"Our human civilisation seems to be flourishing, we can cut through mountains, we can reclaim the sea and create land, we can control rainfall ... Our human civilisation seems to be powerful. But this is just the appearance, the truth is that we are fragile, very fragile." Li Qi took a sip of wine and slowly said to Zhao Watson, who was sitting across from him.
Li Qi seemed to be thinking about something, but then again, he didn't seem to be. Li Qi's eyes were very misty, and his thoughts seemed to have drifted to some distant place a long time ago.
For this senior of his, Zhao Watson had always been very respectful. As early as the time of his doctoral programme, Zhao Watson had entered the Stellar Physics Research Institute under the Alliance Central Academy of Sciences as an intern, and had become Li Qi's subordinate at that time. Li Qi's profound attainments in stellar physics had always been admired by Zhao Huasheng.
"Perhaps." Zhao Watson said, "But human civilisation is always getting stronger, and I believe that in the near future, we will be truly powerful."
Li Qi sighed, and an unspeakable lustre flashed in his eyes, which seemed to be sadness and pain.
Ricci stood up and walked over to the window of this high-rise restaurant. Through the glass of the window, the night view of the bustling city was visible. The lights were so bright that they seemed to cover up the moon in the sky. The roads were filled with long winding dragons of light. Even in this tall building hundreds of metres above the ground, it seemed that one could hear the noise coming from the ground.
It was eleven o'clock, but nowhere near time for the city to go to sleep.
"This is our civilisation." Li Qi opened his arms as if he wanted to embrace it all in his arms. Li Qi's eyes seemed mesmerised, and his tone began to sound like a dream, "This is our powerful and prosperous civilisation."
"Brother Li, you're drunk, let me send you back." Zhao Huasheng walked next to Li Qi and said in a low voice.
Li Qi shook his head, "Watson, there's no rush to go back first. I have something to say to you today."
Zhao Watson froze for a moment and resumed his seat. He sensed that there seemed to be something wrong with Li Qi today.
"Our human civilisation has changed the face of almost the entire planet, and we naively think that we are omnipotent, but the truth is cruel. Take the Earth under our feet, how much do we know about it? Above the earth, the deepest is the Mariana Trench, the depth is about 10,000 metres, the highest mountain is Mount Everest, the height is less than 9,000 metres, our submarine dives down to the Mariana Trench and we thought it was a remarkable achievement, we exhausted our efforts and drilled a hole only eleven kilometres deep on top of the earth and claimed it was a major step forward ... ...But the radius of the Earth is more than six thousand kilometres, and we have spent enormous manpower and material resources to go only one-sixth of a percent deeper into the Earth ... Ninety-nine percent of the Earth is unknown to us."
"Earthquakes generally do not exceed one hundred kilometres in depth, even the strongest earthquakes recorded in the history of the earth, compared to the entire earth, is only equivalent to the earth sneezed ... No, not even a sneeze is not even a sneeze, at most, it is only the earth a little bit of wriggling. But even so, the result is often hundreds of thousands of millions of human deaths ..."
There seemed to be some mockery in Richie's eyes.
Zhao Watson knew all of these things that Li Qi had said. However, at this moment, being spoken by Li Qi in such a tone, Zhao Huasheng still felt some discomfort in his heart. That feeling was like a person who thought he was incredibly powerful being revealed by other people to his face as weak and incompetent.
"Human beings always talk about protecting the Earth, but why does the Earth need human beings to protect it? Even if the nuclear bombs stored by mankind were to explode at the same moment, what would be destroyed would only be the surface environment of the Earth, and it is impossible for the effects of these bombs to be transmitted to a hundred kilometres below the surface. In the end, mankind is only protecting itself. As for the earth ... even if mankind takes great pains to destroy the earth so what? Can ants destroy mountains?"
"Our entire civilisation, all of our cities, all of our buildings, all of our population, our culture, our heritage, our technology ... all of us are just tiny bacteria attached to the Earth, and if the Earth has a consciousness of its own, if the Earth were to destroy our human civilisation ... Earth merely needs to sneeze, merely needs only a sneeze." Li Qi said.
"It's true that our human civilisation is very small, but our potential for development is limitless." Zhao Huasheng said in a low voice.
Li Qi turned a deaf ear to this, but continued: "This is only one earth, compared to the entire solar system, what is the earth? Compared to the entire solar system, what is the Earth? Compared to the Milky Way, what is the sun? Not to mention the Milky Way - Andromeda Galaxy Cluster, Virgo Super Galaxy Cluster, visible universe ...."
There was a deep sadness in Li Qi's words.
"Let's go back." Richie said.
Li Qi was drunk, so Zhao Watson drove the car and sent Li Qi back home. In the middle of taking the lift up the stairs, Li Qi suddenly looked at Zhao Watson with a very unspeakable look.
Zhao Huasheng's heart was strange, so he asked, "Brother Li, what's wrong?"
Li Qi, however, smiled to himself, "See you later." After saying these two words, Li Qi walked straight out of the lift, opened the door to his room, and then closed the door behind him. Obviously, he had no intention of inviting Zhao Watson in to have a seat.
Zhao Huasheng was a bit puzzled. He felt that today's Li Qi seemed strange, but he couldn't tell exactly where. After freezing for a while before the lift, Zhao Watson shook his head and went home as well.
Time has come to twelve o'clock in the evening, Zhao Huasheng washed up, lying in bed but how can not sleep. Subconsciously always feel that something is not right, there is a kind of feeling as if something big is going to happen, but always can not catch a clue.
It was around two or three o'clock when Zhao Watson fell asleep in a daze, but only four or five hours later, Zhao Watson opened his eyes.
Sleep wasn't enough, so at this moment, Zhao Watson still felt very tired. Under normal circumstances, Zhao Watson would not wake up at this time. Because today was the weekend, there was no rush to go to work, and last night, Zhao Huasheng was prepared to take a lazy sleep.
Zhao Watson was woken up by freezing. It was ridiculous to say that it was July and August, the time when the sun was blazing. At less than five o'clock the sun would rise, spreading its light and heat onto this tiny planet, allowing the air that had cooled overnight to warm back up and eventually become hot. But something seemed different today.
Zhao Watson put on his coat and walked over to the window. The weather was clear, there were no clouds in the sky, and there was indeed a large sun hanging above the sky, but it appeared dim. The sky wasn't the usual blue colour either, but it had some dim colours mixed in with the blue, making it look very depressing.
Zhao Watson was a researcher at the Institute of Stellar Physics, and the closest star to Earth was the sun, so obviously, Zhao Watson's work was based on studying the sun, its internal structure, material composition, material evolution, and other things. Today's sun seemed strange, but at the moment, Zhao Watson didn't remember to use his expertise to analyse it.
Zhao Watson just mumbled, "Looks like it's a cloudy day." With that, he returned to the bed and pulled the thin quilt up over his body, preparing to go back to sleep.
But a sharp knock on the door broke the early morning quiet. Zhao Huasheng had no choice but to get up and dress, wash his face and come to the door, and after opening the door, a burly man in a black suit with a cold face stretched his credentials in front of Zhao Huasheng.
"I'm a first class agent of the Alliance Security Department, you can call me Meng Zhuo." The burly man said coldly, "There are some matters that require your co-operation in the investigation, please come with me."
"UNISON? Me?" Zhao Watson was a bit puzzled, thinking about it, he didn't seem to have done anything bad other than robbing his female classmates of lollipops when he was a child, "What is it?"
"Please come with me, you'll know when you get there." Montrose said still coldly.
"Alright." Zhao Watson thought about it and finally agreed. Thus, after half an hour, Zhao Watson arrived in a spacious conference room. Quite out of Zhao Huasheng's expectation, in the middle of this conference room, Zhao Huasheng saw many familiar faces, there were colleagues and leaders, and there were also some people that Zhao Huasheng couldn't recognise clearly, but looked very familiar. After a little thought, he responded that those people he had often seen on TV.
Zhao Huasheng was arranged to sit down at an empty seat. For some reason, everyone in the middle of the conference room looked very grave, not a single person had a smile on their face. Moreover, after Zhao Huasheng came in, everyone, including those few big names who were often on TV, were looking at him with a somewhat inexplicable look.
"Can I ask what happened?" Zhao Watson asked.
"This is the only thing that Director Li Qi left for you." Meng Zhuo placed a safe in front of Zhao Watson, and after opening it, Zhao Watson saw that there was a piece of white paper lying quietly inside.
Zhao Huasheng didn't rush to look at the white paper, but asked in amazement, "Relic? The relic that Brother Li left me?"
"Yes." Meng Zhuo nodded, "Director Li Qi died late last night, and the initial investigation concluded that it was a suicide. At the suicide scene, we found this safe, as well as this white paper, well, there's also this note, which reads, I'm leaving, please make sure to give this white paper to Zhao Watson. He will answer all your questions."
Before Zhao Watson could figure out what was going on, one of the most photographed old men on television knocked on the table and turned his majestic gaze on Zhao Watson, "So, can you tell us now what's going on with the sun?"