Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 210 Clues to the Truth

The email arrived in the early morning of the third day after I wrote down the three questions.

Zuo Cheng was reviewing the security verification report for the NX-40's write function when a new email notification popped up in the lower right corner of his screen. It was a private email address, the sender was blank, and the subject was just two words. He opened it. He first checked the email header information; the route had passed through seven overseas nodes, and the last segment was interrupted in Switzerland. The sending time showed two hours ago, but the server logs indicated that this email had been waiting for almost a year, triggered by a preset time window.

Someone calculated the delivery time a year in advance, knowing he would receive it and that he would open it alone in his office at dawn.

The attachment was an encrypted video, less than 100 MB. The decryption key was written in the email body, a sixteen-character string; the first eight characters were the last eight digits of his ID number. Zuo Cheng pressed play.

The moment the screen lit up, he recognized the person in the video.

Chen Xinghe.

The only publicly available photo online is a blurry group photo from their youth. However, Zuo Cheng had seen the file photo during negotiations with Xingchen Technology; Zhao Wenbo had shown it to him. In the video, Chen Xinghe looked at least ten years older than in the file, with completely white hair, sunken cheeks, and a dark gray shirt, sitting at a wooden table. Behind him was a small window, through which lay a hazy gray sky, obscuring the city.

His voice was calm, as if he were giving an academic presentation, not recording his last words.

"If you've seen this video, it means your technological skills have already awakened."

Zuo Cheng's hand, gripping the mouse, froze. Not because of the words themselves, but because this was the first time someone else had uttered those four words. "Technology tree." He had only ever used those words in his own mind; he had never spoken them to anyone.

Chen Xinghe said, "Let me answer your most pressing question first. How did I know about the technology tree? Because I've seen it before you. I wasn't the first owner of this tree, and you probably won't be the last. I'm a chosen one, a guardian. I put it into the underlying protocol of the NX-07 patch, and then waited for someone to activate it."

He paused for a moment, picked up the water glass beside him, and took a sip.

"What I'm about to say might be hard to believe, but you have to listen. This video was recorded this March, and the doctor gave me three months. By the time you receive this email, I'll probably be gone. That's okay. My task was simply to get the seeds to the right people. Mission accomplished."

A photograph was projected onto the wall behind him. It depicted an underground space where the walls themselves glowed with a faint blue light, like the ocean floor. In the center was a semi-transparent container containing tiny specks of light, each the size of a fingernail, that slowly rotated. With each rotation, the surrounding walls lit up briefly, like a heartbeat.

Zuo Cheng recognized the color. It was exactly the same color as the pulsating light spot in the center of the technology tree in his mind.

Chen Xinghe said, "Seventeen years ago, I was doing geological exploration in the Taklamakan Desert. Three hundred meters below an abandoned oil well, I discovered this man-made cave. The walls are made of an alloy that doesn't exist on Earth, harder than diamond. Inside, there's equipment, an energy system that's still running. A miniature nuclear fusion reactor, one that has been operating for four billion years without interruption."

When the isotope analysis of the surrounding rock strata came back, the lab thought the equipment was malfunctioning. Four billion years ago. Four billion years ago, the earliest single-celled life appeared on Earth. At that time, the most complex thing was just a dividing cell. And the energy system inside this cave is still running today.

"I call it the seed. The seed wasn't activated within me. It only gave me fragments of knowledge: brain-computer interfaces, materials science, and a small part of things I don't even understand myself. With these fragments, I founded StarCraft. But I've always known in my heart that I'm just one hand. I'm not the one who should truly hold the seed."

He leaned forward.

"Seed activation requires certain conditions. There's an inscription in the cave, using a code I don't recognize. It took seven years to barely decipher a single sentence. When the inheritor completes the seventh knowledge transfer, the seed will awaken."

Zuo Cheng repeated the sentence in his mind twice. The seventh knowledge transfer. Communication engineering, Internet of Things, AI, unmanned systems, new energy vehicles, space photovoltaics, commercial aerospace. Seven branches. Exactly seven. All seven that he activated in this life, all the ones he never finished exploring in his previous life.

Chen Xinghe seemed to know what he was thinking. "You've probably already counted. Seven, right? I've counted too. I've tried for thirty years, and only activated one bud. Only one, so faint it was almost invisible, but I knew it was there. I sealed that bud in the NX-07 patch, waiting for someone to continue it."

"You didn't get the system by chance. You were chosen. The seed activated in you in just a few days, while it lay dormant in me for thirty years. This proves one thing: I am the gatekeeper, and you are the one who opens the door."

The video is almost over.

Chen Xinghe concluded, "I don't know where the seeds came from. The civilization that left this cave four billion years ago is no longer in this dimension. They may have sown seeds on every planet with the potential for life, activating them when life evolves to a certain stage, accelerating the progress of this civilization. Like planting trees. Not just one tree, but a whole forest."

"I've saved all the notes, coordinates, and cave records with an encryption key and given it to Zhao Wenbo. He'll be coming to find you. He should be on his way now."

One more thing. Seeds have a deep function I call dimensional perception. When your technological breakthroughs closely match the seed's pre-defined path, the resonance between the seed and the real world strengthens. The stronger the resonance, the more you can do. You may have already unlocked this function. Whether you have or not, remember: the seed is not a tool, not a weapon; it is a key. And this key opens more than one door.

"I've spent thirty years, and I've only reached the door. You'll have to walk the rest of the way for me."

The image freezes.

Zuo Cheng stared at the frozen image for a long time. Then he opened the system panel. The light spots were still pulsating, the rhythm steady. The waveform diagram of dimensional perception showed: brain-computer interface 87, commercial aerospace 74, biotechnology 63. Three numbers; someone had calculated the order four billion years ago, and was waiting for him to complete them step by step.

He sent Zhao Wenbo a message: "No need to wait until dawn, come over now."

Zhao Wenbo replied with a single word: "Okay."

The sky outside the window changed from gray-blue to pale gold. Zuo Cheng wrote down every single word Chen Xinghe said, a total of seventeen, filling two pages. He wrote four characters on the last line.

I was chosen.

After finishing writing, I looked up and saw a car headlight flash below. Zhao Wenbo had arrived.