A deafening explosion rocked the sky, instantly casting a fireball brighter than the sun. The blast waves swept across thousands of square kilometers—flames, fierce winds, earthquakes, and howling dust ravaged the environment, toppling countless trees as if heralding the apocalypse.
Ji Xinghuo suddenly woke up and sat up in the darkness.
The remnants of the explosion lingered in his mind, incessantly roaring, leaving his gaze filled with bewilderment and fright until calm gradually returned a few minutes later.
"The same nightmare again, damn it!"
Cursing, Ji Xinghuo shook his head helplessly and glanced at the luminous clock on his bedside—1 a.m.
For the past week, he had had the same nightmare every night. In the dream, his perspective was fixed; it started in outer space, speeding like a meteor into Earth's atmosphere before exploding above a vast forest.
Each explosion in the dreams woke Ji Xinghuo, making him feel as if his own brain had exploded.
And the culprit behind all this...
With a soft call, the bedroom slowly brightened.
Without waiting for his eyes to adjust to the brightness, Ji Xinghuo swung out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. In the mirror, he saw his haggard and exhausted face, complete with striking red lines in his eyes, reflecting his poor mental state.
After a week of poor sleep, anyone would feel dejected.
"Time to deal with it."
Muttering to himself, Ji Xinghuo opened the cabinet behind the mirror and took out a beautifully woven necklace. It had a complicated and pretty strap made of nylon cord, with a gemstone pendant encased in a mesh, looking quite exquisite.
Looking at the gemstone pendant, Ji Xinghuo's expression was complex.
About ten days earlier, he and some classmates went on a graduation trip to the Lake Baikal area. On the last day, at a local reindeer tribe's stall, he had bought this necklace as a souvenir for 20 Ya Yuan.
That stall had a few hundred similar woven necklaces, only differing in the pendants.
Ji Xinghuo hadn't noticed anything unusual when choosing; he simply liked it and bought it, wearing it back to Chang'an that same evening.
And then, the nightmares started.
After several nights of the same nightmare, Ji Xinghuo pinpointed the cause—it was the gemstone pendant, resembling a glass marble.
The gemstone's shell was transparent, embedded with a colorful nebula resembling an eyeball, its iris center hollow as though the pupil had been gouged out. Several fine cracks spread from the middle, presenting a peculiarly imperfect beauty.
This object was clearly not a natural gemstone, but a man-made object, not worth much.
Driven by curiosity, Ji Xinghuo researched it.
He found that the gemstone's hardness was astonishingly high, definitely many times harder than diamond, exceeding the limits of the hardness tester; its brittleness, melting point, water solubility, and resistance were all undetectable, making it impossible to determine its composition, far beyond his understanding.
He struggled for a long time but failed to leave any mark on the gemstone.
Even once, Ji Xinghuo soaked it in his own blood, but still, nothing happened.
Unable to make headway with the gemstone research, Ji Xinghuo turned to his nightmares for clues.
The first thing that came to mind was the "Tunguska explosion".
The scene of the explosion in the dream matched many aspects of the Tunguska explosion, such as the explosion occurring in the sky, the absence of a meteorite crater and celestial debris, the range of the explosion, and the level of forest destruction, all matching historical research data.
However, the Tunguska explosion took place in 1908, whereas it was now 2223, more than three hundred years later.
Moreover, the site of the explosion was nearly eight hundred kilometers away from Lake Baikal, where he had been.
There were distances both in time and space.
Despite this, Ji Xinghuo still suspected that the gemstone he held might be related to the Tunguska explosion, and could even be the cause of that mysterious explosion.
"Shame, aside from dreaming, I have no other evidence."
"Otherwise, I could solve a century-old mystery from over three hundred years ago."
Ji Xinghuo laughed at himself sardonically, but the current issue was how to avoid having nightmares.
He had already tried; whether he carried the gemstone or left it thousands of kilometers away in another city, he would still have nightmares as soon as he slept, as if bound to it.
He took the necklace back to the bedroom, untied the cord, removed the gemstone from the mesh, and held it in his palm for a close examination.
"Could this really be an alien species?"
This wasn't the first time Ji Xinghuo had entertained the thought.
Initially, he suspected that the gemstone might be an Alien Species, but it didn't match the characteristics of any known species, whether in the "Star Realm Defense Council" (Astral Defense Council, abbreviated as ADC) alien species database or the official website of the "Star Realm Department".
An "Alien Species" is an object imbued with "Abilities."
All of Earth's alien species originated from the "Star Realm."
In 2033, thirteen Star Gates suddenly opened across major continents around the world, providing entry into the Star Realm.
The mysterious and vast Star Realm stunned the world. Its appearance overturned scientists' understanding and violated known physical laws. The Star Realm connected the entire Milky Way, serving as a bridge to every planet in the galaxy and even to every spatial coordinate in interstellar space!