Chapter 21: The Quantum Escape

“Teacher, are we truly just fleeing like this?”

“We must leave. Remaining here would plunge us into unknown dangers, especially now that the entire Alliance high command has succumbed to a fervent hysteria. This is a grave error. Any leadership that forsakes its composure is on the precipice of collapse, as history has repeatedly shown.”

“Their current actions are nothing short of suicidal. We must secure ourselves in a safe haven and patiently await the unfolding of history.”

“Understood.”

Listening to his teacher’s words, the young man nodded thoughtfully. His teacher was not a member of the Alliance; from subtle hints dropped in conversation, the young man suspected he was a historian from a cosmic empire, who had somehow ended up in this remote corner of the galaxy.

His teacher’s insights were always profound, which was why he had chosen to follow and learn from such a visionary mind.

At this very moment, the attention of all Alliance high-ranking officials was fixed on the combat command center. They had no idea that the teacher and disciple had quietly slipped away, their escape remarkably smooth.

While an emergency search warrant had initially halted all flight routes, the subsequent discovery of the massive insect led to its immediate lifting. Air travel swiftly returned to normal, as these routes constituted a major source of Alliance revenue.

The long disruption had certainly pained the high command.

“I didn’t expect it to go so smoothly.”

“This is merely the calm before the storm. Remember, never judge by appearances. The hidden currents beneath a tranquil lake are far more terrifying than any visible ripple.”

“Understood.”

The young man held an unwavering belief in every word his teacher uttered. His mentor had never once been wrong; even in the direst circumstances, events always unfolded precisely as anticipated.

“Once we board the spaceship, remember: speak no words, make no movements. No matter what happens, do not panic. Simply sit still and wait for the ship to reach its destination.”

After a moment of contemplation, the elder suddenly turned to his disciple and spoke these perplexing words, leaving the young man utterly bewildered.

However, the young man did not question their meaning. His teacher had once told him that every statement required his own careful consideration, for only then would the derived answer truly be his own understanding.

Yet, that last remark sounded less like philosophy, profound insight, or a higher state of thought, and more like… an order.

Still puzzled, the young man followed his teacher through security and boarded the spaceship. With a gentle tremor, the view outside the window began to shift.

As the vessel gradually pulled away from the planet where he had been born and raised, a faint sigh of sentiment stirred within the young man’s heart.

Soon after, the twinkling starscape outside the window suddenly shimmered, then gave way to an environment entirely suffused with dark blue iridescence. This was the Quantum Channel, where they would undergo a precise quantum transport.

In just a single day, they would traverse thousands of light-years to reach their next destination.

Legend had it that an even faster method of transport once existed, known as a Wormhole Channel. The principle of operation supposedly involved directly tearing a void channel through cosmic space, allowing one to enter at one end and emerge almost instantaneously from another.

Such a convenient method of transport was once widely heralded and adopted by various intelligent species. However, when the universe became riddled with wormholes, triggering widespread spatial collapses, everyone grew alarmed.

This technology, inherently derived from the Zerg, was innately destructive. Dense cosmic voids transformed space into a sponge-like structure, easily shattering amidst certain fluctuations.

After several wormhole collapses resulted in tragedies claiming tens of thousands of lives, all civilizations abandoned the technology, turning instead to research safer methods of transport.

Quantum Channel was the ultimate outcome of that pursuit.

As humanity’s discovery of a ‘third world’ beyond the void—the quantum world—it possessed exceptional stability and no interference with the real world. One only needed to open a Quantum Passageway in the real world, enter the Quantum Channel, and set off towards another quantum anchor point in the real world.

This allowed for incredibly long journeys to be completed in remarkably short periods.

This discovery thrilled humanity at the time. Not only did they develop various other tools based on the Quantum Channel, but they even applied it to entertainment.

For instance, a particular “virtual game”

—initiated by the cosmic empire and immensely popular throughout the universe—set its game world within the vast expanse of quantum space.

Players, through a gaming device, could import their consciousness into this world and experience scenes almost indistinguishable from reality, except the content of the real world was replaced by the game.

Machines required to connect to such games ranged widely in price. Because these machines needed to connect to Quantum Channels, they required High-Energy Crystals for power. These crystals typically contained extremely high radiation.

Advanced machines could perfectly shield against all this radiation, while lower-grade game connectors were far less effective. This often led to players of these lower-grade connectors being plagued by radiation-induced cancers.

Each cancer removal surgery was excruciatingly painful, and more importantly, it caused hair loss. Yet, this could not deter people’s fervent love for the game. Although similar fully immersive games had been developed long ago, server issues were always a problem.

With the support of the quantum world, this issue was fundamentally resolved.

This young man also enjoyed playing the game, and surprisingly, it was his teacher who had introduced him to it. This seemingly rigid old man actually enjoyed something so trendy.

When he saw his teacher pull out two top-tier game connectors, the young man almost knelt down and called him ‘dad’.

Although his teacher later explained that he had to personally experience such a groundbreaking invention, a quick glance at his teacher’s incredibly high-level equipment and his name prominently displayed on the leaderboard made the young man think, ‘Isn’t the teacher having quite a blast playing this?’

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