Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 73 Featured Chapter: Cretaceous Past (Seeking Monthly Tickets)
(Previous context: The symbiotic civilization of ants and dinosaurs was destroyed. See "The Cretaceous Past" for details. The plot continues from "The Devourer" and is followed by "Poetry Cloud".)
The end of the Seventh Continental War.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex slammed its tail hammer into the ground. On this continent 65 million years ago, as the pheromones of the Ant Federation gradually dried up, the Dinosaur Empire won the final victory in this macro vs. micro war.

The continent of Rome—perhaps it will later be renamed North America, but that doesn't matter now—is now in use. After winning the war against the Ant Federation, the Republic of Rome, led by Tyrannosaurus Rex, also destroyed the Gondwana Empire, founded by Tyrannosaurus Rex, on the ancient continent of Gondwana.

In a series of continental wars that lasted for millennia—a very long period for dinosaurs—the Republic of Rome won both continents, which constituted the entire Earth.

The Ant Federation and the Gondwana Empire have vanished into the long river of geological history.

But did they really win?
The Tyrannosaurus Rex Archon's golden vertical pupils gazed at the sky. Volcanic ash resembled the scales shed by the Grim Reaper. The fern forests were disappearing at a rate that dinosaurs could not comprehend. The once fertile continent of Ronasia was now exposed as bare, gray-blue earth.

The misuse of high-yield nuclear weapons during the war against the ant federation filled the atmosphere with radioactive dust.

Even after the ant federation was defeated, hundreds of billions of ants on this planet continued to harass the dinosaur-dominated Romania Republic.

The destruction of the symbiotic relationship of the 'Dragon-Ant Civilization', which lasted for more than 50,000 years, became the final straw that broke the camel's back for the dinosaur world.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor knew that if the situation was allowed to deteriorate, the once-thriving dinosaur civilization would soon regress to the primitive era of eating raw meat and drinking blood 50,000 years ago.

Shaking off the dozens of ants that had somehow gotten attached to his body, the Tyrannosaurus Rex governor looked up at the Argentine Dragon administrator.

"How many dinosaurs are left?"

"There are less than 200 million left. Due to the disappearance of fern forests, massive famine has plagued every dinosaur city, and there have even been tragic cases of 'dinosaurs eating each other.' Compared to the pre-war numbers, the dinosaur population has dwindled to less than one-tenth." The Argentine dinosaur official's voice was filled with sorrow.

"How many scientists, engineers, scholars, and technicians do we still have?" The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor was somewhat unsteady on his feet.

"There are still 200,000 dinosaurs. Ten years from now, with the death of the older generation of engineer dinosaurs, we will have at most 5,000 scientists and engineers left. Without the help of the Ant Federation from the microscopic world, we will not be able to rebuild our cities, rebuild our industrial system, or even produce a single toothpick."

The Tyrannosaurus Rex Governor was speechless for a moment. The setting sun, shrouded in nuclear dust, shone on him, stretching his shadow into a chasm that stretched across the entire radioactive swamp.

In the distance, a swarm of Triceratops were clumsily operating excavators, digging for uranium-bearing ore deep underground to replenish the nuclear fuel that the Republic of Romania might need for its future interstellar voyages.

"Before the dinosaur civilization returns to the primitive era, build the 'first ring' of dinosaurs as soon as possible, leave this nearly dried-up earth to the ants, ignore those conservatives of Gondwana, take enough dinosaur eggs and leave this place."

...

The dinosaur civilization spent over three hundred years and dozens of generations of dinosaur scientists and engineers working tirelessly to build the 'first ring,' which finally completed its rudimentary pilot fire test.

When the first ring, with a diameter of over a thousand kilometers and a circumference almost comparable to half a moon, was completed on the continent of Romania, the Earth seemed to be wearing a small, dark gray ring.

Hundreds of kilometers outside the spaceship, the army of the Republic of Romania is resisting the onslaught of rebellious dinosaurs and ant resistance forces.

No dinosaur would want to be on the spaceship, not even an ant would.

This ring-shaped spacecraft, later known as "The Devourer," had a skeleton made of 300,000 long rings woven from supramolecular materials. This was the fundamental reason why the main structure of the spacecraft could withstand enormous impacts without breaking.

In addition, the area inside the ring is not a vacuum, but is covered with a thin layer of organic living membrane used to capture cosmic matter for replenishment. However, the membrane has not yet opened at this moment, which is a task that will be carried out in space.

Ankylosaurus Edmondon was striking the seams of the 'Ring 1' with its heavy tail hammers, each strike sending sparks flying like starlight from a Cretaceous twilight.

This is the final inspection.

Without the help of the Ant Federation, the giant ring-shaped warship looked much uglier and rougher than expected.

But this happens to perfectly match the aesthetic of dinosaur civilization.

Delicate and fragile, that's the kind of aesthetic only little ants should have.

The new generation of terrorist rulers stood at the very center of the 'Diamond Restriction' and delivered a final address to the ten million dinosaur spaceship crew members on Earth.

"Well, let me just say a few words."

"therefore……"

"so……"

"Anyway..."

"The glory of the dinosaur civilization will shine eternally in the universe!"

After the Tyrannosaurus Rex Governor's long speech, the grand lighting ceremony began.

It slowly roared out two syllables in a sacred tone.

"combustion--"

His response was a spasm across the entire Romanian continent, with thousands of ignition points on the 'Ring 1' activating simultaneously.

Upon receiving the order, the Argentine dragons simultaneously began to impact the enriched nuclear fuel. Under the influence of external forces, the critical value for nuclear fusion was quickly reached, and rounds of calculated nuclear explosions erupted at the bottom of the ring.

When the vibrations from the nuclear explosion engines, triggered by the resonance of multiple nuclear explosions, reached the ground, the 'Embodiment No. 1' finally shuddered and then suddenly lifted off the ground.

A super ring of fire, composed of nuclear fireballs, is burning across the entire continent.

The tremors caused by the resonance of the nuclear explosion caused a crack to appear in the obsidian worn on the head of the Tyrannosaurus Rex Regency—a power gem known as "Dragon Crystal" by the dinosaurs. The crack was rapidly expanding, and as the huge obsidian shattered, the "Ring 1" completed its first spin close to the ground.

And from this point on, it will continue to rotate for 6500 million Earth years without ceasing.

The launch of 'Ring 1' tore through the entire sky.

The pterosaur swarm, originally tasked with clearing the airspace and driving away dust, was shredded into a bloody mist by the gale-force winds and ionosphere whipped up by the 'Ring 1', and countless termite rebels who tried to bite through the bottom of the spaceship were scalded to death by the high temperature.

Meanwhile, the Romanian Republic army on the ground, responsible for intercepting the dinosaur rebels, stared in astonishment at the spaceship taking off behind them.

Didn't we agree to take them with us?

This spaceship from the dinosaur civilization, carrying their crude but advanced technology, slowly rotated and soon crossed the stratosphere.

Instead of going inside the spaceship, the Tyrannosaurus Rex Governor stood on the open-air observation deck, feeling the impact of more than ten times the force of gravity on his body, facing the raging hurricane, and watching the majestic ring gradually rise.

The mountains stretch endlessly, and the sea is vast and boundless.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor shook off the obsidian fragment representing power from its forehead and unconsciously rubbed its short forelimbs.

Inside the spacecraft's ring, the atmosphere was extracted to create a huge vacuum, and the surging airflow further formed a massive hurricane.

The hurricane poured down on the Romanian continent like a hole in the sky, causing the deaths of millions of dinosaurs and billions of ant resistance fighters in the next hour.

Countless civilians from the Federation of Romania, and even remnants of the previous dynasty from the ancient continent of Gondwana, looked up at the giant ring that was gradually disappearing into the sky, cursing incessantly.

Fortunately, some federal officials who were unable to board the spaceship managed to stabilize the situation in the dinosaur world by making a timely announcement on television.
"Ladies and gentlemen! His Excellency the Governor has taken away a large number of dinosaurs. These departed and dead dinosaurs will free up more living space for the remaining dinosaurs! As long as we have fewer and better off births, we will surely be able to maintain ecological stability and continue the survival of the Earth's dinosaur civilization."

During a live television broadcast of Dinosaur World.

The termite leader of the ant resistance also proclaimed to the remaining ants of the ant federation through a miniature electron tube: "The ant resistance has driven away those dinosaurs! This is a great victory! We have won!!"

The leader termite, standing atop a dinosaur skull, continued its speech:

"We must continue the fight, crawling into their hearts through their blood vessels, into their brains through their cochleas, then biting through their blood vessels, severing their neural connections, and blasting the dinosaurs' yolks and umbilical cords with grenades!"
One day, we will wipe out all the dinosaurs and usher in the era of ant civilization on Earth! An Earth without dinosaurs is a good Earth; days without dinosaurs are good days! Dinosaurs must be killed at all times! They cannot be left unkilled! Let the dragon-ant alliance become a thing of the past! Let the ant federation usher in the future!

But neither ants nor dinosaurs could stir up any more of a nerve with the Tyrannosaurus Rex ruler.

But other things are fine.

The instant the 'first ring' crossed the Kármán line, an astronomer rushed to the governor in a panic, saying in alarm, "A carbonaceous asteroid from the outer solar system has been disturbed by the spacecraft's ring gravitational pull, deviating from its normal orbit and heading in our direction—it was originally going to brush past Earth!"

The astronomical expert's words instantly brought the Tyrannosaurus Rex to his senses, and his golden vertical pupils became perfectly round.

"That meteorite? Where will it hit?"

An astronomer, his voice trembling with emotion, said, "The Gondwana Empire, the Republic of Romania, and even the Ant Federation have already surveyed this asteroid that has repeatedly passed by Earth. It's called the Chicxulub meteorite! In two hours, it will collide with the spacecraft in the first quadrant of its near-Earth orbit!"

That asteroid is tens of kilometers in diameter, almost the same width as the spacecraft's inner and outer rings. It would easily shatter most of the spacecraft, and to the point of being completely irreparable! We'll die in space!

The astronomer's words made the Tyrannosaurus Rex Archon feel a little unsteady, but it soon realized that it wasn't it that was shaking, but the entire spaceship.

The Evangelion is undergoing drastic orbital adjustments, with nuclear bombs acting as blast engines exploding one after another, barely propelling the spacecraft in another direction.

Two more dinosaurs approached the Tyrannosaurus Rex governor, one after the other; they were a mathematician and the Minister of Defense, respectively.

The mathematician said, "I have calculated mathematically that the existing maneuver curve is insufficient for the spacecraft to escape the Chicxulub impact!"

The Defense Minister said, "But we have already used computer simulations. The most powerful nuclear bomb could shatter the Chicxulub meteorite, but the fragments would still hit the spacecraft! The difference is between dying instantly and dying slowly!"

The bad news from the mathematician and the Minister of Defense left the Tyrannosaurus Rex's wisdom suddenly insufficient; the two solutions had only just taken shape in his mind before they were rejected.

"Wait, I have an idea." The astronomical expert suddenly had a flash of inspiration. As a velociraptor, it could leap dozens of meters high in this weak gravity environment, its white coat almost floating into the sky.

"Although the spaceship can't avoid this meteorite, we can make it pass through the spaceship's ring!"

"Are you crazy? At Mach 100 speed, the force of that meteorite leaping through the ring will tear the Evolution Ring apart!" the math expert screamed in terror.

"No, we're already in space. The atmosphere here isn't as strong, so the impact of a meteorite won't be too significant—it might kill tens of thousands of unlucky dinosaurs, but we still have dinosaur eggs, don't we?"

"You mean, like in basketball, throwing the ball into the basket?" The Secretary of Defense made a classic back-to-the-basket dribbling move.

“Ideally, it should be a hollow sphere,” the astronomical expert nodded, then added, “If the angle isn’t right, you immediately use a nuclear missile to bomb the edge of the meteorite to adjust its trajectory, but don’t shatter it, or it’ll be all over.”

The three dinosaurs looked at each other, and finally the Tyrannosaurus Rex chief gave the order: "Do as the astronomer says!"

It wasn't until after the dragons had left that the Tyrannosaurus Rex Archon belatedly realized that the meteorite had traversed the giant ring, and then what? Where would it crash down? It seemed no dragon had asked that question before.

The supreme commander raised his withered forelimbs and measured the angle and distance between the giant ring and the endless blue Earth before him.

"It just so happened to hit the Romanian continent."

"The Tyrannosaurus Rex Governor murmured."

...

Not long after the giant ring disappeared into the pale gray sky, a star that tore through the heavens began to shine in the upper stratosphere. It cut into the atmosphere at an almost vertical angle, compressing tens of thousands of cubic kilometers of air in front of it, forming a plasma shock shield with a diameter hundreds of times larger than that of a meteorite.

"what is that?"

In the waters of the Yucatan Peninsula (present-day Mexico), a baby Argentinosaurus asks its mother a question.

"That's the sun, don't look at it, it will hurt your eyes."

The mother gently embraced her child with her neck. At the cost of the inner ring tearing apart and tens of thousands of dinosaurs dying from their blood boiling in space, the spacecraft successfully guided the meteorite through the middle of the ring.

Instead of immediately rebuilding their shattered new home, the surviving dinosaurs on the spaceship craned their necks and peered through the space window at the blue planet beneath their feet.

A meteorite fell.

The physical parameters of the Chicxulub meteorite at the moment of impact with the Yucatan Peninsula exceeded the calculation limits of dinosaur scientists, and the impact crater, hundreds of kilometers in diameter, swallowed the entire Yucatan Peninsula of the Romanian continent.

The Earth's crustal material was accelerated to the second cosmic velocity and ejected. The pressure at the center of the impact point reached 750 gigapascals. The carbonate rock layer was instantly transformed into a supercritical fluid with a radiation flux 100,000 times stronger than sunlight, carbonizing all organic matter within a radius of 1,000 kilometers.

The shockwave propagated outward at a speed of five kilometers per second, carrying with it rock vapor at thousands of degrees Celsius. The primeval forests and dinosaur cities of Romania were crushed like straw, and the sporangia of ferns exploded.

"There's nothing left to see. The Earth is finished, and all the dinosaurs are gone," said the Tyrannosaurus Rex governor.

A geologist crouched down, weeping, and said, "The continent of Rome is burning; the dinosaurs have no home."

"Dinosaurs don't need homes!" the Tyrannosaurus Rex governor roared irritably.

(Seven hours later, the Chicxulub meteorite will bring global fire rain.)

This is the last day of the Cretaceous period.

the next day.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor gazed at the deep starry sky and the burning planet gradually receding into the distance. Ignoring the newly stabilized dinosaur society, a dragon arrived at the Land of Hope.
This is the darkest compartment in the entire ring-shaped warship.

Three hundred thousand dinosaur eggs are embedded in resin, each encasing a dinosaur embryo brought from Earth.

One of the Stegosaurus seemed to be not quite used to the pseudo-gravity environment created by the centrifugal force inside the 'Ring No. 1', and it staggered to the back of the governor.

It bowed slightly to the governor who led the dinosaurs to accomplish all this great feat and said, "Your Excellency, the agricultural scholars' initial estimates were wrong. We took too many dinosaurs with us. The spaceship did not bring enough materials from Earth, nor enough water. We also overestimated the amount of matter that the polymer membrane could capture from a vacuum environment."

The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor, with his back to the egg, gazed at the shimmering, jade-like dinosaur egg and said, "The universe is so vast, isn't there enough targets for the dinosaur civilization to devour?"

"Perhaps... there are many? But that requires astronomers to find suitable targets."

The Stegosaurus sounded confused as it asked the governor its question: "The Earth's environment will enter a harsh winter lasting tens of thousands of years due to the Chicxulub meteorite. Without the help of ants, the technologically regressing dinosaur civilization on Earth will soon perish. So, are we the only remaining dinosaur civilization?"

The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor countered, "Do you think dinosaurs that have entered space can still be considered a dinosaur civilization?"

Stegosaurus was even more confused: "If it doesn't count, then what should it count as?"

The Tyrannosaurus Rex governor slightly spread its forelimbs towards the countless dinosaur eggs in front of it, making a difficult embrace motion.

it says:

"From the moment Titalik Buterin (the first fish to land) first landed on land, it could no longer be considered a fish, and the same is true for the dinosaur civilization that left Earth."

From this moment forward, the dinosaur civilization will be renamed the 'Devouring Civilization,' and will devour everything in its path to prolong its existence. Both the Earth's dinosaur civilization and the continent of Romania will become history.

The cold winter has lasted for three thousand years.

On a slightly warmer midday, inside the ancient continent of Gondwana, two brown ants crawled out of their anthill to the ground. The cold wind that rushed towards them made the two ants instinctively shrink their antennae and look timidly at the gray world outside.

"Did you hear that? The screaming last night."

"The queen ant said that was the sound of a dinosaur from legend."

"But I haven't heard that voice in a long time."

Another brown ant did not respond to its companion. It cautiously approached the towering bone mountain at the entrance of the anthill. It touched the towering structure with its antennae and quickly discovered that although the surface of the bone mountain was solid, it was not smooth.

It can climb up.

It climbed up.

"How could these dinosaurs, which were so big, have gone extinct?" the brown ant standing on the skeleton shouted to its companions below.

"It's probably because they eat too much, unlike us ants, who eat very little."

The faint voice of his companion was muffled by the cold wind, while the brown ant standing on the keel thought of an ancient legend.

Legend has it that in ancient times, ants and dinosaurs established a symbiotic relationship that lasted for tens of thousands of years, and the ancestors of ants and dinosaurs together created a great civilization.

Back then, the sun was warm and gentle, the ants had an endless supply of food, and they didn't need a queen ant to reproduce. Meanwhile, the dinosaurs built enormous cities. Their rudimentary civilization system became stable and powerful with the help of the ants, and their technology developed rapidly. This was one of the longest and most stable symbiotic relationships in Earth's history.

That was truly a magical era.

But what happened next? For some unknown reason, the dinosaur world and the ant federation went to war. The war led to the decline of the dragon-ant symbiotic civilization. In less than a few hundred years, the ants and dinosaurs had completely broken apart.

A dinosaur civilization on another continent decided to abandon Earth, which was being affected by environmental degradation. They built a huge spaceship and eventually left Earth. These selfish and wicked dinosaurs attracted a meteorite after they left, which completely destroyed Earth and their home.

The brown ant stomped hard on the dragon bone twice: "You stupid dragons, you've already paid the price!"

"Come down quickly, we need more food!"

The companions below started calling out again.

The brown ant quickly returned to its companions, and, unable to contain its wandering thoughts, asked them again, "Tell me, why were we able to survive?"

The brown ant companion answered without hesitation: "We eat little and we dig holes."

"Drill a hole?"

“Dig holes.” The brown ant companion nodded and said, “Don’t you know? Those who know how to dig holes have survived. Near our anthill, there’s a silly Purgatorio monkey. Even such backward mammals can survive by digging holes, so we ants can definitely do it too.”

"But our anthill is getting smaller and smaller." The brown ant's voice trailed off, as it was one of the few ants that worried about the future of its colony. It continued, "I've heard that ants these days can't read anymore. They can't even understand the books passed down from the past. Those electron tubes have become building materials for building our nests. If we continue to degenerate, if ant civilization continues to degenerate—before long, we'll degenerate into tiny insects that know nothing."

“Isn’t this better?” The companion ant twitched its antennae as it looked at the lifeless world before it.

"In these difficult times, the less you know, the easier life will be."

...

"I still prefer the magical era that the Queen Ant Mother told me about. How wonderful it would be if I were on the dinosaur's big spaceship and witnessed the vastness of the universe."

"Forget it, I've heard it's colder in space."

"Hey, do you think there might be other animals that establish a new magical era, just like in mythology, where they are all-powerful?"

"It's possible. If such an animal existed, it would have a large head and flexible hands."

"But it can't be too big either, otherwise there won't be enough food, and it will be very difficult to survive."

"It also can't be too small, like an ant, because its brain capacity is insufficient."

"Oh dear, how could such an animal appear?"

The brown ant sighed. Suddenly, a rustling sound came from afar. Then, a timid Purgatorio monkey poked its head out of the hole and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The brown ant stopped and asked its companion, "Do you think there's any hope for this baby monkey?"

The brown ant companion, without even raising its antennae, replied, "I think so. Time is endless, and anything is possible."

...

After watching the two brown ants on the ground disappear into the wind and snow, a black box located at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point quietly floated in the universe.

This black box absorbs all the light. If we observe it with current technology, we would find that it is a theoretical object that can completely absorb all incident electromagnetic radiation without reflection.

This is an ideal blackbody that exists only in the concept of physics. Its emissivity is also 1. It is precisely because it receives all the light rays that are directed at it that it is also an ideal observation device, with an observation precision that reaches every single photon.

This standard cubic black body has remained completely unchanged over the past 235 million Earth years.

But today, it trembled.

"Planet 42 is now safe. Civilization has naturally perished. Phase III monitoring by the Risk Takers has concluded. Sensors request to return to base."

"Working hours".

3700 million time particles (one time particle is approximately 5 Earth years)
"Monitoring changes in the civilization level of the target population."

"It has fallen from a 6B-level civilization to a 1E-level civilization, far below the safety threshold of a 3C-level civilization."

"Whether any civilized incidents occurred."

'600 time particles ago, Planet 42 gave rise to a Class 6B "devourer" civilization, which left this star system and became a nomadic civilization.'

"Return request rejected. Track the 'Devourer' civilization and be alert for vacuum decay events."
"..."

"Feel free to raise any concerns, sensor number 299792458."

"I have no objection; it's for the service of the universe."

The black box trembled slightly, then anchored itself in one direction and sped toward Ring 1 at the speed of light, the direction the dinosaurs had gone.

Four light-years away, overlooked by the danger-avoiding civilization, in the Southgate II star system, a grand open-air barbecue is underway.

"Three suns in the sky, three suns in the sky, hahaha!"

The Pope, Galileo, Aristotle, and Leonardo da Vinci were writhing in the red pillar of fire that enveloped them, crying, laughing, and shouting as they gradually turned to ashes. Before them, the heretic Copernicus, who proposed the heliocentric theory, had already been burned to death by a gentle fire.

The world is burning, the sky is burning, this planet is like the one next door to Earth three thousand years ago, the world presents a maddening hellish beauty.

The Trisolaran civilization No. 183 was destroyed in the "Three Suns in the Sky".

Within a mere 600 time particles, two civilizations in the neighboring solar system and Trisolaran system perished one after the other.

But the universe remains unchanged, still profound.

注
The Devourer civilization originates from Liu Cixin's novels *The Devourer* and *Poetry Cloud*.

The concept of time particles comes from "The Three-Body Problem III: Death's End".

(The 3C, 5B, and 6B civilization classification standards are derived from Liu Cixin's novel "The Rural Teacher".)
(The term "risk-reliever civilization" comes from Liu Cixin's novel "The Road to Dawn".)
(My synopsis is straightforward and genuine; I guarantee there will be no plot holes. I know some readers are concerned about the Dark Forest theory, and I will address that appropriately. Also, I highly recommend the collection of short science fiction stories by Liu Cixin. I suggest you read them all. Although other works will be included, the main storyline of this book will still revolve around The Three-Body Problem. More of Liu Cixin's works will be gradually introduced later.)
(I'm really looking forward to the apocalyptic war, the scene of dinosaurs and the Trisolarans fighting for Earth.)
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(End of this chapter)