Chapter One: The Explosion of Earth
Through the electronic imaging systems aboard the spacecraft, Xiao Yu witnessed the complete destruction of Earth.
Only moments ago, a super-explosion had erupted at the planet's core, tearing Earth apart into countless fragments. The sheer energy released accelerated the Moon to a velocity of one hundred and thirty-seven kilometers per second. According to preliminary estimates, the Moon would escape the Solar System entirely, becoming a rogue planet adrift in interstellar space.
Along Earth's former orbit, a vast asteroid belt would take shape. At the same time, the Solar System itself would be transformed into a colossal cosmic pinball arena. Over the next several million years, every major planet would be subjected to relentless bombardment from Earth's remnants.
Streams of observational data flooded directly into Xiao Yu's consciousness. He let out a quiet sigh, pushed the spacecraft to maximum thrust, and fled toward the outer reaches of the Solar System.
In truth, ten years before the catastrophe, Xiao Yu—widely regarded as the most brilliant scientist humanity had ever produced—had already sensed the warning signs. Holder of doctoral degrees in more than twenty disciplines, including theoretical physics, high-energy physics, astrophysics, materials science, mechanical engineering, astronomy, chemistry, and computer science, and the recipient of over twenty Nobel Prizes, Xiao Yu had sounded the alarm long before the end came.
Yet his warnings were ignored by human society and mercilessly ridiculed by his peers. He was branded a madman. One scientist even shouted into a television camera in a fit of indignation:
"I don't know what evidence Xiao Yu claims to have—was it something he dreamed up last night? The Earth will be destroyed? What a joke! Even kindergarteners know the Earth will exist peacefully forever!"
Xiao Yu could only smile bitterly. Eventually, he came to terms with it.
Even if humanity accepted the warning, he thought, with our current level of technology, there would be no way to stop it. Rather than condemning civilization to a decade of despair, it was better to let them enjoy their final years in happiness.
And so Xiao Yu withdrew from the scientific world. Within two years, he amassed a staggering fortune, rising swiftly to become the wealthiest individual on Earth. Then, he began his true plan.
Relying on scientific knowledge at least twenty years ahead of the rest of humanity, Xiao Yu spent eight years constructing the first truly interstellar spacecraft in human history. It was fully assembled in geosynchronous orbit.
Then, from a ground-based control center, using devices of his own design, Xiao Yu separated his soul from his physical body. Through a transmission array, his consciousness was sent into the ship's central computer, where it merged seamlessly with the system. Without hesitation, the spacecraft accelerated, broke free of Earth's gravitational hold, and escaped into deep space.
Xiao Yu had already verified that under specific conditions, the human mind—or soul—could endure indefinitely. Abandoning the flesh and merging consciousness with a computer brought additional advantages: the elimination of massive life-support systems, dramatic reductions in mass and volume, and the near-total removal of requirements for food and water storage.
That was the entire sequence of events.
"So it seems I'm the last human in the universe," Xiao Yu muttered wryly. Then he corrected himself. "No… existing purely as consciousness, I can hardly be called human anymore."
"Still," he reflected, savoring the sensation, "this vast computational power—endless energy, endless lifespan—it feels… wonderful."
His new body measured thirty meters in length, twenty meters in width, and roughly five meters in height. The spacecraft was divided into multiple sections: material storage, material processing, scientific laboratories, equipment fabrication bays, the main control core, and maintenance corridors. A single exquisitely engineered robot handled the ship's routine upkeep.
In the boundless starfield, amid the infinite sea of stars, the small spacecraft raced onward at a speed of approximately thirty-three kilometers per second. Even so, reaching the nearest gas giant—Jupiter—would still require nearly two hundred days.
Indeed, Jupiter was Xiao Yu's first destination.
There, he knew, lay an almost limitless supply of nuclear fuel. Although he had chosen chemical propulsion for his ship due to various constraints, he intended to upgrade the propulsion system to nuclear power the moment controlled nuclear fusion became feasible.
Through the astronomical telescope, Earth's direction had transformed into a vast curtain of light. Xiao Yu knew what it was: oceans vaporized by the Sun, forming comet-like tails. Over millions of years, these remnants would slowly peel away and scatter throughout interstellar space.
As for Earth's shattered fragments, some would plunge into the Sun, some would be flung into deep space, and others would gradually merge through collisions, eventually forming a new planet—far smaller than the original Earth.
Xiao Yu sighed silently.
Watching his home turn to cosmic dust, remembering the seven billion lives extinguished in an instant, filled him with profound sorrow.
"It's a pity I had no power to save them… But this explosion feels wrong," he thought. "As if some strange external force were orchestrating it."
He engaged his immense computational capacity, running logical models and projections—but arrived at nothing. At last, he was forced to abandon the line of thought.
"In such a vast universe… where is home?" His mood darkened briefly, but he quickly steadied himself.
"With my current computational power, my solo technological progress can rival that of all humanity combined. And once I obtain new materials and build even more powerful computers, that pace will accelerate further. Very well—let us begin exploring the infinite mysteries of the cosmos."
His resolve reignited.
At that moment, a point of light in Earth's direction caught his attention.
The external telescope immediately pivoted, locking onto the object.
The luminous body was large, and not too distant. Xiao Yu quickly determined its mass.
"The Moon…" His thoughts froze. "Wait—something's wrong."
A sense of dread flashed through him. He immediately fed planetary orbital parameters, masses, velocities, and eccentricities into a formula. His computational systems produced the result instantly.
"How could this be such a coincidence? How could it possibly be?" he muttered. "At its current speed, the Moon should slingshot past Jupiter and escape into interstellar space! How could the orbits align perfectly for a collision?"
"Damn it… Is the universe playing a joke on me? Is this trying to kill me?"
He stared at the results in disbelief, cursing inwardly.
"Am I really about to witness the most spectacular impact event in the history of the Solar System?"
The calculations were unambiguous. At its present velocity, in roughly fifty days, the Moon would collide head-on with—Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System.
Ordinarily, such direct collisions between bodies of this scale are exceedingly unlikely. Far more often, Jupiter would capture the Moon as a satellite. Its orbit would gradually decay, crossing the Roche limit, at which point the Moon would be torn apart and its fragments would strike Jupiter one by one—perhaps over tens of thousands of years.
But this time, the Moon's trajectory was impossibly precise: a direct, frontal impact.
"My technology is still in its infancy," Xiao Yu cried out. "How am I supposed to survive an impact of this magnitude?"
Seventy million years ago, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was only ten kilometers in diameter. The Moon, by contrast, spans over 3,400 kilometers.
Jupiter itself measures 140,000 kilometers across.
When fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 struck Jupiter, each piece was barely two kilometers wide—yet the total energy released exceeded forty trillion tons of TNT. Those fragments traveled at 210,000 kilometers per hour. The Moon now was moving at more than 400,000 kilometers per hour.
How much energy would such a collision release?
Xiao Yu dared not calculate it.
But he knew with certainty that the resulting ejecta and radiation would sweep across the entire Solar System. The asteroid belt would be blown apart. The new belt along Earth's former orbit would be utterly destabilized. A significant portion of the debris would fall into the Sun. If fragments were large enough, they could even rupture the Sun's convective layer, ejecting massive amounts of stellar material and prematurely aging the star.
In other words, this single impact could destroy the Solar System—or, at the very least, turn it into a living hell.
Xiao Yu grew increasingly convinced that Earth's destruction was no accident, but the product of some hidden calculation by an unseen force. Otherwise, the coincidences were simply too perfect.
"Damn it. First priority—survive the worst phase of the impact," he muttered. "If I'm caught in the radiation burst directly, my current materials tech won't save me. The ship would vaporize instantly—even from hundreds of millions of kilometers away."
As dread crept in, his computational core surged into overdrive.
The central computer—personally designed and built by Xiao Yu, with technology at least twenty years beyond humanity's—boasted processing power comparable to Earth's fastest supercomputer, Tianhe-2, while consuming only a tiny fraction of its energy.
In an instant, countless orbital and velocity parameters flooded the system. Indicator lights flashed furiously. Half an hour passed before Xiao Yu emerged from the calculation trance.
"This is the only way… There's about a fifty percent chance of surviving the initial impact phase," he thought grimly. "But my energy reserves will be critically low."
"Alter course toward Mars. Reach Martian orbit in twenty days. Hold position behind Mars and use it as a shield—that should get me through the worst of it. After that… Jupiter is no longer an option. Saturn, then. Titan might work—it has vast methane reserves that could be used as fuel. Oxidizer will be a problem, though. No oxidizer, no combustion."
He snorted bitterly.
"Whatever. One step at a time. I might be dead soon anyway."