Chapter 43 Part 1

“Ah?” Yan Yue took several seconds to react and ultimately failed to grasp it. She nodded and said, “Alright, I’ll convey your words exactly.”

Even after she walked out, she was still muttering under her breath, “Weird.”

Wang Wudao had no idea what had happened either. He coughed twice, opened the light with little enthusiasm, and added the final sentence, “At present, class-laser weapons are the only ones humans have found that can interfere with particle structures. Hitting the core—usually in the brain—will cause the particle structure to fail to adjust and completely collapse.”

Horne closed his eyes briefly. He knew that.

Wang Wudao stood up and asked, “Have you heard of the LHC?”

Horne nodded lightly. The Large Hadron Collider—even recently, he had pieced together events about it in the game.

Wang Wudao smiled faintly, but the smile carried a hint of inexplicable roguishness. Horne suspected it was tied to his first impression—after talking here for a while, he still couldn’t erase the feeling from when he first met Wang Wudao.

Wang Wudao simply didn’t look like a scientist. He looked like a real vagrant.

“The Underground Base recreated a small collider based on the technology from back then, but the research direction is different, and the device isn’t necessarily the same. I can only say it’s a similar kind of device.” Wang Wudao walked to the door, opened it, and gestured outside with his thumb. “Does the Colonel want to take a look? This is the embryo of a weapon against the Aliens.”

The collider control room was at the end of the corridor. They turned left upon exiting, and it took two minutes to arrive.

The alloy door opened to reveal a vast space.

The researchers inside all looked up toward the door in unison.

Among the group, Horne spotted a face that surprised him somewhat.

“Doctor Siselen?” Horne asked.

Siselen’s gaze turned toward him first, then he walked over to Horne. His voice was always gentle. “Mr. Horne, welcome to the Underground Base.”

He explained to Horne that he didn’t work here; he had just come over to handle some business.

“If I had to say what I could help with, I suppose I count as a biologist too,” Siselen said.

This was probably one of the very few people from New Loch City that Yan Yue had mentioned, someone you always seemed to run into.

Wang Wudao led Horne to the far end of the room.

There sat equipment weighing tons, separated from the control panel by a pane of glass.

“We’re currently experimenting with a high-energy laser particle,” Wang Wudao said.

The glass reflected their figures, along with the researchers behind them. Each sat at their station monitoring data. People came and went constantly, but almost everyone stole a curious glance at Horne.

Horne stood straight, listening intently to Wang Wudao.

“The conditions for generating this particle are incredibly harsh. In humanity’s initial calculations, it was merely a theoretically possible substance. Later, through countless simulations—billions of times—on photonic computers, we finally found a feasible method.” He sighed and continued, “The collider has run tens of thousands of trials, and only in the last decade or so have we seen a prototype. We observe it every day.”

He pulled up a holographic projection from the control panel, showing an image of the particle floating in midair.

“This particle—just one, invisible to the naked eye—loaded into a specially made particle gun and fired can instantly sever the Xenomorph Particles structure and its connection to the home planet’s energy field. All Aliens existing on Earth will dissipate immediately, turning into a cloud of particles that drifts into the cosmos. Whoosh!” He blew at the air.

Horne looked at the image but saw nothing special—just an irregularly shaped particle displayed from all angles. He asked, “What’s the current progress?”

“We’re speeding things up. We expect to produce one within three months.”

Horne said nothing. The people in the Underground Base must have known about the countdown for a long time.

Wang Wudao slowly walked up to the particle image and lightly touched it. The projection clung to his hand, turning into curving lines—lines that changed yet remained constant, like history dancing at his fingertips, sometimes calming, sometimes leaping.

His expression grew grave, and his tone turned unusually serious. “Humanity has spent decades and might only produce this one—and it’s the only one we have now. So we must destroy the Alien energy core in one shot, or else…

“…all our previous efforts will be for nothing.”

As he spoke, many people stopped what they were doing and turned around. The control room fell silent, heavy with a deathly stillness. They all knew what they were doing, how important it was, and what the consequences of failure would be. The weight of history rested on their shoulders.

In that heavy silence, Horne broke the tension. “What is the energy core?”

Wang Wudao withdrew his hand from the image. He turned to face Horne, his gravity easing somewhat, and asked, “Have you heard of the Fate Community?”

Horne shook his head. These were probably pieces of information humans had learned in the century he spent in the hibernation pod; he had no recollection of them.

Wang Wudao explained that they had only ever heard of the Fate Community but never truly seen what it was. They knew some descriptions: it was the will of the universe, the will of the Aliens, their souls. In short, it was an energy entity connecting the home planet’s energy field to their energy on Earth—the fate of the entire Alien group on the planet. Destroying the Fate Community meant destroying the Alien race on Earth.

Wang Wudao explained to him, “Before they reached Earth, they could only rely on the most ancient method of interstellar travel—spaceships. But now, the Fate Community has become a channel connecting the two planets.”

“Wormhole,” Horne said softly.

Wang Wudao nodded. “You can think of it that way, but it’s not the kind of wormhole you’re imagining—or rather, the wormhole is just one of its functions.”

“Then where is the Fate Community?”

Another silence fell after Horne’s question.

A long time later, Wang Wudao laughed helplessly. “Unfortunately, we don’t know right now. We only know it’s definitely in the Tower District. Our people have scouted the exact location but haven’t found it.”

Horne pursed his lips in thought for a moment. He suddenly spotted a massive hole in the logic. He frowned and asked uncertainly, “If you’ve never found it, how… do you know all this information?”

Wang Wudao paused, then burst out laughing. He made an inviting gesture to Horne and said, “Let’s talk outside. We won’t disturb their work.”

The door closed, and they returned to the corridor. It stretched long and deep, like a coiled serpent. Micro-lights hid in the walls, casting a soft glow, but people only needed to sense the light’s presence—they didn’t need to know where the lamps themselves were.

As the two walked outward, several people passed by. They greeted Wang Wudao and eyed Horne curiously. After a few steps, Siselen closed a door and came out too.

The sound of leather shoes and military boots echoed steadily one after the other in the corridor. Wang Wudao asked him, “Colonel, have you ever studied Alien thinking?”

Horne paused briefly, then continued walking as if nothing had happened, though his voice grew a bit colder. “I don’t want to know.”

Wang Wudao laughed “haha” a couple of times and repeated “young fella” several times. He said, “There’s an old saying in our country: ‘Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated in a hundred battles.’ I know you hate the Aliens, but the fact is, they’re not the irredeemably evil beings you think they are. In the century since they invaded Earth, many Aliens have actually integrated into human society, grown to love life on Earth, and rejected war—whether initiated by humans against them or by them against humans.”

Horne’s steps slowed. He didn’t quite understand. He frowned, thought for a while, and asked uncertainly, “You mean some Aliens have betrayed their own kind to help humans?”

Wang Wudao shrugged. “Humans betray their own to help Aliens—why wouldn’t Aliens do the same?”

Horne couldn’t comprehend it. He looked down the corridor. The light at the far hall was warm-toned, warmer than when they had entered. On closer inspection, he realized it was because the door he faced had an “Emergency Exit” sign glowing red above it.

At that point, someone hurried over from the other end of the corridor and told Wang Wudao that the item was ready. Wang Wudao patted Horne’s shoulder and said he’d be right back.

Horne stood in place, still trying to process Wang Wudao’s words.

In his life, the ugliness of the Aliens had been without exception. He didn’t need to understand what kind of species they were. He only hoped they would leave Earth entirely—or go extinct.

But even so, his parents wouldn’t come back. His happy childhood had long dissipated, and all his luck and innocence had been severed on his twentieth birthday.

Horne took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

Footsteps stopped beside him. Siselen’s weathered voice rose gently. “Mr. Horne, it seems you haven’t fully understood what Doctor Wang meant.”

Horne then remembered that Siselen had been following them since earlier but hadn’t joined their discussion.

One set of young footsteps, one set of elderly ones, intertwined as they slowly walked from one end of the corridor to the other, toward the hall at the end.

Siselen said, “Perhaps I can explain from a broader perspective. You can think of it this way: there is no true betrayal between humans and Aliens because we are essentially one—we’re all but a fleeting existence in this vast universe.”

Horne neither agreed nor disagreed. From the moment the Aliens appeared, the Fermi paradox had been shattered. He simply couldn’t imagine the Tower Aliens—Azazel—betraying their own race.

“Azazel, the Tower Aliens we know, have seen more forms of life. But most life forms in the universe aren’t like humans. They might rely on waves, on frequencies—even their consciousness born from imprints in energy flows.

“Azazel once found liquid methane-based life forms in Titan, though not in the observable universe for humans.”

Siselen held out his hand and drew a small circle in front of him. The wrinkled skin of his hand encircled it, as if creating a universe anew in the unseen.

He continued, “Life exists far beyond human imagination, but they discovered that no matter the form, all life in the universe shares a common frequency vibration.”

“Common frequency vibration?” Horne repeated.