Chapter 1 The Aftermath

The brilliant sun shone upon the disaster-stricken Isle of Sunrise. The collapsed and cracked city would likely take a long time to repair, and the massive, completely wrecked engine would take even longer. Last night’s breathtaking tumble had given the island an unprecedentedly short night and a hurried dawn. All city institutions were forced to operate at high capacity, treating the wounded and repairing the damaged critical equipment. The only good news was that the casualties were not as severe as feared. Most of the collapses and cracks occurred in the peripheral or older areas of the city, where there were few residents. Moreover, the city's earthquake-resistant design allowed it to withstand the initial shaking for a long time, giving citizens ample opportunity to evacuate to the more stable central area of the floating island.

From high above, overlooking the earth, the lingering dust and smoke columns could be seen everywhere. Air traffic control had been activated inside the dome, and the only aircraft flying were engineering airships or flyers performing the most urgent tasks. Below, on the streets, orderly citizens could be seen: spontaneously rescuing those in need of help, queuing to receive supplies salvaged from collapsed warehouses, and voluntarily reporting whether they had been injured in the disaster, and to what extent their labor capacity would be affected. There was no chaos, no complaints, and very few elves showed any sadness on their faces. They organized themselves with surprising order. The disaster had struck suddenly, but everyone in the city seemed to have practiced for it many times.

Huge shadows were cast on the dome. They were large transport ships sent from other floating islands. These clumsy airships had quickly completed their preparations when the Isle of Sunrise exploded. Now they brought valuable medicines and extra air filtration devices, the latter being essential: the air circulation inside the dome relied on purification equipment buried underground and on the surrounding hoops, but the explosion had caused some damage to them. The smoke and dust in the city had to be removed as soon as possible, so external equipment was the only option.

Hao Ren and Hilda stood on an open terrace at the top of a spire in the royal district. Hilda was lost in thought, while Hao Ren used his extraordinary vision to take in everything in the city. He admired the elves' reaction to the disaster.

Vim stood quietly behind them, not saying a word.

"My people are used to this sort of thing. Seventy years ago, when the Isle of Tranquility disintegrated, they maintained the most important supply warehouses with great composure. About one-tenth of the citizens in this city are survivors of the Isle of Tranquility," Hilda said softly. "More and more floating islands are approaching their limits. The Council of Technical Elders is trying to repair some of the extinguished Dead Islands, but progress has been slow."

Hilda's face was full of fatigue. She had been under the greatest pressure in the past few hours. After hastily ending the Council of Elders, she began to direct the evacuation and rescue efforts. When the floating island rolled over, the districts began to collapse. She was the first to allocate evacuation and refuge plans for each district to the royal district. After the propulsion unit was completely destroyed, she coordinated the work of restabilizing the floating island. The queen was not just an authority who could issue orders. She was also an expert who knew all the technical parameters of the floating islands. Now that everything had settled down, she did not heed the guards' advice to go back to rest. Instead, she brought Hao Ren to the terrace of the spire to overlook the entire city.

"This is our reality."

Hao Ren was still pondering the most suitable solution for the Irim elves. He already had several ideas, but he needed to wait for the data terminal to confirm which was the most feasible. Before that, he cautiously asked Hilda a question: "If I had the ability to get you out of this predicament, how much would you be willing to pay?"

Hilda, with her back to the edge of the terrace, spread her hands, as if her whole body was about to melt into the light under the dome: "You can see what we have left. Just take whatever you need. As long as you can let my people live a better life, and have a real sky like other races, you can take everything in your sight."

Hao Ren quickly waved his hand: "Don't say that, don't say that. It's easy to be misunderstood. I'm not trying to blackmail you or make unreasonable demands. I want to help as a friend, but to be honest, my ability alone is not enough. My ship is only five or six hundred meters long at most—so I might need to ask for help. Those helpers don't come for free."

Hilda thought for a moment: "Then it's still those words. Anyway, we don't have anything else. This place has no resources. The things we have are no different from stones in the eyes of those advanced civilizations. What we have left should only be our own labor force, but that doesn't seem to be anything valuable either."

"Forget it, let's not talk about this yet," Hao Ren scratched his head, feeling that these questions were becoming more and more troublesome. "Let's first..."

Before he could finish his words, he saw an elf run out of the small door behind him and kneel on one knee in front of Hilda: "Your Majesty, the preliminary scan results of the Wishing World are out. We didn't find any information about Lord Cardillen."

As he spoke, the elf handed a rolled-up document to Hilda with both hands. She took the document and quickly browsed through it, her brows furrowing tightly: "The main memory has been tampered with… They have infiltrated so thoroughly. Notify Ekarom to temporarily close the three auxiliary memories of the Wishing World, and strictly review every citizen who applies to upload… Temporarily prohibit citizens from the Isle of Light Prism from entering the Wishing World. The extra rations they consume will be paid from the royal treasury."

The elf messenger obeyed and retreated. Hao Ren curiously asked: "What exactly is this Wishing World?"

Hilda sighed: "Actually, this is our own trouble… but it doesn't matter if I tell you. The Wishing World is a virtual world, established by my great-great-great-grandmother, and it has been running for more than two thousand years. Currently, it is the place where we house our departed souls, and it is also a special testing ground."

Hao Ren immediately thought of a lot of things, and he knew that his guess was probably correct.

"The earliest purpose of establishing that world was for scientific research," Hilda slowly explained. "You know, we have limited resources, and we can't afford to waste many things. Every failure of a large-scale experiment is a harsh winter for the entire Irim society. So, more than two thousand years ago, another queen, with the support of the Council of Technical Elders, established a virtual environment called the 'Wishing World'. It runs on a giant server, designed and built by the most outstanding magic scholars and astrologers. It is our last large-scale technological achievement. The Wishing World simulates the Irim star system: a sun, a planet, a 100% simulation of the home we live in, and it inputs every known world rule. We even made the reality of this world precise to every grain of sand, and we later added many restrictions on the micro-world. This world imitates reality as much as possible, so that we can conduct various large-scale experiments without consuming material resources. At that time, the Council of Technical Elders hoped to find a feasible way to travel to other star systems under the resource constraints of the Irim star system in the Wishing World, and they did get some results in the early stages: some of the spaceships we are using now were simulated and verified in this way."

"But later it certainly didn't go so smoothly." Hao Ren could easily imagine that the second half of this story must have a turning point.

Hilda nodded: "That's right: the Wishing World imagined everything too beautifully, but the technology required to truly cross tens of millions of light-years to other stars is more stringent and precise than we imagined. We must have a complete grasp of the truth before we can create a virtual world that is exactly the same as reality. Otherwise, even the closest imitation is just an imitation. The shadow that infinitely approaches reality is still a shadow. There are still many unknown secrets in this universe that we cannot guess out of thin air in this small cradle. Some scholars even speculate that the mathematical structure of this universe may not be continuous. The laws that are effective in the Irim star system may not be usable in other places—or at least there are a few decimal point deviations. In addition, when many technologies develop to a certain level, they will be affected by the micro-world, and even if we make the Wishing World as precise as possible, it is impossible to describe its micro-parts in detail. We can only constantly add patches—this is not enough at all. Anyway, after working hard for hundreds of years, the faster-than-light engine created in the Wishing World caused a big explosion in reality. Two floating islands were turned into ashes in the explosion. The enthusiasm for the Wishing World plan disappeared, and the ambitious queen of that time died in depression."

Hao Ren knew that there was more to this story.