What happened next?
"Have you ever heard of the 'Dark Forest' theory?" The old man didn't wait for Zhang Fan's answer and continued, "Ancient humans who witnessed the vast starry sky and ocean were as happy as children running on the seashore, excitedly shouting at the sea, hoping that someone would share this joy with them."
"Soon afterward, the signals that ancient humans sent into the vast universe were captured by other civilizations."
"Silicon-based civilization?" Zhang Fan blurted out.
He could imagine that if ancient humans entered a period of suffering, it must have been a silicon-based civilization that was hostile to the carbon-based civilization to which ancient humans belonged.
“No.” The old man shook his head. “On the contrary, the first to capture the signal that ancient humans sent into space was one of the carbon-based civilizations that theoretically belonged to the same camp as them.”
"Huh?" Zhang Fan was stunned. How could this be the opposite of what he understood? Shouldn't it be encountering enemies?
"Sigh... Ancient humans were as innocent as children." The old man smiled bitterly and shook his head. "Can you imagine? A child carrying a priceless pearl is walking alone in a deserted desert. Then a poor, destitute adult finds him. What do you think that person would do?"
Zhang Fan fell silent, unable to speak.
“When the ancient humans encountered this ‘adult,’ they treated him with great enthusiasm, showing him the same respect that children show to their elders.”
"The other party was indeed very friendly to the ancient humans at the beginning, and told them a lot of information that the ancient humans had not been able to grasp, such as silicon-based civilization and carbon-based civilization, as well as the interstellar war between the two that has lasted to this day."
"Ancient humans became as humble as students are to their teachers, inviting them into their homes and introducing themselves to them."
"In displaying themselves without reservation, ancient humans also displayed their ignorance and weakness without reservation..."
"The ancient humans at that time did not realize how rare their star core was, even in the entire universe, among their kind."
Greed arises from this, and the consequences are predictable.
“Without the star core…” Zhang Fan swallowed hard. “Then Mars…”
“Collapse.” The old man nodded with immense sorrow. “Without the star core, the subsurface space of Mars collapsed, and the diameter of the entire planet shrank by one-third, turning it into the solid sphere it is today.”
"But the collapse does not happen instantly; it is a slow process."
The old man stopped speaking abruptly, raised his head, and his eyes shone with two beams of light, illuminating the dome above.
Zhang Fan also looked up at the dome. Each hexagon in the dome was playing a video, and each video recorded the history of ancient humans after the loss of the star core.
At first, Zhang Fan felt the scene was awkward, but later he realized that it was an underground spherical space that perfectly matched the shape of the dome.
Then he saw humans. He was certain they were humans, not aliens or anything else, because they looked just like him.
However, the ancient humans in the picture seem to be living in hell.
The earth was collapsing, people were screaming, and countless people were buried alive underground.
They had nowhere to escape; within the confined spherical space, escaping anywhere would yield the same result.
Zhang Fan noticed one of the images.
A young mother lay prone on the ground, using her body to create a small space for the baby beneath her.
The surrounding area was all mud.
The young mother's eyes were lifeless; she must have been dead for some time.
The baby beneath her stretched and yawned, fast asleep in her mother's arms; it seemed as if you could hear the baby's quiet breathing through the screen...
The surrounding soil is still slowly tightening, slowly tightening...
Zhang Fan closed his eyes; he couldn't bear to watch any longer.
Sometime later, the images on the dome stopped playing, and the old man was in tears.
"Grandpa, I..." Zhang Fan's words choked in his throat. He wanted to say something, but ultimately he didn't know what he wanted to say.
Only silence.
Only silence could express his current feelings.
"What followed was a history of suffering for ancient humans for hundreds of years," the old man continued. "The collapse of the planet buried most of the ancient humans underground, but a small number of humans survived."
"Just like the air bubbles in cheese, there are also tiny 'bubbles' in the collapsed Martian rock layers. Some 'bubbles' may only be big enough to accommodate a few people, some may be able to accommodate dozens of people, and the largest will not exceed a few hundred people."
"Can you imagine the feeling of oppression of living in the dark underground, surrounded by dense rock formations for thousands of kilometers?"
"But even in such a desperate situation, the surviving ancient humans did not give up hope. Each 'bubble' began to spontaneously explore and dig into its surroundings."
"Some bubbles disappeared forever during the excavation process. But some bubbles successfully found each other, merged into a larger bubble, and then continued to explore and excavate around."
"It took about 100 years for the surviving ancient humans to create a 'bubble world' underground with a diameter of about 100 kilometers."
"In this small 'bubble world,' ancient humans struggled to reproduce and survive. However, due to the loss of the star's core, the 'bubble world' was extremely unstable and frequently experienced various geological disasters."
"Therefore, ancient humans continued to go upwards, continuing to explore and dig. It took about another 100 years for ancient humans to reach the ground again."
Zhang Fan felt an immense shock. At this moment, he finally understood that every "tree" he saw growing upwards on the cave wall represented the history of ancient humans' indomitable exploration of the world.
"But the ground at that time had no mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, forests, or grasslands, much like Mars as we see it today."
"Without the star core, the resources of the bubble world are about to be exhausted, but the ancient humans did not give up. They exhausted all their remaining resources and implemented the 'Human Backup Plan' and the 'Immigrant Blue Star Plan'."
"'Human Backup Project' and 'Immigrant Blue Star Project'?" Zhang Fan's eyes widened.
"Hehe." The old man laughed, a laugh filled with immense pride. "Can you imagine? In such a desperate situation, our ancestors were devising such a far-sighted and grand plan."
"What kind of plan is that?" Zhang Fan stared blankly, lost in thought.
"First, back up human DNA and knowledge, which are the foundation for the continuation of human civilization. Second, terraform Earth, as the early Earth was not suitable for human survival."
"To this end, ancient humans launched a large number of rockets to Earth to interfere with and change its natural conditions. Secondly, they sent single-celled organisms with human DNA, which had undergone DNA surgery, to Earth to allow them to evolve naturally."
"Aren't they afraid?" Zhang Fan stared wide-eyed. "For example, in the process of evolution, other animals might replace humans."
"That's the pride of our ancestors," the old man said proudly. "They believed that millions of years from now, humans would still be at the top of the food chain on Earth!"
"And when the new humans set foot on Mars again, the 'gifts' left behind by our ancestors on Mars will be activated."
"So, it was 'Caesar' who brought back the 'gift'?" Zhang Fan suddenly realized.
“Yes.” The old man nodded. “But I must say, the ‘gift’ left to us by our ancestors is too rich. Humans at that time were not mature enough to control it. If we had given it to the people of that time, it might have had the opposite effect.”
"So at that time, we, this group of people, took it upon ourselves to restart the 'Human Backup Plan' and the 'Mars Colonization Plan', leaving the ancestral legacy we had acquired to future generations of humanity."
“Those…those cockroaches…” There was still one thing Zhang Fan didn’t understand.
“If we were to search for the traces of our ancestors at the pace of human space exploration, it would be far too slow,” the old man replied. “So we put insects on Mars and let them help us find the remains of our ancestors.”
"Oh." Zhang Fan nodded.
"Did you see that cockroach queen?" The old man smiled and touched the two magic flower mantises beside him. "That cockroach queen underwent DNA surgery, using the DNA of 'Little Flower' and 'Little Blue'."
"Both Xiaohua and Xiaolan are my pets, so the queen cockroach is more likely to be attracted to humans."
"Oh, I see!" Zhang Fan suddenly realized that he might have to thank the queen cockroach for surviving the fall.
"By the way, sir," Zhang Fan had another question, "those insects seem to have all left Mars. Where are they flying to?"
"Go to the location of our star core." The old man suddenly became very serious, his tone firm and resolute. "This is precisely what I want to convey to you in the future, across time..."
"Go and retrieve our star core!"
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