"In the 17,000 years before the Great Calamity, humanity tried every means to escape, with interstellar migration being the most straightforward idea. However, including this Ark ship of yours, none have found a star with habitable planets. Even if one were found, with the space technology of humanity in the century before the Great Calamity, it would be impossible to migrate even one-thousandth of humanity. Another idea was to move underground, hiding from the solar flare and emerging afterwards. This is merely prolonging the process of death, as the ecosystem of Earth will be completely destroyed after the Great Calamity, unable to sustain human life."

  There was a period of time when people almost lost hope. But a spark flashed in the mind of a genetic engineer: what if humans were shrunk to one billionth of their current size? In this way, the scale of human society would also shrink by one billion times, and as long as there was a very small ecosystem, survival would be possible with very minimal resource consumption. Soon, all of humanity realized that this was the only feasible way to save human civilization. This idea was based on two technologies: genetic engineering, which allowed humans to shrink to around 10 micrometers in size, equivalent to the size of a cell, but with their bodily structure remaining completely unchanged - this was entirely possible since there wasnt much difference between human and bacterial genes; and nanotechnology, a technology that had been developed in the 20th century, at which time people were already able to build generators the size of bacteria. Later, people could create everything from rockets to microwave ovens on a nanoscale, only they never imagined what their products would ultimately be used for.

  Cultivating the first batch of micro-humans is similar to cloning: extracting all genetic information from a human cell, and then cultivating micro-people that are exactly the same as the main body, but with only one-billionth the volume of the main body. Afterwards, they reproduce offspring just like macro-humans (what micro-humans call you; they also refer to your era as the Macro Era).

  "The first appearance of the micro-humans was extremely dramatic. One day, about 12,500 years after your spaceship took off, a classroom appeared on TVs all over the world. There were thirty children in the classroom, and everything looked very ordinary - the children were normal, the classroom was normal, and there was nothing special about it. But as the camera panned out, people realized that this classroom was being filmed under a microscope..."

  "Id like to ask," the Forerunner interrupted the Lead Executor, "can a being with a brain as small as that of a micro-human achieve macro-human intelligence?"

  "So you think Im a fool? Whales arent any smarter than you! Intelligence isnt determined by the size of the brain, and in terms of the number and quantum state of neurons, the information processing capacity of micro-humans is more than sufficient... Hmm, can you invite us to take a tour of that big spaceship?"

  "Of course, Id be delighted, but... how do I get there?"

  "Please wait for us!"

  Then, the highest governing official jumped onto a strange flying device in mid-air, which was like a large feather with a propeller. Next, others on the square also rushed to jump onto that "feather". This society seemed to have no concept of hierarchy, and those who randomly jumped up from the crowd were definitely ordinary civilians, old and young, but all like the highest governing official girl, excitedly chattering away. That "feather" was quickly packed with people, and new "feathers" kept appearing in the air, each one immediately packed with people jumping onto it. In the end, hundreds of "feathers" loaded with tiny humans floated in the city sky, following the highest governing officials feather, flying in a grand manner towards one direction.

  The precursor leaned over the transparent hemisphere again, carefully observing the micro-city inside. This time, he could distinguish those skyscrapers, which looked like a dense forest of upright matchsticks. The precursor strained his eyes to the limit and finally distinguished those feather-like vehicles, which were like tiny white particles floating in a cup of clear water, and if not hundreds of them gathered together, it would be impossible to distinguish them. It was impossible to see people with the naked eye.

  In the left lens of the pioneers video glasses, the image shot by a micro photographer with an unimaginably small camera is still very clear. Now that photographer is also on one of those "feathers". The pioneers found that in the traffic of the micro city, collisions are happening all the time. Those groups of fast-flying "feathers" constantly collide with each other, collide with giant dust particles floating in the air, and even crash into towering skyscrapers! But the flyer and its occupants are safe and sound, as if no one notices these collisions. In fact, this is a physical phenomenon that even a middle school student can understand: the smaller the objects degree of freedom, the higher the overall strength, the consequences of two bicycles colliding and two 10,000-ton ships colliding are completely different, if two dust particles collide, they will be unscathed. The people in the micro world seem to have a diamond body, without worrying about getting hurt. When the "feather" group flies by, there are often people jumping out of the window of the skyscraper next to it, trying to jump onto one of them, which is not always successful, so that person starts a dizzying fall from hundreds of meters away, while those falling micro-people are still calmly greeting acquaintances in the windows of passing buildings!

  "Ah, your eyes are like a deep black sea, so profound and filled with deep sorrow! Your sorrow has shrouded our city, turning it into a museum! Waaahhh... The highest ruler burst into tears again, and everyone else cried along with her as their feathers crashed back and forth between the skyscrapers."

  The pioneer also saw his own gigantic eyes in the sky of the city from the left lens, and the sorrow that was magnified by tens of billions of times deeply shocked him. "Why is it a museum?" The pioneer asked.

  "For only in museums is melancholy, the Micro Era is an era without worries!" The Earth leader exclaimed loudly, although tears still hung on her delicate face, but she had no trace of sadness anymore.

  "We are the carefree era!" Others also cheered up with abandon.

  The precursor found that the emotional changes of micro-era humans were hundreds of times faster than those of macro-era humans, and this change was mainly reflected in negative emotions such as sadness and melancholy. They could jump out of these emotions in an instant. Another discovery made him even more surprised: such negative emotions were extremely rare in this era, to the point where micro-people regarded them as a rare commodity, and they eagerly sought to experience them whenever they had the opportunity.

  "Dont be gloomy like a kid, youll soon find that theres nothing to worry about in the Micro Era!"

  This remark made the precursor extremely surprised, he had seen that the spiritual state of the microcosm was very similar to that of children in the macro era, but the spiritual state of children would have to be exaggerated many times over to truly resemble them. "Are you saying that in this era, people become more and more... childish as they grow up?"

  "We grow happier and happier!" said the leader girl.

  "Yes, Micro-Era is an era of increasing joy!" The crowd responded loudly.

  "But melancholy is also beautiful, like the lake water under the moonlight, it represents the pastoral love of a great era... Wooo..." The Earth leader let out another sorrowful cry.

  "Thats right, it was a beautiful era!" The other micro-people also nodded in agreement with tears in their eyes.

  The predecessor laughed and said, "You dont even know what melancholy is, little ones. True melancholy is when you cant cry."

  "You will let us experience it!" The highest ruler returned to a state of excitement.

  "I hope it wont." The vanguard sighed softly and said.

  "Behold, this is the monument of the Macro Era!" said the Supreme Executor as "Feathers" flew over another city square. The Pioneer saw that the monument was a thick black pillar, about as wide as an old giant TV tower, with a smooth surface, towering into the clouds, and he looked at it for a long time before realizing that it was a single hair of a Macro person.