Chapter 888: Dim Dawn

The time now is half past eight in the morning in the ruined world - of course, this time is calculated through conversion. People on this planet are not used to the 24-hour clock, but onee-sama and the others agree that thirty hours a day is simply It was too much of a headache, so we converted the time here to Earth Standard Time.

Under normal circumstances, daylight in the ruined world starts at six o'clock in the morning. Every morning, the timing center in the "big city" will broadcast the standard time to the entire ruined world, and then the solar furnace maintenance workers will restart the fusion reactors on all planets. , those reactors that have been running at low power all night will take thirty minutes to fully restore power, and at half past six, bright "sunshine" will fill the earth, and the day in the ruined world will begin.

But this is normal.

Today, the ruined world did not usher in the dawn - it is not accurate to say that. The suns in other places started normally, although they were also a few minutes slow. Strictly speaking, only the northern hemisphere of the ruined planet under our feet should have still started. There was no dawn. Of course, the northern hemisphere here is also an artificial concept added for convenience. All celestial bodies in this space do not have orbits and stable magnetic fields, which makes it difficult to divide them into southeast, northwest, and northwest. In order to facilitate the unified scouts, they collected data from these ruined planets. After receiving the information, we had to use Qian Qian's "simple orientation calibration method", that is, throwing shoes. After throwing away three pairs of shoes in a row, Qian Qian felt that the place we were in should be the northern hemisphere...

Everything was still shrouded in the thick darkness of night. There was a dim red halo hanging in the sky, as I said before, like a tungsten light that was running low on battery. Looking far into the distance, the scene is the same elsewhere in the sky at the end of the line of sight. All the fusion reactors in the northern hemisphere have not been started yet, causing everything here to be shrouded in darkness and cold.

I looked around. I found that except for myself who had just woken up, Qian Qian who was still snoring, and Big Fox who was still confused, the others had actually woken up a long time ago. Sandora was standing on a metal pillar protruding from the ground dozens of meters away. Looking into the distance, I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Onee-sama was still in a state of low blood pressure after getting up, so she squinted her eyes and scratched around looking for a comb.

"So many girls sleeping in the big bed, what a day of debauchery..."

Miss Lin pinched my neck and blew into my ear angrily. I jumped out of the corner of my eye and hit her on the head with my backhand, "Can you please stop thinking the same way as Qian Qian?"

The eldest lady sighed and continued to look up at the sky.

I don’t know when some small bright spots appeared around the still dim red circle in the sky. These small bright spots were slowly moving along the edge of the former. After watching carefully, I found that there were some thin lights connected between them and the aperture. After watching for a long time. I touched Lin Xue’s arm: “Girl, what is that?”

Lin Xue didn't raise her head at all. She didn't need to use regular "eyes" like me to observe things outside her sight. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and a white light flashed through her eyes.

"It's a spaceship repairing the fusion reactor. They are trying to reactivate the artificial sun. From six o'clock to now, they have tried no less than ten times. Of course. It seems that they have never succeeded."

There was no emotion in Lin Xue's tone, as if she was just stating facts. I had a vague feeling that something very bad had happened, but I had no idea how serious the situation had become. It is easy to check the current situation of the ruined world on the information link, because pl-15 released countless probes yesterday. These probes monitor the three ruined planets and every corner of the entire Daxu ring. According to According to the information fed back by the probe, all the fusion reactors used to play the role of artificial suns today only started operating a few minutes after the "big city" issued the start-up order, and Ruin Planet No. 1 - the planet under our feet, its None of the reactors in the Northern Hemisphere have been able to start up until now.

"Did they break at the same time?"

"This is one of the reasons." Lin Xue combed her hair that was blown by the cold wind. "Those fusion reactors are in disrepair. I can see that they have accumulated hundreds of thousands of years of decay. They should be at the end of the world. After that, they were made urgently and are still in use today... However, there should be other reasons why so many fusion reactors failed at the same time today, but I am not an expert in nuclear engineering... The only thing that is certain is that this is not a good sign."

"Not a good sign..."

I repeated something in a low voice, and then suddenly remembered something, "I just had a dream."

Lin Xue's eyes suddenly brightened up when she heard this: "Come here, let me test your dreams. First, stretch out your hand and show your face..."

I didn't react until I stretched out my hand. Really, this girl came so suddenly that she didn't even give me a chance to react!

I slapped off Lin Xue's claws and said seriously: "I'm not kidding, I think that dream is extraordinary..."

At that moment, I recounted the messy dreams I had just had, including seeing all the fusion reactors dim at night, a low rumble coming from beneath the earth, the planet disintegrating in an instant, and myself falling in confusion. Entering the center of the earth, I initially dismissed these bizarre experiences as random random dreams, but now, I feel that things may not be that simple.

Lin Xue listened to my statement, her eyes opened wider and wider, and finally couldn't help but interrupt: "Wait! Mumu, you said you dreamed that the planet cracked open in the end, and then you fell into the center of the earth?"

"It didn't make it all the way to the bottom," I thought for a while, "I woke up just as I fell."

"Don't worry about the details," Lin Xue waved her hand, then looked at me straight in the eyes, which made me feel awkward, "Mu Mu, I had the exact same dream, even the shape and position of the small basin. Not bad at all – look behind you.”

Lin Xue pointed to the opposite side, and I turned around in the direction of her finger. A small basin exactly like the one in my dream appeared in front of me.

"You must have never seen this place before. The platform we are standing on now is our first time here. This basin can only be seen from here." Lin Xue said in a low voice.

"Did we have the same dream?"

"It's not 'the same dream', it should be that you had the same dream as me. There is a difference: this dream belongs to me. You are the one who accidentally got to watch," Lin Xue narrowed her eyes slightly, milky white A halo began to flow in his eyes, "That was no ordinary illusion. You should have discovered that you can clearly recall every detail of what you saw at that time. Even after you wake up, there is no trace of what you saw when you recall it. Weird place. Normal dreams are not like this. Normal dreams will become incomplete after waking up. It is difficult for even trained psychologists to recall 100% of the scenes they dreamed about, and it is difficult to recall the contents of the dream while awake. Scenes, people can easily find the absurdity of those scenes. Think about it now, is there anything absurd in that dream when you recall it now?"

I thought back carefully, and after working hard for half a minute, I finally realized that it was exactly what Lin Xue said. That dream was extremely clear and reasonable from beginning to end. Now when I recall the scene at that time, I feel like I am looking back on my memory, rather than an hallucination, huh. But if I have to say whether there are any absurd places, there should be some——

"There is one abnormality that is particularly incredible." I nodded solemnly, causing Lin Xue to be surprised. "In the dream, Qianqian didn't kick off the quilt!"

"Oh, that's really incredible," Lin Xue nodded with deep surprise. Then he kicked me, "You can't be more reliable! What I mean is. That dream was actually my ability at work, and it was a passive prophecy. Then you, a piece of wood, didn't know what was going on. You broke into this young lady’s spiritual world, you bastard!”

I jumped aside quickly: "You could have said no earlier. Don't you know that I have poor understanding?"

Lin Xue was speechless at that time: She was always helpless in the face of my calmness in certain aspects.

"Okay, that is to say, this world may really be... coming to an end?"

Seeing that the eldest lady didn't speak for a long time, I had no choice but to take the initiative to bring the topic back up.

"One of the possibilities, but I don't know what caused the ruins to suddenly disintegrate," Lin Xue covered her forehead with some distress, "In other words, if there is no way to avoid it, then it will most likely happen. Happened. We still don’t know what is maintaining this space, nor how its special structure was formed, but my intuition tells me that if the world collapses in the future, it must be something that maintains its current situation. There is something wrong with the 'core'. Of course, this shouldn't happen soon, I can be sure of this. Now I am more curious about one thing, how did you see my dream."

When Lin Xue said the last sentence, she suddenly raised her head and looked straight here. Under the night, those all-seeing pupils with white light swimming around looked like searchlights - I instantly thought of dog eyes. One light.

"Turn off the skill first," I quickly waved my hand in front of Lin Xue, "It's so dazzling... Ahem, maybe the two of us have a telepathic connection? Then we will be in the same spirit when we sleep."

Lin Xue's face suddenly flushed slightly: "We are in touch with each other? Can we reach this level? Qianqian sleeps closer to you, how come you don't see what is thinking in her mind at all?"

I thought about it, and suddenly I felt that maybe it was because Qian Qian really didn't have anything in her head when she was sleeping, or maybe the things she had installed were too weird, and after sharing them, all that was left was garbled characters.

"This makes sense..." Lin Xue suddenly nodded subtly when she heard my explanation, "I really can't imagine how her mind usually works. As for Sandora, you shouldn't be able to understand that Xiling Apostle is just dreaming when she sleeps. , if she happens to be thinking about the origin of the universe, you must think it is more garbled than garbled. Sister, it may be because she is a little far away from you, and the other one is the big fox sleeping naked, the brains of canines and primates Most likely they are incompatible..."

After such elimination, it seems that the only person here who can be mentally synchronized with me in the previous situation is Lin Xue, but knowing this seems meaningless. What we are really curious about now is why I actually experienced Lin Xue's dream in person. ?

We discussed this topic for a few minutes, but in the end no one could figure it out. At this time, onee-sama suddenly called us over from a distance, so the topic ended here for the time being.

"Look over there, it's in the direction of the town. It seems like there's chaos."

Onee-sama pointed in the direction of the town of "Condenser" in the distance. He said with a frown.

The town one kilometer away is now brightly lit. There are many searchlight-like beams sweeping back and forth on the edge of the town. After enhanced eyesight, you can clearly see that there are many people running around under those lights. Obviously, the "sun" in the sky has not yet ignited and has attracted the attention of ordinary people. Now it is probably panic.

Lin Xue and her elder sister immediately went to pack up the campsite and prepare to go back to the town. Qianqian was still confused at this time, and she slept on me all night with her wings spread wide. As a result, I felt a little stiff. When I looked at someone, I was like a melancholy girl looking at the sky at a 45-degree angle. Not far away, I suddenly heard a soft scream from Lan, whose voice sounded like a canine animal being stepped on. to the tail. It turned out that her tail hair was caught by the zipper of the sleeping bag, and when I pulled the zipper, a large piece of it was pulled off, which did not make the unfortunate fox cry out in pain. When she slowly got dressed and came to me. , those nine tails are basically curled up, and one of them is still wrapped with a bandage, which looks weird no matter how you look at it. If I hadn't been afraid that Lan would really cry, I would have decided to take a photo and send it to Zi via MMS...

It took Lan a few minutes to sort out his tail. When we arrived at the "Condenser" town, all the townspeople had gathered in the square, and the white light cast by the lampposts around the square shone on these people's faces. There was a sad color in everyone's face. Five or six adults were gathering at the street corner outside the square to talk about something. Last night, Glick happily introduced us to the people in the town. These people had an impression of us "guests from the big city". It was quite profound. When they saw us walking from the outside of the town, they all looked quite surprised.

I noticed worries on the faces of these people. Although I knew what was going on, I still asked, "What's going on?"

"Don't you know?" A dark-skinned uncle shook his head, "We thought people in the big city would know more or less what was going on... The fusion reactor doesn't seem to be started. It's still dark. I heard that it won't happen again. If this continues, the cold wind will start blowing. If there is nothing else, it’s best to hide in the house. It won’t be long before the big city will take you back.”

We mumbled a few words without comment and walked towards the center of the square.

It seems that the situation is slightly better than expected. Although the residents are at a loss, they have not yet fallen into chaos. Perhaps in this world, sudden breakdown of huge machinery has become such a common occurrence that even the sun in the sky suddenly fails to light up can be downplayed. ——Of course, this may be a bit taken for granted. In any case, those fusion reactors are not something to play with. Basically, the ecological lifeblood of the world is maintained on them. If that thing breaks, the calmness of these ordinary people will be affected. I don't know how much longer I can hold on.

Mr. Barnard was discussing matters in a low voice with several other old people in the town. The residents gathered around these respected old people, keeping a distance of about five meters from them, trying not to make a sound, but they looked worried and confused. Emotions are still gradually fermenting in the air.

Just like the previous adults, Mr. Barnard immediately showed an eager look when he saw us walking in, trying to get information about the fusion reactor from the "people from the big city". Of course, in addition to those reactors that may happen We have no comment other than a malfunction.

"I have never encountered such a disturbing thing in my life," Mr. Barnard kept wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. "I'm not saying that I have never seen a fusion reactor break down. I also encountered it when I was very young. There have been times when fusion reactors failed to light up in time, but that time only one fusion reactor failed to light up, and it only delayed the day for less than an hour... But this time the situation seemed to be much more serious, and so did the sky in the distance. There is more than one black and broken fusion reactor, and it is almost noon now..."

"Don't be nervous, it will be fixed. It's just a coincidence that things broke together. We have definite news. The city has sent spaceships to activate those fusion reactors." My sister comforted Mr. Barnard with a calm voice, and her voice was enough to reassure him. When people nearby heard this, the atmosphere around them immediately relaxed a lot. It seemed that what the "big men from the big city" said was quite convincing.

At this time, there was a little commotion in the crowd, and Glick's thin figure slithered back and forth from the feet of the adults. When he saw us, he shouted in surprise: "Wow! It turns out you are still here! I thought you had gone back."

"Grick, be quiet." Mr. Barnard quickly reprimanded, and then his expression softened, "Go home and stay with Shuizhu. The sun will light up later today. There are not enough lights in the town, and the children will come out and run around. It’s easy to be in danger.”

Glick still listened to the old man's words. When he heard this arrangement, he just made a face at us and turned around to leave. But at this moment, there was a bigger commotion in the crowd, which made him stop. pace.

"Look! The reactor lights up!"

Someone looked at the sky and made a sound of surprise.

I heard the sound and looked up, and saw that the dark red ring hanging in the center of the dark night a little west was slowly getting brighter. The dark red color gradually turned to bright red, and then turned into bright yellow, around the ring The small bright spots suddenly scattered away like a school of frightened fish, and in the center of the halo, a bright white dot expanded rapidly, instantly covering the surrounding dim yellow halo. The crowd was silent for a moment, and then there were chaotic cheers, but one step faster than these cheers was Lin Xue's shout: "Close your eyes!!"

In just two or three seconds of reaction time, the small white dot in the sky expanded into a ball of white light that was more than three times larger than a normal artificial sun, and then the dazzling white light covered the entire sky.

The fusion reactor exploded.