novelhk Chapter 1114 So this is actually a world where the younger man is the older woman?
Chapter 1114 So this is actually a world where the younger man is the older woman?
This continent appears to have several major nations. The vast mountainous region where they currently reside is located on the southern border of a country called Qing, and is sparsely populated. To the north of Qing lies the powerful Qi country, to the west the Dongyi city, and further north are nomadic nomadic tribes. Wars frequently break out between these nations.
Information about "martial artists" is gradually becoming clearer. This world does indeed have martial artists who cultivate "true qi," and they have a clear hierarchy! From the lowest first rank to the highest ninth rank, and supposedly above that, there is an even higher realm: Grandmaster. Legends circulate among the people about some of the top experts, who can scale walls, take on a hundred men single-handedly, and even… take the head of a general amidst a vast army.
Upon hearing the description of "taking the head of a general amidst ten thousand troops," Gao Yao's pupils suddenly contracted. How similar this was to his own martial arts realm! Could it be that the upper limit of martial power in the other world was comparable to his own?
What shocked him even more was that among the fragmented information he had collected, certain specific terms and titles began to appear repeatedly: “Supervisory Bureau”, “Inner Treasury”, “Fan Mansion”... as well as some well-known and revered titles: “Four Grandmasters”!
When the title "Four Grandmasters," along with keywords such as "Qing Kingdom," "Supervisory Council," and "Fan Xian," was presented to Gao Yao, he sat in his study in the Xianyang Imperial Palace, watching the snowflakes falling outside the window, and remained silent for a full hour.
Long-buried memories surged forth like a floodgate opened. Fragments of memories from past lives, so distant they were almost obscured by the glory of this world, gradually became clear and pieced together.
Was it a certain year? ...Fan Xian...Ye Qingmei...Emperor Qing...Si Gu Jian...Ku He...Ye Liuyun...
"So...this is where it is."
Gao Yao slowly stood up, walked to the huge map, and his gaze seemed to penetrate the map, seeing that magnificent world full of intrigue and passion, where masters stood tall and power struggles were intertwined.
A slight smile played on his lips, a complex expression that blended realization, solemnity, and a hint of barely suppressed excitement.
“The world of the younger generation… I almost forgot about this world.” He murmured to himself, his eyes regaining a light that was even more intense and profound than before. “A grandmaster who can fight against ten thousand men single-handedly… Emperor Qing who controls the world… Interesting, very interesting. It seems that this bridge connects to no ordinary place.”
Fortunately, Gao Yao's current strength is undeniable, and his memory has also improved significantly, so he can naturally recall some information about this world.
The root of all the disasters can be traced back to the Third World War, also known as the Final Twilight. It was not a simple confrontation between two camps, but a total collapse of the global system under multiple apocalyptic pressures, including the complete depletion of resources, geopolitical grievances, and an out-of-control artificial intelligence game.
In the early stages of the war, it was limited to battles in high-tech conventional weapons and cyberspace. But in desperation at a strategic turning point, one side pressed the first nuclear button. Pandora's box was opened, and retaliation and chain reactions swept the globe within 72 hours, with more than 9,000 nuclear warheads being unleashed on the most brilliant points of human civilization.
Blinding flashes of death engulfed cities, mountains, and coastlines, followed by towering mushroom clouds that formed a dark, sky-high curtain. The shockwaves flattened architectural marvels built over thousands of years, but the most deadly was the radioactive dust that enveloped the entire planet and lasted for hundreds of years.
In the last relatively "sober" period before the full-scale outbreak of nuclear war, Chinese scientists and the remaining far-sighted authorities launched a tragic and almost futile "Fire Seed" project. Knowing that their home planet was inevitably about to fall into a long nuclear winter, they devoted all their remaining industrial capacity to frantically building two types of shelters: next-generation spaceships capable of escaping into deep space, and surface fortresses deep underground for self-preservation.
The spaceship carried away a small elite, hailed as the pinnacle of civilization, on a desperate expedition to a distant star system where habitable possibilities might exist. But the greater number, and those whose fates were far more arduous, were those who could not leave or chose to remain because of their beliefs. They were sent in batches to ground-based fortresses scattered across continents, falling into a long slumber through induced cryogenic freezing, hoping to be awakened in a future era when radiation dissipates and the environment returns to habitability.
Inside the fortress lies the last hardware backup of human civilization: from crop seed banks and animal embryos to encyclopedic digital storage cores, and machine tool and weapons production lines that maintain a minimum level of industrial reproduction capacity.
All of this is managed by a super-intelligent AI with only two core instructions: monitor global environmental indicators, especially radiation levels; and spare no effort to protect the survival of the human "seeds" inside the cryogenic chamber until dawn breaks again.
The devastation at dusk far exceeded even the most pessimistic model predictions. Thousands of nuclear explosions triggered geological shifts, electromagnetic pulse storms, and direct hits, destroying 99 percent of the ground fortifications.
The magnificent engineering project was reduced to a twisted metal tomb, forever sealed beneath layers of rock and glaciers along with its inhabitants. Only one fortress, located in the frigid far north of the eastern continent, with an exceptionally stable geological structure and fortunately spared from direct impact, miraculously survived intact.
In the centuries that followed, it remained as a solitary, beating heart on a vast, icy plain, weak yet tenacious. Later generations of humans, emerging from this fortress and guided by it, called it—"the Temple"—with a primal religious sentiment mixed with awe and mystery.
Thick clouds of radiation dust blocked out the sun for centuries. Global temperatures plummeted, ocean evaporation decreased, and precipitation covered everything in the form of ice and snow. The blue planet lost its color, becoming a pale, silent ice ball in the universe.
The once majestic cities, transportation networks, farmlands and villages—all traces of civilization—are buried hundreds or even thousands of meters deep beneath eternal ice layers, as if sealed in amber of time, leaving only a blurry yet enormous outline.
When the sensors in the "temple" finally detected that the radiation index was slowly and steadily declining to a critical point, and atmospheric light transmittance began to slightly recover, nearly five hundred years had passed since the Great Destruction. The AI "Gaia" strictly followed the protocol and initiated the first phase of the recovery process.
It first dispatched a diverse team of robots made of radiation-resistant materials. These silent, metallic messengers emerged from the frozen exit and set foot on the ravaged, deathly white earth. Their mission was to scan for signs of life, searching for scattered human communities that had survived the nuclear explosion and might have undergone unknown evolution in the harsh environment.