarlet Terra directly with the naked eye in space would certainly produce a stronger effect than on Tianshui Star. This had already been proven in experiments conducted in Luruiguo using space telescopes—while enduring more attacks from the Scarlet Fear force, one could also find the deeply hidden Source of Fear more quickly.
Guan Tong stared at the curtain, his mind sorting through various preparations.
Over these three days of preparation, the Countermeasures Research Office had input over ten million Mind Power for him. Converted at a 5:1 ratio, that was over two million. Adding what he had left, he now had three million reserve Mind Power.
Based on Silver Fox's earlier experience, she had looked at a photo of Scarlet Terra for less than five seconds. In those five seconds, Wenren Yizhi's black chess piece was destroyed, and most of the Mental Stability Anchor totem was consumed.
Considering that Scarlet Fear would take effect 2-3 seconds after a human gazed at Scarlet Terra, that meant the effect of Scarlet Fear had only been active for about 2 seconds, yet it consumed nearly a thousand points of Mind Power used for mental defense.
Roughly calculating at 500 points consumed per second, Guan Tong's current three million reserve Mind Power, combined with some other items, could last about 6000 seconds—100 minutes.
One hour and forty minutes. That was the limit of his exploration time if he used everything.
Regardless of whether he could discover anything crucial, he would have to withdraw near the time limit. This was the consensus between Guan Tong, Zhang Minglu, and the others.
Guan Tong himself only gave himself about an hour.
He wouldn't push to the absolute limit—that was too dangerous. He also didn't know if the erosion speed of Scarlet Fear would accelerate over time. If it wasn't a constant rate but instead kept stacking and speeding up, his exploration time could be drastically reduced!
After checking all his items, he felt he was ready. He spoke, "Let's start now."
"Don't forget, if the situation goes wrong, you can decide to interrupt the experiment yourself," Zhang Minglu said. "That's your right."
Guan Tong replied, "I don't need Dr. Zhang to remind me of that."
"...Alright, let's begin. Press the button on the left armrest of your chair, and the electric curtain will open. During the experiment, unless you actively ask for help, we won't speak to avoid disturbing you."
Guan Tong pressed the button on the armrest. With a soft "click," the electric curtain covering the porthole slowly rose.
On the black canvas of space, the eerie red-glowing Scarlet Terra, just before the rule's end, finally met Guan Tong's eyes for the first time.
In an instant, Guan Tong heard many cracking sounds.
He knew it was his various mental defense items at work. These items, expensive on the Market, were now shattering and being destroyed one after another.
After just over twenty seconds, only one external aid remained.
That was Wenren Yizhi's black chess piece.
She had destroyed all her other black chess pieces, leaving only this one, infused with her greatest power. It vibrated wildly in Guan Tong's pocket, using the power of the "Realm" to resist the erosion of Scarlet Fear.
Guan Tong's main consciousness, meanwhile, was already immersed in Scarlet Fear.
His eyes stared straight at Scarlet Terra, while his consciousness entered some bizarre layer.
This layer was completely red. He himself felt like a spiritual body floating. He tried to lower his head to "look," but he couldn't see anything except red.
This meant that in this layer, he had no body—he existed purely as a consciousness. The "red" around him wasn't something he saw, but something he perceived.
This feeling was indescribably strange and deeply uncomfortable. Guan Tong just wanted to find the "Source of Fear" as quickly as possible.
As he "advanced," images kept trying to emerge. But these images, the moment they appeared, were immediately annihilated.
It was like opening a webpage on a computer. If you were fast enough, you could close it the moment it opened. The webpage would pop up, but its content wouldn't load—or perhaps it did load, but you just couldn't see it.
Guan Tong was facing this exact situation.
Scarlet Fear kept manifesting, creating terrifying scenarios. But the moment they appeared, they were blocked by Guan Tong's mental defense items, unable to fully form.
However, the number of "webpages" was simply too many. Red dots kept appearing and annihilating, appearing and annihilating. While feeling the eeriness, Guan Tong vaguely noticed that the speed at which these red dots were generated seemed to be increasing.
Zhang Minglu had never mentioned this. It seemed that the Human Consortium's experiments had never reached this level. If the experiments ended quickly, how could they know what would happen with prolonged exposure to Scarlet Fear?
*Crack!*
At that moment, Guan Tong felt a violent tremor in his pocket. His heart tightened—he knew Wenren Yizhi's chess piece must have shattered.
At the same time, the palm of his hand began to heat up. This was his own Mental Stability Anchor starting to take effect.
The warmth quickly turned scorching hot, meaning an "anchor point" was almost immediately consumed. Guan Tong quickly used the [Wordless Book] to inject Flowable Mind Power and keep the anchor from collapsing.
*My premonition came true,* Guan Tong thought. *The erosive power of Scarlet Fear really does increase and strengthen over time.* Originally, he had 1 hour and 40 minutes of exploration time. Now it seemed likely to shrink drastically to just tens of minutes or even less. He had to speed up!
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