In the silent space, Jin Sen yawned, "The bed in the prison is quite soft."
An Zhe glanced around his space. In the narrow cell room, a two-meter-long, one-meter-wide plastic soft board was placed in the corner, with a white blanket folded at the end of the board – this was supposedly the bed.
He went over, sat cross-legged, wrapped himself in a thin blanket, and leaned against the wall.
Footsteps came from the end of the corridor, and glaring lights shone in the passage. Three city defense soldiers held flashlights for inspections. When they passed by, a soldier on the left asked, "Three more, who brought them in?"
"The tribunal. Colonel Lu is impressive. The city defense office is now the tribunal's logistics team."
"The tribunal wants to fully take over the city defense office, but the director is still holding his ground."
They flashed their lights on their faces, didn't say much, and walked forward to check each cell before going up through another passage.
After the commotion disappeared, the entire underground space was silent, only the sound of prisoners breathing. An Zhe could sense that there were very few people. From a distance, he heard the sound of water dropping onto the plastic board, and Boss Xiao muttered, "The city defense office wastes water resources like this."
Yet the sound of dripping water continued incessantly, evenly and without interruption. Jin Sen said, "It's a clock."
An Zhe listened hard and recognized that the sound came from the cell next to his. It ticked at regular, very short intervals, not water drops, but the ticking of an old mechanical clock.
In the darkness, the second hand moved at a steady pace, making time stretch infinitely.
Finally, Jin Sen asked, "Boss Xiao, you have experience. How long will we be detained?"
"Not for long," Boss Xiao replied. "Illegal acquisition of tribunal information depends on the purpose. It's okay as long as it doesn't harm the tribunal members."
"I think you profited from it," Jin Sen said. "So even if it's not for long, we'll get fined, right?"
Boss Xiao sighed, "Then I'd rather be detained for a few more years."
Jin Sen lamented, "The tribunal is the tribunal, even a photo gets you detained. I should just honestly sell phones in the future. I just took a photo and was dragged away by the tribunal. At that moment, I thought I had unknowingly turned into some mutant; I was scared to death."
Boss Xiao didn't speak, but a clear male voice from the cell next door said, "I've seen the crime of illegal acquisition of tribunal information."
Boss Xiao asked, "How many days did they detain you?"
"The shortest is three days, the longest is three years, and one person was executed—they attempted to assassinate a tribunal member."
Boss Xiao tentatively asked, "…Were they successful?"
"Unsuccessful."
"And they were still executed?"
"According to the tribunal law, without the absolute safety of tribunal members, there can't be absolute tribunal power."
Boss Xiao said, "Then... we had no intention of harming, how long will we be detained?"
The voice said, "Depends on the tribunal members' mood."
An Zhe gripped the blanket. He felt that the tribunal members were in a good mood.
Then he heard Jin Sen curiously ask, "Brother, what crime did you commit?"
The voice replied, "Incitement and spreading panic."
Jin Sen seemed puzzled, "Huh?"
"I wrote articles for the cultural institute, and the city defense office arrested me," the person next door said. "Later, the cultural institute closed, but I wasn't released."
An Zhe thought, so he was in the same profession as An Ze.
Jin Sen asked, "How long have you been detained?"
"Life imprisonment."
Jin Sen was silent for a moment, "Are you kidding me?"
The person laughed but didn't answer.
An Zhe thought for a moment. Based on An Ze's memory, it was a pretty safe job.
He asked the next door, "What did you write?"
The person replied, "I wrote popular science articles on the history of the base. My pen name is Poet. Have you read any?"
An Zhe replied, "No."
Poet asked, "Then do you want to hear? Your voice sounds very nice."
"So does yours," An Zhe felt that he seemed very eager to talk, so he said, "I want to hear."
"Stop," Boss Xiao interjected, "you committed incitement; don't think about inciting our kid here."
"Just listen, don't be afraid of being arrested," Poet's voice carried a smile. "After all, you've already been caught."
What he said actually made a lot of sense.
"I spent a long time organizing these things. Since being detained here, I rarely have a chance to talk about them," Poet said, "But, those things you mostly know."
An Zhe said, "I don't know."
"Oh?" Poet said, "Then I'll explain in more detail."
"Let me think where to start…" His speech gradually slowed, "Let's start from the Desert Age."
"Before the Desert Age was the 'Great Prosperity Period,' there were seven billion people on Earth. In the plains, driving an hour you'd definitely encounter a village or city. Cities were full of people. Surrounding the cities were farmlands, pastures, and factories providing goods for the city. There were wars, but they were between countries, and animals and plants were not human weapons' match."
He paused, seemingly organizing his thoughts, then continued, "That was the year 2020. Over a hundred years ago."
"When I was a mercenary, I went to the ruins of a research institute in a capital city of a country and dug out some materials – a geomagnetic research report starting from the year 2020."
No one spoke, and he went on, "From that year, they detected a rapid weakening of Earth's magnetic field—do you know what a magnetic field is?"
Jin Sen said, "Don't ask me, brother. I'm uneducated."
Boss Xiao didn't speak.
"The base doesn't teach these things," Poet continued. "In short, by 2030, the geomagnetic field disappeared."
Jin Sen asked sincerely, "So what does the geomagnetic field do?"
"The Earth is a huge magnet, with the South and North Poles as its positive and negative poles. The geomagnetic field is everything," Poet explained. "After the geomagnetic field disappeared, compasses failed, the global biosphere became chaotic, and human industry came to a standstill, unable to generate or use electricity. However, that's the least of the consequences."
"The most important role of the geomagnetic field is to protect the Earth. The Earth floats in the universe, surrounded by cosmic rays and solar wind, but these things, when encountering the magnetic field, are diverted to other directions and don't harm surface life. So, in 2030, with the geomagnetic field gone, the entire planet directly faced the onslaught of solar storms and cosmic radiation. The radiation outside was too strong, most lands were directly torn up by storms, moisture disappeared, the atmosphere thinned. Drought, skin disease, cancer... half of the Earth's population perished, which is what we call the 'Desert Age.'"
Jin Sen gasped, "Oh my God."
"However, the Desert Age ended quickly," Poet chuckled and continued, "From the time geomagnetic changes were discovered in 2020, humanity had already proposed responses, divided into Plan A and Plan B. I found this after going through many documents in the ruined cities."
Urging respect, Jin Sen said, "Please tell us."
"Plan A involved constructing massive magnetic field generators at two special locations on the Asian continent and North America, named 'East Pole' and 'West Pole.' These two magnetic field generators would replace Earth's South and North Poles, resonate with charged particles in the solar wind to form a new magnetic field covering the globe."
Jin Sen clapped softly, "Impressive."
"Plan B was to build large underground cities, shifting human life from the surface to underground to avoid radiation and solar wind."
Jin Sen continued clapping, "Good."
"By 2040, Plan B succeeded, and underground cities opened for residence."
"By 2043, Plan A succeeded, a weak magnetic field covered the globe, the climate no longer worsened, biological life ceased to die from cosmic radiation. Human technology began to recover. The period from 2040 to 2043 was called the 'Age of Dawn.'"
Here, Poet gently sighed, "But, the most difficult time for humanity was just beginning."
An Zhe widened his eyes.
"I know," Jin Sen said at this moment, "The Great Calamity era arrived."
"Yes," Poet said, "Cosmic radiation brought unknown genetic mutations, creating terrifying things."
"Initially, it was super bacteria, fungi, and viruses proliferating in the human cities, indiscriminately infecting everyone. Cities were full of corpses. Anyone who had been to the wilderness ruins would know this."
An Zhe asked, "How did people survive?"
"Survival was down to luck," Poet said. "If your genes had immunity to these bacteria, you lived; if not, you died. The surviving people were those immune. By the end, there were only about a billion people left from the three billion who survived the Desert Age. However, this wasn't the hardest time for humanity."
An Zhe asked, "And then?"
"Next, you all know. Whether it was unknown evolution from cosmic radiation or some undetectable virus, comprehensive biological mutations appeared, and the world was overtaken by these beings. They carried something special, and humans who came into contact would getAssimilated. They love attacking humans, and human genes are a delicacy for them—that's how the war started. It was the most epic war in human history."
Taking a gentle breath, the poet continued, "Humans living scattered could not withstand the monsters' attacks, so humans began to consolidate the remaining resources and establish human bases. Our ID number starts with 3, indicating that this is the third human base. The Dungeon Base, the Virginia Base, the Northern Base, and the Southeast Base—these four bases formed an alliance, becoming the community of shared human destiny. Once the bases were established, we could catch our breath, and that's how you have the life you know now."
With this sentence, the atmosphere in the prison seemed to ease, but with the next sentence, it dipped back to freezing point.
"Unfortunately, the bases are not safe places." The poet coughed a few times, and his voice gradually lowered.
"In 2073, the mutant rodent tide broke out, and the Southeast Base fell."
"In 2121, marine aberrations infiltrated, and the Virginia Base fell."
"Damn," Jin Sen suddenly interrupted him, "I understand why you were convicted of incitement and maliciously spreading panic. The city defense department should shut your mouth forever!"
"But I haven't done anything wrong." The poet smiled and said, "I just mingled with my boyfriend's mercenary team, collecting data from human ruins all over, and then organized and published them, only to be sentenced to life imprisonment."
Jin Sen said, "Your tongue should be cut out for life. And you even have a boyfriend."
The poet laughed, "It's so boring in the base, why can't I have a boyfriend?"
Ignoring Jin Sen, he continued, "So, only the Northern Base and the Dungeon Base are still functioning. These two bases protect the magnetic field generators, so the auroras in the bases are brighter than anywhere else. Auroras are streams of particles from solar winds."
Here, the poet sighed, "I don't know if there's still contact between the two bases, considering the whole Pacific Ocean lies between them. I said earlier that the hardest time for humanity wasn't the Desert Age or the Great Catastrophe; the hardest time is now. Who knows what will happen in the next moment."
Just as he finished, the ground under their feet suddenly shook.
Dust fell from the prison ceiling, landing on An Zhe's head and body, causing him to cough, but then an even stronger tremor struck.
Jin Sen jumped up and shouted, "Earthquake?"
"It's not an earthquake." An Zhe heard the poet getting up from the ground beside him, muttering some incomprehensible things, "Earthquakes produce P-waves and S-waves, but this is irregular shaking, and the epicenter is very shallow—"
"—There's something underground!"
An Zhe understood this sentence.
"Boom!"
Suddenly, a loud noise came from the depths of the corridor, accompanied by the clanging sound of an iron door falling.
"Boom!" Another loud noise.
The shaking, a hundred times more violent than before, came again, and An Zhe held onto the iron gate bars tightly to stay steady.
He realized.
Something large and living was violently smashing the ground from below.