After passing through the orbit of Pluto, Ark continued to fly towards the depths of the solar system. For an interstellar spacecraft, navigating in the solar system was like a cruise ship sailing in a harbor. The sun soon grew larger and brighter, Pioneer had taken a glance at Jupiter from the telescope, finding that the surface of this giant planet had changed beyond recognition, the Great Red Spot was gone, and the storm pattern seemed more chaotic. He didnt pay attention to other planets anymore, flying straight towards Earth.

  The precursors trembling hands pressed a button, and the opaque metal curtains of the high stern window slowly opened. Ah, my blue crystal ball, the blue eyeball of the universe, the blue angel... The precursor closed his eyes in silent prayer, and after a long time, he forced himself to open them again.

  He saw a black and white striped globe.

  Black is the rock that melted and solidified again, thats the black of tombstones; white is the ocean that evaporated and froze again, thats the white of shrouds.

  The Ark entered low orbit, slowly passing over the black continent and white ocean, the pioneers saw no signs of anything, everything had been melted away, civilization was nothing but a fleeting memory.

  But its better to leave a monument, one that can withstand 4000 degrees of high temperature.

  The precursor thought so, and the monument appeared. The spaceship received a video signal sent from the ground, and the computer displayed the signal on the screen. The precursor first saw the scene of the great disaster more than 2,000 years ago taken with a high-temperature camera. When the energy flashed, the sun did not suddenly increase in brightness as he imagined, and the energy emitted by the sun was mainly radiated outside the visible light. He saw that the blue sky suddenly turned into a hellish red color, and then turned into a nightmarish purple color; he saw that the high-rise buildings in the epoch city he was familiar with first emitted thick smoke at a temperature of several thousand degrees, and then emitted dark red light like embers, finally melting like wax: molten rock flowed down from the high mountains, forming huge waterfalls, countless such waterfalls gathered into rivers of molten rock emitting red light, and the flood of fire on the ground was rampant; where there was originally a sea, only steam formed tall mushroom clouds, the lower part of this majestic cloud mountain reflected the red color of the molten rock, and the upper part showed the purple color of the sky, rapidly expanding, everything soon disappeared in the steam...

  When the steam cleared and objects could be seen again, it was several years later. By this time, the earth had cooled down from its molten state, and everything was covered with black pumice-like rocks. Lava flows could still be seen, forming a complex network of fire on the ground. All human traces had disappeared, and civilization had vanished like a dream. After several more years, water recombined from hydrogen and oxygen that had dissociated at high temperatures, and heavy rains poured down from the sky, causing steam to rise again from the scorching earth, making the world seem dark, hot, and humid like a large steamer. The rain continued for decades, cooling the earth further, and the oceans gradually recovered. After hundreds of years, the clouds formed by sea water evaporation finally dispersed, revealing a blue sky, and the sun reappeared. Later, due to the Earths orbit moving outward, temperatures dropped drastically, the oceans completely froze, the sky was cloudless, and the dead world became quiet in the cold.

  The pioneer then saw an image of a city: first seeing a forest of tall and slender skyscrapers, the camera descended from above the skyscrapers to reveal a square, with a sea of people in the square. The camera continued to descend, and the pioneer saw that everyone was looking up at the sky. The camera finally stopped on a platform in the center of the square, where a beautiful girl, seemingly only in her teens, stood waving at the pioneer on the screen, shouting "Hey, we see you! Youre like a fast-flying star! Are you Ark One?"

  In the last few years of his journey, Pioneer spent most of his time in virtual reality games. In that game, the computer received the players brain signals and constructed a three-dimensional image based on the players thoughts. The people and objects in this image could also make limited movements according to the players ideas. Pioneer had built countless virtual worlds from families to kingdoms in loneliness, so now he could see at a glance that this was such an image. But this image was made very crudely, due to the volatility of thinking in the brain, this kind of image constructed by imagination always had some places that were not quite right, but there were too many mistakes in the image in front of him: First, when the camera panned over those skyscrapers, Pioneer saw that many people jumped out from the windows on the top floor and fell straight down from hundreds of meters high, after a dizzying fall, these people all landed safely on the ground; at the same time, there were many people on the ground who jumped up like they had light kung fu skills and jumped to the height of several floors, then their feet stepped onto a small stepping board protruding from the wall (such stepping boards appeared every few floors, as if specially designed for this purpose), and then another jump, flying up several more floors, all the way to the top floor, and then they crawled in through a certain window. It seemed that these skyscrapers didnt have doors or elevators, and people entered and exited in this way.

  When the camera panned to that square platform, the pioneer saw several crystal balls suspended in mid-air by threads in the sea of people. The diameter of those balls was probably over a meter. Some people put their hands into the crystal balls and easily pulled out a part of them. After they withdrew their hands, the crystal balls immediately returned to their original shape, while the parts that people had grasped turned into small crystal balls. Those people then threw the transparent small balls into their mouths... Apart from these obvious absurdities, there is one thing that best reflects the chaotic thinking of the person who created this computer-generated image: in all spaces of this city, some strange objects were floating around, with larger ones being two or three meters and smaller ones being half a meter. Some looked like broken sponges, while others resembled curved tree branches. Those objects floated slowly, and one tree branch floated towards the girl on the platform. She gently pushed it away, and the branch turned around and floated away into the distance. The pioneer understood this: in a world on the brink of destruction, people would not have clear and normal thinking.

  This could be some kind of automatic device, buried deep underground by humans before the great disaster, avoiding high temperatures and radiation, and later automatically rising to this already destroyed surface world. The device continuously monitors space, and when it detects a spaceship returning to Earth sporadically, it automatically launches that image, giving those survivors such a terrible and ridiculous comfort.

  "Did they launch another Ark ship later?" the pioneer asked.

  "Of course, and then there were twelve more!" the girl said. Without mentioning other parts of this absurd and bizarre scene, this girl was indeed quite well-made, her face, which combined the essence of East and West, showed an extremely innocent expression, as if the entire universe she gazed up at was a big toy. Her large eyes seemed to be singing, and her long hair, as if weightless, floated forever in mid-air without falling down, making her look like a mermaid in the water.

  "Is anyone still alive then?" the scout asked, his last hope flaring up like a wildfire.

  "Are you that kind of person?" the girl asked innocently.

  "Of course its a real person like me, not a virtual one created by computers like you."

  "The previous Ark returned seven hundred and thirty years ago, you are the last Ark to return. Are there any women on your ship?"

  "Its just me."

  "Are you saying there are no women left?" The girls eyes widened in surprise.

  "I said I was the only one left. Are there other ships out in space that havent returned?"

  The girl clasped her two pale small hands in front of her chest, "Its all gone! Im so sad, youre the last one like this... If... Waaahhh... if we dont clone it..." The beauty covered her face and burst into tears, and the crowd on the square was also filled with sobbing.

  The pioneers heart sank to the bottom of the ocean, and humanitys destruction was finally confirmed.

  "Why didnt you ask me who I am?" The girl raised her head again to gaze up at him, and she regained that innocent look, as if she had forgotten the sorrow of just a moment before.

  "Im not interested."

  The girl shouted loudly: "I am the leader of the earth!"

  "Yes, she is the highest governing official of the United Earth Government!" The people below also suddenly changed from sadness to excitement in a flash, this was truly a clumsy product.

  The forerunner didnt want to play this boring game anymore, he stood up and was about to leave.

  "How can you be like this! All citizens of the capital are here to welcome you, elder, dont ignore us!"

  The girl shouted with a sobbing tone.

  The forerunner thought of something and turned around to ask: "What else has humanity left behind?"

  "Just follow our guidance and you will know!"