Chapter 416: The Future That Can Never Arrive

On the first day, you and Xiao Jiu came excitedly to that former Shelter, you temporarily erected an iron tent capable of resisting the Radiation Storm, and quietly waited for the arrival of the human female.

Xiao Jiu was very eager to see the miraculous human female you spoke of; of course, you were too. You did not think her sudden departure was abandoning yourself, and you always knew she was not an ordinary-background person.

One month passed, and the human female had not arrived; Xiao Jiu said this was normal, as interstellar travel time always spans a great range, which you of course knew, but the unknown wait was inevitably agonizing.

Taking advantage of this time, you began to exert your own talent, researching some odd little things for Xiao Jiu to take to Feitu City to sell, since waiting here was utterly boring.

However, with Xiao Jiu's companionship, this period seemed not so hard to endure.

You treated this wait as a kind of long-term camping, of course, Xiao Jiu would not wait so honestly.

She changed from her previous lazy demeanor to a now hyperactive one, nearly wearing you out; for the first time you missed the quietly lazy Xiao Jiu.

Afterward, days passed like flowing water—one month, two months, three months, half a year...

You never did wait for the human female, and the originally joyful anticipatory atmosphere between you gradually changed, becoming confused and anxious.

Interstellar travel time will have discrepancies, and the more advanced the civilization, the smaller this discrepancy becomes, unless encountering some irresistible event, such as the sudden formation of a black hole or the sudden reversal of a cosmic gyroscope neutron star.

These things are unknowable, but it is also possible that the human female really met with some accident and perished somewhere.

In short, either way is enough to make you vexed and distraught.

Now you, a towering 1.9 meters tall, your whole body bulky beyond proportion, hardly look like someone grown on the Wasteland, yet even so you are still attacked by some oblivious Wasteland Dwellers.

In the seventh month, you were attacked by a gun-wielding Wasteland Dweller; this person was obviously not doing this for the first time, but he underestimated you and Xiao Jiu's abilities.

Xiao Jiu directly took the bullet, punched him away, and casually tossed him onto a nearby scrap heap... This gave you a clearer understanding of Xiao Jiu as a humanoid weapon.

In the ninth month, the prolonged wait made you start doubting whether the human female would come; she must have encountered something, otherwise it would be impossible for her not to come pick you up after so long, and you began to think of giving up.

Thus a year passed; regardless of whether the human female really encountered something, you all knew she was likely not coming to find herself.

Perhaps on some future day she will come to this planet as promised, but in any case, you are very likely never to see each other again.

The span of interstellar travel time can be as short as a few months or as long as several decades; perhaps if you keep waiting here, you could wait for her.

But you are unwilling; your inner self does not want to keep waiting like this. You want to enter space, eagerly thinking day and night—this is an instinct engraved in your genes, the instinct of you as an Extraterrestrial Entity.

Human, do you intend to leave?

Yeah, I think I might never see my mother again in this lifetime.

Interstellar travel time often spans decades; I cannot possibly wait ten or so years on this junk planet.

Xiao Jiu looked at the sorrowful Zhang Jie, pursed her lips; this remark was cruel, but it is reality.

How vast is the universe? No one can know.

I think perhaps only after I truly enter space and gain ability will there be a chance to find my mother.

Xiao Jiu listened to Zhang Jie's words, wanting to speak but hesitating; yet in the end she chose to break his unrealistic fantasy.

I heard the experimenter's mom..... my experimenter once said, a civilization's unobservable universe is about 250 times the observable universe.

Unobservable universe?

Yeah, the unobservable universe refers to where the universe's expansion speed exceeds light speed, causing light to never be able to reach a certain planet.

Where light cannot reach, a civilization cannot obtain any information about them; beyond their observable range lies the unobservable universe, which is about 250 times the observable universe.

This 250-fold factor is merely a minimum limit; if the universe is finite, it would not fall below this multiple. If the observable universe's radius is 93 billion light-years, then the lower limit of the unobservable universe's diameter would be 23 trillion light-years, that is a 1 followed by twelve zeros.

So.... finding a person on a single planet is almost impossible; in the universe, how could one possibly find them.

In other words, besides waiting here, I have no other way?

Theoretically speaking, that is the case.

This is his only chance to see the human female again.

I will keep building starships nearby until she comes or I succeed.

Zhang Jie said thus, wanting him to spend a lifetime on this junk planet, which is impossible; he will not compromise, nor can he compromise.

So he chose to continue manufacturing starships in the second Shelter until he succeeds or the human female truly comes here.

His life, from this moment on, has only two choices: give up, or strive for that unknowable future.

Nineteen years old: to wait for the human female, you spent an entire year on this, and now the manufacture of the starship must be put on the agenda again, but this time there is no time limit.

You have more patience than before, you feel your brain seems more agile, but actually this is just an illusion; you remain the mediocre talent called a genius.

A true genius can succeed in one go at something; you need to do it countless times, while a true genius at this point might have already ascended to heaven, yet you still wander in the sea of scrap.

Experiment after experiment, failure after failure, wait after wait.

Perhaps this is the difference between a talent and a true genius....

Failure, longing, setback—these have become the main theme of your coming years....