Chapter 3: Prologue

Prologue

(Author's note: this is a revised version of the old prologue. It has little bearing on the main story — feel free to skip it.)

"It finally worked!!" A burst of cheers erupted in a certain QQ group chat.

With the help of a Martian (female) and a Zenith Star person (male) hiding on Earth, the time-travel enthusiasts gathered on the SC forum had built a Gate of Time and Space powered by a prehistoric energy engine — a magnificent technological invention capable of sending people to any parallel space-time and any point in time...

"I declare Operation Sky Shift begun." Chairman Ma waved his hand heroically, and Committee Chair Nanshan was the first to stand and applaud.

Among the wildly cheering crowd below the stage was a young man named Huang Shi. He had heard early on that this was a two-way gate, so he signed up with the mindset of taking a free sightseeing trip.

Step one of the plan: hijack a merchant ship in the Qiongzhou Strait to serve as a supply depot.

Step two: travel through the two-way gate to the late Ming dynasty and seize Hainan as a base.

Step three...

"Plant the Twin-Bear Underpants Banner across the entire universe!" A hoarse, frantic shout rang out across the horizon: "Long live the Pit Party, long live the Eunuch Party, eternal glory to the Setting Party!"

The leader surrounded by fanatics was in fact only the second-generation chief. The frenzied crowd failed to notice a sinister figure in the distance. The former party boss, notorious for abandoning pits, eunuch-ing stories, and endless setting, curled his lips into a cold sneer: "I — will — be — back."

Huang Shi had not originally been a very suitable candidate. As Chairman Ma reviewed the form Huang Shi submitted, he felt the man's possible strengths boiled down to just two: first, fifteen years of bitter practice in large-character calligraphy; second, a height of 1.85 meters and a weight of nearly 100 kilograms.

"People in the Ming dynasty all practiced calligraphy using sand and straw paper. This guy practiced large-character calligraphy for fifteen years — he probably used more paper than a hundred Ming scholars could afford. Besides, in the late Ming, where the average height was 1.6 meters, this guy could at least be paraded around to intimidate people. Whatever, one more won't hurt." So thought Chairman Ma, chief architect of Operation Sky Shift.

"Your education only goes up to a technical secondary school diploma — that's pretty poor. You don't know metallurgy or crop breeding... Fine, we're crossing over to the second year of the Chongzhen reign. Go and thoroughly study the history of the late Ming."

"Thank you, Chairman Ma. You're the person I admire most on SC!" Huang Shi said with a grin as he left.

Although Chairman Ma was very satisfied with the overall progress of the Sky Shift plan, as the day drew nearer, an inexplicable premonition seemed to linger in his heart. He couldn't help but confirm once more with the Zenith Star person: "Are you certain it's a two-way gate?"

"Certain."

"We will arrive in the second year of Chongzhen."

"Absolutely no problem."

"It's a group crossing. Absolutely no one will be stranded alone in an unknown space-time." The unease in Chairman Ma's heart grew thicker.

"Not a single error in ten thousand."

At the same time, Huang Shi, who was out shopping for a travel bag, sneezed.

"Committee Chair Nanshan, you personally lead a team to hijack the sea vessel."

"Just wait and watch the show, Chairman Ma."

At exactly 1:00 PM, September 18, 2009, Earth Gregorian calendar (chosen for the auspicious homophone "just about to prosper"), the SC "Sky Shift" operation commenced...

Hainan evening news that day: "Over a dozen criminals attempting to hijack a cargo ship in the Qiongzhou Strait were subdued by public security officers who rushed to the scene upon receiving the report. All suspects have been apprehended."

September 18, 2009, 12:00 Beijing Time: The Gate of Time and Space exploded. Its creators and operators — the Martian and the Zenith Star person — died on the spot. Several hundred time-crossers were arrested due to the blast, and the remaining several hundred were sucked into the resulting space-time vortex... The gate's beacon was set to the first day of the first month of the second year of Chongzhen, so most people's landing times followed a normal distribution curve with the second year of Chongzhen as the peak.

The wheel of history was spinning madly. Because a crudely made space-time device on the third satellite of a sun in a certain space-time's Milky Way suffered a massive explosion, that device sent several hundred people to different stages across a hundred space-times in a very short period. Thus, the history of these hundred space-times would all have to be replayed. Feeling its burden increase, the wheel cursed, then ignored its fatigue and continued its frenzied spinning.

Stories of the same space-time: (Causal relationships cannot be altered)

A certain sect leader of Dragon Sky got wind of the news in advance and also became a space-time stowaway. As a traveler shuttling through the original space-time rather than a parallel one (the Gate of Time and Space exploded, and the wheel of history subsequently assigned the crossers' landing points), he returned to a certain mountain range in northeastern China in the year 1911 (this mountain range was once called Mount Luding). The sect leader's overwhelming aura of dominance clashed violently with the Manchu Qing dragon vein there. After a great explosion, the dragon vein, the Qing dynasty's fortune, and the sect leader all perished together... That same year, the Xinhai Revolution erupted, and the imperial aura over Beijing dimmed...

In any case, there is a reason why "Wind Rises" and "Headwind" cannot be updated.

Still a story of the same space-time: (The Meteorite Escape)

A woman's wail: "My prince, others abandon their children because they cannot afford to raise them, but you — you raised a child just to strangle him."

"This place is too flat," the man said thoughtfully. Before the crazed woman could lunge at him, he bellowed: "God said — let there be light."

A distance of billions of light-years was effortlessly torn apart by that summoning cry — auspicious flames descended from the heavens, and thus the Tunguska Explosion occurred. After the smoke and dust cleared, the man had long since fled without a trace. The woman only heard the deep, resonant male voice echoing within the giant crater: "The meteorite is my power!"

Story of Parallel Space-Time One: (The middle school textbook suspended in space-time)

Historians noted that starting from the second year of Chongzhen, the Great Ming experienced astonishing technological and industrial growth. The empire's Grand Secretary at the time was glorious, great, and correct; his ideology endured for millennia. The Grand Secretary's prophetic intuition regarding the laws of the universe and science and technology was even more astounding. The physics, mathematics, and chemistry treatises he wrote remained the empire's middle school textbooks a thousand years later.

By the tenth year of the Great Ming Culture era, the territory of the Great Ming Empire had expanded to every corner of the universe, and immigration experiments to other universes had cautiously begun. Technology allowed humans to conduct safe space-time tourism that had no impact on the past. Regrettably, for unknown reasons, space-time tourism always failed for the fifty years around the second year of Chongzhen. The rise of the Great Ming's legendary Grand Secretary thus could not be observed. In the fifteenth year of Great Ming Culture, courage and admiration prompted a history professor from the Great Ming's Mars Province and her boyfriend — a Zenith Star journalist from the Great Ming — to once again attempt to travel to the second year of Chongzhen to witness the dreamlike Grand Secretary in person and record his legendary experiences.

Unfortunately, the pirated operating system on their travel agency's computer performed an illegal operation at the moment of crossing. The two were mistakenly sent to an unknown space-time, a universe where the Great Ming had already perished in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen — over 360 years ago. Through the primitive computer network on that universe's Earth, they met a group of netizens dreaming of time travel on a BBS abbreviated as SC.

Using her superior knowledge of Martian history, and with the uncanny home appliance repair skills of her Zenith Star boyfriend, the Mars Province professor worked together with these primitives to build a new engine and a prehistoric energy engine, setting the space-time beacon to September 18, 2007, Earth time, to the first day of the first month of the second year of Chongzhen in the Great Ming.

Although, out of work necessity, the Martian and the Zenith Star person introduced all the universal laws and scientific knowledge they knew to one person and had him assist them, due to their deep-rooted contempt for primitives and shameless pragmatism, they gave him a complete set of middle school physics, mathematics, and chemistry textbooks, but did not introduce the cosmic history they knew. They were even more unaware that the name of the person who had been assisting them all along was exactly the same as the great man they were searching for... And the space-time field this assistant crossed into experienced an abnormal fluctuation with a probability of ten to the power of negative one billion, making space-time tourism inevitably fail in that universe near the spatial coordinates of Earth and around the temporal coordinates of the second year of Chongzhen...

Story of Parallel Space-Time Two: (Sky Shift will update soon, stay tuned — by Eunuch Yang)

Time: 2403 years after the death of Confucius. Place: Beijing History Museum. A teacher was introducing a statue to a group of elementary school students: "Children, this is our nation's famous reformer, statesman, and scientist, Yang X. Physically disabled but strong in spirit, he overthrew the feudal autocratic system and established the Republic of China. His achievements changed China's traditional disdain and hostility towards eunuchs... The only regret is that the autobiography he claimed he would write, 'Sky Shift,' only ever had its first chapter completed in his entire lifetime. Although he said for decades that he would update it, the future is bright, but the road is tortuous." "I am not a eunuch," the teacher read the line inscribed beneath the statue: "The words Eunuch Yang repeated over and over in his final moments, inspiring generation after generation to march forward in song..."

Story of Parallel Space-Time Three: (For detailed history, see "The New Shun" by Zao Manxiong)

Cheng Xi's clothes were in tatters. The great explosion of the Gate of Time and Space had nearly scorched him into a Kunlun slave. After confirming he had no companions, he sighed and resolved to go to the nearest city to see if he could find work as a bookkeeper or something similar... At the same time, a scholar was loitering in a rice shop. Ten years had passed since he arrived in this era, and he still hadn't found a path to wealth. The problem was, his wife at home still needed to eat. "Zao Mou Xiong," the scholar recalled his online username from ten years ago before crossing through the Gate of Time and Space, and hot tears filled his eyes. "Refrigerators, air conditioning, the internet, and my most beloved settings — have they all left me just like that? The 'Second Confrontation,' 'The Werewolf of the Kremlin,' 'The Life of Shooting Willows,' and so many more I started digging — still unfilled. (Author's note: hopefully he remembers them.)"

Story of Parallel Space-Time Four: (The Legend of the Guangzhou Stud)

It is said that one drop of a certain man's seminal fluid contained enough sperm to impregnate every woman on Earth; it is said that everyone's ancestry traces back to a single female. The above are merely hearsay, but we know one fact: appearing in the fifteenth year of the Wanli reign of the Great Ming on Earth, his charm swept across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, making him the common male ancestor of all humanity... Extremely pornographic, unsuitable for minors. Those over 18 may view it in that universe's library, but must undergo mandatory brainwashing afterward. "I once had a name: Winters. My power lies in the fact that I never fill my pits." This parting line left by the stud became an eternal mystery, causing countless men aspiring to become studs to ponder for a lifetime, die with regret, and refuse to close their eyes in death.

Story of Parallel Space-Time Five: (The Marvel of the Free Civilization)

In this space-time, communism had already been achieved; everything was free. Thus, time-crossers from different space-times lived happily, often recounting strange tales of fee-charging space-times to elicit the marvel of the native inhabitants.

"I've seen a compulsory elementary school charge fees."

"Tch, I've seen a socialist country charge housing fees."

"Tch, I've seen a hospital charge a terminally ill person fees."

"Tch..."

"I've seen a non-pornographic website charge a registration fee," an old-timer from the SC forum said.

"Ah..." This person won unanimous exclamations of wonder.

Space-Time Observer Advisory: For details on some of the above stories, please visit (don't worry, registration is now free — if you don't count time as money) and (Pit Party Base).

The Parallel Universe Queen Conjecture: (Queen + Male Opponents + Opponents After Queen Self-Defense Technique + War Caused by Numbers + Destruction)

Conjecture formulation: Define the universes the Queen reaches as Queen Sequence Spacetimes. For any n belonging to the Queen Sequence and n greater than 0, there is 1+n+n+1+1 (abbreviated form).

For example, n=1: a certain Queen surnamed Duhu transmigrates to Queen Sequence Spacetime 1. At her landing site there is 1 guard dog, intending to harm the Queen. The Queen uses Women's Self-Defense Technique — no, Queen Self-Defense Technique — to eunuchize it. The Queen uses vast numbers to persuade (confuse?) the village cadre. A brawl breaks out, gasoline drum war, great explosion, the village is destroyed. The Queen uses great power to depart for Queen Sequence Spacetime 2 before the great explosion. n=2: one Queen, at the landing site two polar bears intend to harm the Queen. Eunuchized by the Queen using Queen Self-Defense Technique. The Soviet leader is persuaded (confused) by the Queen using vast numbers. A great war, great explosion, Europe is destroyed. The Queen uses great power to escape to another spacetime. Hmm, n=3: one Queen, three world boxing champions at the landing site, intending to assault the Queen. Queen Self-Defense Technique, three world eunuch boxing champions, vast numbers, a certain Western nation's leader, world war, nuclear war, great explosion, the world is destroyed. The Queen uses great power to escape;... Queen Sequence Spacetime 10: 1 Queen, 10 Tyrannosaurus Rexes at the landing site, Queen Self-Defense Technique, 10 eunuch Tyrannosaurus Rexes, vast numbers, one dinosaur leader, a war, asteroid, great explosion, destruction, great power;... Sequence 100: 100 Super Saiyans, Queen Self-Defense Technique, 100 Saiyan divorce cases, vast numbers, galactic war, great explosion, destruction, great power, n+1;... n=1000: Gods above gods, Queen Self-Defense Technique; the god race goes extinct, numbers, god war, explosion, destruction, n=n+1...

Across several hundred parallel spacetimes, countless epic tales worthy of song and tears emerge one after another. The great wheel of history is forced to turn laboriously. What we shall now recount is the story of Parallel Spacetime n — which is to say, the story of Huang Shi:

(End of Prologue)

Gaiden:

The National History: Veritable Records of the Great Ancestor

"The Great Ancestor, who received Heaven's mandate and inaugurated fortune, who established the ultimate standard, sagely and wise, penetrating the divine, benevolent in culture and righteous in arms, of handsome virtue and perfected merit, who settled the realm and expanded the frontiers, the Exalted Emperor, taboo name Shi, courtesy name Yilan, of the Huang clan. His ancestors had for generations made their home in Hebei. His great-grandfather, taboo name Shiren, took a wife of the Yang clan. She dreamed a divine being entered her chamber and made obeisance, rising only after nine kowtows, and thus she conceived. After twenty-one months she gave birth to the Great Ancestor. At that moment, the heavens displayed nine colors, the earth sent forth a vast sound, beasts praised in human speech, birds sang phoenix calls, a red glow filled the chamber, and an extraordinary fragrance overflowed.

The Great Ancestor was majestic in bearing and heroic in form, his aspirations far-reaching, his stratagems flawless, unfathomable to men. His voice rang like thunder, awe-inspiring without anger. At one full year of age he could write, and what he saw he remembered without forgetting. In his youth, whenever he played with the neighborhood children, none dared look up at him directly. The Great Ancestor would once sit high above and command the flock of children to present themselves with the rites of ministers, his manner vividly that of dragon and tiger. He encountered a strange man, who was greatly startled and said, 'Is this not the aura of the Son of Heaven? How does it coil around this child?' The great-grandfather sensed something in his heart and told the strange man to please not reveal it. The man made obeisance to the Great Ancestor three times, then withdrew and vanished without a trace."