Chapter 108: Hello, General

Chapter 108: Hello, General

“Professor Ouyang, I’m so happy to see you.”

Chen Feng blinked at the white coat in front of him.

He couldn’t be blamed for easily showing his feelings, seeming impatient.

Ever since he arrived, his mood had been fantastic.

Every time he saw another familiar face still existing, he felt comfortable and fortunate.

He had been changing history.

In his personal history, the history books were not a static record. They were elusive and unpredictable, like Schrödinger’s cat, or like electrons whirling around a proton.

It existed because he observed it.

Before he arrived on this timeline and reconnected, all history was nothingness.

Only when he arrived here and lifted the lid with his own hands could he see whether the cat was dead or alive.

To put it in an exaggerated way, Chen Feng, who constantly traveled through time, created a universe every time he opened his eyes.

But he himself did not know what this universe he “created” was like, or whether the people he knew from the past still existed.

He had been avoiding one thing.

In the past, he didn’t want to form emotional connections with people a thousand years later. The surface reason was knowing everyone would eventually die. The deeper reason was his anxiety that his changes to history might accidentally erase the people he befriended.

That would hurt deeply.

After his last arrival, because he saw Ding Hu several times in a row and his comrades in the recruit camp hadn’t changed much, he gradually opened his closed heart.

But the deeper he got involved, the deeper his anxiety grew.

He could learn to be calm, but he could never learn to be heartless.

The familiar faces appearing one after another were like pliers pulling out the thorns in his heart one by one. So today, he was excessively lively.

Professor Ouyang’s brows furrowed slightly, and his head tilted back. “Have you met me before?”

Chen Feng shook his head and stepped onto the testing device. “No, but we soldiers who go to battle always hold great respect for technical personnel.”

Ding Hu couldn’t stand his casual friendliness anymore. “Shut up, you little brat! You are still a hundred thousand miles away from going to battle!”

Chen Feng’s arm trembled, completing a test. He pointed at the huge three words “New Record” on the virtual image in the air and smiled at Ding Hu. “Is it a little less far now?”

The entire laboratory instantly erupted into a frenzy.

Ding Hu’s self-timed running circle data wasn’t rigorous enough to drive people crazy, but the data from the laboratory was rigorous enough and instantly synchronized globally.

No one could have imagined that devastating new physical test parameters appeared so effortlessly.

As the tests progressed, Chen Feng kept breaking every single record.

“My god, what kind of Gene Awakening did you undergo last night? I’ve seen your old physical parameters before. You were only above average. This…”

Ding Hu was speechless.

Chen Feng keenly caught the phrase “Gene Awakening” and committed it to memory.

Good, another new piece of technology.

The day passed in a bustle of various tests.

Physical tests, psychological tests, political screening, somatic cell sampling…

“Alright, Corporal Chen Feng, you may return to your dorm to rest now. Tomorrow morning, after the General returns to the base, she will meet with you.”

With the tasks finally completed, Dr. Ouyang arranged.

Chen Feng held back all day but finally couldn’t resist and asked, “Doctor, as a new recruit, I have an impertinent question.”

“Speak.”

“What is the General’s name?”

“Corporal Chen Feng, what are you talking about? Didn’t you attend the new recruit mobilization meeting when you first arrived at the base? Haven’t you seen the General?”

“It might be that last night’s Gene Awakening caused some memory confusion. I have an impression in my mind, but I’m not sure, so I thought I’d ask first to avoid being disrespectful tomorrow.”

“You now have a formal assignment. Although you can look it up yourself after you return, I can also tell you. The General’s name is Tang Tianxin.”

“Male or female?”

“Female.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“From an aesthetic perspective, the General’s appearance is flawless.”

“Thank you. That’s the best news I’ve heard today.”

Following the assistance of his personal information system, Chen Feng returned to his dorm alone and began looking up information.

His astonishing physical test data brought him a great deal of convenience. Without needing to apply, his authority in the military system was automatically upgraded to Corporal.

Looking at the information, Chen Feng felt as if storm after storm was hitting him in the face.

His modifications to the past history this time were so significant they startled even himself.

First, the historical database he could access had become much more detailed, infinitely more comfortable to look at than the mere summaries from last time.

Although the military management of this era was stricter, information control had actually become more relaxed.

Although the Doomsday disaster was still not exposed, the World Government no longer completely blocked historical records and knowledge by force. Instead, they adopted another, more inductive guidance strategy.

All changes still started from the beginning of 2020.

The song “Baptism of Fire” originally composed by Zhong Lei was still a military anthem and still played an extremely significant role in the birth of the Xuanwu Institute.

But the time of the Xuanwu Institute’s birth had been moved forward by nearly a century.

After releasing his first album, Ou Junlang became famous worldwide. Although he never created or performed another classic afterward, that first album alone kept him famous for his entire life.

Of course, due to the great Renaissance in the early 21st Century, the music world was blossoming with a hundred flowers. Ou Junlang still regrettably failed to rank among the top hundred of the millennium, but his artistic career as a singer was still successful.

This led to him only reluctantly taking over the Ouhe Group at the age of sixty-five.

But Ou Junlang’s influence on the Ouhe Group was greatly weakened. Because this sole heir was reluctant to return to his position for so long, Ou Guohua, in his later years, simply took the entire Ouhe Group public.

In the tides of the market, although the assets of the Ou Clan kept growing, the Ouhe Group grew even faster. By the time Ou Junlang took over, the Ouhe Group had become a mega-sized multinational corporation with trillions in assets, and the Ou Clan’s controlling share had dropped to 31.28%, no longer allowing Ou Junlang to mess around as he pleased.

The Ouhe Group continued for nearly another century before losing out in the scientific research competition for new energy and being swallowed by another company, becoming dust in history.

But the Ouhe Group left behind many more scientific research achievements for all of humanity.

These were the most direct modifications Chen Feng could see with his own eyes, the changes he personally made to humanity.

But there was another major event in history that was inseparable from him and Zhong Lei.

The song “Self-Combustion,” especially its English version, triggered a terrible turmoil in the late 25th century, when the World Government had just been established for less than a hundred years.

It was a revolution.

In the tide of the times, a Slav named Sergey was born in 2543.

Sergey was a genius scientist, a rare all-around scientific talent. The first half of his life left behind many groundbreaking major scientific achievements.

Future generations, building upon his scientific inferences and after nearly three hundred years of advancement, finally achieved a major breakthrough. The results of this breakthrough were still in use in 3020, providing nearly one hundred percent of the energy supply for all of humanity.

In the previous Timeline, there was no famous figure named Sergey.

Perhaps this person was never born, or perhaps he died young due to some external interference.

But on this Timeline, the role Sergey played in the many technological innovations Chen Feng could now see was no less than that of the Ouhe Group and the Xuanwu Institute, perhaps even greater.

But Sergey’s contributions were mainly only in the first half of his life.

At this stage, he was a researcher at the Research Institute under the World Government.

He almost became the only Chief Science Officer in human history, overseeing everything.

But one year before his inauguration ceremony, he watched a movie that later generations considered poorly made.

“Chaos Space.”

What changed Sergey was not the movie, but its theme song, “Self-Combustion.”

According to historical records, after listening to this song, Sergey developed new thoughts about freedom and humanity’s future. It changed him overnight, and ultimately, on the day of his inauguration, he started a scientific revolution.

It was a real revolution.

He wanted to overthrow the rule of the military party.

He had many supporters.

He told his supporters that the World Government was a conspiracy.

He also told everyone that all of humanity was being infiltrated.

Although he couldn’t find direct evidence or write a complete formula to prove his theory, he smelled the scent of certain doom in the fresh air.

A brutal war broke out, lasting nearly thirty years. Earth’s total population dropped sharply from eight billion to four billion.

In the end, Sergey won.

Yes, his revolution succeeded.

But on the day his revolution succeeded, at the robust age of ninety-five, he chose to shoot himself.

Before his suicide, he cried out in despair.

“Humans stand no chance because everyone is part of it. When I overthrew one infiltration, I found I was still part of another. Just like we live in this Universe, we can only ever follow its rules.”

Sure enough, after Sergey’s death, the regime he led eventually became the new World Government, leading humanity forward again, all the way to today.

When Sergey killed himself, he believed there was no real difference between the old and new World Governments.

So, although Sergey contributed greatly, no one ever truly thanked him in their hearts.

Historians split their judgment of Sergey’s merits and faults right down the middle.

Some believed humanity would have been better off without him.

Others believed humanity would have been worse off without him.

The two schools of thought argued endlessly, never reaching a definite answer.

And because of the damage his successful revolution caused to humanity, everyone agreed Earthlings couldn’t withstand a second upheaval. The newly formed World Government became more centralized, more militarized, turning into a stricter and crueler militarized society.

In Chen Feng’s present time, there was no class of Subsistence Allowance Recipients; instead, there were Slums.

The lowest people in the Slums no longer enjoyed any generous benefits, only the minimal guaranteed quality of life.

It was truly the bare minimum, just enough to keep people from starving, nothing more.

Even though social productivity was still abundant, this surplus was no longer distributed as welfare to the lowest class. Instead, it was used to reward laborers and soldiers for their contributions, or invested further into industries like research and military manufacturing.

The competition in this era was crueler than in any Timeline Chen Feng had experienced before.

But the path upwards for the lowest class was never closed, because the World Government founded by the scientist Sergey established one highest principle from the very beginning.

Even knowing everyone was infiltrated, even if they still couldn’t find the problem, everyone had the right to learn all knowledge!

To ensure his highest principle wouldn’t be shaken by future generations, Sergey even threatened them in his will.

He hid an explosive source deep within Earth’s core, powerful enough to blow Earth into cosmic debris.

If anyone tried to disarm his explosive source, it would detonate immediately.

If the Artificial Intelligence he hid in the smart network judged that the World Government leadership had closed off the upward path for the lowest class, it would still detonate immediately.

In Chen Feng’s view, this was Sergey’s greatest contribution, because his threat was really effective.

Under these unique social circumstances, all Earthlings were in the fiercest competitive landscape. If they fell behind, they could only go to the Slums to eat husks and endure trampled dignity.

Countless scientists, economists, generals, elite soldiers, top craftsmen, artists… emerged from the Slums.

If you had the ability, if you wanted to, you could get everything you desired.

If you were lazy and incompetent, even if your ancestors had accumulated wealth for dozens of generations, it was useless. If your ability wasn’t enough to support your status and wealth, you would be devoured down to the bones in just a few decades.

The upper class and the Slum class were clearly divided, yet closely interconnected, constantly infiltrating and replacing each other.

The structure of the whole society was very dynamic, full of vitality.

Chen Feng thought Sergey’s achievements almost caught up to his own.

When Sergey killed himself, he must have already foreseen the social framework for the next few hundred years. All of this was built upon his crazy actions.

Planting a bomb inside Earth, using one threat to temporarily replace another to create this twisted yet effective social structure.

This move was really sky-high slick, truly worthy of the mad scientist.

Chen Feng even thought if Sergey did his job, he might do it better.

He had no choice anyway, otherwise he really wanted to quit.

By the early 29th century, after Watson Gaislav invented Gene Fluid technology, this cruelty reached its peak.

One-third of the “incompetent people” were denied the right to life from birth.

The final result, to some extent, matched Chen Feng’s initial expectations when he left hints, but it was also a history written with even more blood and tears.

Everyone’s clockwork was wound tight, but the truth of the Doomsday was hidden. Everyone struggled numbly like machines, but didn’t know what they were struggling for.

After reading these historical records, especially seeing those tragedies, Chen Feng ultimately wasn’t Sergey. It took him great effort to control his emotions.

He even couldn’t help but look down at his own hands.

If he indirectly counted all the lives lost in war or under the system as being on his hands, he, Chen Feng, would probably become the greatest super butcher in history.

But he finally calmed down.

The dead were gone; only the living could talk about the right to keep living.

No matter how difficult the process, how much blood was shed, humanity’s technological level today was indeed much higher.

The Azure Dragon Armor, Type C3 loader, vibration blade, the high-explosive bomb in the pants, the battleship-class escort he experienced last time—all had appeared in history, roughly widely used technologies from the 28th to 29th centuries, now all obsolete.

He was busy all night without sleep. Only when he was about to meet Tang Tianxin the next day did his mood completely settle.

Time and fate were truly strange things.

Historical inertia was really strong.

Even though he had almost messed up and twisted a thousand years beyond recognition, he could still see so many familiar faces.

He didn’t know if it was Tang Tianxin’s tough fate or his own great fortune.

He knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

“Hello, General, I am Chen Feng.”

Chen Feng looked at the black and white Go pieces and board still placed on Tang Tianxin’s desk and slowly spoke.