In the darkness of night, beneath the moonlight, the young man walked into the darkness.
The breeze tousled his slightly long hair.
He observed the scenery by the roadside.
This was a wilderness, with the shadows of a few distant trees appearing vague and somewhat sinister.
He then shifted his gaze to his feet, the soles of his canvas shoes making a crisp sound as they stepped on stones.
He could also hear the sound of sewage flowing through channels beneath the ground.
The young man looked around.
See.
How very real everything seems.
Ding.
His tech wristwatch received a message.
'Officer Wang: Yiguan, every brain has its limit. Considering your current physical condition, the department might not employ you anymore. Don't worry...'
The young man slightly frowned.
This was my most important part-time job.
From now on.
The future is uncertain, and I might be on the verge of poverty at any moment.
In that instant.
The young man's palm began to flicker, showing a faint glow, then the flesh tone faded, turning into blue lines, like sketching guide lines.
Subsequently.
The tranquil wilderness under the moonlight in his vision also began to flicker frequently.
The scenery started to blur and stretch.
The world seemed like a monitor running out of power, ready to shut down at any moment.
Blue text began to appear in mid-air.
[Login time exhausted.]
[Please exit as soon as possible.]
The young man sighed lightly.
Then he made a motion as if taking off a helmet.
The cool moonlight showed no anomaly.
But the young man's face and body shattered into blue code, dispersing like dandelions in the wind, disappearing!
This scene.
Strikingly similar to what had happened in front of the concrete house earlier.
The young man's last words echoed in the air.
—"Everything can be simulated, and this world is no exception."
...
At the same time.
Inside a somewhat dim apartment.
The young man placed the neural helmet he had just taken off to one side.
He 'exited' that world.
Qin Yiguan stood up from the sofa, pulled open the heavy black curtains, and opened the window to breathe in the fresh air quietly.
Under the night sky of the city, blue lights twinkled like stars.
His apartment was located in a backward district of the city.
Numerous old metal towers, tall and short, their paint peeling off to reveal rust, stood in each other's shadows, resembling a city of the apocalypse.
An old but automatically operating hover train passed through the sky, crossing the silver moon.
There was no one in the train, and the streets were also empty.
Of course, there might be a few nanny robots moving inside the train and on the distant streets.
By the roadside, a virtual screen that seemed to be malfunctioning flickered in the dim light, and the green digital date jumped.
'Current time'.
'August 4, 2122, 20:00:01'.
The young man stared at the time, his thoughts seemingly traveling through a century in an instant.
100 years ago.
A company with groundbreaking technology turned a fantasy into reality.
This company was called—Gemini.
From the initial VR headset—virtual reality.
Then came the AR helmet—augmented reality.
Followed by the non-invasive brain-computer interface—immersive reality.
People could enter a virtual world through these devices.
It was called the Gemini Metaverse.
It wasn't just a virtual game.
But a twin world, a brand new way of life.
This marked the beginning of a technological era.
With the advent of metaverse technology, like a spark igniting a fire, it exploded across the era. All technological achievements could be simulated and deduced within the metaverse before being applied in reality.
In the metaverse, there were no limitations of physics, space, temperature, chemical elements, and so on.
Absolute vacuum, faster-than-light travel... were no longer concepts humanity could only sigh at.
Thus.
During this period, the steadily increasing technological progress bar in human history was suddenly extended by a large margin.
Therefore, 50 years after the emergence of the metaverse.
Humanity welcomed...
A technological leap.
A cognitive revolution.
Ascension of the world.
Now.
It's the 101st year since the birth of the metaverse.
97% of humanity has completed the transition to the background world, lying in nutrient pods, fully entering the life of the metaverse.
In historical records, this term is known as—'The Great Migration'.
The young man muttered to himself: "This is a new era, the era of the metaverse, the era of virtual reality!"
The recent murder case of the young girl.
It indeed happened in reality, just two days ago, and the crime scene was just 15 kilometers away in the suburbs.
It was part of the extremely rare offline murder cases of this era.
Times have changed.
Police no longer need to mobilize in force, go to the crime scene, and then surround it with caution tape.
The entire process of solving the case can be completed within the Gemini Metaverse.
The essence of the recent scene was the combination of the Metaverse world + virtual scene + simulation of the murderer.
World—The world of the Gemini Metaverse, shared by all humanity.
Scene—The environment is a virtual creation; the police, using their privileges, simulate a small house and a lifelike girl in a white dress with ease.
Murderer—Recreated by Qin Yiguan using his condition.
And the participants of the entire event.
Two policemen and Qin Yiguan, just need to sit on the couch at home, wear a helmet, or never leave the nutrient pod, to start working.
In the era of the metaverse, this most basic work efficiency has been increased by tens or even hundreds of times.
In less than 20 minutes, a bizarre murder case is easily solved.
The passerby was just an ordinary resident who happened to pass by.
He, like all of humanity, lives in this world while looking up to it.
A second world for humanity, created by a Chinese enterprise.
This technology, with an insurmountable technological barrier, cannot be replicated by anyone else.
And thus, China became the strongest nation in technology.
...
At this moment.
Outside the young man's window, was the real city.
It was like a forest of steel, a forest of technology, lacking human warmth, lacking emotions, and even lacking a bit of color.
All of this started from 2022 when people spent an average of 18.9% of their time immersed in their phone screens.
Qin Yiguan wasn't sure whether to agree with the saying—'The higher the technological level of civilization, the greater the degree of virtualization of the world.'
But...
Even in such a technological era.
In the twin Earth, the gap between rich and poor, class oppression, open and covert fights, the pursuit of fame and fortune, and even bloodthirsty cruelty by any means, remained the same as before.
Since the birth of intelligent human beings, tens of thousands of years of reproduction have been interpreting one thing.
—The advancement of technology is inevitable.
But human nature.
It's the hardest thing in the world to change.