Chapter 491 - 427: Facing Fear in Space

Chapter 491: Chapter 427: Facing Fear in Space

A deep, heavy boom erupted from the launchpad, like hundreds of thunderclaps detonating at once.

Everyone watching the launch on-site felt their bodies vibrating in unison with the earth.

The other professionals were used to it and didn’t react much.

However, it was Zhang Minglu’s first time seeing a rocket launch up close. His heart pounded with excitement, and for a moment, he set aside his concerns about the experiment to fully immerse himself in the overwhelming sensory experience—the sight, the sound, the physical shock.

Amid the roar, the base of the launch tower was swallowed by gushing flames and thick smoke as the rocket itself began to lift off.

Unlike the spectators outside, Guan Tong, currently inside the rocket, was having a much different experience.

The thick cabin walls and his spacesuit filtered out most of the earth-shattering roar of ignition. He heard only a low RUMBLE, which reminded him of the sound a diesel truck made when starting up in his hometown when he was a child.

This sensation was quickly replaced by another.

Thrust.

Or, as the professionals would call it, the G-force of the overload.

Guan Tong felt the force pinning him to his seat. The thrust steadily increased, growing heavier and heavier. An ordinary person would likely find it difficult to even twitch.

But for an Ascender like Guan Tong, who had already entered the second stage, this force was actually quite limited.

He was even inexplicably reminded of the decapitation strike in Liluo’an, when Adam had used a gravity field to kill Bishop Peter. Now *that* had been terrifying—a gravity field fifty times normal crashing down in an instant.

Before long, Guan Tong felt his body begin to shake.

It wasn’t him shaking, but the entire rocket.

’Looks like we’ve reached the dense part of the atmosphere.’

While receiving Psychic Power infusions over the past few days, Guan Tong had also crammed a ton of aerospace knowledge.

He knew that when a rocket traversed the densest part of the atmosphere, the fuselage would shake violently from air resistance. Astronauts described it as feeling like they were in a car driving over a dilapidated road full of potholes, a vibration so intense it rattled their teeth and bones.

Guan Tong cracked open his helmet’s faceplate and glanced out the porthole.

He saw that the once-straight horizon had now become a distinct curve. The atmosphere, illuminated by the sun, looked like a thin eggshell wrapped around Celestial Water Star.

The feeling was undeniably wondrous.

He could feel a strange yet familiar sensation emerging as his body moved farther and farther away from Celestial Water Star.

Guan Tong thought, ’I’ve heard that astronauts have to undergo rigorous psychological screening and receive counseling after returning from space... I can see why that’s necessary.’

He hadn’t even left the atmosphere yet, but viewing Celestial Water Star from this macro perspective was already having a strange psychological effect on him. The feeling would only intensify once he was actually in space.

He remembered reading a science fiction novel before he’d crossed over. There was a line in it, the gist of which was: "Life’s journey from the ocean to the land was an evolutionary milestone. But the fish that came ashore were no longer fish. Similarly, a person who truly enters space is no longer a person."

Now, experiencing leaving Celestial Water Star for himself, Guan Tong felt that sentiment was spot on.

’If humanity truly entered space—and I don’t mean launching a rocket or manning a space station, but actually colonizing other planets—would Celestial Water Star still be important to those colonists?’

In Guan Tong’s view, colonizing another planet was fundamentally no different from immigrating to a foreign country.

’First-generation immigrants might still miss their mother country, still feel the pull to return to their roots.’

’But what about the second or third generation?’

’If humanity could colonize other planets, after two or three generations, would anyone still consider the homeworld, Celestial Water Star, important? To them, the new planet would be their homeworld.’

’And at that point, would those colonists even care if it was destroyed by the Fire Thief’s Apocalypse Rules...?’

As this thought crossed his mind, Guan Tong felt a faint sense of melancholy, yet he also thought he was being needlessly anxious.

In a few more days, it would be exactly two years since the Fire Thief’s arrival. Nearly twenty of the forty-nine Apocalypse Rules had been released. In three or four more years, at most, all forty-nine rules would be finished—assuming, of course, that humanity could last that long.

It was debatable whether humanity could even establish a self-sufficient colonial base on another planet in just three or four years. Talking about second and third-generation space colonists was undoubtedly getting way ahead of things.

Still...

Guan Tong felt this wasn’t something that could be judged by conventional logic.

Because while the Fire Thief brought disaster, it was also accelerating humanity’s technological progress. In fact, it wasn’t just accelerating; it had reached the point of being a forced, unnatural advancement.

For example, the Memory Digitization technology. If humanity were to research it on their own, it would take at least a decade to even get started. Now, due to contact with the nano-cluster intelligence brought by the rules, humanity was expected to break through and master this technology within a year.

’Who knows if there will be more rules like this one?’

’Even if there aren’t, if humanity can fully digest this technology and find that "special substance not found on Celestial Water Star" that the nano-intelligence mentioned, they could overcome their material limitations. Maybe technology would enter an explosive new phase of development.’

Suddenly, just as Guan Tong’s thoughts were wandering, the shaking of his body came to an abrupt halt.

The environment switched from cacophony to silence in an instant. The sudden shift made his ears ring.

’It seems...’

Guan Tong’s gaze fell on a piece of paper taped to the bulkhead not far away. He saw its lower half quietly float up. It wasn’t just the paper; in his peripheral vision, Guan Tong saw his own slightly long hair also gently floating up.