Even when his intelligence was being suppressed by the stars, Huang Ji never thought of it as much of a predicament. Strengthening his body allowed him to block out unknown information while acquiring knowledge could help him unlock and decipher that unknown information. This allowed him to understand the information and then also block it out. As long as there was a solution, he could go about solving the problem, it was merely a matter of hard work.
For Huang Ji, the real problem wasn't anything like having his intelligence suppressed by the stars. The true source of his worries originated from the most terrifying planetary object in the sky, the Moon. More accurately, a group of aliens living on the Moon! They were very few in number. Last week when he had checked there were only two, now there were four of them. They were there to monitor Earth, this wasn't hard for Huang Ji to figure out. The moon had a piece of information that Huang Ji interpreted as: Total time spent monitoring the Earth, 12,831 years 4 month and 19 days...
Huang Ji couldn't observe any information about the alien race because he had yet to directly observe them. Despite that, simply analyzing the Moon itself was enough for Huang Ji to make a few speculations. This was because the Moon wasn't a natural satellite at all, it was a weapon of war that had been created by a different alien race!
Huang Ji could sense a large assortment of powerful machines and devices hidden within the Moon, most of which he was completely unable to comprehend. If he couldn't comprehend it, the data wouldn't be automatically translated into a format he could understand, it would just be in a garbled state. The only devices he could approximately recognize were nuclear weapons and artillery cannons. This was because he knew about their existences and had a basic understanding of the weapons, that's why the information was translated . Only with knowledge of the corresponding concept would the information transform into a comprehensible format. But there was no doubt that their cannons were definitely not the same cannons seen in human society.
Their cannons could fire projectiles that weighed three hundred thousand tonnes! These massive projectiles were made with ultra-high purity tungsten and were a living realization of kinetic bombardment. No matter where they struck, any shot fired at Earth would be akin to a high-speed meteor impact...
As for the nuclear weapons. they weren't as crude as the hydrogen bombs being used by humans either. Due to a lack of relevant knowledge, Huang Ji was unable to decipher more information. All he knew was that the blast radius of the weapon could be controlled with pinpoint precision.
Other than those weapons, the most natural weapon would have to be the Moon itself. The Moon's orbit controlled the tides on Earth. Generally speaking, the oceans facing the Moon would rise up. If the Moon suddenly left, those parts of the oceans would come crashing back down, causing sea levels to rise all over the world. High latitude areas in particular would see a dangerous rise in sea level that would submerge a number of coastal cities. Furthermore, the Earth and Moon orbited around each other at the same center of mass. The Moon's departure would cause Earth's center of rotation to return to Earth's geometric center. Its speed of rotation would suddenly accelerate, resulting in an instability of Earth's structure that would cause large-spread natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis.
Likewise, it would be equally disastrous if the Moon approached Earth, or maybe even worse. The Moon's gravity had a massive effect on everything at Earth's surface. There was no need for it to fire even a single shot. All it had to do was move around a bit and this giant rock that hung above humanity's head, the Moon that humans had stared at for ages, would bring down calamity upon all of humanity. It was a natural weapon, and right now, it was in the perfect position...
From this one aspect, Huang Ji couldn't even begin to fathom how technologically advanced were the watchers hiding on the Moon? In their eyes, humanity was probably nothing more than monkey's in a zoo. At the moment, even getting on the Moon was an extreme challenge for humans. Just on the first of March, Huang Ji had seen a news report about how the nation's Chang'e 1 lunar exploration probe had successfully crashed onto the Moon, completing its lunar orbiter mission. Why crash onto the Moon? Wasn't it precisely because the technology hadn't reached a high enough level to retrieve it? This technological level was probably a joke to the alien civilization where the Moon was nothing more than an observation post.
More importantly, the only reason he knew about this brutal truth was because he had a superpower. People lived on this planet, bustling about and living their lives completely oblivious to Earth's current situation. Watched for twelve thousand years without knowing. Staring into space asking where were the aliens. Well damn, they were right above us!
When Huang Ji first learned of this information, his heart was filled with despair. It was better to be ignorant than to know about this kind of thing. He was drowned in a heavy sense of powerlessness. Why did he have to know about this? He was just a farmer, someone who had been treated as an idiot since he was little, who'd even given up on the High School Entrance Exam, a boy who was still only sixteen.
Huang Ji desperately wanted to reassure himself; this civilization was friendly, at least they hadn't destroyed humanity, and they'd watched over us for so long. But there was one piece of information that he couldn't ignore that sent chills down his spine when he thought about it. The Moon's 'Terminator Mode' where all of the Moon's weapons were unleashed had been activated once in the past, exterminating two sentient races!
If that wasn't terrifying enough, there was a piece of information pertaining to humanity itself that made Huang Ji truly unable to convince himself of their friendly status...That's right, a piece of information about humanity. Through observing the Moon and gaining a heavy perspective about how Earth's civilization was being monitored by aliens, he had also gained a corresponding understanding. When this understanding was paired with humanity's data, he was then able to check 'Humanity's merit as assessed by the XXX race'.
This race was in reference to the one on the Moon. Their name could not be expressed using human words or language. Huang Ji could only vaguely sense that the name contained the meaning 'eye'. With a forced transliteration, they could be called 'Zeta', but Huang Ji preferred to call them the Monitors. After giving the Moon aliens a name, the XXX race in the information was displayed to him as the 'Monitor race'.
'Humanity's merit as assessed by the Monitor race', this piece of information could be interpreted as the positive views the Monitors had about humans. The contents of the evaluation were extremely simply, to such a degree that it made Huang Ji's blood freeze over. Delicious. This was the reason he was always trembling for no apparent reason in front of his grandfather last week.
Huang Ji and his grandfather along with everyone around him, they all had one thing in common, a 'racial merit' on an interstellar level called delicious! Was this a merit? Then what were their flaws! Huang Ji could see that they did have flaws. Humanity's flaw in the eyes of the Monitors was...cruelty. How ironic was that? A race that judged humanity to be delicious seriously thought that humans were cruel?
He never told this to anyone. When he was young and had mentioned all of the strange things he saw, not even his own grandfather had believed him and would even tell him to stop with the nonsense. Last week after reading the Moon's information, he had told Dr. Liang, "I can see the age of trees and the history of rocks. The Moon is an alien observatory."
In response, even a kind person like Dr. Liang had told his grandfather in secret, "The kid's got a mental illness..."
That's right, even when it was said behind his back Huang Ji still knew. Nobody could whisper in front of Huang Ji. With his data perception, the five senses were shared. If he saw it, he heard it. If he heard it, then he tasted it. Huang Ji could hear the taste of food and could see what something felt like. He could even use his nose to smell a person's scent, and through it know what they were talking about... For every person he encountered, he had access to every piece of information about them that was available to him.
Huang Ji decided to stop trying to get other people to understand his ability. Even though he could prove that the information he provided was correct, it would actually be dangerous to let more people know about it. All of Earth was being monitored, a single mistake could mean total failure. As quite possibly the only human on Earth with this knowledge, it was up to him for now to come up with a solution to this problem. The more that he knew, the more he would be able to do. If there was a single person who could deal with the curse hanging above all of their heads, that person was probably him. This wasn't him being conceited, it was the result of an absence of choice. He had to think of a way to deal with this predicament!
How could he just ignore what he had learned and live out the rest of his life pretending like he didn't know anything? That was impossible, unless he really was an idiot. Otherwise, it was no longer possible for him to live the normal life of a normal person. What could a sixteen year old boy without any strength or power accomplish with just his data perception?
The possibilities seemed endless.
......
Thanks for the chapter!
ReplyDeleteThis chapter reveals a lot about the different race that seems 'eyeing' humanity as a food source. I couldn't help but think the world building the author described was humanity is prospering over 12,000 years and yet, failed to have a decent-technology advancement that would successfully launched an exploration on the moon. It got me thinking, if that's the case, then, wouldn't it be someone hindering the humanity to advanced or is it the propagation of being not overly curious and religions explain all nature of living and non-living things. I dunno.
Once again amazed at your insight into the chapters. Don't want to spoil anything, but you are a very smart person...
DeleteOk. Now this is gettig interesting
ReplyDelete