Chapter 308: The Fifth Element
Watching the golden liquid in front of him, he suddenly felt that even after a decade of earth-shattering changes, humanity's self-destructive experiments had never ceased.
Bai Mo's initial goal, at the military's request, was merely to refine the life alchemy array, creating an artificial bloodline with significant potential. This would allow ordinary soldiers, relying solely on instinctual evolution after bloodline implantation, to possess Second Tier combat strength, enabling them to counter the American Federation's power armor.
However, when he actually began the work, he decided that if he was going to do it, he might as well create something more interesting. A standard implanted bloodline, peaking at the Second Tier, held little significance in his eyes. After producing a half-finished product that met the requirements, he casually handed it over to the Spirit Energy Research Institute to refine the details.
For the remaining time, he followed this line of thought, continuing to experiment with even crazier ideas. He invested astronomical resources, intending to create an implanted bloodline with an extremely high upper limit—one that would at least be meaningful to him.
As his status within the Huaxia Federation grew, Bai Mo increasingly disregarded costs. Matters like sacrificing performance to reduce expenses were simply tossed to others to handle.
Whether it was merit or reward, none of it mattered to him. He had long since surpassed the stage where he needed others' validation to prove his worth.
Now, Bai Mo's task was to judge who comprised the new generation of prodigies, not to fight to the death like a monkey on a martial arts stage for the sake of being the "number one of his tier".
Time rewound a few hours.
"This is another great leap for humanity. The Four-Nation Alliance will collectively purge the alien races on the Moon that could threaten human survival, and then formally commence the lunar colonization plan! It is projected that within fifty years, the Moon will be transformed into a second Earth, with beautiful mountains and rivers!"
Uncharacteristically, there were no voices anywhere in the world calling to defend alien human rights. Even though everyone knew this lunar expedition force was undertaking an act of genocide, those who previously stirred up trouble over every conceivable right now remained silent.
For even if they didn't keep quiet, someone would forcibly shut their mouths with a fist. The term "freedom of speech" had become increasingly luxurious in the new era. With lunar development tied to the interests of countless high-ranking figures, no one wished to hear dissenting voices.
I disagree with your opinion, therefore I will fight to the death to defend your right to remain silent.
Amidst an atmosphere of harmony, rockets ascended one after another, laden with humanity's countless aspirations for the sea of stars. They pierced through the atmosphere, embarking on their journey towards the Moon.
However, as the distance grew, the avatars aboard the rockets discovered a grave problem: an unbearable signal delay between themselves and their main bodies!
Previously, no one had considered this issue. For a long time, people on Earth had enjoyed using their avatars, believing them to always be perfectly synchronized with their main bodies. They thought that in the future, avatars could form a super army, conquering galaxies and fearless of death.
But reality had poured a bucket of cold water over them. The speed of information transfer between a main body and its avatar actually had an upper limit: the speed of light, at least for the current stage.
The reason they hadn't noticed the delay before was simply that the signal, traveling at the speed of light, took less than one-twentieth of a second to propagate between any two points on Earth. This amount of time wasn't even enough for a blink.
Furthermore, for most of the time, the distance between avatars and their main bodies was far less than the Earth's diameter, making the signal delay even more imperceptible.
"How should we handle this?" Chen Bo, stationed at the ground control center, asked the people around him. This was another one of his avatars; his main body naturally remained in Ziliu Sea.
"Once they reach the Moon, the signals we send to the avatars will have a round-trip delay of almost three seconds."
"For the past few years, the mainstream hypothesis among researchers worldwide regarding the principle of avatar information transmission has been quantum entanglement, because all electromagnetic wave-related hypotheses have already been disproven by experiments."
"Spirit Qi, this substance, has turned the fundamental physics of our world upside down. Now it has conjured up an existence that transmits information at the speed of light but isn't an electromagnetic wave..." Inside the Spirit Energy Research Institute, the few physicists urgently summoned to try and solve the problem wore grim expressions.
Since the emergence of Spirit Qi, this was not its first challenge to established physical theories.
A few years ago, in the fundamental research into mental will and psychic power, which could interfere with reality, researchers discovered that they were not, in essence, electromagnetic forces, nor even one of the four fundamental forces!
The mechanism by which mental will interferes with reality is achieved through a force that, to this day, they have been unable to analyze—just like the current unknown transmission method.
When this experimental result was obtained, everyone present was stunned. The notion that the four fundamental forces governed everything had become an almost absolute truth in their minds. Now, this "Fifth Element" had been forcefully inserted, leaving many utterly unable to accept it for a time.
It was precisely for this reason that fundamental research throughout the scientific community stagnated, with everyone reflecting on how to proceed in the future.
Most people, led by Bai Mo, ultimately chose to shelve research into the true nature of Spirit Qi. Instead, they opted to treat it as a black box technology, pursuing a path of pure application development.
Because they felt that for a civilization that hadn't even left its home star system, dabbling in something capable of altering the laws of the universe was meaningless. Even if it truly was part of an unknown entity's plan, it was simply beyond the ken of "little ants" like them.
After five hundred or a thousand years, once they possessed sufficiently powerful strength, they could then revisit the research, with a greater likelihood of uncovering the truth.
Moreover, there was one more crucial factor behind his choice: a warning from another version of himself.
Even another Bai Mo, who could effortlessly swallow stars, destroy worlds, and even communicate with parallel universes, still felt that the waters behind Spirit Qi ran deep. For his current self, who hadn't even left Earth, pursuing this path further would only lead to a dead end.
Of course, there was also a minority unwilling to abandon the pursuit of truth, insisting on finding the ultimate answer.
However, humanity's most advanced observational equipment currently showed no difference from the naked eye when observing Spirit Qi. Aside from knowing it was a pale green gas, they couldn't observe any microscopic structures. Spirit Qi seemed like a projection from a higher-dimensional world; no matter how one looked, only an outline could be seen.
Nevertheless, these drastic shifts in scientific theory would not significantly impact the vast majority of ordinary people for a considerable period.
Just as with the emergence of quantum mechanics in this world a hundred years ago, scientists battled fiercely, with some even suffering a loss of Dao Heart, yet life went on as usual among the populace.
For ordinary people, whether their salaries would increase next month was far more important than questions like the true nature of light. Debates in cutting-edge science were simply too distant from their lives.
PS: In these past few days, seeing over a thousand daily favorites on pirated reading apps compared to only dozens on Qidian, my heart is filled with mixed emotions. I hope everyone can come to Qidian more often to support the original 666.
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