Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 214 System Resonance

Zuo Cheng didn't leave after saying that.

He stood before the pedestal, watching the point of light inside flicker every three seconds. Zhao Wenbo had retreated to the entrance of the passage, leaning against the door engraved with symbols, and remained silent. He knew that sometimes, bystanders were unnecessary.

Zuo Cheng raised his right hand and placed his palm on the surface of the pedestal.

The translucent material was warm. Not warmed by body heat, but it was inherently radiant, like the temperature inside a living organism. The instant his palm touched the surface of the pedestal, the frequency of the light spots changed. It went from once every three seconds to twice a second, then ten times a second, until finally, so fast his eyes couldn't keep up, it became a continuous golden-white light.

Then he couldn't see anything anymore.

It wasn't darkness, nor light; the very meaning of vision itself had vanished. He saw a space of consciousness. A space of consciousness more real than any system interface he had ever entered before.

He was suspended in the center of a starry sky. There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above him, and stars all around him. Nebulae and galaxies filled his entire field of vision. He looked down at his hands; the outlines were still there, but the edges were glowing, as if woven from light.

Then sound appeared. It wasn't language, it wasn't music, it was information directly written into his consciousness. Thousands of concepts were understood simultaneously in an instant, without needing translation.

He saw a civilization.

Not an Earth civilization. Pure consciousness, without a fixed physical form, like a ball of light. They live on a planet under a red dwarf star. Liquid ammonia oceans, hydrogen and helium atmosphere. No Earth life could survive there for even a second, but they thrive. They have evolved for three billion years.

Then they discovered something. The universe was getting colder.

Entropy is increasing at an accelerating rate. In billions of years, all stars will die out, and all matter will decay. Everything will return to heat death.

They spent hundreds of millions of years searching for a solution. Finally, they found it.

sowing.

Knowledge, technology, and understanding of the universe are packaged into seeds, embedded within the very fabric of spacetime, and scattered throughout the cosmos. One seed is sown on every planet with the potential for life. When the seed is activated at the right time, it helps the intelligent life on that planet accumulate technology. When a civilization travels far enough, it gains the path to the next stage.

"Why?" Zuo Cheng's consciousness asked.

The information flow responded to him. That civilization had completed its journey three billion years ago, crossing a boundary he couldn't comprehend. They didn't need to be remembered, didn't need to be thanked. They simply did what they could within the limits of their abilities. Like water flowing downhill, not out of purpose, but out of nature.

Then the information stream began displaying numbers. Not Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals, but groups of arranged pulse signals, in the same format as the codes engraved on the wall. But his consciousness automatically translated them.

One planet. Two planets. Three. Four. The numbers jumped rapidly, until they were no longer visible to the naked eye. Finally, they stopped at one number: 177.

Earth is the 177th planet.

The information stream concluded with a set of coordinates. Not latitude and longitude, but some kind of stellar coordinate system. The encoding method was beyond his current comprehension, but he remembered the shape of the coordinates. It wasn't a set of numbers, but a spatial sensation, like the pressure of a key on his palm.

Then the space of consciousness began to dissipate.

One by one, the stars receded into the distance, and the luminaries dimmed. The final message in the information stream wasn't text; it was more like a commandment, etched directly into the depths of his consciousness.

You have reached the boundary of the seventh knowledge transfer. The path to the eighth transfer will appear after all branches are activated. You have the right to choose whether to continue. But once you begin, there is no turning back.

The starry sky has completely disappeared.

Zuo Cheng opened his eyes. His palm was still on the pedestal, and the light spot had returned to its three-second pulse. But the technology tree panel in his mind had completely changed.

The waveform diagrams for dimension perception have disappeared. In their place is a new interface. The background is deep space, with a rotating Earth suspended in the center. Real-time atmospheric flow, the movement of city lights in the night hemisphere, and the clear orbits of every communication satellite are all visible.

Earth's technological level was transformed into readable data. Communications were at Level 7, aerospace at Level 6, computing at Level 5, energy at Level 4, and biology at Level 4. He also saw technological nodes from other companies, distributed across the globe, each climbing at a different pace. The beam of light from 402 was the tallest of all.

A new line of text appeared in the bottom right corner of the interface.

Dimensional perception has been upgraded to civilization perception. New capability: Real-time monitoring of the technological development level of a target civilization.

Zuo Cheng removed his hand from the pedestal. The light spots resumed their original rhythm, once every three seconds.

He turned to look at Zhao Wenbo, who was standing in the doorway. Zhao Wenbo's expression told him that he had been standing outside for more than three minutes.

"how long."

"Forty minutes."

Zuo Cheng nodded. He didn't explain, and Zhao Wenbo didn't ask. The two walked back along the path they had come from. When they emerged from the well, the blazing desert sun made him squint.

On the way back, Zuo Cheng kept looking out the window. Through the interface of civilization perception, he could see a beam of light on the horizon in every direction. China's aerospace beam was in the northeast, and Europe's quantum computing beam was even further away. The entire Earth looked like a plate being pushed upwards by countless beams of light.

Zhao Wenbo broke the silence. "What did you see inside just now?"

Zuo Cheng thought for a moment and said, "One hundred and seventy-seven."

Zhao Wenbo didn't press for the meaning of the number. He simply said, "When Teacher Chen came out of the cave, he also mentioned a number. Not 177. It was zero. He said he could feel the seed there, but he couldn't see anything. For thirty years, all he saw was zero."

Zuo Cheng looked down at his palm. The three lines on his palm were still there, not glowing, and without any special symbols. But he knew that from this day forward, the world he saw would be different from everyone else's.

It wasn't just because he could sense civilization. It was also because an undeniable fact was before him.

The civilization that left the seeds completed this journey three billion years ago. And he has only just obtained the map.

He returned to Hangzhou in the early hours of the next day. Zuo Cheng didn't go home; he went straight to headquarters 402. He needed to record all the new information before the system stabilized. The lights came on, and he opened the system panel. The seventh leaf of the eighth branch was fully lit, and the sixth leaf was half-lit. The progress bar had reached seventy-two percent.

A new main quest notification will appear at the same time.

He clicked on it.