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Chapter 2: The Collapse of Physics
This was the sixteenth solar eclipse this month.
Each eclipse lasted longer than the last. The first had been brief, no more than two minutes. Now, four hours later, the sky remained dark. The sun was reduced to a faint, pale arc—a remnant, as though something had pierced it and left behind only its shadow. That shadow no longer emitted light, plunging the world into an oppressive gloom.
Scientists claimed the object obscuring the sun wasn’t the moon. But what was it?
Li Xingyuan squinted at the dimmed sun, but the longer he stared, the sharper the burn in his eyes became. It felt as though a black hole had been seared into his retinas, and through that void, something insidious seemed to creep, slithering toward his brain. He tore his gaze away.
“Old Chen,” Li Xingyuan said, turning to his childhood friend with a wry grin. “Or should I call you Professor Chen, like everyone else?”
Chen Yancheng ignored the question. Instead, he cut straight to the point. “What’s the situation outside?”
“You arrived here about a month ago, right?” Li Xingyuan replied. “Let me just say—it’s bad. The number of cancer cases keeps rising.” He paused, looking directly at Chen Yancheng. “The hospitals are full, but those inside aren’t any luckier than those outside. The system’s collapsed. Patients and corpses share rooms. Most of the living have barricaded themselves in their homes.”
“It’s said that even so, some people still vanish without explanation,” Li Xingyuan continued, narrowing his eyes as he gazed into the distant, silent forest. Bright floodlights from The Ember Base illuminated patches of the woods, carving out arcs of light that guided incoming travelers. Beyond their reach, the darkness was suffocating. “And there’s more—stranger things. Remember those little ghost story magazines we passed around in school? What I saw on my way here makes those tales look tame.”
He hesitated, as if unsure whether to believe his own words. A rueful smile tugged at his lips. “A whale’s corpse. On a mountain road. Blocking the entire lane. The nearest ocean is two thousand kilometers away, yet when I found it, the body was still fresh—just hours dead. Gases from decomposition had bloated it to grotesque proportions. The stench…” He shook his head. “I’ll never forget it.”
“I’m no biologist, but I can tell you this much: whatever caused the wound on that whale wasn’t anything natural—not by human standards, anyway. It looked like something enormous—far bigger than a blue whale—took a bite out of it. Can you imagine? Like someone casually biting into a hot dog, then tossing it aside.”
Now it was Li Xingyuan’s turn to ask the question. He fixed his gaze on Chen Yancheng, searching his eyes. “What exactly is going on?”
“What kind of answer do you want?” Chen Yancheng asked bitterly. As a physicist who had achieved renown at a young age, he rarely wore such a somber expression. But now, shrouded in darkness, his face lit only by the faint glow of his cigarette, he looked defeated. “An official explanation? Or a physicist’s perspective?”
“Officially,” he began, glancing up at the obscured sun, “a high-energy particle storm from a supernova explosion thousands of light-years away struck Earth, piercing our atmosphere. This is the joint statement issued by several major nations. Some think it’s easier for people to accept this version.”
“But as physicists,” he took a deep drag of his cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke into the dark sky, “you know… over the past century, generations of scientists worked tirelessly to construct the edifice of modern physics. Sure, it has its flaws, but within the bounds of our observable reality, most phenomena could be explained.”
“The real question,” he continued, “is whether the laws we’ve discovered apply universally across the cosmos. Academia has debated this for years.”
“We always assumed we’d find answers once our spacecraft ventured beyond the solar system.”
Chen Yancheng crushed the cigarette underfoot, his face vanishing completely into the shadows.
“But we were too optimistic.”
“The universe didn’t wait patiently for us to explore it. Instead, it came crashing down on us.”
“You mentioned the ocean earlier. Let’s use that as a metaphor. Imagine the universe as an endless sea. Humanity, Earth, the solar system—we’re islands briefly lifted above the waves during a violent tidal surge.”
“In the lulls between waves, we built our civilization.” Chen Yancheng gestured with his hands, shaping invisible structures in the air. “We thought we lived in a dry world, constructing our physics, chemistry—and maybe even mathematics—from the sand beneath our feet. But the truth is, when the next wave crashes down, everything we’ve built will wash away.”
Li Xingyuan listened silently, unable to fully grasp the implications, but the despair in Chen Yancheng’s voice was unmistakable. “So… physics doesn’t exist anymore?”
In the darkness, Chen Yancheng shook his head. “Not that it doesn’t exist anymore—it never did.”
The eclipse seemed to be ending. Whatever had obscured the sun hadn’t moved; rather, it appeared to coalesce slowly, allowing the sun to regain its shape from the edges inward. Yet it remained pale and distant.
“Shouldn’t we take cover?” Li Xingyuan suggested. “They say exposure to sunlight now increases the risk of cancer.”
“The rise in cancer rates isn’t related to sunlight—at least that much I can guarantee," Chen Yancheng countered. His face, weary and swollen, emerged slightly as the dim light returned. For the first time in over half a year, Li Xingyuan saw him clearly. He looked decades older. “Besides, I prefer standing in the light these days.”
Chen Yancheng fished another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “The reason so many people are getting cancer… let’s go back to the ocean analogy. We weren’t born in the deep sea, were we? All our evolution was geared toward life on land. How can we possibly adapt to the ocean? The physical laws that allowed humanity to exist have ended. And perhaps, in the darkest corners of the Earth, remnants of the previous deep-sea era still linger—lifeforms whose forms and awakenings remain unknown.”
Li Xingyuan fell silent, recalling the bloated, putrid whale carcass blocking the mountain road. He shook his head, banishing the image from his mind. “You make it sound like humanity is already doomed. If that's the case, then why did you call me here? For one last goodbye?”
“Humanity is doomed—that’s what most informed people believe,” Chen Yancheng admitted, inhaling half the cigarette in one drag. But then his eyes sparked with sudden intensity. “But I think there’s still… just a sliver of hope. If you’ll trust me, that is.”
“Before the wave hit, my institute made a discovery.” He finished the rest of the cigarette in another drag, crushing the butt beneath his shoe. With each word, his eyes grew brighter, almost feverish. “Something small, unproven, and likely useless—but it might help us—humanity—survive this catastrophe.”
“What did you discover?”
“Light,” Chen Yancheng said simply. “I captured a beam of light.”
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