Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Great Downgrade, Great Famine, Great Destruction
Shen Feng felt like he couldn’t breathe, his eyes widening as he stared intently at the photograph.
It was a Polaroid photo, faded with age, but the subjects’ expressions were still clear.
In the photo, his own expression was solemn, while Ji Xin wore a typically carefree smile.
He shook the journal again, and a few more photos promptly fell out.
This time, it was a group photo of Ji Xin with several other classmates, as well as a picture of him with his parents.
’What the hell is going on!?’
Shen Feng looked up at the skeleton. ’Could this skeleton... be Ji Xin!?’
’The one who’d been hiding in this Shelter all this time... was Ji Xin?’
’His best friend, the one who was joking with him just a few days ago? The same Ji Xin who warned him to be wary of Li Chang?’
’What world is this? Is this the future of his Earth!?’
He hurriedly flipped open the journal and began to read, page by page.
Though called a journal, it was more like a memoir, with entries spanning more than twenty years.
A long-forgotten history from after the nuclear war unfolded before his eyes.
The earliest event recorded in the journal began a year after the nuclear war broke out, in 2026.
By that year, the world had completely collapsed. When the nuclear strikes occurred, Ji Xin, then a graduate student pursuing a master’s in mechanical engineering, happened to be on vacation at his family’s home in the countryside. Because of this, he escaped the devastating attack.
His family and friends, however, were not so lucky.
Fortunately, human civilization wasn’t completely extinguished. Many people were still alive. Though large and medium-sized cities had been annihilated, some smaller towns and villages survived.
After the first wave of victims died from acute radiation sickness, the survivors were left to endure. Most suffered from various radiation-induced illnesses and faced an extremely high risk of cancer, but they were, after all, still alive.
There was still hope for human civilization.
But the price had been too tragic. No one knew how many years it would take for Earth’s environment to recover. The old social order, and all the achievements of civilization that humanity had once taken pride in, were overturned.
Survivors gathered together, forming makeshift organizations. Across the globe, what remained of humanity began to exchange information.
Having almost universally lost countless loved ones, many survivors were plagued by self-doubt. These tragic experiences shook their faith in humanity itself.
’Can we ever avoid self-destruction?’
This was the question on almost everyone’s mind.
Ultimately, most people reached the same conclusion, a shared consensus:
To abandon the Information Age, to abandon the Industrial Age. To voluntarily downgrade the Level of human civilization, returning to a time before the Steam Engine and gunpowder, back to an Iron Age agrarian society.
Of course, with the global population at only one percent of its original size and the industrial base completely destroyed, what little civilization remained could barely sustain itself.
This so-called "civilizational downgrade" was, for the most part, a matter of necessity.
It came to be known as the Age of the Great Regression.
At the same time, the entire Earth was plunged into a nuclear winter that would last for three long years.
Clouds of radioactive dust enveloped most of the planet, blotting out the sun. Massive amounts of plant life withered and died.
Then came the Great Famine.
For the three years of the nuclear winter and several years after, most crops failed completely, yielding almost nothing.
Even grass and trees died off in droves, leaving barren land that stretched as far as the eye could see.
The remaining animal populations naturally couldn’t survive either.
At first, the human remnants survived on stockpiles of pre-war processed foods, but as time went on, everything was slowly consumed.
Finally, after the survivors had struggled through so much tragedy in the ruins, after they had weathered the worst of their fate, a time came when they thought they could finally embrace hope for civilization once more. But they were horrified to discover that the same sun that woke them from their slumber also woke something else: the automated nuclear strike systems of the world’s great powers.
The sun had awakened the survivors, and it had also awakened the slumbering doomsday machines.
A new, systematic nuclear war began once more!
The great cities, newly rebuilt by a humanity that had just begun to reunite, were once again reduced to ash by mushroom clouds brighter than a thousand suns.
The last of humanity lost all courage to rebuild. They hid themselves away in small Shelters or eked out a meager existence in the apocalyptic wasteland, living like cockroaches...
Ji Xin had been very lucky. After the first wave of nuclear strikes, he and a few friends had already taken refuge on this farm.
Thanks to the farm’s unique basin microclimate, its unremarkable location, and its various automated tools, they managed to survive.
They even managed to store enough food before the nuclear winter set in, allowing them to survive those long years.
Ji Xin used his mechanical knowledge to modify various farm tools, which proved to be a great help.
But this place was both their Peach Blossom Spring and their prison.
The edges of the surrounding forest were shrouded in radioactive contamination, trapping them.
Ji Xin had once designed a decontamination device from a lawnmower and used it to clear a path of low-level contamination through the forest, but in the end, they didn’t leave.
’Even if we leave, where could we possibly go?’
’Out into the wasteland, to eat others or be eaten?’
Despair nearly destroyed them.
And despair did not keep them waiting long.
Within a few years, members of the group began to develop cancer, one after another—mostly leukemia or thyroid cancer.
A decade or so later, only Ji Xin remained.
And he, too, faced his final moments with leukemia.
In the final moments of his life, Ji Xin recalled his parents, the friends of his youth, and all the beautiful things life had offered. Then, he passed away peacefully.
Shen Feng looked at the skeleton on the sofa. He was certain now. This was Ji Xin...
He broke free from the shock of the memoir only to be immediately enveloped in a new fog of confusion.
’According to this memoir, I was turned to dust in the first wave of nuclear strikes.’
’What on earth is this place?’
’The future of the real Earth, or the Earth of a Parallel Cosmos?’
"Shen... Feng, do you... know this person?" Firefly, who was beside him, had noticed something was off and asked cautiously.
Shen Feng nodded.
"This person... he’s my best friend. I was just talking with him a few days ago..."
Firefly quickly reached out to touch Shen Feng’s forehead, checking to see if he had a fever.
’He must be exhausted,’ she thought. ’After all, he’s been on the run with me for so long. Maybe he ran into some curse in the forest.’
Firefly decided to play along.
"Since he’s your... friend, shouldn’t we give him a proper burial? My mom used to say that dying in the wasteland isn’t scary. As long as you’re buried properly, your soul goes up to the sky to join the great figures of the ancient past and become a star."
Shen Feng nodded.
’Yes. He deserves a proper burial...’
He then placed the photos amongst Ji Xin’s ribs, gathered his skeletal remains, wrapped them in a blanket, and headed outside.
By now, Shen Feng had taken control of the building’s entire automated system. The two heavy machine guns on the roof were completely under his command; instead of attacking him, they now stood guard.
Shen Feng went out into the yard, unfolded an entrenching tool, and dug a pit deep enough for one person. He carefully placed Ji Xin’s remains inside.
After a moment of thought, he took a ballpoint pen labeled "Tai City Senior High School" from his pack and placed it with Ji Xin’s remains.
Then he filled the grave back in, forming a small mound. He planted a verdant green branch on top to mark the spot.
Firefly watched him from the side, silent the entire time. She didn’t understand what had come over him. ’Could this skeleton, dead for who knows how many years, really be his friend?’
"Shen Feng, don’t be sad... I’ve had a lot of friends die, too. It was really hard at first, but... but you get used to it..."
Firefly wasn’t very good at comforting people and was at a loss for words.
To her surprise, Shen Feng turned to face her, a smile touching his lips. His gaze was blazing, sharp as two drawn swords, as he said:
"There’s no need to be sad. Now that I know the outcome, it means there’s still time. If I can end this quickly enough, this tragic future will never come to pass!"
With that, he strode back into the house and headed for a specific spot in the basement.
’Whether this is the future of the real Earth or the Earth of some Parallel Cosmos, I will never allow this to happen to my home!’
’I have to finish this mission, get back home, and stop all of this!’
The two of them had now reached a wall in the basement. Shen Feng walked up to it, grabbed a rusty iron chain, and gave it a sharp downward pull.
With a CLANG and a GROAN of scraping metal, a rusty roll-up door was pulled upward, revealing the wall behind it.
Guns. Racks upon racks of them, densely packed. Nothing but guns!
