Chapter 13: Verification
Time passed second by second, gradually reaching 11:59.
One minute remained until the apocalypse’s final arrival.
Perhaps due to the medicine, Jiang Yang felt no tension or fear in his heart, only calm.
In this calm, he clearly saw the time jump from 11:59:59 to 12:00:00.
In that instant, a strange sensation suddenly emerged from within his body.
It was a very odd feeling, neither painful nor comfortable; it could barely be described as awkward.
It was as if something inside his body was wrong, yet from the outside, even to his own perception, everything seemed normal, but he always felt something was off.
Jiang Yang’s spirit suddenly tensed.
He was very familiar with this feeling.
Ten days ago, he had personally experienced it once.
He knew that it started with just awkwardness, a sense that something was off. The next moment, intense pain would sweep in.
He steadied his mindset, preparing to welcome the arrival of the pain. At the same time, he once again viewed his surroundings from an observer’s perspective.
He saw Professor Lu Zhaoming, Zhou Yu, Gu Changshan, and a crowd of staff whose names he could not recall all looking up in bewilderment, gazing at each other.
It seemed they had already sensed the abnormality in their bodies but did not dare confirm it, trying to find answers from their companions.
The next moment, the intense pain arrived as expected.
It was as if countless hands simultaneously gripped every cell and organ inside his body, then ruthlessly kneaded and twisted them. An indescribable sensation of soreness, stuffiness, and pain instantly generated from all over his body, instantly overwhelming his consciousness.
From the observer’s perspective, he clearly saw Zhou Yu collapse to the ground in pain, clutching her abdomen, her whole body trembling.
Her mouth was wide open, as if she wanted to scream, but Jiang Yang heard no sound.
He saw Gu Changshan’s expression remain calm, his eyes slightly narrowed, the muscles around his eyes twitching lightly. He made no howl of agony but gently sighed.
It was as if he had finally accepted reality, finally dispelling any fluke in his heart.
Professor Lu Zhaoming, with his graying hair, clutched his abdomen with one hand and gripped the chair’s handrail with the other, trembling as he sat down. But his eyes remained fixed on the screen in front of Jiang Yang, never shifting away.
In a short time, the originally solemn and orderly hall descended into chaos.
Countless people gaped their mouths in silent howls, countless trembled and convulsed uncontrollably, countless rolled on the ground.
Jiang Yang knew that if nothing unexpected happened, he would perceive this pain in the next moment.
Just as he thought, the pain did arrive the next moment. But unlike last time, although he truly felt the pain this time, that observer-like perspective still existed.
The physical pain had no influence on his spirit. He thus “observed” his body’s pain while maintaining his spirit’s stability and clarity.
The data on the screen in front of him jumped wildly, too fast to discern any information.
Jiang Yang knew that at this moment, that vast net centered on him, with nodes at every observation experimental base, every satellite, every telescope or large experimental device, extending to every corner of the world, had truly been activated.
Information from around the world was undergoing frantic computation and verification by the Arctic No. 4 supercomputer. Soon, the final result would appear before him.
He turned his head to look at Sun Changhe beside him and saw Sun Changhe looking at him as well.
Countless red dots flickered on the screen in front of this half-bald elder, converging into a swath of red light that tinged his gray hair with a faint red hue.
Jiang Yang knew each red dot meant an observation point had detected signs of the apocalypse’s arrival.
A screen full of red dots meant that no place—whether seabed, lake bottom, mountain interior, underground base, regardless of elevation or environment—could escape the apocalypse’s arrival, nor could anyone.
At this moment, the apocalypse had finally received complete verification, leaving no room for doubt.
The elder extended his somewhat trembling arm and pressed the red button on the table.
The next moment, a clear and steady electronic synthesized voice appeared in Jiang Yang’s ears.
“Password is: Desert Sea East Flank, Beneath the Suspended Tower, Mount Buzhou Falls. Contact method is the base’s wifi password.
Repeat, password is: Desert Sea East Flank…”
Jiang Yang silently memorized this password in his heart.
He did not understand what it meant at all and did not care.
What mattered was the password itself. As for the earth-shattering national secret it represented, it had nothing to do with him.
The password repeated three times, and the voice ceased. Meeting Sun Changhe’s gaze, Jiang Yang nodded lightly, and he saw the elder exhale in relief.
His lips trembled as if speaking. At first Jiang Yang could not hear clearly, but Sun Changhe repeated until the message reached Jiang Yang’s ears.
“Comrade Jiang Yang, I entrust it to you.”
Jiang Yang nodded lightly. Thus Sun Changhe turned back, quietly leaned against his seat, closed his eyes, as if awaiting death’s arrival.
Jiang Yang also turned back, focusing his attention on the screen before him.
The information from this spiderweb seemed to have been preliminarily verified by the Arctic No. 4 supercomputer.
He saw a red message hovering at the top of the flickering screen, no longer blinking.
With this stable message’s appearance, soon a second green message appeared below it, then a third, fourth…
Red, green, blue messages of various colors filled the entire screen.
When the messages finally all appeared, Jiang Yang heard a hoarse, pained, incredulous voice from behind him.
“How could it be like this, how could it be like this…”
He turned to see Professor Lu Zhaoming clutching his abdomen with one hand, gripping the seat’s handrail with the other, relying on it to steady his body—he was trembling and swaying, his legs like soft noodles, would have fallen without that hand.
From the outside alone, one could clearly sense the intensity of his current pain. But now, the pained expression on his face was overshadowed by shock and doubt.
It was as if at this moment, aside from the screen and data before him, there was nothing else in his world, nothing able to distract him—not even the pain before death.
This left him repeating like a robot: “How could it be like this?…”
