Chapter 001: The Golden Dome

Hudou, Songjiang University Town.

Late at night, in Dorm 406 of Donghai University, on the bed near the window, Grace Bennett ran his hand through his hair and let out a soft sigh.

The even snoring of his roommate Ryan Carter sounded in his ears. He reached under his pillow for his phone; the time read 4:06 AM.

There were still two hours until dawn, but Grace Bennett was already awake.

He climbed down the ladder, sat on a chair to put on his shoes, then tiptoed out of the dorm, gently closing the door behind him.

On the track field, under the dim streetlights, Grace Bennett walked alone along the rubber track.

His stomach was a bit hungry, but the cafeteria wasn’t open at this hour, so he had to bear it.

Tick-tock, tick-tock~

The ticking in his ears irritated him, like an old radio sending Morse code.

Grace Bennett had been hearing this sound for two weeks. He’d gone to the campus doctor for help, who gave him a few melatonin pills to help him sleep.

Later, unable to stand the noise, he went to the top-ranked ENT hospital in Hudou, paid forty yuan for a specialist appointment.

After a round of tests, the specialist told Grace Bennett, “Your ears are perfectly fine. Could it be a psychological issue? I suggest you see psychiatry.”

“I’ll send you to psychiatry!” Grace Bennett was fuming.

In short, Grace Bennett’s ears had a problem—a big problem.

Twenty-four hours a day, he could always hear the ticking sound, and only when he was utterly exhausted could he barely fall asleep.

He was distracted in class. His roommate William Clark asked Grace Bennett to bring him a roujiamo, but Grace Bennett came back with two sets of jianbing guozi instead.

Misfortune never comes alone.

Last night, his mother called to say that, due to increasingly strict environmental inspections over the past two years, their family’s small decorative bead factory had been repeatedly fined by the environmental bureau and ordered to suspend production for rectification. On top of that, the bank had withdrawn their loans, and the factory finally went bankrupt.

After paying the factory rent, supplier payments, and worker severance, they still owed relatives and friends over 800,000 yuan. Only by selling their only home could they solve the problem.

His mother said that when Grace Bennett came home for summer break, the family might have to rent a place to live.

Grace Bennett wanted to help, but as a freshman, he was powerless. All he could do was comfort his mother over the phone.

“It’s okay, Mom. Renting is fine. As long as our family is together, that’s all that matters.” Grace Bennett said optimistically on the phone, but he didn’t feel that way inside.

The more he thought about it, the more dejected he felt. Grace Bennett pulled a crumpled cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

He didn’t usually smoke. Before leaving the dorm, he’d taken one from Ryan Carter’s pack, along with Ryan Carter’s lighter.

Cough~

Cough~

After just two puffs, trying to look cool, Grace Bennett was choked by the harsh tobacco, coughing violently, bending over as if his insides were about to come out, his mind going blank.

Suddenly~

The intense coughing seemed to trigger some kind of stress response in his body, and Grace Bennett’s brain began to hallucinate.

A grand hall with a golden dome, exaggerated and sharp lines, dazzling with multicolored lights.

In the distance, massive buildings like towers reaching the sky rose and fell like waves in the sea—everything showed this was a high-tech world.

The vast city and planet could hold tens of billions, yet in this world, there was a strange silence; as far as the eye could see, not a soul in sight.

No one knew where the inhabitants had gone. Only that sacred, majestic golden dome, like a cathedral, was still operating ceaselessly.

It sent out radio waves into the deep starry river, the waves crossing the eternal night sky, heading for some distant, unknown shore.

The ticking in his ears suddenly turned into a stream of data, surging into Grace Bennett’s brain like a tide, making his head feel like it was splitting, collapsing in pain onto the rubber track, his whole body convulsing.

Cybernetics, reverse engineering, astrogeology, electromagnetic physics, graviton physics, magnetohydrodynamics, nanomechanics, homeworld engineering, starship engineering, spatial jump theory, spatial acceleration, spatial folding...

All these profound and complex fields of knowledge were pouring into Grace Bennett’s mind with the magical radio waves.

……

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Why are you sleeping on the track?”

Who knows how long had passed before Grace Bennett groggily opened his eyes to find the eastern sky already pale—the sun was about to rise.

Two girls out for an early morning run had found Grace Bennett sleeping by the track and shook him awake.

“I’m fine. One of my roommates snores so loudly I couldn’t sleep, so I came out for a walk. I was just too tired and rested by the track, didn’t expect to actually fall asleep.” Grace Bennett lied casually.

The two girls laughed and ran off, glancing back at Grace Bennett and whispering to each other.

“Boys’ dorms are scary.”

“Yeah, just how earth-shattering must the snoring be to drive this freshman to sleep on the track?”

Grace Bennett was about to head back to the dorm, but realized he really was quite hungry, so he took a detour to the school cafeteria.