A child drowned in a reservoir while trying to cool off due to a power outage and the extreme heat. This was a major news event locally, with parents and relatives lamenting their carelessness and even blaming the power company for not performing routine maintenance.
However, on a national and global scale, it barely caused a ripple and had no impact on the larger picture.
Everything continued to develop at its own pace.
The weather remained hot, water remained scarce. Places prone to drought suffered, places prone to flooding did not escape. Wildfires ignited as they should, volcanoes erupted without restraint.
Various extreme weather events continued to emerge.
Within a few years, due to widespread crop failures and reduced yields across the country, Xia Kingdom was forced to reintroduce the grain ration system.
Adjustments were made step by step in the following years.
A key difference was that by the time everyone's monthly grain ration was reduced to twenty catties, the technology for mass-producing artificial starch was still a distant dream, and controlled fusion power generation remained nowhere in sight.
Grain reserves had dropped to the lowest alert level.
To ensure more people could survive,
The Grain and Oil Administration once again implemented industrial adjustments.
First, they stopped issuing grain rations and switched entirely to distributing nutrient solutions, three tubes per person per day, no more. This was to further reduce grain consumption.
Second, they continued to develop large-scale underground planting bases.
Third, they utilized processed foods as much as possible to manufacture nutrient solutions, with survival as the sole criterion.
What did this mean?
It meant that previously, the raw materials for nutrient solutions were grains. From now on, that was not necessarily the case. Anything edible or inedible, as long as it was non-toxic and could extract essential elements for the human body, could be added.
For instance, mass-farmed mealworms could be added to supplement essential protein. Large harvests of seaweed could also be incorporated into nutrient solutions to provide trace elements like alginate.
Crop stalks, roots, leaves, husks, and even microalgae like Chlorella would be added to the nutrient solutions.
While these measures alleviated the famine to some extent, they also led to malnutrition for many, especially after several years of this practice.
A large number of elderly and frail individuals began to pass away.
Concurrently, without artificial starch, there was no Human Mutual Aid Society. Without the Human Mutual Aid Society, many small nations were unable to sustain themselves, ultimately resulting in either near-annihilation or prolonged conflict until their populations reduced to a level their current resources could support.
The wars between various small nations finally subsided.
The original national systems had long since collapsed.
Only small scattered tribes remained, congregating in areas where cultivation was still possible, struggling to survive.
As long as the grain problem could not be definitively solved, many things remained eternally unchanged. This was true in the past, is true now, and will inevitably be true in the future. When land is vast and sparsely populated, and grain is abundant, it is an era of prosperity. When the population grows to its limit and there is insufficient food, chaos ensues, until the population is once again reduced by conflict to a level where food is sufficient.
This cycle repeats, continuing until extinction.
The other major powers now followed the same principle, allowing ordinary citizens to starve in large numbers.
They remained indifferent and unconcerned, offering no disaster relief.
In their view, national development relied primarily on the elite. As long as the elite remained, the core of the nation persisted, and it could slowly recover in the future.
Only Xia Kingdom was unwilling to resign itself to this fate.
It persistently sought solutions.
To allow more people to survive.
Many individuals toiled day and night in research, hoping for a breakthrough. However, some matters could not be accomplished overnight. It took another six years before the artificial starch technology finally achieved a breakthrough, enabling mass production. By this year, the national population had decreased to eight hundred million, most of whom were malnourished.
With the breakthrough in artificial starch technology,
Subsequent technologies like artificial protein also achieved initial implementation within the next four to five years, gradually transitioning towards mass production.
Even so, Xia Kingdom could only guarantee the basic sustenance of its citizens. Recovering the former level of moderate prosperity remained a distant goal, with no clear timeline for achievement. As for transforming planets like the Moon and Mars,
All research efforts were concentrated on agriculture, and there was no capacity to divert resources to such endeavors.
However, regardless of the difficulties, Xia Kingdom ultimately managed to preserve the largest population in the world through the collective efforts of its people, defying fate. In current terms, the remaining global population combined was less than half of Xia Kingdom's remaining population. In other words, excluding Xia Kingdom, the combined remaining population of all other nations was less than four hundred million; they purely relied on population reduction to weather the disaster.
As long as enough people died,
The remaining individuals would not starve.
They believed they were more astute, thinking that by preserving the elite, the nation could be restored in an instant. However, reality soon delivered a harsh blow. All nations except Xia Kingdom began to experience technological and civilizational regression.
The principle was simple: elites are not born as elites, nor can it be guaranteed that all their descendants will be elites. Without a sufficient population base, where would so many elites come from? Population is the bedrock supporting technological and civilizational development. A building without a foundation, no matter how beautiful, how long can it endure?
Although the living conditions and standards of the people of Xia Kingdom were far inferior to those of the nations that sacrificed a large portion of their population, they preserved the momentum of technological and civilizational development, and from this foundation, they began a slow recovery.
Even if it took decades for the living standards of Xia Kingdom's citizens to barely recover to the level of moderate prosperity through continuous technological advancement, compared to certain countries whose technology had regressed to the point where they could barely maintain fission weapons, time proved Xia Kingdom's choice to be correct.
They used the arduous sacrifice of two generations.
To create a new era of prosperity for their descendants.
Another forty years passed, and the global environment and ecosystem slowly recovered to a stable level. Simultaneously, Xia Kingdom finally overcame all technical issues related to fusion.
It officially began its journey into the interstellar era.
This included building lunar bases, transforming the Martian environment, and launching light-speed spacecraft to explore the universe, embarking on a grand cosmic voyage.
Without external assistance, Xia Kingdom's technological development, while experiencing more setbacks and requiring more time and greater sacrifice, was built step by step through their own efforts. This process, without reliance on others, resulted in a more solid foundation and potentially a more distant future.
However, the specifics would ultimately be left to time.
Only time is the standard by which all things are measured.