Chapter 5 The Three-Body King Wen of Zhou Long Night

Wang Miao called Ding Yi's phone number, and after the other party answered, he remembered that it was already past one o'clock in the morning.

"I'm Wang Miao, I'm so sorry to bother you so late."

"It's okay, I'm insomnia."

"I... encountered some things, I would like to ask you for help. Do you know that there are institutions in China that observe the background radiation of the universe?" Wang Miao developed a desire to talk, but immediately felt that it would be better not to let more people know about the countdown on the ghost.

"Cosmic background radiation? Why are you interested in this? It seems that you have really encountered something... Have you ever seen Yang Dong's mother?"

"Ah-I'm so sorry, I forgot."

"It doesn't matter. Nowadays, many people in the scientific community... have encountered some things like you said, and are absent-minded. But you'd better go and see her. She is old and doesn't want to hire a nanny. If you have any effort, please help... Oh, the radiation of the universe, you can just go to Yang Dong's mother to ask her. Before she retired, she was a major in astrophysics and was very familiar with such research institutions in China."

"Okay, I'll go after get off work today."

"Thank you first, I really can't face everything related to Yang Dong anymore."

After making the phone call, Wang Miao sat in front of the computer and began to print the very simple Morse code comparison table displayed on the web page. At this time, he had calmed down and moved his thoughts away from the countdown, thinking about the "Border of Science" and Shen Yufei, and thinking about the online games she played. Regarding Shen Yufei, the only thing he could be sure of was that she was not a person who likes to play games. The only impression this woman who spoke as streamlined as a telegram gave him was that she was cold. Her coldness was different from some other women. It was not a mask, but cold from the inside out.

Wang Miao always subconsciously associates her with the long-disappeared DOS operating system. On an empty black screen, there is only a "C:>" prompt that is so simple that it can't be simple. It outputs whatever you enter, and there will be no more word, and there will be no change. Now he knows that behind the "C:>" prompt is actually a bottomless abyss.

She really has the interest to play games, and she is wearing V gears? She has no children, so she can only buy the V gears herself and use them. This is a bit incredible.

Wang Miao entered the easy-to-remember game website in the address bar of the browser: The web page shows that the game only supports V-mount. Wang Miao remembered that there seemed to be a set of V-mount in the Nano Center entertainment room, so he walked out of the empty center experiment hall, went to the duty room to ask for the key, passed through a row of pool tables and fitness equipment in the entertainment room, found V-mount next to a computer, and took a lot of effort to put on the sensor suit, then put on the display helmet, and started the computer.

After starting the game, Wang Miao was in a wasteland at dawn. The wasteland was dark brown and the details were not clear. There was a small white light on the horizon in the distance, and stars flashed in the rest of the sky. With a loud bang, two red peaks fell on the distant earth, and the entire wasteland was shrouded in red light. After the aroused dust covering the sky and the sun dissipated, Wang Miao saw the two big words that stood tall: Three Body.

Then a registration interface appeared, Wang Miao registered with the ID "Searen" and then successfully logged in.

The wasteland was still the same, but the compressor in the V-equipment sensing suit hissed and Wang Miao felt a sensation of coldness. Two walking figures appeared in front of the dawn, with black silhouettes in front of the dawn background. Wang Miao chased after him and saw that both of them were men, wearing tattered robes, and were wrapped in dirty animal skins. Both of them were carrying a wide and short sword of the Bronze Age. One of them was carrying a slender wooden box half the height of him. The man turned his head to look at Wang Miao. His face was as dirty and wrinkled as the animal skin, but his eyes were very vivid, and his eyes reflected the dawn. "It's cold." He said.

"Yes, it's so cold." Wang Miao echoed.

"This is the Warring States Period, I am King Wen of Zhou." The man said.

"King Wen of Zhou was not a person from the Warring States Period, right?" Wang Miao asked.

"He has lived until now, and King Zhou is alive." Another person who did not carry a box said, "I am a follower of King Wen of Zhou. My ID is 'Follower of King Wen of Zhou'. He is a genius."

"My ID is 'Sea Man'," said Wang Miao, "What are you carrying?"

King Wen of Zhou put down the rectangular wooden box and opened a facade like a door, revealing the five-layer square grid inside. With the shimmer of morning light, Wang Miao saw a small pile of fine sand between each floor, and a stream of sand flowing down from the previous grid in each grid.

"The hourglass is leaked once every eight hours, and it takes one day to turn it invert three times. However, I often forget to turn it inverted and rely on followers to remind me." King Wen of Zhou introduced.

"It seems you are on a long distance trip. Do you need to carry such a bulky timer?"

"How to time it?"

"It's so convenient to get a small sundial, or you can just look at the sun to know the approximate time."

King Wen of Zhou looked at each other and stared at Wang Miao together, as if he was an idiot, "Sun? How can you know time when you look at the sun? This is an era of chaos."

Wang Miao was about to ask about the meaning of this weird noun, and his followers whined: "It's so cold, I'm so cold!"

Wang Miao also felt cold, but he couldn't take off the sensor server casually. Generally speaking, if he did that, he would have his ID cancelled by the game. He said: "The sun will warm up when it comes out."

"Are you pretending to be a great prophet? Even King Wen of Zhou is not a prophet!" The follower shook his head disdainfully at Wang Miao.

"Does this require a prophet? Who can't see that the sun will rise in an hour or two?" Wang Miao pointed to the horizon and said.

"This is a time of chaos!" said the follower.

"What is a chaos era?"

"Apart from the Heng Era, they are all chaotic Era." King Wen of Zhou said, like answering a question from an ignorant child.

Sure enough, the morning light in the sky began to darken and soon disappeared. The night clouds enveloped everything again, and the stars in the sky were shining brightly.

"So it's dusk, not morning?" Wang Miao asked.

"It's morning, and the sun may not necessarily rise in the morning. This is an era of chaos."

The cold made Wang Miao feel uncomfortable. "Looking at this point, it will take a long time for the sun to rise." He said tremblingly, pointing at the blurry horizon.

"Why do you have this kind of thought again? That's not necessarily the case. This is a chaos era." The follower said and turned to King Wen of Zhou, "Ji Chang, give me some dried fish."

"No!" King Wen of Zhou said decisively, "I am just barely full, and I must ensure that I can reach Chaoge, not you."

While speaking, Wang Miao noticed that there was another dawn on the horizon in the other direction. He couldn't tell the difference between the east, south, west and north, but it was definitely not the direction when it last appeared. The dawn increased quickly. After a while, the sun in this world rose, a small blue sun, very much like a moon that enhanced its brightness, but it still made Wang Miao feel a little warmth and see the details of the earth. But this day was very short, and the sun drew a shallow arc above the horizon and fell, and the night and cold enveloped everything again.

The three stopped in front of a dead tree. King Wen of Zhou and his followers drew out a bronze sword to chop firewood. Wang Miao collected a piece of broken firewood. The followers took out a scythe, crackled, crackled for a while, and raised a pile of fire. The front chest of Wang Miao's sensor suit warmed, but the back was still cold.

"If you burn some dehydration, the fire will be strong." said the follower.

"Shut up! That's what King Zhou did!"

"Anyway, the scattered people on the road are broken like that and they can't be soaked anymore. If your theory really works, let alone cooking some, eating some will make it. Compared with that theory, what are the lives of a few lives?"

"Nonsense! We are scholars!"

After the bonfire burned out, the three of them continued to rush. Since there was little conversation between them, the system accelerated the passage of game time. King Wen of Zhou quickly turned the hourglass on his back six times. In a blink of an eye, two days passed, and the sun had not risen once, and there was not even a shadow of dawn in the sky.

"It seems that the sun will not come out." Wang Miao said, and at the same time, he called out the game interface to see his HP. It was rapidly decreasing due to the cold.

"You are pretending to be a great prophet again..." said the follower, and Wang Miao and him said the second half, "This is an era of chaos!"

Shortly after this, a dawn appeared in the sky and it increased rapidly. In the blink of an eye, the sun rose. Wang Miao found that this time it was a big sun. When it rose to half, the diameter occupied at least one-fifth of the horizon in the field of view. The warm current hit him, which made Wang Miao feel relaxed, but when he looked at King Wen of Zhou and his followers, he found that they were all frightened, as if a devil was coming.

"Hurry, look for the shade!" the followers shouted, and Wang Miao followed them and ran to the back of a low rock. The shadow of the rock was gradually shortening, and the surrounding land was as dazzling as incandescent. The frozen soil under his feet quickly melted, from hard as iron to mud, and the heat waves rolled. Wang Miao quickly sweated. When the sun rose directly above his head, the three covered their heads with animal skins, and the strong light still shot in from all the gaps and holes like sharp arrows. The three moved around the rock to the other side, hiding in the shadow that had just appeared there...

After the sun set, the air was still extremely stuffy. The three sweaty people sat on the rocks. The followers said in frustration: "I really walk in hell when traveling in the chaos. Besides, I have nothing to eat. You don't tell me about some dried fish and don't let anyone eat dehydrated ones, alas--"

"Then you can only get dehydrated." King Wen of Zhou said, suffocating the wind with his animal skin.

"After dehydration, you won't leave me, will you?"

"Of course not, I promise to bring you to Chaoge."

The follower took off his long robe soaked in sweat and lay naked on the mud. In the afterglow of the sunset, Wang Miao saw that the sweat on his follower suddenly increased. He quickly realized that it was not sweating. The water in the person's body was being completely discharged. The water formed several small streams on the sand. The follower's entire body became soft and thin like a melted candle... Ten minutes later, the water was discharged, and the body turned into a human-shaped soft skin spread on the mud, motionlessly, and the facial features on his face were blurred.

"Is he dead?" Wang Miao asked. He remembered that along the way, he saw such human-shaped soft skin, some of which were damaged and dehydrators whom his followers wanted to use for burning fire not long ago.

"No." King Wen of Zhou said, picking up the soft skin that his followers turned into, patting the soil on it, putting it on the rock to roll him up, like rolling a ball of air, "After soaking in the water for a while, he will return to his original state, just like soaking dried mushrooms."

"His bones have also become soft?"

"Yes, they all become dry fibers, which makes them easy to carry."

“Can everyone in this world dehydrate?”

"Of course, you can, or you can't survive in the chaos." King Wen of Zhou handed the rolled follower to Wang Miao, "Take him with you, throw it on the road either to be burned or eaten."

Wang Miao took the soft skin, a very light roll, and there was no strange feeling when he clamped it with his arms.

Wang Miao was holding a dehydrated follower, and King Wen of Zhou carried the hourglass on his back. The two continued their difficult journey. Like the previous few days, the sun in this world was completely irregular. After several consecutive long nights of coldness, a hot day may suddenly appear, or the opposite. The two depended on each other, resisted the cold by the bonfire, and soaked in the lake to survive the heat. Fortunately, the game time can be accelerated, and a month can be completed in half an hour, which makes the journey of chaos still tolerated.

On this day, the long night has lasted for nearly a week (by the hourglass time), and King Wen of Zhou suddenly pointed to the night sky and cheered:

"Flying Star! Flying Star! Two Flying Stars!!"

In fact, Wang Miao had noticed that strange celestial body before. It was larger than stars and could show the shape of a disc the size of a ping-pong ball. It ran very fast and could clearly see it moving in the starry sky with the naked eye. However, two appeared this time.

King Wen of Zhou explained: "Two flying stars appear, and the Heng Age is about to begin!"

“I’ve seen it before.”

“That’s only one.”

“Are there only two at most?”

"No, sometimes there will be three, but not more."

"Does the appearance of three flying stars indicate a better era?"

King Wen of Zhou glared at Wang Miao with fearful eyes, "What are you talking about? Three flying stars... pray that it will not appear."

King Wen of Zhou said that, the eternal era they yearned for soon began, and the sun rose and set began to become regular, and the day and night gradually fixed for about eighteen hours. The regular alternation of day and night made the weather warmer.

"How long can Hengqin last?" Wang Miao asked.

"One day or a century, no one can tell how long each time it is." King Wen of Zhou sat on the hourglass and looked up at the noon sun. "According to records, there was a two-century era in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Oh, it is blessed to those born in that era."

"How long will the chaos last?"

"Didn't you say that except Heng Era, they are all chaos Era, and the two are the gaps between each other."

"That means, this is a chaotic world with no rules?!"

"Yes, civilization can only develop in the long and warm epoch of the climate. For most of the time, humans are collectively dehydrated and stored, and when the long and epoch of the age arrives, they are collectively soaked and resurrected, produced and built."

"Then how can we predict the time and length of each epoch?"

"I can't do it, I have never done it. When Hengqiu arrives, whether the country is soaked depends on the king's intuition. It is often: the soaking is resurrected, the crops are planted, the towns are built, life is just beginning, the Hengqiu is over, and the cold and heat destroy everything." King Wen of Zhou said this, pointing at Wang Miao with one hand, his eyes become bright and bright, "Okay, you already know the goal of this game: to use our intelligence and insight, analyze and study various phenomena, master the laws of the movement of the sun, and the survival of civilization is maintained here."

"In my opinion, the sun is running at all without any rules."

"That's because you failed to realize the origin of the world."

"You realized it?"

"Yes, this is my purpose in going to Chaoge. I will present an accurate perpetual calendar to King Zhou."
To be continued...