When a person is fully engrossed in doing something, anything unrelated to that matter is consciously ignored.
Devoting oneself solely to scholarly pursuits, oblivious to the outside world.
Fang Er was precisely in this state.
His attention was entirely focused on communicating with the system, completely unaware of the events unfolding below him.
The revelation from the system was simply too immense, so much so that Fang Er felt like cursing.
According to the system, ancient myths were both true and not true.
Countless years ago, Earth had only one continent, and on that continent existed a single civilization, known as Yan Huang!
The people of the Yan Huang civilization possessed endless lifespans, making them, in a sense, immortal.
Their extended lives led to an unimaginably large population.
However, it also resulted in extremely advanced technological development.
To accommodate their burgeoning population and ensure sufficient living space for procreation, the Yan Huang civilization captured eight planets—Gold, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn—along with the Moon, connecting all nine celestial bodies to Earth.
At that time, these planets were far from their current states. After being modified by the Yan Huang people, they became habitable for humans, just like Earth.
However, life did not exclusively exist on Earth; interstellar warfare was commonplace in that era.
Forty-five billion years ago, Earth witnessed its final interstellar war.
This colossal conflict between the Yan Huang civilization and alien civilizations raged for thousands of years!
The connections between the nine planets and Earth were destroyed, returning them to their independent states.
Earth's continents were also shattered by the war, which claimed the lives of hundreds of billions of people!
Leveraging their advantage on their home planet, the Yan Huang civilization ultimately defeated the invaders and emerged victorious.
Yet, as everyone celebrated the continuation of humanity in another interstellar war, they suddenly discovered a massive number of people dying inexplicably, as if facing the apocalypse!
Finally, through the diligent efforts of scientists, the cause was identified.
The clash between the two civilizations, the collision of different technologies, had inadvertently produced a new substance.
Oxygen!
This was a substance that had never existed on Earth before!
Due to the presence of oxygen, the Yan Huang people, who once possessed endless lifespans, could no longer live beyond two hundred years.
The ruling council made the difficult decision to evacuate the solar system and relocate to a terrestrial planet outside of it.
That planet, which represented humanity's last hope, was named Zi Xia by the Yan Huang civilization.
However, after Zi Xia was discovered by later generations, some gave it another name: Kepler-452b!
As the Yan Huang civilization evacuated to Zi Xia, they took with them Earth's most precious possession: the Star Core!
While countless planets exist in the universe, those possessing a Star Core are exceedingly rare. It is precisely due to the Star Core's existence that life on Earth was able to evolve.
The Star Core possesses the ability to repair planets!
After the Yan Huang civilization, carrying the Star Core, evacuated the solar system, Earth's self-healing capabilities gradually diminished. This very reason led to the five major mass extinctions: the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods.
Fang Er found this explanation difficult to accept and could not help but voice his questions to the system.
Who are you, and where do you come from!
What do you mean by my responsibility, as you mentioned earlier?
The system began to answer Fang Er's questions again.
It, or rather, she, originated from one of Earth's countless parallel worlds.
The technological path of that world had taken a peculiar turn, leading them to glimpse a sliver of the mysteries of time and space!
They discovered a method to trace time, allowing them to observe events that occurred at any point in history.
However, this was limited to observation; it was akin to watching a movie, where one could fast forward or rewind, but the plot's progression could not be altered.
Humans are inherently curious. With such technology, they longed to know what the future held.
Curiosity killed the cat; ignorance is bliss.
Because they foresaw Earth's demise.
February 22, 2222!
The sixth mass extinction!
This time, it would be more thorough than the previous five. Earth would explode!
Not due to the outbreak of World War III, but rather because Earth would suddenly detonate!
All parallel worlds dependent on Earth's existence would vanish in that instant!
And all of this began to show signs as early as 2020.
Volcanic eruptions, melting glaciers, rampant torrential rains, severe droughts and heatwaves, widespread plagues, devastating locust infestations
These were all manifestations of Earth losing its self-control!
Subsequently, frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, and a series of other disasters would occur.
To prevent such an event from truly happening, the world from which the system originated deployed immense energy resources to trace time and investigate the true cause of the first mass extinction, thereby learning about the Yan Huang civilization.
To ensure Earth's continued existence, they devised a single method: to travel to Zi Xia and retrieve Earth's Star Core.
Alternatively, they could find a planet with a Star Core and extract it to bring back to Earth.
The method was found, but it was impossible to execute!
Setting aside the fact that they lacked the ability to traverse spatial barriers at will, the mere requirement of returning from Zi Xia with the Star Core within 200 years presented an unsolvable problem.
Zi Xia is 1400 light-years away from Earth!
A light-year is not a unit of time but a unit of length; one light-year is the distance light travels in one year.
To cover a round trip of 2800 light-years within 200 years, while also allowing time to search for the Star Core, would require interstellar travel capability of at least 20 times the speed of light!
The speed of light is approximately 299,792 kilometers per second; 20 times that would mean reaching speeds of about 6 million kilometers per second!
With their technology, this was simply unattainable!
Not only were they incapable of achieving this, but after surveying numerous parallel worlds, they even concluded
that no parallel space with such technological prowess could be found!
To accomplish this task, a new parallel space would need to be created, forging a path distinct from all existing parallel spaces, and even from the primary world.
Creating a parallel space had to be undertaken by individuals from the primary world, and their status could not be low; they needed to have a certain influence on the primary world.
Fang Er, capable of independently developing an aero-engine, became the prime candidate.
He was young and possessed exceptional technical skills!
To allow sufficient time for development, this newly constructed parallel space had to revert to ancient times, and importantly, not to a period of chaos, as survival itself would be an issue, making technological development impossible.
The world that created the system, after countless experiments, finally found a method to open spatial barriers, albeit a tiny, rice-grain-sized opening that could only be maintained for 0.1 seconds.
The spatial passage would disappear as quickly as one could blink.
Their world existed based on the primary world; if the primary world ceased to exist, their world would perish with it.
For survival and propagation, they mobilized all their resources, created the system, and through the spatial passage, deployed it into the primary world.
However, during passage through the spatial barrier, an issue arose: the system's core was grazed by the closing spatial passage, causing it to split into two parts.
One half of the system, bearing Fang Er's bio-electric signature, found Fang Er, while the other half landed on Motorola, who was on a trip to China at the time.
The two incomplete systems, using their pre-stored energy, constructed parallel worlds within their minds.
The consequence of the system's incompleteness was that their minds could not withstand the energy impact, resulting in immediate death.
However, fortunately, the system, along with their memories, appeared with them in this new parallel world.