I Will Teach You How to Hunt Gods

Chapter 723 - 23: Future? Or the Past...? (2)

If Chen Zaikun really made a move on Lamia, tried to snatch the treasure, then what the hell was he supposed to do?

In that instant, the air itself seemed to freeze.

Chen Zaikun’s gaze lingered on Lamia for several seconds, his thoughts in his mind locked in a constant struggle.

But in the end, that ambiguous smile at the corner of his mouth slowly faded, and the impulsiveness in his eyes ebbed away like the tide, once again becoming unreadable.

He gave Yun You a long, deep look, then glanced at Lamia.

He didn’t make a move.

He merely turned around in silence, dragging his heavy steps toward that dilapidated iron door.

At the entrance, soldiers in Equality Association uniforms had already arrived.

"It’s over."

Chen Zaikun’s voice was low and exhausted, yet carried the tone of an order.

"Clean up the battlefield, seal all entrances and exits, and clear out all irrelevant personnel."

"Within a radius of five kilometers, not even a fly gets in."

He paused, then added another line.

"And absolutely no one is allowed to disturb the surgery inside. Disobey, and you die."

With that, he didn’t stay any longer. His tall figure melted into the wreckage beyond the corridor and soon vanished.

Seeing this... Akas finally let out a breath of relief.

He knew why Chen Zaikun had suddenly backed off, but... at least the result was good.

And so, in the tiny operating room, only the monotonous hum of the machines remained, along with the faint breath of life from two girls.

...

Darkness.

That was the only thought in Yun You’s mind right now.

In fact, although her body in the real world had already fallen into a coma, her consciousness had not sunk into oblivion. It wasn’t like the blackout that came after getting drunk; instead, she had entered another boundless world.

Time and space here had both been blurred.

Yun You felt like a dead leaf that had fallen from its branch, drifting with the invisible undercurrents.

The searing pain and exhaustion of her body—those heavy burdens belonging to the real world—had all been temporarily stripped away.

Yet the feeling of loneliness clung to her like maggots on bone, circling her heart without end.

Just when she thought she would sink like this forever, her consciousness completely scattering...

"Buzz!"

A speck of blue light abruptly lit up in the darkness, like a stone thrown into the surface of a still lake, instantly shattering the equilibrium of deathly silence.

Almost at the same moment, Yun You’s consciousness felt as if it had been caught by some immense gravity, yanked toward that ghostly blue point. The darkness around her shattered like a broken mirror, and in its place surged scenes bizarre and kaleidoscopic.

Here, time had lost its normal flow. She saw fragmented images flashing in and out at light-speed—Akas with bloodshot eyes, a face caught between despair and manic joy; the fleeting shimmer deep in Lamia’s hollow gaze; Chen Zaikun’s blood-drenched back as he stood his ground; the feral instant when the Death God Slayer, burning its Soul, lunged at her.

Countless shards from the past few hours whirled and overlapped before her eyes like a scrambled kaleidoscope.

And then...

An even stronger force of attraction suddenly descended!

This time, it was no longer a montage of broken images, but a complete "new world" that swallowed her whole.

The dizzying sense of spinning was like being tossed into the drum of a washing machine on max speed.

And when Yun You’s vision finally steadied again, she found herself suspended in an unimaginably magnificent spectacle.

Before her was that familiar star—the Sun.

However, at this moment, the Sun was wrapped in a metallic structure so colossal it shattered the limits of comprehension.

It was a superstructure made of countless geometric mega-plates...a design so complex it felt suffocating. Like an intricate metal web, it sealed the Sun completely within, greedily siphoning off the nearly inexhaustible energy of the star.

A Dyson Sphere.

An ultimate energy project that had existed only in theoretical speculation was now laid out "before her eyes," the cold metallic sheen echoing with the star’s blazing fire.

"This is... the future?"

Yun You froze, that thought surfacing reflexively.

But soon, her perspective was pulled back. She saw the planetary orbits circling the Sun—Mars, Venus, those solid planets now covered in hive-like megacity clusters and crisscrossing space elevators.

Around Jupiter and Saturn, those massive gas giants, floated countless space stations and industrial platforms. Even their rings had been replaced with icy mechanical constructs.

The asteroid belt had been completely transformed; giant mines and refineries clung to the rocks like steel lichens. The entire Solar System had been thoroughly conquered and reshaped by human technological might.

Clearly, this was a Golden Era where technology had climbed to its absolute peak.

However, when Yun You’s gaze pierced the outer shells of those magnificent space cities, turning inward, toward the lives housed within those megastructures...

Her eyes froze.

The imagined Utopia was nowhere to be seen.

The sky-piercing alloy megastructures were draped in countless flickering holographic ads, their content stuffed with cheap sensory thrills and consumption bait. The air was thick with a cloying sweetness of bargain-bin fragrances and synthetic chemicals. The sky itself was blotted out by massive holographic projections, not a hint of natural starlight or sunlight getting through, only artificial light sources grinding on without rest.

On the ground, narrow streets ran with foul water, mountains of trash piled everywhere. Neon tubes flickered with ambiguous color in the damp air. Most pedestrians wore cheap synthetic-fiber clothes, their faces etched with numbness, exhaustion, or drug-induced frenzy.

Their bodies were more or less mechanically modified—prosthetic limbs glinting with cold metal, chip interfaces embedded under the skin glowing dimly, even half a face swapped out for cybernetic eyes—such sights were everywhere.

Between people there was only a cold, alienated distance; eyes hollow, most communication carried out through implanted neural links. There was not a trace of playful laughter in the air, only the engine roar of hovercraft and the blare of holographic ads.

Then again, the whole world wasn’t entirely rotten to the core.

At the summits of those megastructures, or in the most luxurious core zones of orbital stations, lay another world altogether.

Beneath transparent domes stretched carefully simulated natural environments, four seasons tuned to the most comfortable temperatures, filled with birdsong and the fragrance of flowers.

The well-dressed upper class reveled there in eternal youth granted by cutting-edge Biotechnology. They talked about art, virtue, and cultivation, yet turned a blind eye to the bottom-dwellers beneath their feet, struggling like ants.

Technology had reached its zenith, the Dyson Sphere drinking in near-infinite energy, humanity’s footprints scattered throughout the Solar System, and yet human civilization as a whole had fallen into a massive rift and stagnation.

Energy was virtually unlimited, yet could not benefit all; technology could reshape the stars, yet could not erase poverty; lifespan could be extended, yet the spirit grew ever more hollow.

The drive to explore deep space had long since been worn away by an overabundance of resources and the bottleneck in interstellar navigation.

Humanity was trapped in a golden cage called the "Solar System." The entire civilization was like a gigantic ship with a splendid hull but no engine, sliding irreversibly toward a "High-tech, low quality of life" Cyber World in a haze of decadence and numbness.

"This... this is..."

Yun You’s eyes widened.

The scene before her was so similar to the Nest City era she lived in!

The same colossal Nest Cities, the same rigid hierarchies and yawning wealth gap, the same underclass struggling amid pollution and numbness, the same elites drowning in hollow pleasures; the same sharpened civilizational contradictions, the same lost dream of the starry seas, all locked inside a cage.

Only, in the era before her eyes, the tech was more advanced, the scale even more grand.

But that rotten, suffocating core of despair was like a Curse of recurrence that no one could shake off, crossing unimaginable spans of time to play out once again in this age.

"Where... exactly is this? And what era is it, really?"

Yun You muttered to herself.

Fortunately, the question didn’t trouble her for long.

Soon, she found the answer on a projection screen.

[October 24th, 2345 AD, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Earth United Nations!]