"In peacetime, it's easy to build, but hard to destroy. In wartime, it's easy to destroy, but hard to build!" Jiang Youwei sighed as she sat on the roof, looking at the ruins before her. In the moonlight, she could clearly see the ruins of the construction site. The pile of collapsed rubble must have once been a complex of buildings, far larger than anything she had ever seen or heard before.
Given a large enough area, humans could recreate the Tower of Babel. Human creativity is undeniable; this is just some other world in the near future. It's hard to imagine what magnificent wonders they'd create if they were given another hundred years! Jiang Youwei stared at the grayish-white rubble before him, but his mind was picturing a towering sky-high tower. He really wanted to see the orbital elevators of the future, or something else entirely. Those things he'd seen countless times in virtual reality videos weren't as exciting as actually being able to touch them in person.
Unable to control herself, she gradually raised her head and looked towards the starry sky. It was strange that no matter in the past, present or future, the people who liked to look up at the starry sky the most were always those who had just filled their stomachs. Perhaps looking at the stars was just a poor man's romance.
It was a clear night, and the moon overhead wasn't too bright to block out the twinkling stars. There are always no stars on a full moon night, but try it yourself!
"Venus and the North Star are always the brightest. It seems the starry sky in this world isn't much different from before I traveled through time." Jiang Youwei only knew those two celestial bodies, so she assumed she had arrived in a parallel universe. If it were exactly the same, it wouldn't be possible. At least, she hadn't heard of any "system" before. While there were a few online stories of time travelers in history, that was just history, a glimpse of the whole picture.
The stars in the sky twinkled as usual; their twinkling wasn't anything special; it was simply the temperature fluctuations in the upper atmosphere. Jiang Youwei, perched on the roof, desperately hoped to see something special. Since there weren't any man-made wonders these days, it would be wonderful to see a supernova explosion; at least that would be a cosmic wonder.
Around two in the morning, she was drowsy and seemed to see something, "What is that? Is that a shooting star?"
The meteors above the starry sky seemed to follow a pattern. The yellow-red tails of flames, created by the friction of the small rocks with the atmosphere, seemed almost equidistant to Jiang Youwei. "Very unusual, like they fell this way on purpose!" She became interested, regaining consciousness, and then began counting each meteor.
"Hmm? There are so many different kinds of metal elements in these meteors!" She observed carefully, noting that the flames always had a colorful glow. This reminded her of a strange knowledge she'd learned from setting off fireworks before: different metals produce different colors of flame when burning.
She took out her "antique" mobile phone and took a picture of the shooting stars. Then she thought of something and opened the compass software, pointed the pointer on the screen between her legs, and then took a screenshot.
Comparing the angles of the two images, she suddenly realized her head was facing west and her feet were east. "Shit! I wish I hadn't known! What bad luck! Isn't this the position for the dead?" Recalling her old feudal superstitions, she couldn't help but feel troubled. Although she didn't believe in such nonsense, she always tried to avoid it when she encountered it. This was probably a unique culture of Country Z: no matter how mysterious it was, it was best to pay homage.
But in the end, she remained motionless. This position was the most comfortable she had found, the jagged ravines on the roof making it difficult to lie still for long. What was she about to say? That's right! She noticed the meteors were at a strange angle to her, somewhere between fifteen and thirty degrees, each with the same angle to the next. It wasn't hard to imagine they were man-made.
"I wonder what that person wants to express? Or what the aliens want to express." She suddenly felt that human beings were very small. Those twinkling stars were eternal, but the beautiful meteors were only a moment of brilliance.
Regardless of what they were trying to say, Jiang Youwei decided to wait a little longer. Generally speaking, if an intelligent being wanted to communicate, it wouldn't call out just once. A single, isolated instance would simply be dismissed as a fluke, or lost in the chaotic background of the universe, leaving no one responding.
Time ticked by, and just when she was about to lose her patience, almost an hour and a half later, the same process happened again! The same number of meteors, the same angle and spacing, but the difference was that this time, a few new meteors appeared in the opposite direction of the majority.
This completely caught Jiang Youwei by surprise. In fact, the spectacular sight also amazed most of the people who stayed up late to observe it. Such a regular meteor shower had never happened in Earth's four billion-year history. Some even set up cameras, hoping to capture the next one.
"Is there anyone still awake?" She tried to find one or two like-minded people in the community chat group, but unfortunately, no one had spoken there for several days. Since the third mutant attack, many frightened residents had fled with their belongings, and there was no telling where they could find a safe haven.
She is just like that. Interesting things should be shared, but only with interesting souls. So she kicked open the door of the two unlucky guys next door at around four in the morning and said, "Get up and have fun!" You should be wild while you are alive, and you will sleep forever after you die.
The two unlucky guys hadn't slept well since last night, mainly because the floor was too hard, the temperature was too low, and they kept hearing rustling sounds coming from the roof. Of course, most people would definitely not be able to sleep on their first night at a construction site, but this was definitely not Jiang Youwei's problem. She slept soundly that night.
The sound of the two alloy doors slamming against the roof was the last straw that broke the camel's back. When they tiredly climbed up from the floor with dark circles under their eyes and messy hair, they only heard the devil's whisper from outside: "Come up quickly! Come up quickly!"
"Ahhh! Why are you in such good spirits!" Fatty Fan roared with his last bit of strength. He had never seen a girl like this before, or rather, he had never seen a "human" like this before.
"You are so energetic! I am really impressed by you!" Squatting on the temporary road full of cracks, the staggering Li Wenjia felt that the "orcs" in the army were not as healthy as him.
"Come up quickly and see the meteor! It will appear in more than half an hour!" The guy hid on the roof and didn't pay any attention to the wailing of the two people below.
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