Chapter 70: Chapter 69: Gasping for Air_l
Translator: 549690339
After listening, Harrison Clark fell into a long silence.
He forgot to keep walking, just standing still with both hands in his pockets in the middle of the road.
He looked up at the willow branches above his head.
The willow branches swayed gently in the breeze, with a few tender green buds hanging on them.
This was the last newborn before the end of time.
Harrison Clark squinted his eyes, turning over in his mind the story of the predecessor of the Yellowstone Research Institute that Daniel Thompson had told him.
He felt deep sorrow for the people who were born in this era a thousand years later.
They had tried so hard, but nothing could change their fate; it was all in vain.
A century ago, at the beginning of the 3020s, human technology had reached a bottleneck.
During this period, there was no progress in science and technology for ten years.
Materials and energy were the foundation of all scientific progress. To break through the bottleneck, the World Government gathered the best scientists in all relevant fields at one base, putting all their effort into breakthroughs.
Little did they know that this battle would last for eighty-three years.
Four generations, a total of 1,370,000 people, walked side by side on this incredibly difficult, thorny path.
Struggling day after day, year after year.
In the highly advanced twenty-ninth century of medicine, the average life expectancy of the global population had already exceeded 100 years.
But these scientists, who enjoyed the best welfare, had an average life expectancy of less than 60 years!
More than 600,000 people died of overwork before they reached the age of 50.
They burned their last drops of wick when they were at their most energetic and clear-headed.
Even on their deathbeds, just moments before taking their last breaths, they held their work materials in their hands.
Their final words were all about passing on the unfinished projects to their successors.
Eighty years, more than a million people, never backing down, falling one after another.
This was a war without gunpowder, but with corpses everywhere.
Finally, humanity won this war, achieving a breakthrough twenty years ago.
It took another twenty years to transform these achievements into tangible results, as manifested by the Type-3 armor being replaced with the more advanced spindle-shaped vehicles and the bulky, clumsy old Single Soldier Armor being replaced with the lightweight and efficient Azure Dragon Armor.
The reversal of Ward Owen’s fate was just a prelude set by Harrison Clark.
The changes in the Whale Group were an amplified version of Harrison’s influence on the future.
The Yellowstone Research Institute’s predecessor, relying on the achievements of the previous generations, had stormed through those eighty-three years, further amplifying the Butterfly Effect.
Ultimately, countless factors converged to create this result, allowing humanity to win a technological war, complete a phased qualitative change, and establish the present situation.
With Harrison’s worldview, he didn’t understand how those people had persevered.
What kind of faith supported them?
How did the World Government persuade the scientists to make such self-sacrifices to face that illusory, yet inevitable, enemy?
Harrison was utterly baffled by it.
But his biggest advantage was that he didn’t spend much time thinking about things he didn’t understand.
He could easily determine the limits of his ability and didn’t overthink things, decisively giving up on pondering them.
As for why “The Fire” became the human anthem, it was closely related to the self-sacrificing scientists.
These people worked an average of over 16 hours a day, and even with their unwavering faith and access to proper nutrition to restore their physical strength, their minds were still exhausted from being in a state of high-load operation for extended periods.
They also needed some mental stimulation.At first they used drugs and psychological counseling.
But the nature of drugs is to borrow ahead of time, after enjoying the benefits of drugs, soon the debt has to be repaid.
Psychological counseling took too long to produce results, and precious time couldn’t be wasted.
So what to do?
Scientists thought of many ways, using new technologies to make countless attempts, but the results were minimal.
Later, it’s not clear who first uncovered the dusty old papers and discovered that gleaming pearl among the sediment of history.
The thousand-year-old masterpiece “The Fire” was once again played in the sky.
Carrie Thomas, a renowned artist from a thousand years ago, had never been forgotten, but with new talents constantly emerging, people’s hearts were always restless. Apart from a few enthusiasts of “ancient style”, few people would listen to songs from a thousand years ago.
But this time, the first person in this group of scientists to take a chance looked to see if they could find enthusiasm from the song, and then they listened to “The Fire”.
The emotions in this song perfectly matched their mindset of struggling, burning, and sacrificing for the survival of mankind.
At that time, he was in tears and maintained perfect mental state for the whole day.
The next day, he continued to listen.
He originally thought the effect would decrease, that the second listen would generate immunity and numbness due to repetition.
But no, the state remained just as good.
The third day, still the same.
It lasted for a whole month, and the effect didn’t diminish.
This person was an expert in materials science and acoustics. He conducted a comprehensive technical analysis of “The Fire”.
In the end, he concluded that when someone’s mindset perfectly matches the emotions in “The Fire”, the song’s effect will not diminish, because both the accompaniment and the singing represent the ultimate sound that humans can create at a certain level.
Its melody doesn’t seem like an artificial creation, but rather more like a natural force that drives genetic evolution, ultimately forming a great human gene with an incredible precision of combination.
This person recommended “The Fire” to his close colleagues, and it quickly became a shared hobby among hundreds of thousands of people in the entire research institute.
“Ever since then, the progress of the entire project team has accelerated significantly, but because of this song, even more people have exhausted their strength prematurely and died of overwork.”
“But it can’t be said that it’s ‘The Fire’ that has harmed everyone. Take a certain researcher for example; he originally needed 80 years to complete his work, but with the stimulation of ‘The Fire’, he completed it in just 40 years.” “Although he eventually died prematurely at the age of 60, he reached the ultimate of what he could achieve in his life, and his life was without regrets. His name will be forever remembered by mankind.”
“Carrie Thomas is no longer a leader in the narrow sense of the art world, and her achievements and contributions can’t be summarized by rankings.”
“Her works, after thousands of years, can inspire generations of people, allowing us to complete this technological advancement. Her achievements will forever shine on the monument of civilization.”
“Harrison, do you see that bell tower? The names of 1,376,432 people are engraved on it. The names of Carrie Thomas and her mentor Mr. Clark are at the very top, followed by the names of all the scholars who have sacrificed themselves at the Yellowstone Research Institute.”
“Coincidentally, Mr. Clark’s name is exactly the same as yours. You are now the first person in human history with a 100% Coagulation Serum Adaptability. You are also remarkable.”
“It seems like it’s destined. Should I change my name to Daniel Clark? Haha…hic…”
Daniel Thompson said this before sending Harrison Clark to the Azure Dragon Armor Training Center.
Harrison wandered alone in the academy for a long time before gazing at the bell tower from the corridor.
The blazing afternoon sun was glaring, and Harrison turned his face away, unable to look any longer.
For a fleeting moment, he wanted to go to the bell tower to see his own name.
But in the end, he never took a step forward, instead turned his back, and went to meet the Azure Dragon Armor trainers who came to welcome him, quickly walking into the building.
Something weighed on his heart.
It was so heavy.
It almost suffocated him..