by <unknown>
The structure on top of the deck of the Blackwatch Cruise was in horrendous condition. Nearly half of the structure had vanished without a trace while the remaining half was a bare representation of its former self. It was now torn and battered like a slice of cake that someone had mashed their hands into.
"Thankfully it's just the structure on top of the deck that's affected. The control cabin is safe and sound."
Chen Chen breathed a sigh of relief. A thought suddenly crossed his mind as he promptly instructed, "Send thirty Black Knights with enough food, weapons, and camera equipment into the passage to survey. If any problem occurs inside there, send someone back immediately to report!"
As soon as Chen Chen gave the order, thirty Black Knights immediately obliged and rushed inside after completing the preparations. Thirty figures plunged into the Rosen bridge and vanished...
After this, Chen Chen landed on the Blacklight Cruise again but did not order the cruise to leave just yet. Instead, he had the cruise anchored around the edges of the Rosen bridge and waited patiently.
All of the Black Knights as well as Chen Chen no longer had reason to be worried about the T-virus. The Black Knight was the product of T-virus fused with human embryos while Chen Chen had also been injected with a modified version of T-virus to enhance his physical condition. This was why Chen Chen chose Resident Evil as the subject for this experiment.
Another reason was that each time Chen Chen opened a passage to another dimension, that dimension would be in a desecrated state. Therefore, Chen Chen would not dare to recklessly open a passage to an unexplored dimension. There was never a guarantee that he would not run into some strange entities in Elysium that could potentially destroy human civilization in a matter of seconds.
Comparatively, Resident Evil which Chen Chen had completely figured out at this point was a far safer option.
As things turned out, an unforeseen accident did occur with the appearance of the Rosen bridge. However, Chen Chen did not find any remorse in the situation but instead found it laughable.
He already knew of the nature of the T-virus as well as the antidote for the T-virus. There was essentially zero concern of the potential harm the virus could bring. Therefore, this Resident Evil dimension was a completely harmless new world as far as Chen Chen was concerned!
Unfortunately, Chen Chen would not have the "New World" all to himself since it was exposed in the middle of an ocean. Even if no other forces had come to realize its existence just yet, it was only a matter of time. Besides, it was a challenging task for Chen Chen to venture into the ruins of the dimension all on his own.
After giving the matter further consideration, Chen Chen decided it was better to discard these thoughts for now. It was not the time to be worried about the details of these matters before the groundwork had even been laid out at all. Although it was a similar passage opened by the USB drive, there was no sure way to tell what the situation in the opposite dimension was like. This was why Chen Chen figured it was wiser to not enter the passage himself just yet. Caution was the parent of safety.
Within three hours, a Black Knight returned from the opposite dimension. As soon as the Black Knight stepped out of the passage, his foot landed on thin air and tumbled onto the open deck.
The crew of Black Knights on the Blackwatch Cruise had set up a makeshift negative pressure tent on the deck. The Black Knight that returned immediately went into the tent to be quarantined upon arrival. After that, several other Black Knights went inside to collect microorganism samples and proceeded to disinfect the returning Black Knight.
The footage the Black Knight returned with was immediately cast onto a computer display.
When the footage was played, the first thing that Chen Chen saw was the remaining half portion of the ship that had the Blacklight Biotechnology logo printed on it. As the camera panned around, the wide-open plains were presented on screen.
The video was recorded after entering the passage and had a timestamp on the top section. It seemed to be high noon in the opposite dimension at the time. There was a large assortment of plantations on the surface as well as a large amount of rubble and gravel. There were a couple of structures scattered across the horizon.
After that, the Black Knight in charge of recording started to advance toward the direction of the buildings.
Since they did not have vehicles available, the Black Knights had to travel on foot. Along the way there, they spotted more flattened ruins of what was once houses. These ruins were nearly buried underneath stacks of dust and rubble. One would not even notice the houses buried underneath unless they got a closer look at it.
Chen Chen gained a brief understanding of the situation of this dimension upon seeing this scene.
About an hour later, the Black Knights arrived at where the sparse collection of buildings was spotted. These buildings were mostly one to two stories tall and most of them had already collapsed and were buried underneath mounds of yellow sand, with only their top-most section sticking out of the miniature mountains.
The further they went, the flatter the terrain became until at one point, the terrain started to sink downward.
It was around this point when Chen Chen determined that this was the city where the T-virus first broke out and was soon nuked by a nuclear warhead - Raccoon City.
Along the way there, the Black Knights did not discover any corpses nor did they find any signs of a living person. It seemed as if after the humans were wiped out, the natural order of things had been restored to the land, as they were in ancient times.
Based on the footage, it seemed the timeline of the opposite dimension was set a long way into the future, even further into the future than the Resident Evil dimension which Chen Chen had previously ventured into. Six years ago, he remembered delving into the Resident Evil dimension to search for a cure for the Blacklight virus. The changes to this current dimension were far more drastic than the previous dimension he went to.
No, this was no longer the same dimension as the one he previously explored, but a completely separate dimension only of extreme similarity. Just like how Chen Chen could repeatedly instantiate the same object, there must be countless parallel renditions of the Resident Evil dimension in the scale of the multiverse.
Chen Chen suddenly froze as he considered the implications of this. In the grand scheme of things, it was not a big deal that he was the first one to discover the Rosen bridge or that a portion of the Blackwatch Cruise was discovered in this alternate dimension. He could simply feign obliviousness and the entire thing would eventually blow over.
As long as there was no significant proof, Chen Chen would never have to own up to the fact that he was the one who opened the Rosen bridge.
However, if other parties discovered that this alternate dimension was a dimension associated with Resident Evil, that would be problematic...
The technology in The Hive underground base must not be discovered by the Earth Federation. There was a vast collection of biotechnology similar to the ones that Blacklight Biotechnology had presented to the world in the underground base. If the Earth Federation discovered it, it was only a matter of time until they formed the connection and determined how Chen Chen came to achieve his biotechnology breakthrough.
Apart from that, Chen Chen would also be forced to give a lengthy explanation to the Earth Federation regarding the existence of an alternate Resident Evil dimension. Although Chen Chen in his current state was not too concerned about the prosecution of the Earth Federation, it was still not a good time to have his secrets exposed.
At least it would have to wait several years until he made a breakthrough in the aerospace sector...
With this in mind, Chen Chen instructed the Blackwatch Cruise to remain anchored in its position while he returned to the teleportation room and the Spire Experimental Base.
The first thing Chen Chen did upon returning to the Spire was to look for a large one-foot-wide suitcase from the armory. This was som
ething that he had instantiated from a movie a long time ago as a safety measure.
The title of the movie was G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
The content of the suitcase was a weapon known as the "Nanomite Missile". A brief overview of the weapon was that it contained seven million microscopic robotic ants. Upon detonation, these robotic ants would erupt in a swarm and devour all matter in front of them.
Whether it was humans, plantations or steel and concrete, objects of all forms were objects to become their victims. These robotic ants would never stop their streak of destruction.
The only way to stop them was by using a complimentary "Kill-switch Device". Each nanomite missile came with a matching kill-switch device which caused all the microscopic robotic ants to self-destruct when triggered.
This meant the threat this weapon posed surpassed that of even nuclear bombs. The scale of its destruction was up to the owner of the kill-switch to decide. It could simply be used to destroy a specific building, a group of citizens or devour an entire city effortlessly.
It completely negated the drawback of radiation that came with using nuclear weapons. The user of this weapon could very well fire this weapon first before commencing negotiations with the opponent. Unless the opponent was willing to watch helplessly as their cities held hostage were devoured one after another, they would have to yield.
The nature of this weapon was completely geared toward being a strategic chess piece. Chen Chen took great interest in the potential value of this weapon and instantiated four of them at the time. One was used for research while the other three were stashed in the armory all this time.
Chen Chen took two nanomite missiles out of the armory in one go.
After that, Chen Chen returned to the teleportation room and went to the Blackwatch Cruise again, this time with two suitcases in tow. He then passed through the hundred meters tall, gigantic Rosen bridge by himself!
"Swoop…"
The sensation of passing through the Rosen bridge was just like how it felt passing through the Schwarzschild's Throat created by the USB drive. Chen Chen felt his vision turning dark as if he was trapped in a pool of mud. After the light was drained from his world, a wave of suffocating sensation invaded him...
It felt as if he had descended into a bottomless pit. He felt a sense of weightlessness and disorientation due to the sudden absence of gravity.
All these combined sensations only lasted for a brief instant and before Chen Chen even needed to regather himself, he felt his feet planted on solid ground again.
Chen Chen slowly opened his eyes.
What greeted him was the wreckage of the top deck of the Blackwatch Cruise that was easily more than forty meters tall. It stood magnificently over the plains like an enormous tower.
Chapter 496: The Lilith Assembly |
A few days later.
A video suddenly appeared on YouTube, the world's largest website.
This was a common vertical-screen video recorded by a mobile phone. It was sent by a little-known vlogger. It showed a stormy, cloudy sea with lightning and thunder, and the dark clouds seemed to be only a hundred meters above the sea, creating a suppressive atmosphere as if the clouds were crushing the land below.
The videographer seemed to be standing on a freighter and a large number of red and blue containers could be seen in the shot. At this time, the frame was also bobbing up and down along with the freighter.
However, as the videographer's lens turned, something special appeared in the frame.
It was a huge light spot, emitting a rainbow-like variety of colors. It was translucent, like a rainbow standing upon the sea.
At this time, the videographer was still a little far away from the "rainbow spot", but the spot was conspicuous in the dark weather and one could hear that several people were constantly talking in the video. The subject of their conversation also revolved around this light spot.
Some people guessed that it was a rainbow, but this was immediately rejected by others because they were now in the midst of a storm and no sunlight could shine through the dense dark clouds to form a rainbow.
Some people thought it was a leak of biogas from the seabed, but it was quickly overruled. As the freighter approached, the full appearance of the light spot gradually emerged.
In the previous frames, the freighter was located at the right rear of the light spot, so the light spot appeared to be completely flat, like a vertical bar. Even so, as the freighter came to the right side of the light spot, everyone finally saw that the light spot turned out to be an irregular circle.
Moreover, the light spot was not connected to the sea surface but was higher above the sea surface. It was just that, because of the freighter route, the freighter did not get too close to the light spot. Plus, there was nothing to compare it to on the surface of the sea. As the people in the video discussed, they reached no agreement on how big the light spot was.
Then, the freighter gradually moved away from the light spot and the videographer stopped shooting when it was almost out of sight.
This video, which was less than ten minutes in length, immediately attracted a crowd of people with too much time on their hands on YouTube. They also discussed what the light spot was:
[Getlost]: So, what exactly is that thing? What was filmed in this video, what the f*ck did I just watch?
[Director of SFA Medical Academy]: Allow me to reply. That is a plastic bag.
[PSYCHO]: Isn't it a rainbow? I thought it's a rainbow, but if it's not, what is it? Those illiterates would think it's something cool.
[Kill]: Why does a video taken now still have such bad quality? The hands are so shaky. As we all know, as the pixels of mobile phones increase, the chances of online gamers all over Earth capturing UFOs (or dragons) on phones are getting less and less.
[DREZZ]: That's a wormhole, okay, the kind that can lead to another world!
[The account has been terminated]: Some people said that this kind of video is fake, is it true, alright. I was there at the time, I was the dark cloud.
[LiLei]: It seems that what happened in 1999 can't be concealed anymore…
At first, this video did not attract the attention of any department, since everyone thought it was just an everyday prank from a certain special effects producer. However, as the second, third, and even more and more people released similar videos, gradually, the fact that a strange light spot had appeared somewhere in the Indian Ocean also gradually spread.
At first, some people thought it was some kind of advertisement for a film but as more and more people came forward and said that they had seen it with their own eyes, and even after the sea coordinates were shared out, gradually, many people finally began to believe the authenticity of the video.
Someone even publicly claimed that he had rented a Mauritius boat to explore the area and indeed found the spot about two thousand nautical miles southeast of Mauritius.
However, the spot was located dozens of meters high up in the air. Although it was not reachable, he still tried to throw things into the spot. The strange thing was that the spot swallowed the objects he threw in…
As soon as the news came out, it immediately attracted many wagging tongues. Many people who had time and money flew to Mauritius to try to see the "space wormhole" that had become viral recently.
However, after the first group of people went to Mauritius, they were prohibited from going to sea at the port. The reason was that a hurricane was about to hit nearby and any ships with long-distance capability were prohibited from going to sea.
Some tourists who came to explore even noticed the presence of the Earth Federation United Army in the port.
As soon as the news broke on the Internet, there was an uproar. If this group of people had been skeptical before, now that they were not even allowed to go to sea at this time, did it not mean that the spot was a real issue?
When everyone was fervently discussing how the light spot was something extraordinary, a ne
w update blew up everything:
A tourist who went on an expedition posted a message saying that he had discovered an astonishing great secret. It turned out that a large chartering yard in Mauritius to attract tourists for more business, had created all this fake news. The videos were all edited, and those who were sharing evidence were all hired by the charter yard. The entire incident was a premeditated and planned advertising campaign!
Sure enough, within a few hours, more people began to expose the "crimes" of that chartering yard, from creating fake videos to forging evidence to attract tourists. There were all sorts of proof for this, including conversation transcripts.
At once, those who felt deceived were whipped into a frenzied mob that rained down condemnation. The website of this chartering yard was completely shut down due to complaints.
Until a day later, the chartering yard personally apologized and repeatedly promised not to commit such tricks. This allowed the anger of the public crowd to calm down and slowly dissipated…
In this manner, a wave of rumors was quashed.
While the Internet was in full swing over this rumor, Chen Chen was in a huge empty room. He was sitting cross-legged in the center of the room with his eyes closed. Through the eyelids, one could see his eyeballs spinning violently.
This room was as huge as a football field, but it was empty. The weird thing was that the room did not use any supporting pillars. The floor was black marble and the ceiling had a shed's structure. Dazzling light came from above, illuminating the entire room until there were no shadows.
This was not so much a generic room as it was a quiet room.
At this time, Chen Chen meditated in the quiet room. This was a set of methods he had gradually compiled throughout three years to improve the accuracy of his Field energy. In this extremely quiet and empty area, he could observe everything in the world without interruption, yet perceive the flow of every current of air, the touch of each trace of Field energy.