At nightfall, far away in the sky, a strange and brilliant star shone with a light bright enough to rival the moon. Beneath this radiance, within the city, more than a dozen burly men moved cautiously through the urban streets. They disturbed no one, carefully slipping into the abandoned shop where Brian Carter was located, and then descended into the basement where he waited.

Each man’s face was marked by hardship. Among these dozen or so, the oldest was about thirty, even older than Brian Carter, and his name was George Miller. He was now the captain of the Black Star Special Forces, yet he treated Brian Carter with great respect.

The others, whether old or young, all looked sharp and capable. Even though every one of them was starving, they exercised great restraint. After eating their allotted rations, they sat quietly, turning their eyes toward Brian Carter. At this moment, George Miller suddenly asked, “Old captain, you didn’t call us here just to treat us to a meal, did you? Go ahead, with at most eight months left, tell us everything—are we supposed to clean out those beasts and rebel scum in this city? That’s a job we can handle!”

The dozen or so men around him all chuckled, especially one huge, dark-skinned man who looked like a black iron tower—at least two meters tall, his muscles bulging so much he seemed more like a robot than a human. In a hoarse voice, he said, “On the way here, we saw those beasts rampaging everywhere. Old captain, just give the word and tomorrow we’ll take their heads!”

Brian Carter sighed, shook his head, and said, “They really are beasts! But now is not the time to deal with them. We need to save more people, not just rescue them for now and then wait for the doomsday eight months from now... The reason I called you here is this!”

Brian Carter turned his computer around to face everyone present. They all saw a string of numbers and English words, but each of them looked puzzled—except for George Miller, whose expression changed as if he had thought of something.

Without hesitation, Brian Carter said, “This is a set of coordinates. The English below refers to a story, and the name of that story is...”

“Noah!”

Chapter Two: Hope!

The development of humanity began as far back as the late era of ancient apes. At first, it was the accidental striking of stones to create sharp points, then learning to shape and craft tools, then lighting the first fire, recording with simple symbols, and finally the creation of written language...

Human progress has never stopped; it only speeds up or slows down for various reasons—war, slaughter, genocide, or the Renaissance, technological explosions, and so on. Through all these bumps and turns, humanity made it to the twenty-first century. At last, humans were about to step into the universe...

In 2027, the United States declassified a secret from the 1950s: back then, in Tennessee, the US had discovered a crashed alien spacecraft, with even the decayed corpses of aliens aboard. This matter was kept secret and buried for decades, while the US continued to study the alien ship. But the technological gap was simply too great, and for decades there was no breakthrough. Time slowly moved into the twenty-first century...

The era of humanity’s technological explosion began after the first industrial revolution, then the second, then the third... The advent of computers, the emergence of new scientific theories—human technological progress continued to explode until the late 2020s, when it finally began to slow.

But just as human progress seemed about to slow, in 2027 the US suddenly declassified the alien spacecraft incident and announced that they had mastered space-jump technology. At the end of 2027, they would conduct the first jump experiment. Humanity was about to step off Earth, conquer the solar system, and stride into the realm of the stars. This was a giant leap for mankind!

“I received this email around April 2028. It was sent to me by an expert in electronic cryptography. I have some connections with him—I once saved his daughter abroad. He sent me a long string of codes, but I remembered he was working on a new type of cipher, which I’d heard about when visiting his home. So I tried to crack it, and unexpectedly, I got this set of data and English words.”

Looking at the dozen or so brothers and comrades before him, Brian Carter said in a deep voice, “At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I just thought the old man was testing my skill with his new cipher. But soon after, all kinds of doomsday declarations exploded across the internet. That’s when I suddenly paid attention to this string of numbers and English. I found an opportunity to visit his family in Italy, but when I arrived at the small town, I discovered their home was under surveillance by certain forces. Judging by the surveillance methods, it seemed to be American and British agents. Luckily, I was disguised as a European at the time, so I didn’t alert them and managed to get away safely. It took some effort to divert their attention, but at that moment I knew this string of numbers and English was anything but simple.”