Chapter 323

Seeing the situation, Xu Can wanted to tease her.

"Call me once, and I'll make it for you for free."

"Call you what?"

"Call me like they do in the movies." Xu Can grinned wickedly.

Liu Tianxian tilted her head, thinking—she hadn't caught on right away.

A few seconds later she finally realized Xu Can was joking, and blushing red, she gave him a light punch.

Xu Can wanted her to call him daddy?

Dream on!

Gao Yuanyuan, seated to Xu Can's right, noticed the two of them stirring and couldn't help curling her lip.

Why was he so much closer to Liu Tianxian?

When he was with her, Xu Can treated her like she was a thief.

Hmph!

Gao Yuanyuan puckered her lips and sulkily went on watching.

The opening of the film is the same as the original: the Shen Yue family ekes out a living in this dust-choked environment.

Former CNSA astronaut Shen Yue can only farm corn to feed his family.

"Why are they burning things again?"

"The neighbors are burning their long johns—this is the last crop."

"Blight?"

"Yeah, he should be planting corn like everyone else."

Blight has wiped out the vast majority of Earth's crops, and the corn that remains may soon go extinct too.

Shen Yue drives his daughter Shen Mofei and son Shen Cheng to school,

and is stopped by the dean of students.

His son's temperament is steady; he'll make a fine farmer someday—no worries there.

But his daughter Shen Mofei takes after her father, a bit of a wild one,

and she's been caught reading a novel in class—one about the Apollo moon-landing program, no less.

"This is an outdated book. It contains serious errors."

the female teacher said earnestly.

"The Apollo moon-landing program it describes was faked, and so were Tiangong space station and the Chang'e moon landing."

Shen Yue couldn't hold back on the spot:

"Fine, the Apollo program being faked is one thing, but Tiangong and Chang'e were the lifeblood of generations of aerospace workers—how could they possibly be fake?"

In his fury, Shen Yue left the school with his children.

While driving, a drone suddenly skimmed past at low altitude, and Shen Yue excitedly chased after it.

As the car cut through vast fields of corn,

signed composer Hans Zimmer once again delivered his masterpiece "Cornfield Chase"!

Its stripped-down, back-to-basics melody lent this cornfield chase scene an inexplicable, stirring emotion!

At last, drawing on his knowledge of aerospace technology, Shen Yue captured the drone.

"It's one of ours—a classified Air Force model. Its solar cells can power the whole farm."

"Looks like it's been flying for at least ten years."

But Shen Yue was puzzled: this drone shouldn't have been here in the first place.

What on earth had caused its flight path to veer off course?

Back home, he got his answer—but it raised even more questions.

His house was surrounded by multiple farm harvesters,

and no one had come to make trouble—these harvesters had all driven over on their own!

"Could it be a magnetic-field problem?"

Shen Yue suddenly thought of the black box inside the drone; perhaps it could answer the question.

So he took the drone apart and found a string of data inside the black box.

Following the data, Shen Yue somehow logged into a strange encrypted server—and the login screen looked suspiciously like CNSA's style!

Weren't there rumors CNSA had been disbanded? How could a server still be running?

How much investment must that burn every year!

Burning with curiosity, Shen Yue used his experience from his astronaut days to crack it and successfully logged in.

In the top-secret information column inside, Shen Yue's eyes went wide at what he read.

"Dad, what are you looking at?"

"……"

"What's this? The South Pole?"

"No, this isn't our planet."

Shen Yue's brows knit tight.

He knew perfectly well that since CNSA disbanded, humanity's space-exploration program had been declared over.

Countries around the world, including Eagle Sauce, had shut down NASA and given up hopes of reaching the heavens.

The few investments that remained were all funneled into agriculture.

In an age when tomorrow was never certain and bellies were never full, aerospace was the most extravagant wish of all.

He never expected that the exploration plan was actually still ongoing!

And CNSA had actually found an alien planet suitable for human survival!

The shock this brought Shen Yue was no less than a solar helium flash.

"Warning! You are illegally browsing classified files! Please close the file immediately and return the military facility!"

"Warning! You are illegally browsing classified files! Please close the file immediately and return the military facility!"

Because the login server was detected by the other party, the computer emitted a warning sound.

Shen Yue quickly cut the link, erased his own tracks, and put the black box back into the drone.

But in the instant before the server shut down, Shen Yue recorded a set of data.

It was the coordinates of the server's location!

If CNSA existed, perhaps they were conducting research at those coordinates!

As a former astronaut, Shen Yue's dead-ash dreams reignited! His heart beat uneasily!

……

"You don't belong to this land, you're not a qualified farmer."【】

At night, gazing at the night sky covered by dust, with not a single star in sight.

Shen Yue was drinking and chatting with his father-in-law.

Veteran actor Han Tongsheng's acting was naturally beyond reproach, worthy of being called the nation's father-in-law.

"I've been growing corn for so many years, how am I not a qualified farmer?"

Shen Yue said with an unconvinced smile.

"Shen Cheng is a qualified farmer, that child has a steady disposition. You're not, you have your own specialty, your heart belongs to the starry sky… I'm very sorry, back then I didn't let you go and use your specialty."

"Dad, don't say it, it was my own choice to focus on family."

"Alright, let's drink to that, father and son."

The two clinked glasses, all words in the wine.

Ever since his wife passed away from lung cancer caused by air pollution, and his own parents were also gone, Shen Yue's father-in-law was no different from his own father0.....

The next day, daughter Shen Mofei's soccer match, the whole family came to the school field to cheer.

Suddenly a sandstorm appeared, and the broadcast sounded the air raid siren.

Clearly a terrifying natural disaster, the sky was blanketed by swirling sand and dust, its momentum immense.

But everyone present left in an orderly fashion, clearly long accustomed to this kind of hellish weather.

Xu Can used an IMAX-exclusive camera, combined with sufficiently detailed special effects, to create a sandstorm several times more terrifying than reality.

Dark clouds press down on the city, as if to crush it,

In the face of nature's brutality, human beings are exceptionally insignificant.