The Last 299 Days of Humanity

After Yu Qing suggested exchanging Temofu for Ya Shi, the control center fell into an even deeper silence.

After a while, Chang Sheng actually said, "No need!"

Yu Qing looked at Chang Sheng with some surprise. At this moment, Chang Sheng's face was covered with a twisted expression that was a mixture of immense grief and a kind of resolute determination.

"You're going to give up your own daughter too?" Yu Qing's voice trembled with disbelief.

Chang Sheng's lips trembled, but in the end he said nothing. He just turned around abruptly, his shoulders twitching almost imperceptibly.

Yu Qing thought that he probably understood that the people of Dadian would not let Ya Shi go. Even if she was brought back, she would no longer be his daughter, but just an empty shell.

Even so, Yu Qing felt a chill creep up his spine from the almost ruthless decisiveness that Chang Sheng displayed at that moment.

However, upon further reflection, he realized that he might have misunderstood him.

Since Shengtian can clone a thousand Temofus, why can't the people of Dadian clone a few Yashis? Perhaps what they get back won't be a mere shell, but a meticulously crafted replica used to transmit false information or carry out assassinations.

“The most urgent task,” Yu Qing forced himself to calm down, his voice regaining its usual composure, though tinged with a hint of hoarseness, “is to prepare for the worst. Immediately activate the 'Nirvana' protocol, assuming that all the important secret nodes known to Ya Shi have been exposed.”

All safe houses, contact points, and backup command centers must be relocated or abandoned within twelve hours. Key personnel who have had direct contact with Ya Shi must immediately enter a state of silence and activate backup identities and communication channels. We must stay ahead of the enemy.

The order was swiftly issued, and Shengtian, this massive machine, began a devastating retreat and reorganization at the cost of efficiency.

Inside that dark underground facility, the plot is taking a brutal turn.

A technician responsible for the body search carefully examined Ya's lifeless body and finally noticed an unusual tiny bump under her fingernails. They carefully removed it—it was the slow-release patch for drug B, which carried their only hope.

"Hidden drug detected, suspected to be the ultimate poison." The technician reported to his supervisor, his tone carrying a hint of relief as if he had completed a mission. "Successfully neutralized; the target has lost the ability to commit suicide."

They mistakenly believed this was the poison Aya had prepared to use to commit suicide during her torture, completely unaware that it was precisely the only way to prevent her from entering the "blank." This fatal misjudgment completely extinguished the last glimmer of hope for Aya's return to the world.

As her consciousness gradually succumbed to the effects of the "Forgetful River" drug A, and her memories crumbled like a sandcastle, Ya Shi vaguely perceived this scene. The tiny patch was picked up with tweezers and casually tossed into the processing box, as if it were merely a matter of removing a little dirt.

Despair, a despair deeper than any physical pain, instantly devoured her remaining consciousness. She knew she could never go back to the past, never see her father again, never see Yu Qing again, never see everything she knew and cherished...

She gave up the struggle completely, letting the flame of consciousness be extinguished in the gale, and closed her eyes in despair, sinking into that eternal nothingness she had chosen herself.

In the time that followed, the interrogation experts at Dadian used every non-lethal method they could think of to try to extract information from the still-warm body. Electric shocks, nerve drugs, sensory deprivation, psychological torture... but it was all in vain.

Drug A worked efficiently, erasing the long-term memories stored in her brain.

She was unable to answer any questions about the secrets of Shengtian, and even lost the ability to respond to names like "Yu Qing" and "Chang Sheng." She had become an empty shell, only able to produce the most instinctive physiological twitches in response to external stimuli.

Those who reached the target point ultimately confirmed that memory extraction was impossible, and conventional interrogation had completely failed. They had obtained no valuable information.

However, they were not willing to give up so easily. A sinister glint flashed in the commander's eyes: "Since we can't get the secret of life, we'll use her death to weaken Shengtian's power."

They began to meticulously fabricate the illusion that they had "successfully obtained Aya's memories." They released carefully altered, half-true, and half-false "intelligence" in an attempt to mislead Shengtian into making wrong judgments and mobilizing resources into a pre-set trap.

They even imitated Ya Shi's communication habits, sending ambiguous messages with specific codes to several minor outposts on the outskirts of Shengtian, creating internal suspicion.

But in the eyes of Chang Sheng and Yu Qing, these tricks were full of loopholes.

The details of those messages don't stand up to scrutiny, the imitations lack the sharpness that Ya Shi had, and more importantly, all the "intelligence" released cleverly avoided the real core secrets.

This, in turn, confirmed Chang Sheng's worst suspicion: Ya Shi, his daughter, did not betray him after suffering inhuman torture, and the enemy failed.

The enemy's actions at this moment seem more like a demonstration of anger and humiliation, a cover-up for their defeat.

This concealment, combined with the precise grasp of Ya Shi's personal habits demonstrated in previous actions, and the current contradictory behavior of "gaining the memories but being unable to access the core"...

Chang Sheng stood alone at the observation window of the control center, gazing at the pitch-black night sky, his mind processing all the clues. There were no tears, no hysteria, only a deathly coldness solidifying in his eyes.

He understood that his daughter was not only dead, but had suffered immense pain before her death, and was now being used by the enemy even in death.

A destructive rage, transcending sorrow, burned within him. Conventional revenge? Localized conflict? Neither could quell the pain of losing his own flesh and blood, nor wash away the humiliation inflicted by Dadian Jinghua.

He left the command center and entered a top-secret laboratory accessible only to him. Inside the cold, isolated chamber, two grams of antimatter—the most destructive substance currently known to humankind—suspended and imprisoned by a superconducting magnetic field, seemed to emit a dim glow.

This was the ultimate weapon he had been secretly researching, prepared for use in the most extreme circumstances to perish together with the enemy; even Yu Qing was unaware of its existence.

“Since you have chosen destruction…” Chang Sheng muttered to himself, his voice eerily calm as he looked at the core R&D headquarters of Dadian Jinghua in Haiyuan City, marked on the virtual map, “then let everything be buried with Ya Shi.”

He didn't notify Yu Qing, nor did he go through any authorization process. Driven by extreme personal grief and intense resentment towards the enemy's cruelty, he opened this Pandora's box.

A faint energy signal, almost impossible for conventional detectors to detect, guided a miniature projection device through multiple layers of defense, precisely delivering the 2 grams of antimatter to a predetermined altitude above Haiyuan City.

next second...

An indescribable light engulfed everything. This was followed by a shockwave that swept across the heavens and earth, and a rapidly expanding sphere of destruction that reduced the entire Haiyuan City and its surrounding area to elementary particles. The city, life, the core base painstakingly built by Dadian Jinghua… all vanished in an instant.

This unprecedented and horrific attack was like throwing a spark into a dry prairie. Fear, anger, misjudgment, and all long-suppressed contradictions... were instantly ignited and spiraled out of control. The prelude to the Seventh World War was brutally opened with Chang Sheng's resolute strike, born of extreme personal grief and indignation.

At that moment, Yu Qing, who had just completed the emergency deployment, stared in astonishment at the blank area on the screen that represented the complete disappearance of the signal from Haiyuan City. A chill even deeper than when he learned that Ya Shi had been captured instantly froze him.

He immediately tried to contact Chang Sheng, but only received a busy signal indicating that the communication was interrupted. A terrible thought arose in his mind—what Chang Sheng had just said, "No need," concealed was far darker and more insane than he had imagined.

At this moment, the fate of the world slid into an unpredictable abyss.

The destruction of Haiyuan City was like casting a star onto a calm (or at least superficially calm) lake.

The message, like an out-of-control virus, accompanied by that brief but distinct energy spectrum representing antimatter annihilation that could be captured by global monitoring networks, instantly spread to every corner of the world.

Panic, unprecedented panic, began to spread.

The painful lessons of World War Six are still fresh in our minds. The New Human Weapons Control Agreement signed after the war lists a number of destructive weapons that exceed the bottom line of human morality, such as antimatter and genetically targeted extermination weapons, as the highest taboo, and strictly prohibits their research, development, stockpiling and use.

While nations and city-states outwardly adhered to strict regulations, and though underhanded maneuvers may have continued, they at least maintained a precarious balance and a facade of restraint.

Now, the taboo has been broken. Two grams of antimatter wiped a modern metropolis with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and its core functions off the map, leaving only a huge, vitrified crater radiating residual radiation.

This was not merely the destruction of one of Dadian Jinghua's strongholds; it was a fatal blow to the very foundation of the post-war international order. It declared to all humanity that the so-called ban was merely a piece of paper, that madmen possessing ultimate weapons still existed, and that they truly dared to use them!

The city-state leaders who had consistently adhered to the general rules and invested heavily in people's livelihoods and technology rather than in an arms race felt a chill run down their spines and were filled with lingering fear. Their "naive" pacifism proved utterly vulnerable in the face of bloody reality.

Emergency meetings were held in the capitals of various city-states, with only one theme: Do our neighbors also harbor such demons? Should we preemptively destroy them before we can use the "Abyssal Solution" against them?

Suspicion formed and solidified at an unprecedented pace. The floodgates of an arms race were forcibly opened, with budgets originally allocated to scientific research and healthcare being frantically diverted to weapons development; border frictions increased dramatically; and diplomatic rhetoric was rife with tension.

The world is like a giant powder keg, and the embers of Haiyuan City are setting the fuse.

Yu Qing felt dizzy as he looked at the constantly flashing red alerts and the rapidly deteriorating relationship index on the global situation monitoring map.

He has confirmed through secret channels that the antimatter weapon was indeed made by Chang Sheng.

This is an unforgivable crime! This is a heinous crime worthy of being condemned by the entire world and nailed to the pillar of historical shame!
Chang Sheng, grieving the loss of his daughter, actually pushed the entire human civilization to the brink of collapse.

Yu Qing locked himself in his office for two hours, his heart filled with a mix of anger, disappointment, fear, and guilt towards Ya Shi and countless innocent people in Haiyuan City.

But he knew he couldn't afford to collapse now. Chang Sheng had completely disappeared after the Haiyuan City incident, leaving behind a mess that could destroy everything. He had to stabilize Shengtian and, more importantly, find a way to prevent the world from sliding into all-out war.

An extremely audacious plan, even blasphemous, gradually took shape in his mind. It was the only way to contain the disaster within a certain range, give the world a "reasonable" explanation, and buy time for Shengtian to recover.

He wanted to pin the blame on Dadian Jinghua, which was likely destroyed in the destruction of Haiyuan City.

He immediately assembled his core team, whose loyalty had been rigorously tested, and activated the highest-level information manipulation plan—Operation "Wedding Dress."

To this end, he mobilized all the media resources and online trolls under Shengtian's control, and began to spread a carefully crafted "truth" in the guise of an "anonymous expert" and an "insider leaker":
Deep within its underground base in Haiyuan City, Dadian Jinghua has been secretly developing antimatter weapons in an attempt to create the ultimate deterrent.

The explosion was caused by a catastrophic accident during an extreme pressure energy core stability experiment, which led to the accidental detonation of the weapon. They played with fire and burned themselves, dragging the entire city down with them.

Shengtian's technical team began "leaking" some processed data fragments that appeared to originate from before the Haiyuan City explosion to some neutral international scientific institutions. These data "showed" that there was abnormal energy accumulation inside the Dadian base and characteristics that did not conform to conventional weapons development, which were highly consistent with the antimatter annihilation theoretical model.

Through controlled media channels, they vigorously promoted the ruthlessness and madness displayed by Dadian Jinghua in the "Tiemofu" clone incident, emphasizing that in order to fight against Shengtian, they were fully capable of taking risks and touching human taboos.

The public's anger and fear were redirected from "someone used prohibited weapons" to "it was this group of lunatics in Dadian who researched prohibited weapons, killed themselves, and implicated others."

Yu Qing personally intervened, delivering an emergency broadcast to the world, his face grave but his tone resolute:
"The tragedy of Haiyuan City is the darkest moment in human civilization. It serves as a warning of the terrible consequences that can result from violating conventions."

We, Shengtian, like all peace-loving forces worldwide, express our strongest shock and condemnation of Dadian Jinghua's secret antimatter weapon program, which ultimately spiraled out of control! This is a suicidal disaster caused by their madness and arrogance!

He skillfully avoided direct conflict between Shengtian and Dadian, characterizing the incident as an "accident" rather than an "attack," and positioning Shengtian as a "shocked bystander" and a "defender of peace."

In his concluding statement, Yu Qing issued a powerful appeal: "Ladies and gentlemen, the sacrifices in Haiyuan City have been tragic enough. We cannot allow panic and suspicion to trigger a chain reaction, which is exactly the chaos that the departed Dadian would have wanted to see!"
I call upon all city-states and all powers to exercise maximum calm and restraint. I propose an immediate global emergency security summit to discuss how to strengthen oversight and ensure that such tragedies never happen again!
Let's contain this disaster within the ruins of Haiyuan City, instead of letting it devour our entire world!

His explanation, though still questionable, offered a relatively "reasonable" and temporarily calming account to the panicked crowd. Shifting blame to the undeniably dead was the safest option.

While global tensions have not eased immediately, the fuse that threatened to ignite a full-scale war seems to have been temporarily extinguished.

Most powers accepted the notion that "Dadian is playing with fire and will get burned." Although the arms race continued behind the scenes, at least publicly, large-scale preemptive attack plans were temporarily shelved. The world gained a brief respite.

However, Yu Qing felt no relief. He knew that this was a fragile balance built on lies.

Chang Sheng's disappearance is like a time bomb. The technology of antimatter weapons may have already spread (at least Chang Sheng has mastered it), and it is unknown whether other forces really believe his story.

He stared at the situation map on the screen, which had temporarily stabilized, his heart heavy. He had used a colossal lie to temporarily avert the immediate destruction of the world, but he had also dragged Shengtian and himself into the center of a larger and more dangerous vortex.

The road ahead remains shrouded in mist, and beneath one's feet lies an abyss. (End of Chapter)